Chapter two
MINDFULNESS EXERCISES: THE FIVE SENSES
Eating is a multisensory experience. In this section, we explore the five basic senses of smell, vision, hearing, taste, and touch. We discover and explore the sensory experiences through simple mindfulness exercises that anyone can do, including children. We eat with all of our senses, so familiarity with these basic exercises will make the mindful eating practices more powerful.
EAT WITH YOUR NOSE
EXPLORE THE SENSE OF SMELL
WHAT: In this mindfulness exercise, the focus range is limited to the sense of smell. You only want to pay attention to aromas, odours, fragrances, perfumes, or even trace scents that are related to the experience of eating.
WHY: Smelling your food can add some richness to the experience of eating, and the more you focus on it, the better you become at detecting subtle aromas. As a result, you may experience more pleasure from each meal.
PREPARATORY EXERCISE: Take a moment to notice what you smell right now. You may not detect anything. The air you breathe is potentially odourless, or your brain may have become accustomed to the environment where you are and does not register any smell right now. Make a cup with your hand and bring it to cover your nose. Take a sniff or two and notice if you detect anything different. Then try to bring the crease of your elbow to your nose, but this time close your eyes before you inhale and notice how different it might be.
HOW: A good starting point is to focus on the aromas, odours, and smells that are coming from the food. You could also decide to include everything you can smell in the room where you are having a meal.
When you are ready to eat, bring the food to your nose or your nose to the food. Notice what you smell as the food comes closer to your nose. Take your time. Pick one smell at a time and be curious about it. Soak your awareness into that sensory experience for a few seconds. Then release your attention to notice another or the same aroma. Continue to selectively pay attention to the aromas that are present as the food disappears into your mouth. Do this exercise for the duration that you set or until all has been eaten.
WATCH OUT: Common issues include getting caught in thinking or being distracted by another sensory experience like the taste of the food or rushing to finish your meal to move on to something else — something you consider more important than eating at this time.
You don’t need to describe what you smell. If you want a label to keep you grounded in the practice, consider using the simple and neutral label “SMELL” to acknowledge the fact that you are only paying attention to what you smell at that moment. Using this label may help keep your focus on this mindfulness exercise, especially if you are dealing with a lot of distractions.
Another common issue with smelling is not detecting much aroma and olfactory fatigue, which is the temporary, normal inability to distinguish a particular odour after prolonged exposure to it. In general, comparing smells may help to identify more aromas (like going back and forth from a strawberry to a raspberry to notice the slight differences). Remember that in a mindfulness exercise, you want to work with what is present and not what you would like to be present. If no aromas are detected, then this is the experience for now, and you could focus on the absence of smell for an instant.
EXAMPLE: You are walking into the kitchen where you smell your favourite childhood dish. As you sit down with your plate, you detect an immediate aroma. You inhale further, and the sensory experience of smelling the food occupies considerably more space in your awareness. You bring all of your focus to that sensory experience and focus on it for a few seconds. You then take another sniff and detect a different aroma. You say the label “SMELL” to yourself to strengthen your awareness that you smell something. You become interested in how this olfactory experience unfolds. You stay with it for a few seconds. Then you release your attention to notice another or the same smell. You remember to slow down and you take your time for this exercise.
The smell of the food may trigger mental images of your childhood’s kitchen and feelings of contentment in the body. For this exercise, you let those distractions (mental images of your childhood kitchen, feelings of contentment) come and go in the background of your awareness and keep the focus exclusively on the smell of your meal.
SKILLS TRAINING: Refer to Chapter One for more information and definitions.
Concentration: Let your attention notice the different aromas of food. Every time you are distracted, bring back your focus to what you smell at that moment.
Sensory Clarity: Explore and discover what you smell, how intense it is, where you detect it, when it starts and stops, and whether or not it is changing over time. Those are examples of questions you do not need to answer in your mind. They are just pointers to how you can develop your Sensory Clarity.
Inner Balance: Allow aromas to freely come and go and stay for as long or as little as they will in the foreground of your awareness. Do not try to cling to or repress anything you smell. Allow the other sensory experiences (distractions) to arise and pass on their own in the background of your awareness without interference.