Eating Mindfully

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all!

I hope to write about eating, one of the favorite activities during the holiday season.  Like many people, I  am concerned about what I eat, to make sure what I eat makes me healthier and stronger and on occasions brings me great pleasure and memories.  But then I realized I spent little time to think about how I eat.  I don't mean using forks or chopsticks to eat, but in what state of mind do I eat.

In October, when I was visiting my parents in Hong Kong, while we were having dinner at home, they commented that I ate too fast, did not seem to chew my food and even made slurping sound as if I were eating Ramen noodle!  Then I started to observe some other Chinese people eat say in a professional conference luncheon setting.  To my surprise, men and women alike usually do not eat that fast; they pause in between bites.  I was surprised because I thought Hong Kong is such a fast-paced city that every one is pretty much stressed and focused on efficiency and wants to finish her meal quickly. Now I found out I was the one who is stressed out!


Then more recently I have been reading this wonderful book called "Beyond Wealth" by a financial adviser called Alexander Green who talked about "How to Eat like a Zen Master" in one of the chapters.  His book is really about how to live and to focus more on spirituality, meaning, new discoveries and ideas.  In this chapter, he talked about his experience with sandwich thieves - you know the sandwich thieves appeared when you thought you made a meal for yourself, but you were so consumed with what you were doing (apart from eating), thinking, planning that you did not know what you had been eating, and worse still, you ate so fast that you did not chew or even know you have finished eating everything without tasting a thing in your mouth of what you just ate.  How many times have we experienced that?  I realized that I experienced that quite often.

So it is really wonderful when I came across Alexander Green's chapter on practicing eating like a Zen Master with Thich Nhat Hanh, my favorite Zen Master whose books I first came across when I studied at Berkeley (my favorite of his is called "Peace is Every Step").    To quote Alexander and Master Thich Nhat Hanh, there are seven practices of a mindful eater:

1.  Honour the food.
2.  Engage all your senses.
3.  Serve modest portions.
4.  Savor small bites.
5.  Eat slowly (very important to me - I have to remind myself to chew many times and set my fork or chopsticks down between bites).
6.  Eat regular meals (this one I always do).
7.  Eat a plant-based diet (I am also eating more vegetarian dishes).        

These serve as very good reminders.  Eating mindfully would allow you to appreciate your food better, make a better connection with the present moment which can help your digestion.

Thank you Alexander and Master Thich Nhat Hanh!