Awareness Experience
Step One - Mindful Eating
Audio
Key Information
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LENGTH: 15 minutes
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FREQUENCY: try before one meal/snack every day
Mindful eating focuses on your eating experiences, body-related sensations, and thoughts and feelings about food, with heightened awareness and without judgment. Notice the differences between the experience of this and our habitual, autopilot way of eating. This offers an example of how we can choose to tune into what our senses are telling us and engage in all the activities in our life, becoming more aware of our moments. You can consume any food mindfully, but let’s start with one we usually eat mindlessly, raisins.
Before starting, place four raisins in front of you. Then close your eyes and take as many deep breaths as you like.
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While remaining in a focused and relaxed state, open your eyes and choose one raisin. Look at it as if you’ve never eaten or seen it before. Notice its size, texture and smell.
Once again, close your eyes and place the raisin in your mouth without chewing for a few moments. Use your tongue to gently hold it, move it and feel its taste and texture.
Now, begin slowly chewing it, experiencing every bit of its taste. Notice changes in taste and chewing through time. Observe the feeling and time of the arrival of the impulse to swallow. Continue chewing the raisin, until you’ve extracted every bit of pleasure from it. Once you swallow the raisin, what do you continue to sense and taste?
Do the same with the second and third raisin. Notice any differences between the first. Listen to your thoughts and feelings throughout. Are they judging your raisin or judging your reaction to the raisin? As you do this, continue chewing mindfully and when you decide to swallow, be aware that you are taking the food energy of these three little raisins into your body.
When you get to the fourth raisin, pause and consider: Do you really want it? In the moment you have finished the other three, make a decision whether to pick up the raisin and eat it, or whether to leave it.
Regardless of whether you ate the fourth raisin, reflect on how you make this decision. How did you take the decision? Any thoughts, concerns, worries?
End with bringing awareness back to the breath. Take three deep breaths. Bring your awareness back to your body and open your eyes.
Reflection
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Compare your usual way of eating with this experience, highlighting both the differences and similarities.
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Reflect on the internal battle you went through to make the decision whether to eat the fourth raisin.
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Consider if similar thoughts arise when deciding to eat another bite of other types of food in other contexts.
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Try to slowly bring this practice into your everyday life as you will start to enjoy eating in a way you may never have before.
