Mindful Eating Practice

This guided visualization can be done at any time, you do not need to be eating food or sitting at a meal to participate. You can then take the principles you learn in this practice to your meal times.

Transcript

Welcome.

In today's mindful eating meditation,

I'll be doing a guided visualization.

You do not have to be eating in order to participate,

And instead I invite you to do this meditation on your own,

Using the guided visualization,

And then to take these principles and strategies that you learned through this meditation into your actual mealtimes.

When you are ready,

Find a comfortable seat.

Whether you're sitting on a chair or on the earth,

Feel the connection between the hip bones and the ground or the seat beneath you.

From the base of the tailbone,

Start to feel some lengthening up through the spine,

Straight and strong.

The shoulders are going to gently drop back and down,

And the crown of the head is going to lift.

You might choose to have a soft gaze or you can close your eyes.

Just feel an ease through the body as you start to breathe mindfully.

Taking deep full inhales and exhales,

Letting them be steady and strong.

And finding an ease in your breath.

For today's meditation,

We're going to follow the life of a food as it makes its way from the earth to you.

So let's start by envisioning a seed.

Just a tiny round seed.

It's actually a grape seed,

So if you've ever eaten grapes that have seeds in them,

You know their shape,

Their texture,

Their size.

If you haven't,

That's okay.

Just imagine a small,

Tiny round seed.

The seed's in the earth.

And slowly,

Because of the soil and the water,

It starts to grow.

Day after day,

Growing little by little until the little plant pops out from the ground.

Just a little green spike in the earth.

Underneath the sun,

Underneath the moon,

Growing day in and day out.

There's a farmer that comes by to check on this grape vine as it grows,

Maybe sometimes giving it more water or fertilizer.

Eventually,

As the grape plant grows,

The farmer is going to start to trellis the vine onto a stake and onto wire to help it grow in a specific shape.

See this vine growing next to the other vines,

Longer and longer,

Stronger and wider.

You start to see the leaves growing.

Underneath the sun,

Underneath the moon,

Underneath all types of weather.

And slowly,

This little bundle of grapes start to grow.

At first,

These grapes are no larger than the eraser on the top of a pencil,

Even smaller.

They experience warmer days,

Cooler days,

Cloudy days,

Super rainy days.

Just see these grapes growing,

Getting bigger and plumper.

Going from hard to soft as they ripen.

Maybe those grapes even change color,

Going from green to purple.

And each day,

The farmer or farmers come by,

Checking in on the plants,

Checking in on the grapes,

Trying to see if they're ready,

If their growing is complete.

Day after day,

Under sun and moon,

Wind and rain,

Until eventually this bundle of grapes looks like the beautiful,

Perfectly round bundle of grapes that you see when you go to the store or the farmer's market or maybe even pick them from your own house.

The farmer and the team decide they're ready.

And so the entire crew gets together to start harvesting the grapes,

Cutting off each bundle one by one.

The bundle of grapes that we've been following is just one of many,

And they spend many days getting all of the grapes off of the vine,

Into containers,

Washing the grapes,

Making sure they're in good shape,

Packing them up.

All the people that are involved in getting those grapes harvested,

Washed and packed.

And then they get handed off to someone that's going to transport the grapes.

Maybe the grapes are going into a huge truck or a small pickup truck.

There's a driver of the truck that takes these grapes many miles,

Maybe even over the course of days.

And then the grapes reach a distribution center.

The person checks off the grapes,

Makes sure,

Okay,

Yes,

Here are all of the grapes that we expected,

And decides where these grapes are going to go.

They decide which city they're going to be sent to,

Which store exactly,

When they're going to reach the shelves.

So the grapes get diverted again,

Handed off to another driver,

Another set of people to get them to the exact store that they're going to be sold from.

When they arrive at the store,

The people,

The workers at that store unload the grapes,

And then another worker sets them all out.

You see those perfect grapes that used to be underneath the sun,

Now underneath the fluorescent lights of the store.

Until one day you come in,

You pick up that exact bundle of grapes,

Decide they look delightful and delicious.

You even get help getting those grapes home because you go through the checkout person,

The person that's bagging up the groceries,

They all have a hand on the bag or on the grapes themselves.

Getting them packed up for you,

So that you can drive them home,

Put them in the fridge,

And when you're ready,

When it's time,

Taking them out and washing them.

Now imagine that you're putting that grape into your mouth.

When that grape enters your mouth,

Before you even bite down onto the grape,

Just in tasting the skin of the grape,

You can feel and notice all of those days of sun and rain and wind and clouds,

Day and night.

And you see the grape as it was grown.

You see that food underneath the watchful eye of the farmer and then the harvesters and the packers and the drivers and the store clerks and the checkout person and the bagger and you.

All of these stewards helping that food get to you.

The reminder of the long life cycle of the food you're consuming and how many people and places it is touched to get to where it is now.

You bite into the grape as you feel that sweetness through the mouth.

And gratitude for all of those days of sun and wind and rain and clouds,

Day and night.

And gratitude for the watchful eye of the farmers and the packers and the harvesters and the drivers and the store clerks,

The checkout person,

The bagger and you for playing the necessary role in this life cycle.

Knowing that this is just the story of one grape and that in so many of our meals and foods,

We have multiple ingredients coming from multiple parts of the world,

Having very different plants,

Plants and life cycles and pathways to getting to us.

Take a moment of amazement that it all works and it all culminates in a meal for you,

Just one single meal of how many thousands you eat over a lifetime,

How many millions and billions are eaten in a day.

And what I invite for you is the next meal you sit down to take a moment to look at your plate,

To look at the foods you're about to consume.

And to notice maybe you can identify what the plants or animals look like that are a part of that meal.

If you don't know,

You can always search on the Internet to just see what does that plant look like?

What does the beginning of their life cycle seem like?

What does the seed look like?

Where does this thing grow or where is it raised?

Knowing that when you do this,

Every time you eat a food,

You're going to be connected to the sun and wind and clouds and rain.

When you're ready,

You can open up your eyes,

Slowly returning to the space around you.

Gratitude for this world and all of the complexity in it.

Namaste.

Reviews

Very well done 👍! Thank you 🙏🏼 🍇 🌞 🌱 👩🏻‍🌾