The following simple food practice allows you to explore the depths of the essential nature of a food as experienced by all of your senses. It also introduces you to the idea of staying fully conscious as you eat.
Set aside about 20 minutes during which you won't be interrupted. Make sure to start the practice at a point in your day when you are hungry, but not famished. Select three of your favorite foods. If possible, choose foods that require no preparation and that may be eaten with your hands (a piece of fruit, some cheese, or a cookie, for example).
Place the foods on a table in front of you within easy reach. Close your eyes and take a moment to clear your mind. Open your eyes and look carefully at each item, examining it fully, noting whatever it is that appeals to you about its appearance. Allow all of the thoughts or feelings about the food to register, then decide which food you want to eat and reach for it. The instant your fingers touch the food, broaden your awareness to include your sense of touch. Pay attention to the physical sensation of the food against your hand: its texture, firmness, temperature, and so on.
Now bring the food close to your mouth and prepare to take a bite. As you do so, notice its smell; you may also detect a shift in temperature around your lips as you bring the food close to your mouth. Notice that the smells may be influenced by the temperature or moisture of the food, or they may be mixed with the smells of your environment. In order to hone in on this part of the eating experience, you may close your eyes momentarily.
Now open your mouth and take a bite of the food. Notice that you can hear the sounds of contact between you and the food as you bite into it before you even begin to taste it. Are the sounds soft, rhythmic, slurping, sucking, crunching, wet, dry, etc.? Finally, take another bite of the food and engage your sense of taste. Are the flavors sour, sweet, spicy, pungent, aromatic, etc.? Do you taste more than one flavor at once, or does one taste dominate, then another come forth?
This food practice demonstrates two important elements that will help you appreciate tasting as a complex art. First, it gives insight into how your physical senses work. Although you may ordinarily jump to the conclusion that you like or dislike something because of how it tastes, the practice shows that a food appeals (or does not appeal) to you based on how you perceive it through all five senses, and even before you taste it. The practice also trains you to become more conscious as you eat so you can be truly satisfied by food.
As you tune into the essence. or rasa, of any given food, you may find that what you thought you were hungry for doesn't bring real satisfaction. If you stay conscious and start tuning in to the rasa of your favorite junk food or candy, you may discover that the refined sugars, hydrogenated oils, artificial colors and flavors, not to mention a host of preservatives with hard-to-pronounce names, may not actually be brimming with lively seductive deliciousness.
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Posted by Online Editor Erica Rodefer
