Raisin Meditation

This is a traditional MBSR meditation for bringing mindful awareness to eating. Have two raisins and a glass of water handy before you start. See Palouse Mindfulness for the free 8-week MBSR course that this is part of.

Transcript

This is the raisin meditation.

Before beginning,

You want to start with two raisins,

A glass of water,

And we'll begin with a breath meditation.

There's no right place to feel the breath.

It could be your belly,

Or it could be your chest,

Or it could be your nostrils.

So if you want to close your eyes for a moment,

You could do that.

Just find the actual sensations of breathing.

And notice it's not just breath in and breath out,

There's actually a pause in between,

Where your breath turns around on its own.

And there's no need to change your breath in any way because you're breathing just fine.

Now we'll just do this for a few breaths.

When you're ready,

Letting your eyes open,

And we'll begin to pay attention to these raisins,

Because that's what this meditation is about,

After all.

And picking up one of the raisins.

And we want to look at this raisin,

I want you to pretend for a moment,

Like you've never ever seen a raisin before,

Like you just landed from Mars,

And you wondered what this object is.

You might not even know that it's edible.

And so you're looking at how the light hits it.

You're seeing that it has crevices and indentations that looks different,

Whether you're looking at it from the side or you're looking at it on end.

That its color is,

Now we think of raisins as being black,

But the color might actually have some brown and if you look at it,

There's some gold.

And there's a certain way it feels in your fingers as you touch it.

You can roll it around in your fingers.

Yours might be drier than mine is,

But mine feels kind of pliable.

So if I press it,

It squashes a little bit.

You can even see if you can smell anything.

Now I can detect a little bit of a smell.

I don't have a very good smeller,

But I can smell this raisin a little bit.

Now I'm going to suggest you try to do something that sounds kind of strange,

Which is see if you can hear your raisin.

It's not going to make much of a sound,

So you're going to need to give it some help.

So if you squeeze it a little bit and roll it around in your fingers,

Applying a little pressure,

You might be able to hear some crinkling or some popping as things readjust inside.

And now,

Taking that raisin and bring it to your mouth.

And of course the tendency is just pop it in your mouth,

Chew it,

And swallow it,

But we're going to make this a slower process.

So as you bring it to your mouth,

Placing it on your lips,

Bring it in the mouth between your teeth.

Don't break the skin just yet.

And roll it around in your mouth.

And let it visit different parts of your mouth.

You can go to your palate,

Go to the front of the tongue,

The back of the tongue,

Over in your cheek.

You'll be like a squirrel and put it over your cheek there.

Bring it over to the other side.

Now if you've been pretty disciplined about this,

You haven't broken the skin yet,

So when you're ready,

Just gently tap it with your teeth,

Just enough so you can break the skin.

You may be able to experience a little burst of flavor.

It's hard to keep from chewing it.

I find myself wanting to chew it now,

But just rolling it around,

Getting the flavor,

Changing its shape by pushing it up on your palate.

And when you're ready,

Without taking big bites,

Just small bites,

You may be able to hear the bites,

Feel the flavor,

Taste the flavor.

And you'll notice it's beginning to break up a little bit in smaller pieces.

And it's both feeling the raisin in your mouth,

Tasting the flavors,

And tasting the flavor.

And you'll notice that it's starting to break up a little bit in smaller pieces.

And it's both feeling the raisin in your mouth,

Tasting the flavors,

Feeling the textures,

Hearing the sounds.

And the pieces in your mouth get smaller and smaller.

That is,

If you're able not to already have swallowed it,

Which is possible.

And pretty soon the raisin's gone.

You still taste some of the residual flavor of the raisin.

When you're ready,

Taking a little sip of water,

Feeling the coolness of the water,

You just swish it around in your mouth and swallow that.

Now we have a second raisin.

And this raisin,

Of course it's not the same raisin,

It's a different raisin.

You might look and see how it's different from the first raisin.

This one,

I know,

Is for me,

It's a little bit smaller.

It's actually a little browner than the other one was.

And of course the wrinkles on it are different.

In this raisin we're going to explore a little bit about where it came from.

This raisin didn't always exist as a raisin.

It used to be a grape.

It was a grape in a vineyard somewhere.

And that grape needed certain things in order for it to survive and to grow.

It needed sun,

It needed soil,

It needed a place in which to grow.

It needed water,

Whether from the sky and rain or from irrigation.

And if you look really closely,

Just barely see this on this raisin,

There's a little place where the stem was.

This is the umbilical cord for the grape and for the raisin,

The place where all the nutrients came in.

Nutrients from the soil and from the sun,

From the water.

And the soil itself,

This raisin couldn't exist without the soil.

In a way,

The raisin is the sun and it is the soil.

In fact,

The soil came probably from volcanic rock ages and ages ago before it was broken down.

The nutrients in the soil came from plants and animals that had decomposed and provided nutrients for it.

All that's in the raisin.

And we're not done yet because this raisin,

When it was still a grape,

It got picked by some laborer or took it and it was taken away.

And it was left out there to dry or in a drying bin until it dried enough to get the wrinkles that we see and the color that we see here.

And then it had to be gathered up,

Packaged in some way and put in a truck to go to a packaging plant that was put in the kind of container that you found it in at the grocery store.

The trucker had to get it there,

Driving on miles and miles of road,

Which you couldn't do without gasoline,

Which came from the ground somewhere,

Some sort of petroleum product,

And somebody built the truck.

So it's everything.

There's so much that went into getting this raisin to you here now,

The grocery store,

The clerk who purchased it from when you got it off the shelf.

And now here it is on your counter and in your hand.

This one small raisin,

It's a little bit of a little bit of a thing.

And in your hand,

This one small raisin,

Everything,

Everything's in this raisin,

The sun,

The sky,

The rain.

In a way,

It's not separate from those.

And that's really one of the lessons of mindfulness is to discover that everything is connected.

There isn't anything really that's totally separate from anything else.

And now if you want,

Actually to me,

It feels a little sacrilegious to do this,

But if you want,

You can eat this raisin.

And maybe not as slowly as the first raisin,

But give it some time.

Really taste it.

Hear it.

Feel it.

See if you can bring the same sense of curiosity and exploration to the things you do in daily life.

Like walking the dog,

Brushing your teeth,

Taking a shower,

Walking to the car on your way to work or driving on the highway.

Maybe you shouldn't do it driving on the highway just yet,

But things where you can just really notice where you are and what you're doing.

Reviews

Absolutely beautiful

Great meditation that brings awareness about details that could help you get a sense of abundance and apreciation

An unusual approach to a mindfulness meditation. He gives you an object to focus on, in his case a raisin in mine a piece of chicken I was eating, and helps you practice mindfulness with that piece of food. It’s so much easier to stay focused when you have something to focus on!

Thanks Dave! I’m retaking the MBSR course and will be using the exercises here on insight timer.

A great mindfulness activity!

Very simple yet profound. I enjoyed that. It helps. 🙏

Great. Loved the detail of focus on different aspects! Thank you 🤗

One of the most beautiful meditations I’ve meditated to. Thank you. ❤️

Fantastic! Thank you for giving so freely of the excellent resources (here and on your website) to benefit all beings. I had this idea a few years ago for use in group counseling for adults and children. Now, thanks to you and Insight Timer, thousands and more will be able to share this beautiful introduction to Mindfulness! (Bowing deeply) Namaste.

This is a lovely, fun practice. I listen even when I’m not eating raisins. It reminds me to take time out to appreciate how many elements and people are involved, for my food to get to me! 🤓🍽

Who knew raisins could be fun?! Thanks for a good lesson, Dave. 💙