Mindful eating

Does anybody have any experience with the practice of eating mindfully? I've noticed that I become particularly unmindful when I start to eat (even if it's a relatively healthy meal). I've heard a couple passing references to applying mindfulness to eating, but I haven't come across anything devoted to the subject. Unfortunately googling produces results massively skewed towards the application of mindfulness as a dieting tool, a way to eat more healthily, to eat less, etc., rather than as a facet of holistic dharma practice. Does anybody have any experience with it, or any dharma talks on the subject?

I tried an eating meditation (following an audio file from the Insight Meditation Society) once. It was a great way to kill all the pleasure of eating! Seriously, you had to touch the almond. Smell the almond. Slowly chew the almond long beyond the point where it had any flavor. Swallow the pasty glop. Next almond. It made me super aware that we are basically a mouth and anus surrounded by food gather apparatus.

Worth trying though.

It made me super aware that we are basically a mouth and anus surrounded by food gather apparatus.

-ona

I imagine that was exactly the effect the meditation was supposed to have. Very Buddhist, I think. It's a lot like the dharma practice of going to the burial grounds and meditating on rotten corpses in order realize that we are just sacks of yucky, disgusting stuff and nothing more.

Hmmm. I did the raisin thing once, just like you described with the nuts Ona. But the point was more (or so I gathered) to experience the actual sensations without layering the stories ("this is a raisin, I hate raisins, my mother made me eat raisins and I hated that, I'm a naughty boy to hate raisins, my mother loved me, raisins make me guilty."). You know, it's a fucking raisin already, not all the jibber jabber in my head. What is a raisin? What's it actually taste like, feel like on the tongue... that's what I got from that practice.

But like walking meditation (and sitting meditation, for that matter) it's a controlled environment. It's pure research, not application in the world. Mindfulness in daily life works best for me without any contrived attitudes of moving slowly, or deliberately trying to parse the facets of experience (five skandhas) but rather to have the whole gestalt of embodied experience arise in a natural way, pervaded by a sense of really having the experience. All the stylized ways of moving, sitting, eating, making tea, social interaction, all of that ritualized practice is to my mind an opportunity to arrange conditions in such a way as to help one discover a sense of easy presence pervading what's happening within and around one, a sense of really being in one's life. Then one tries to find or tune in to that sense in completely ordinary and even adverse circumstances.

On this practice in daily life thing, some people find it easiest to discover that conscious/mindful/attentive presence to life's unfolding in ordinary or even disturbing circumstances first, then follow up with more deliberate and focused practice to stabilize and deepen those qualities of mindfulness and equanimity. Maybe try just bringing a sense of holistic intention to acts (of eating and whatever). Like really feel like "I am eating now" and just gently bring your whole being to that activity.

This sounds silly, but every time I've been exposed to the "raisin thing" it was in a soto zen context and meant to give people a little mindfulness charge, like an introduction to "zen."

I'm guessing (from Ona's experience) that the almond thing from IMS was a longer, more intense guided meditation really meant for some kind of deep insight into nature of our bodies.

But, maybe not.

lol - maybe I just missed the point! doesn't matter. maybe if it had been green beans I could have dealt with the stories like Jake describes. maybe the main thing is "eat slowly and savor the food". who knows.

who knows indeed. "food gathering apparatus'... that's what i'm gonna go be right now!

I'm eating a meat pie as mindfully as I can. It's interesting, being someone who's generally so sensitive to texture of food, how the texture of most things gets kind of gross and unappetizing, really, after a few bites. It's interesting that we react so strongly to the childish pastime of sticking out your tongue with a mouthful of food, when the rest of us are sitting with the exact same unappetizing mass in our mouths, moaning with pleasure.

Remember the scene in the movie "Brazil" where the restaurant food arrives as a pile of glop, accompanied by a photo of what it was before it got blenderized?