While holding and gazing at the slice of organic navel orange, yesterday, I tried to take my time and focus on how the thin skin of the slice felt. It reminded me of when I was a kid and used to peel that skin off and eat the pulp like individual fruits, themselves. I contemplated the smell, and the mist of juice, when I bit into it. I chewed slowly and enjoyed the experience in a way I realized I don’t do as often as I did a few years ago.
As mindful eating went from being a new thing, to being a part of my daily routine, I realize that I started getting mindless about my mindfulness. Being a techie, it makes me think of the unix world, where a process on your computer is satisfied but still persists on being there, it’s called a Zombie Process. That’s kind of how we get with our eating habits sometimes. We finish what we need to eat, but we don’t stop there. We just keep eating. We’re on auto-pilot.
It made me realize I was still being more mindful of my eating choices and habits than I used to be, but less present in the actual eating of the food than I was at first. I realize I needed to get back the old “Beginners Mind” outlook.
This “Orange Meditation” was performed as part of our first
M.E.A.L.S. (Mindful Eating And Living Sangha) group. I read from “
The Apple Meditation” in Savor, and then joined in the mindful eating afterward. While the above description sounds nice, rest assured that just as often as I was enjoying the Orange mindfully, I caught myself chewing and swallowing mindlessly. BUT, the important thing is that I kept coming back. That’s where the magic is, after all. In that moment we wander, we gain the opportunity to come back again as well.
I recognized, in this first
M.E.A.L.S. meeting, that I consider myself to always eat mindfully, but I really haven’t been. Or, more accurately, while I almost always choose my food mindfully, and even eat with a degree of mindfulness, there is nothing quite like truly eating with full mindfulness of the experience. I’m really, deeply, grateful that people expressed an interest in starting a group such as this, and I look forward to seeing how it brings me back to a deeper focus on my health again. While I haven’t drifted far, it’s great to be re-energized around health matters again!
