Chapter one
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
This book works with any diet: omnivorous, halal, kosher, celiac, vegetarian, vegan, raw vegan, keto, paleo, diabetic, and also with intermittent fasting. Why? Because you get to choose the food that you eat. There’s also the option to work with beverages for any of the exercises. The exercises will suggest how to focus on the experience of eating. You can jump around from one exercise to another, but I encourage you to try each activity a few times before experimenting with another one.
Choose a time of day when you can eat in an environment that is neutral, with minimal distractions — no smartphones, no tablets, no computers! Start by yourself during a solo meal so you can sink into the experience and not be disturbed. You might also try working with a partner if you’re both focussed on the exercise. Remember to slow down and take your time to appreciate better the mindfulness that you will be cultivating. Closing your eyes is not mandatory but would certainly help in all the exercises unless the exercise involves focussing on the visual experience.
Most of the mindfulness exercises begin with your first bite of food. You could begin the practice before you start to eat as you prepare food or bring your meal to your plate, for instance. You can do them for as long or as short as you want. Feel free to use a timer if that would help, but you don’t need to. The duration of your meal could be your timer. The practice can finish when all has been eaten or as you bring your dish to the sink.
In the following chapters, you will discover many exercises that are presented in the same way. You should find all the necessary information to do the exercise without having to read the entire book. Should you encounter some challenges, please visit my website www.eat-book.com and consult the free section on mindfulness. On my website, you will also have access to many tips to bring your mindfulness practice into your daily life.
All exercises are presented in this format:
WHAT: In any mindfulness exercise, there is an object of focus or a type of sensory experience you want to focus on. If you’ve done breath meditation, the object of focus in that practice is following the breath. For mindful eating, the object of focus will be specific aspects of the sensory experience of eating. Focus range means all the sensory experiences you could potentially focus on. In the “WHAT” section, you will discover what the focus range includes with some objects of focus examples.
WHY: Contains excellent reasons to do the exercise.
PREPARATORY EXERCISE: These orient you in the direction you should take when doing a mindfulness exercise while eating.
HOW: Relevant instructions on how to do the mindfulness exercise while eating food. Have a look at the preparatory exercise to make sure you get all the proper explanations before you do the practice by yourself.
In your day-to-day life, you may not be consciously aware of where your attention is drawn to or what sensory event pulls your attention. When practicing mindfulness, you become consciously aware of where your attention lands or what captures your attention from moment-to-moment, and you develop this awareness.
Although there are many ways to practice mindfulness, most exercises presented in this book use these four steps:
1) Noticing
Noticing means acknowledging the sensory experience that draws your attention. For example, you may notice that you are looking at a brown spot on a banana.
2) Labelling
Labelling implies saying a neutral and simple word to yourself to support the act of noticing. In the banana example, the label could be “SEE.” The word “SEE” is an excellent example as it doesn’t describe much of what you see. Hence, it prevents the mind from being triggered and caught in a mental process of defining, comparing, and analyzing. Labelling “SEE” reinforces the fact that your attention noticed something visual.
3) Soaking
For a brief instant — 1 to 5 seconds — you soak your awareness into what you noticed in step one. You focus, discover, and open up to the sensory experience you noticed. In the above example, that would be soaking into the visual experience of the banana’s brown spot. During this step, you become curious and explore the details of the sensory experience for a brief instant. When you soak into it, you can actively focus on what you noticed or you can let your attention be passively drawn to what you noticed. When you soak into it, you can focus on one part of what you noticed (zoom in) or you can focus on the entire sensory experience (zoom out).
4) Repeating
After step three, release and allow your attention to notice a new or the same sensory experience. You label it and you soak into it for a few seconds. In our visual exploration of the banana example, your attention could land on a different part of the banana or stay on the same brown spot. You would label that new experience “SEE” and discover that experience for a few seconds and repeat the cycle of noticing, labelling, and soaking over and over.
WATCH OUT: This section highlights the most common challenges. Labelling is a powerful strategy when dealing with distractions or lack of concentration during a mindfulness practice. I included some label suggestions in this section. For additional strategies, you may refer to Chapter Six: “Common Issues While Practicing Mindfulness” and visit my website.
EXAMPLE: This passage presents what the exercise could look like in practice.
SKILLS TRAINING: You can develop mindfulness like any other capacity in life. Just as we can go to the gym to train our muscles to get more endurance, strength, and flexibility, we can train our awareness to become more mindful. Mindfulness exercises aim to develop the awareness to become mindful. Very few mindfulness training programs explicitly define what the different components of mindfulness are and how you can improve them.
Shinzen Young, a modern mindfulness expert, conceived an empowering mindfulness system where he distinguishes between three different attention skills that interplay with one another to constitute mindful awareness. Those skills are Concentration, Sensory Clarity, and Inner Balance. In this section, you will find specific information on how you can train those three attention skills during each exercise. All mindfulness exercises develop the three core skills.
Concentration is the ability to focus on what you consider to be relevant at a given time. Concentration can be for a brief or a sustained period. There are many approaches to train Concentration. You can decide to let your attention go wherever it wants within the focus range. Whenever your attention is outside the focus range (i.e., whenever you are distracted), kindly bring back your attention to the focus range. Without any judgment, let the distraction be in the background and put the spotlight of your attention back on one of the sensory events you decided to focus on. Similarly, you might decide to pay attention to a specific object of focus. When you realize you are no longer focussing on that particular object, kindly bring back your focus on the object that you chose to pay attention to. In the Soaking step (after Noticing and Labelling), you build your momentary Concentration by briefly and completely focussing on what you notice for a few seconds.
Alternatively, you could decide to systematically scan the focus range to detect the sensory experiences you are paying attention to. When you find yourself no longer scanning, kindly start back where you left off. You may also begin anew anywhere in your focus range if you can’t remember where you left off.
Lastly, you may decide to hold your attention over the entirety of your focus range by covering it all with your attention. Whenever you are no longer holding your attention in the focus range, kindly bring back your focus to cover the focus range.
Sensory Clarity is the ability to keep track of what sensory event(s) you’re experiencing in the present moment. Keeping track means detecting where and when sensory experiences occur, observing how long they last, and discriminating how intense or how subtle they are. It also means differentiating one sensory experience from another and observing how they are changing and interacting with one another. To build Sensory Clarity, you do not need to use words to describe to yourself what you are experiencing. All those different aspects of what you can keep track of are examples of how your awareness could gain more clarity. Put on your explorer’s hat and be curious about the world of sensory experiences. Become interested in the details that make a sensory experience vibrant, vivid, distinct, and alive.
Inner Balance (also known as equanimity) is the ability to not interfere with the sensory experiences as they arise and pass in a kind of hands-off relationship to the sensory event. Training this skill is like giving permission to sensory experiences to fully express themselves and allowing them to freely come, be, and go without any resistance. There are no efforts to push them away and no attempts to grasp onto any of them. An open and relaxed posture may contribute to this openness. If you use labels, you may also enhance the Inner Balance skill with a gentle, welcoming, and loving tone in your voice. If it is possible to intentionally let go of any judgment in your mind, this also cultivates the skill of Inner Balance.
When you are focussing on a particular object, you may have other sensory experiences that try to grasp your attention (also known as distractions). For example, you are focussing on the aroma of your soup, and at the same time, there is some muscle tension in your neck that tries to steal the spotlight of your attention, and you hear your inner voice that is planning for the upcoming meeting. By allowing the distracting sensory experiences (i.e., muscle tension and inner voice) to freely come and go on their own in the background of your awareness, without bothering them and without interference, you further develop the Inner Balance skill. You don’t need to suppress the distractions. You are not focussing on them.
CHOOSING AN EXERCISE
Although the primary aim of this book is to boost the pleasure of eating, all the exercises presented in this book will support you in your mindfulness journey. Should you want to address an undesired behaviour such as compulsiveness, neediness, or drivenness to eat, refer to Chapter Seven: “Transform Your Relationship with Food: Addressing Undesired Behaviours.”
The first six exercises (“Eat with Your Nose,” “Eat with Your Eyes,” “Eat with Your Ears,” “Eat with Your Tongue,” “Eat with Your Hands,” and “Eat with Your Mouth”) present a pleasant way to build the three core skills of Concentration, Sensory Clarity, and Inner Balance. The exercises “Eat in Space,” “Eat with A Smile,” and “Eat in Peace” are additional fun exercises to work differently on those skills.
The exercise “Eat with Your Stomach” is an introduction to the bodily sensations associated with the desire to eat. The practices “Eat with Your Heart” and “Eat with Your Mind” are there to sensitize you to your inner system. Everybody has internal reactions whether they manifest as mental talk, mental images, or an emotional body sensation. Discovering this is very helpful on any mindfulness path.
The book then presents a series of exercises that may help to develop the awareness of the impermanence of the sensory events: “Eat in the Flow,” “Eat Fresh,” “Eat All Your Food,” “Eat More,” and “Eat Less.”
I also include two exercises to experience the effortlessness of life: “Eat Spontaneously” and “Just Eat.”
Lastly, this book offers a self-enquiry practice called “Who Is Eating?” that might help you explore the sensations that are experienced while eating in a different way.
All you need is to get started. Work your way up. Start with a few mindful nibbles and aim for a mindful meal, one bite at a time!