Imaginative Nutritious Garden To Encourage Mindful Eating

Let your imagination create your thriving, nutritious garden full of your favorite fruits, vegetables, and herbs to nourish your body and senses. Let it even grow silly things like popcorn on trees! Notice how important it is to give your garden (and yourself) everything it needs, and not too much of what it doesn't. Then enjoy the harvest of your bright, beautiful garden through your senses to inspire you to mindfully enjoy the nutrition from your food during your meals!

Transcript

Welcome friends, Let's go on a journey to create our very own thriving garden filled with all of our favorite nutritious foods that'll help nourish our bodies. Fruits, Vegetables, Herbs, You can even grow silly things in your garden like popcorn on trees if you want. It's your garden, It can be whatever you want it to be. So I invite you to join me in a comfortable place, Maybe get your wiggles out, Shake through your fingers, Your toes, Your hair, Whatever else needs to shake out. When you're ready, Arrive with a big breath in through your nose, Exhale, Sigh out through your mouth. If it feels okay, You can close your eyes and start to imagine with me. Begin to imagine a sunny spot, Maybe it's in your backyard or maybe it's in a little corner of your front yard or maybe it's at your grandma's house or somewhere you really love and start to picture it filled with warm sunlight, Maybe you can feel the gentle breeze, You hear birds chirping, You see butterflies flying, Notice the color of their wings. This is where your beautiful garden can grow, It can grow and it can grow and it can grow just like you. What do you want in your garden? What fruits do you love? Maybe strawberries, You can pick them right off the vine, Pop them in your mouth, Maybe juicy tomatoes, Perfect for making your favorite salsa, Perhaps some crunchy carrots, Bright orange, Make a snap sound when you bite into them, What about some herbs, Basil smells so good, So yummy on pizza and mint makes your lemonade even yummier. Imagine having these fresh herbs right at your fingertips, You can rub the leaves between your fingertips and smell the smells, Imagine all your favorite things growing in this garden, Imagine yourself going out and taking care of them, Perhaps feel your hands in the soft rich soil, Visualize yourself watering them gently with a watering can, Perhaps watch the water soak down into the ground, Imagine yourself visiting this garden every day, Perhaps you feel excited as you notice how much it's growing, The new little green shoots sparking up through the soil, The fresh fruit blossoming on the vines or the trees, And each day you offer this garden the nourishment it needs, The water, You watch it soak up the sunlight it needs, And as it takes in everything it needs it grows, Bright, Beautiful, And notice that you take care of all the things it doesn't need, Pulling out pesky weeds, Making sure that your plants have enough space to grow big and strong, Notice how important it is to give your garden everything it needs and not too much of what it doesn't, Look around your garden, What do you want to eat here, You want to go pick a raspberry off the raspberry bush or an apple off a tree, Go choose what you want to eat, Notice what it feels like to pick it off the vine or the branch and hold it in your hand, Take in its color, Perhaps hold it up to your nose, Take in its smell, It's almost as if you can taste it with your eyes, Now let's enjoy that, Whatever it is, Bring it up to your mouth and take a bite, Don't just take a quick bite, Take a bite where you can fully enjoy this thing that you've nourished, It's important when we eat to savor each bite, Helps our senses, Helps our brains, Our hearts, It also helps our digestive system, Our teeth, Our tongue, Saliva glands, They're all part of our digestive system, They help us break down our food and make it smaller so we can swallow it and send it down our esophagus and into our stomach, They also help us break down our food and make it smaller at a chemical level, They're special things in our saliva called digestive enzymes and they break down your food and help you start to get all the nourishment out of it, Help you take what you need and get rid of the rest just like we did in our garden, So imagine yourself enjoying whatever you harvested from your garden slowly, Mindfully, Taking your time with each bite, Savoring the taste of each bite and eventually swallowing your food, Letting it go down into your belly so it can nourish your whole body and visualize your body thriving just like your garden, Fully nourished, Happy, Healthy and I invite you to bring one hand onto your belly, The other onto your heart, Maybe feel the corners of your mouth turn up into a smile, Make a promise to yourself that you will enjoy your food each and every bite and appreciate how much it nourishes you and allows you to do all the things you love to do, I invite you to meet me with your hands at prayer at your heart and thank you for going on this garden journey with me, Namaste, See you next time.