Episode 345
Feel the Food
There is a certain aspect of our culture that expresses itself when we eat. Instead of taking our time to enjoy our food, we rush through it as if it is just another task to get through.
There is a very old meditation that we can practice to experience our food more deeply. We take a single raisin, and attempt to notice every single sensation involved in its consumption.
There is the texture, different sensations in the lips, tongue, cheek and gums; the experience of breaking the skin; the sweetness of the flesh; and the crunch of the seed.
Just as a skilled musician can hear the individual notes in a chord, a meditator might find different notes of flavor or texture in a simple experience.
Hosts & Guests
Kurt Robinson
Resources
Transcript
And how your food is already tasting delicious and various textures and sensations its a very powerful experience. Let’s talk about feeling the food. There is a classic meditation, this technique has existed for thousands of years where you take a single raisin and place it in your mouth.
You don’t have to be in a rush to chew it.
And what happens is you explore the sensation that wrinkle texture of the raisin on your tongue, how it touches various parts of the mouth. Maybe there are parts of the mouth it doesn’t touch perhaps changed by the experience. Or perhaps they remain the same and as we chew the raisin we start to explore different areas, different varieties of sensation and aspect of the raisin until finally it comes apart in our teeth.
The skin, the pulp, the sweetness.
Other layers of flavor which might not be obvious. Sometimes I think its something like learning to listen to music.
A lot of the time when we have an untrained ear and someone plays a chord we will only hear the top note of the chord and perhaps the bottom note of the chord. And as we learn, as we listen closer and closer, our ears become accustomed.
And eventually a trained individual can pick up the notes in a chord. A very skilled guitarist can even pick out exactly how a chord is fingered. Thats how it is for taste, flavor and textures. Exploring these things.
Just now I was at Peace and Bowl here in Playa del Carmen and went for breakfast and ordered a matcha bowl. Full of flavor, matcha and different things. Banana, coconut, strawberries. So many different things to explore.
What a shame it would have been, what I occasionally do, what happens is I rush through the meal and don’t take the time to notice the different aspects. Those finer flavors which might not be immediately obvious.
Those ones that are a little more subtle, perhaps a delicate balance that those people there have taken to prepare. Taken time, taken care to prepare just for us, a wonderful gift.
I suppose I have mentioned before in the Sikh tradition food is holy. In fact, the one who taught me about this tradition a fellow taught me, actually it’s not just that its holy. Food is good. Food is the sustainer. What a wonderful thing it is that we can eat almost every day of our lives.
Let us take full advantage, let us be respectful with that which is sacred, that which sustains us and feel the food.
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