Jennifer May for The New York Times
TRY this: place a forkful of food in your mouth. It doesn’t matter what
the food is, but make it something you love — let’s say it’s that first
nibble from three hot, fragrant, perfectly cooked ravioli.
Now comes the hard part. Put the fork down. This could be a lot more
challenging than you imagine, because that first bite was very good and
another immediately beckons. You’re hungry.
Today’s experiment in eating, however, involves becoming aware of that
reflexive urge to plow through your meal like Cookie Monster on a
shortbread bender. Resist it. Leave the fork on the table. Chew slowly.
Stop talking. Tune in to the texture of the pasta, the flavor of the cheese, the bright color of the sauce in the bowl, the aroma of the rising steam.
Continue this way throughout the course of a meal, and you’ll experience
the third-eye-opening pleasures and frustrations of a practice known as
mindful eating.
The concept has roots in Buddhist teachings. Just as there are forms of
meditation that involve sitting, breathing, standing and walking, many
Buddhist teachers encourage their students to meditate with food,
expanding consciousness by paying close attention to the sensation and
purpose of each morsel.
In one common exercise, a student is given three
raisins, or a tangerine, to spend 10 or 20 minutes gazing at, musing
on, holding and patiently masticating.
Lately, though, such experiments of the mouth and mind have begun to
seep into a secular arena, from the Harvard School of Public Health to
the California campus of Google. In the eyes of some experts, what seems
like the simplest of acts — eating slowly and genuinely relishing each
bite — could be the remedy for a fast-paced Paula Deen Nation in which
an endless parade of new diets never seems to slow a stampede toward
obesity.
Mindful eating is not a diet, or about giving up anything at all. It’s
about experiencing food more intensely — especially the pleasure of it.
You can eat a cheeseburger mindfully, if you wish. You might enjoy it a
lot more. Or you might decide, halfway through, that your body has had
enough. Or that it really needs some salad.
“This is anti-diet,” said Dr. Jan Chozen Bays, a pediatrician and meditation teacher in Oregon and the author of “Mindful Eating: A Guide to Rediscovering a Healthy and Joyful Relationship with Food.” “I think the fundamental problem is that we go unconscious when we eat.”
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