“MINDFUL EATING”

 

“Beyond Illusion Project”

 

“MINDFUL EATING”

Rediscovering a Healthy and Joyful Relationship with Food

 

 

The Program

Nowhere are the elements of the human condition we call unawareness, addiction, and delusion more poignantly and tragically manifested nowadays than in widespread disregulations and disorders in our relationships to food and to eating. These pathologies of imbalance are driven by many complex factors in society itself.

     The art of mindfulness can transform our struggles with food – and renew our sense of pleasure, appreciation, and satisfaction with eating. Drawing on recent research and integrating my experiences as a life coach and counselor, this on-line seminar/workshop is a wonderfully clear presentation of what mindfulness is and how it can help with food issues.

     Mindful eating is an approach that involves bringing one’s full attention to the process of eating – to all the tastes, smells, thoughts, and feelings that arise during a meal. Whether you are overweight, suffer from an eating disorder, or just want to get more out of life, this program offers a simple tool that can make a remarkable difference.

 

During this program you’ll learn how to:

·         Tune into your body’s own wisdom about what, when, and how much to eat

·         Eat less while feeling fully satisfied

·         Identify your habits and patterns with food

·         Develop a more compassionate attitude toward your struggles with eating

·         Discover what you’re really hungry for

 

If you give yourself over wholeheartedly to the practices described during the workshop, you will be thanking yourself for recovering your life and for enjoying the blessings of food in ways that feel liberated and delightful.

 

(The webinar/workshop consists of 30 sessions)

 

Meeting 1. Introduction

This program addresses an increasingly widespread and unnecessary form of suffering. Our struggles with food cause tremendous emotional distress, including guilt, shame, and depression. Our eating problems can also lead to debilitating diseases and even to premature death.

     The problem is an increasingly unbalanced relationship to food. One of the primary causes of this imbalance is a lack of an essential human nutrient: mindfulness. Mindfulness is the act of paying full, nonjudgmental attention to our moment-to-moment experience. This program explores how we can use mindfulness to free ourselves from unhealthy eating habits and improve our overall quality of life.

 

Meeting 2. What Is “Mindful Eating”?

This program has been developed for all those who would like to improve their relationship to food. Whether you have a moderate tendency to overeat, or whether you are struggling with obesity, bulimia, anorexia, or other such problems, this program is for you. Most programs and techniques for changing our eating try to impose change from the outside. Mindfulness brings about change from the inside. A natural and organic process, it occurs in the manner and at the rate that fits us. It is the ultimate in natural healing.

     This program is about learning mindfulness while eating. Mindfulness is a skill that any one can develop.  Through mindful eating we can learn to be present when we eat. Mindful eating is a way to reawaken our pleasure in simply eating, simply drinking. Mindful eating replaces self-criticism with self-nurturing. It replaces shame with respect for your own inner wisdom.

 

Meeting 3. EXERCISE: The Basic Mindful Eating Meditation

Our journey begins with an essential mindful eating exercise. We will experiment with bringing our full awareness to eating a very small amount of food. Many of the other exercises in this program rest upon this one.

 

Meeting 4. The Seven Kinds of Hunger (A)

Infants and young children have an intuitive sense of what and how much to eat. Over the course of a week a baby will eat just right, as if prompted by an inner nutritionist. Babies are tuned in to the messages from their body. This is a skill, an inner listening, that we all were able to do at one time but forgot as we grew older. Food begins to serve many purposes. The once straightforward relationship between hunger, eating, and satisfaction of our childhood becomes tangled up in all sorts of thoughts and emotions. The business of eating has become a primary focus, an over-the-kitchen-counter medicine for the many pressures and anxieties of our busy lives. Our eating has become driven by many different forces, many kinds of hunger. Mindfulness with eating begins at the beginning with hunger. There are several kinds of hunger, so before we work on mindfulness during eating, we need to become aware of what urges us to eat.

 

Meeting 5. The Seven Kinds of Hunger (B)

People generally decide how much of a given food they will eat based upon feedback from the eyes. The eyes also have the power to override the mouth. Even the experts can be fooled by the eye. At a party they served themselves and ate significantly more ice cream, without being aware of it. If they were given larger serving scoops and larger bowls. The power of the eye hunger can be turned to good use. People wishing to eat less should use smaller plates or bowls and smaller serving utensils. The mix of colors and shapes satisfies eye hunger, the variety of tastes and textures satisfies mouth hunger, and the balance of nutrients satisfies cellular hunger.

     Our eyes do get hungry. What satisfies eye hunger? Beauty. To satisfy eye hunger we have to ask, what is beautiful?

Exercises: Becoming Aware of Eye Hunger (CW, HW:1, HW:2)

Exercise: Creating a Feast for the Eyes (HW: 3)

Exercise: Feeding Eye Hunger without Eating (HW: 4)

 

Meeting 6. The Seven Kinds of Hunger (C)

Smells exert a primitive and potent effect upon the subconscious mind. Our ancestors depended upon their sense of smell to locate food and to distinguish friends from enemies in forests or the dark of night. What we call the “taste” or “flavor” of a food is almost entirely the smell of the food. Without smell all the subtlety of flavor is lost. Food becomes something you have to eat because your body needs fuel. Nose hunger is satisfied by fragrance.

Exercise: Becoming Mindful of Nose Hunger  (CW:+HW:1)

Exercises: Feeding Yourself with Fragrance (HW:2, HW:3)                                                                                                        

 

Meeting 7. The Seven Kinds of Hunger (D)

Mouth hunger is the mouth’s desire for pleasurable sensations. What constitutes pleasant sensations in the mouth varies from person to person. What your mouth experiences as pleasant depends upon factors such as genetics, food habits in your family of origin, cultural traditions, and conditioning, which means the association of certain foods with other pleasant or unpleasant experiences.

     To satisfy the mouth’s hunger for sensation, it isn’t enough to put food into the mouth, chew it, and swallow it. If we want to feel satisfied as we eat, the mind has to be aware of what is occurring in the mouth.

Exercises: Becoming Aware of Mouth Hunger (HW:1, HW:2)                             

Exercises: Feeding Mouth Hunger  (HW:4, HW:5)

Meditation: Tongue Practice (CW+HW:6)

 

Meeting 8: The Seven Kinds of Hunger (E)

What signals does you stomach give you when it’s hungry? For some people hunger is an empty feeling in the abdomen, an emptiness that demands to be filled. Others experience constriction, as if the stomach is trying to grind up food that isn’t there. It’s good that we perceive “hunger pangs” as unpleasant. If we didn’t, we might starve to death. The notion that the stomach tells us when we must feed it is not correct. We actually tell the stomach when to be hungry, through our eating habits. If we ignore sensations of hunger, we’ll get in trouble. We have to walk the middle way with hunger This means to be aware of signs of hunger in the whole body, not just the hunger signals from the stomach.

     What satisfies stomach hunger? The right amount and kinds of food.

Exercises: Becoming Aware of Stomach Hunger  (HW:1, HW:2)                                      

Exercise: Staying Aware of Stomach Hunger during a Meal  (HW:3)

 

Meeting 9. The Seven Kinds of Hunger (F)

When we were infants, we were tuned in to the signals from our body that told us when to eat and when to stop. Given a choice, we had an instinctive awareness of what foods and how much food our body needed. The body has its own wisdom and can tell us a lot about what it requires if we are able to listen. But as we get older we become deaf to what our bodies are telling us we need.

     If we are to return to a healthy and balanced relationship with food, it is essential that we learn to turn our awareness inward and to hear again what our body is always telling us about its needs and its satisfaction. To learn to listen to cellular hunger is the primary skill of mindful eating.

Exercises: Becoming Mindful of Cellular Hunger (XW+HW:1,  HW:2, HW:3)                             

Exercises: Asking the Body What it Needs  (HW:4, HW:5)                                                        

Meeting 10. The Seven Kinds of Hunger (G)

Mind hunger is based upon thoughts. It is influenced by what we take in through eyes and ears, the words we read and hear. Thousands of cookbooks provide food for mind hunger. Thousands of diet books provide food for mind hunger. Mind hunger is often based upon absolutes and opposites: good food versus bad food, should eat versus should not eat. We have learned to choose our foods by the numbers – calories, carbs, fats, price, whatever – relying more heavily on our reading and computational skills than upon our senses. As a result, we have become, in the midst of our astounding abundance, very anxious eaters.

     The mind is always changing its mind. One day it puts us on a strict diet, the next day it convinces us we need another dessert. The mind also contains the inner critic, a voice that criticizes us no matter what we eat or drink.

     The mind is truly content only when it becomes quiet. When the many and contradictory voices around eating are still, when the awareness function is dominant over the thinking function, then we can be fully present as we eat. When we are filled with awareness, we become filled with satisfaction.

Exercises: Becoming Aware of Mind Hunger  (HW:1, HW:2, HW:3)                                       

 

Meeting 11. The Seven Kinds of Hunger (H)

People talk lovingly of foods they ate for family holidays, foods their mother made for them when they were ill, foods eaten with people they loved. The particular foods are not as important as the mood or emotion they evoke. Hunger for these foods arise from the desire to be loved and cared for. The memory of those special times infuse these foods with warmth and happiness.

     People eat in an attempt to fill a hole, not in the stomach but in the heart: We eat when we are lonely. We eat when a relationship ends. We eat when someone dies, taking food to the home of those who are grieving. These are the ways we try to take care of ourselves and others. But food put into the stomach will never ease the emptiness, the ache in the heart.

     We cannot depend upon others to fulfill our desire for intimacy. We cannot depend upon food to satisfy our heart hunger. What must nourish our heart is intimacy with this very moment. We can experience this intimacy with anything that presents itself to us, people or plants, rocks, rice, or raisins. This is what being present brings us to, the sweet and poignant taste of true presence. When this presence fills us, all hungers vanish. All things, just as they are, are perfect satisfaction.

Exercises: Becoming Aware of Heart Hunger  (CW, HW:1, HW:2)                                      

 

Meeting 12. The Seven Kinds of Hunger (I)

Most unbalanced relationships with food are caused by being unaware of heart hunger. No food can ever satisfy this form of hunger. To satisfy it, we must learn how to nourish our hearts. We will not find full satisfaction in food, no matter how delicious, if we do not nourish the heart on a daily basis. Conversely, when we are mindful with eating, a feeling of intimacy and connection will arise. Then any food can nourish the heart.

     When we eat and look deeply into our food, we are in the company of many beings: the plants, animals, and people whose life energy was poured into the food on our plate. Each time we eat, we take in the life energy of countless beings into our bodies. These beings literally become us, our blue or brown eyes, our soft lips, our hard white teeth, our loving heart. To awaken to this miracle that occurs in our own bodies day and night, even for a few moments each day, can give us new joy, and new energy. If we eat with our mind open and aware, we can experience our intimated connection to these many beings, and our loneliness dissolves.

Exercise: Satisfying Heart Hunger   (HW)

 

Meeting 13. The Seven Kinds of Hunger (J)

Now you are becoming aware of the seven hungers. Three of the seven tend to be more problematic in our lives than the others. They are mouth hunger, heart hunger, and mind hunger. These forms of hunger often cause us to overeat – but only when we remain unaware of them and of how to go about satisfying them.

     Now that you’ve explored the seven types of hunger, you can develop an essential skill of mindful eating: assessing the level of each kind of hunger whenever the desire to eat arises. In order to know which kind of hunger we are feeling, we can make it a regular practice to ask the question, “Who in there is hungry?”

Exercise: Who Is Hungry in There? (HW audio)

 

Meeting 14. The Seven Kinds of Hunger (K) – Review

This session is about reviewing the Seven Kinds of Hunger. Furthermore we discuss your experiences of the very important exercise of the previous meeting, titled, “Who Is Hungry in There?”

 

Meeting 15. Exploring Our Habits and Patterns with Food (A)

Another important aspect of mindful eating is becoming more aware of the eating habits and patterns we’ve developed through our lives – what is called our conditioning. Like Pavlov’s dogs, humans also form connections. When we receive positive rewards, we are more likely to continue a behavior. When we receive negative feedback, we are less likely to continue a behavior. Food itself is intrinsically neither good nor bad. We learn “good food” or “bad food” through experience.

     Most of the habit patterns we create in childhood are harmless and fade away. Ideally, as we mature we become more flexible and are able to recognize conditioned patterns of behavior and free ourselves from them. Many reactive patterns, however, are deeply held. They remain hidden and constrain us. How can we detect that an old conditioned habit pattern has been activated? There are several clues. They are idiosyncratic eating, anger, overwhelming desire, and going unconscious.

 

Meeting 16. Exploring Our Habits and Patterns with Food (B)

How can we work with unconscious conditioning in order to unwind ourselves from its painful embrace? Awareness is the key. Our desire to be awake, to see clearly how our blind spots make us and others suffer, has to be stronger than our desire to live on automatic pilot. It’s not a simple, once-made-always-kept decision. It’s a decision we will face again and again.

Exercises: Becoming Aware of Conditioning around Eating  (CW:1, CW:2, HW:1, HW:2)                

 

Meeting 17. Exploring Our Habits and Patterns with Food (C)

One particularly strong area of conditioning has to do with binging and dieting. In this mode of dieting one “voice” in your mind takes over and puts you on a diet. It talks to you about the rules, the should and should nots. Sooner or later you get tired of being constantly nagged by this voice and change occurs. Another part or voice takes over. You flip out of the iron grip of strict discipline and into the indulgence of eating what you want, and a lot of it. Flipping between fasting mode and feasting mode, also called “yo-yoing”, becomes a way of life for many people. It is a frustrating, exhausting, and demoralizing way to live. Who wants to live their life as both perpetrator and victim of an unending internal battle? How can we bring ourselves to a sense of ongoing trust with food, to find peace in body and mind when we eat? If we look at these impulses, we find that they are rooted not only in our personal life experiences but in our collective human history.

 

Meeting 18. Exploring Our Habits and Patterns with Food (D)

The session is dedicated to two exercises we do during the meeting.

Exercise: Becoming Aware of Reactive Patterns around Food  (CW:1)

Exercise: Becoming Aware of Food Cravings, Fears, and Anxieties  (CW:2)

 

Meeting 19. Exploring Our Habits and Patterns with Food (E)

Another important aspect of exploring our eating habits is to look into our cravings for what we might call “the big three”: sugar, salt, and fat. They are an unholy and very profitable trio. The fast-food industry depends upon our insatiable desire for these three: the soothing taste of sweetness, the tangy taste of salt, and the deep-fried taste and creamy texture of fat. When eaten in excess, they play a role in many diseases. They have an addictive quality. In addition, sugar, fat, and salt all have a powerful effect upon our mind states.

Exercise: Food and Mood    (CW)

 

Meeting 20. Six Simple Guidelines for Mindful Eating (A)

Mindfulness is a skill that can be learned. The ability to be aware already lies within us. This ability usually lies dormant, accessible only in moments of clarity that we might call “peak moments”. But we can learn to cultivate mindfulness, whether in eating or in any other aspect of our lives. In this unit we’ll explore six principles that will help us to cultivate mindfulness as we eat. In this session we explore how we cultivate mindfulness by eating more slowly.

Exercises: Hot to Slow Down Your Eating and Drinking

Exercise: Make a point of pausing  (CW:1)

Exercise: Drink slowly (CW:2)

Exercise: Fletcherize  (HW:1)

Exercise: Put down the fork or spoon (HW:2 audio)

Exercise: Eat with the non dominant hand  (HW:3)

Exercise: Eat with chopsticks   (HW:4)

 

Meeting 21. Six Simple Guidelines for Mindful Eating (B)

The next guideline for mindful eating has to do with how much we eat. The concept of “right amount” comes from the Buddhist teaching, according to which “right” means appropriate, beneficial, leading to happiness and freedom. Mindful eating is ethical action. A country that consumes more than its share of the world’s food is a country composed of people who are ignorant of the suffering that results when we are not aware of “right amount”.

     Up to the age of five, children have a well functioning “appestat”. They eat until they are no longer hungry and then stop. After the age of five children begin to rely on the amount on the plate to tell them how much to eat. They lose awareness of their appestat. Many adults have ignored the signals from their appestat for so long, they have no sense of when to stop eating. Zen masters recommend eating until you are two-thirds full. Then we would drink some water.

Exercise: Taking in the Right Amount  (HW audio)

 

Meeting 22. Six Simple Guidelines for Mindful Eating (C)

Another way to cultivate mindful eating is to become aware of the energy equation. Food is energy. It is actually sunlight, which is converted into plants and then into animals. How does the energy flow in? By eating and drinking. When we eat, we are taking in the energy of sunlight. When we live our lives, we are releasing and spending that energy.

     If we want to lose weight, there are only two ways to do it. We have to decrease the energy flowing into our body or increase the energy flowing out.

Exercise: Working with the Energy Equation  (HW)

 

Meeting 23. Six Simple Guidelines for Mindful Eating (D)

When we offer the hungry voice in our mind a sliced peach drizzled with honey instead of a hot fudge sundae, we are making use of an essential mindful eating practice, that of mindful substitution. When we become aware that there are many voices in our minds – some that are needy, restless, and frightened – we should honor and care for these energies and voices in the thoughtful and deliberate way a good parent notices and cares for a young child. The point is to take good care of our self.

     The practice of out-of-sight, out-of-mind is quite effective because anything we don’t reinforce will lose its strength. It is a principle of conditioning. If we do not think, speak, or initiate action around something, the force of that thing will eventually wither. This involves active substitution, not forceful resistance, for what we resist can become perversely persistant.

Exercise: Mindful Substitution  (HW:1)

Exercises: Mindful Fasts   (HW:2, HW:3)                                                              

 

Meeting 24. Six Simple Guidelines for Mindful Eating (E)

When our relationship to eating and food is out of balance, it is easy to be overcome with negative emotions. Our mind becomes full of the voices of conflicting thoughts and emotions, and it is hard to do anything in a deliberate and straightforward way. How can we get some distance from these voices and steer the bus of our life down the road of our choice?

     The first step is to start a regular meditation practice. Meditation helps to settle and quiet the mind, to create some space around the inner voices. We can begin to sort them out, to hear what individual voices are trying to tell us. Actually these inner voices are trying to help us. They carry useful information, but when they become too powerful and neurotic, their potential for destruction outweighs their intent to assist us.

     An essential aspect of mindfulness is to see through these voices, to not be caught or fooled by them. Fortunately, there are several ways to work with them when they get involved with our eating.

Exercise: Basic Meditation Practice   (CW:1, HW:1)                                                

Exercise: Mindfulness of the Inner Critic   (HW:2)

Exercise: Acknowledge the Inner Critic and Let it Go  (HW:3)

Exercise: The Computer Model   (HW:4)

Exercise: Loving-Kindness: A Spiritual Antidote (CW:2, HW:5)                                 

Exercise: Expanding the Field of Loving-Kindness  (HW:6)

 

Meeting 25: Six Simple Guidelines for Mindful Eating (F)

As people begin doing the mindful eating exercises and begin making these six guidelines part of their daily lives, some questions naturally arise. Here are some of the most common questions, along with my answers and suggestions. You can contribute with yours for further discussion.

 

Meeting 26: Cultivating Gratitude (A)

It is ironic that in countries where food is abundant, disharmony with food and eating is most common. Somehow, when we have too much, something happens to our sense of gratitude, and when we lose touch with gratitude, we become increasingly dissatisfied with our lives.

     Not only food, but most of us take our bodies and our good health for granted. In fact, we don’t actually experience ourselves as “healthy” until we fall ill. We may not be aware of our irritation or anger at our body, but the body is aware of it. If an illness or disability lasts or becomes chronic, then we can be bathing our body continually in the negative energy of our distress. An atmosphere of love and kindness is essential if living beings, including children, pets, plants, and our own bodies, are to thrive and reach their highest potential.

     There are practices, however, that will uncover, at the center of our being, a humble and natural feeling of gratitude for our food and for our underappreciated bodies.

Exercise: The Basic Body Scan Meditation (CW, HW:1)                                            

Exercise: The Soft Butter Meditation  (HW:2 audio)

Exercise: Mindfulness Meditation on the Body with Gratitude  (HW:3 audio)

 

Meeting 27. Cultivating Gratitude (B)

When food and drink are abundant, it is easy to take them for granted. When we take them for granted, it is easy to stop paying attention to what is on our plate or in our mouth. When we stop paying attention, we stop smelling and tasting. We might as well be eating cardboard. Cardboard is not very satisfying to eat, so we try eating more. 

     How grateful would you be for a slice of bread if you had to weed and plow the field, sow and raise the grain, grind and sift the flour, and cut and burn the wood in order to bake one loaf? These days we don’t have to perform these many labors before we can eat a piece of bread, but someone does. When we cultivate a remembrance of these innumerable someones, our natural sense of gratitude begins to reawaken.

     Through mindfulness, we can look more deeply into everyday things. It is an aspect of wisdom not to be fooled by superficial aspects of things, even of the most ordinary things, things that we encounter many times a day. Food is one of these.

Exercise: Looking Deeply into Our Food  (CW)

Exercise: Loving-Kindness for the Beings Who Brought This Food  (HW)

 

Meeting 28. Conclusion: What Mindful Eating Teaches Us (A)

When we make mindful eating a regular part of our lives, we benefit in many ways. Not only do we find greater balance and satisfaction with food, we can also discover some of the deeper lessons and teachings that flow out of mindful eating.

·         It’s OK to be empty

·         Desires are inexhaustible

·         Desire is impermanent

·         Eating can be a sacred activity

Exercise: Experiencing Emptiness in the Body and Mind (HW:1 audio)

Exercise: Watching Desires  (HW:2)

Exercise: Discover your “Dharma Gates”  (HW:3)

 

Meeting 29. Conclusion: What Mindful Eating Teaches Us (B)

Discussion on your HW of meeting 28.

 

Meeting 30. Summary – Review

In this program we’ve explored a great deal of information and practices. This meeting is a quick review of the essential points. It might be helpful to return to this list from time to time, as you work to make mindful eating part of your everyday life.