Taking routine events and applying the principles of mindfulness can have a tremendous impact on the quality of everyday life, specifically given the hectic, fast-paced, technologically complex lives we lead in the 21st Century. This 'applied mindfulness' helps us implement a philosophy of mindfulness and integrates it into our total way-of-being.
As we must eat everyday and can reclaim eating as a basic source of enjoyment and nourishment, mindful eating seems an obvious first choice. Since nutrition is also involved in so much mental health symptomology such as fatigue, depression, anxiety, poor motivation, and brain fog, eating mindfully also presents an opportunity to develop an intuitive approach to refining the ability to take care of ourselves, getting adequate amounts of calories and nutrients, and steering away from toxins and foods that make us feel bad.
In true fashion, mindfulness does not require you to overhaul your life circumstances to profoundly encourage a different experience of life. Mindfulness, as a mental attitude, a method, and a set of practices encourages an inner shift that affords its practitioners with a capacity to, as suggested by spiritual author Mark Nepo, ‘fall in love with the life you already have.’ It also allows you to make more intentional changes. Increased awareness and ability to discern complex situations help facilitate means to deal with them more flexibly, effectively, and ethically.
Mindfulness concerns the ‘how’ not the ‘what’. It’s about paying attention in a new way and at a deeper level. Eating mindfully can develop this kind of attention and awareness that transcends the way the untrained mind typically reflexively "chooses" and reacts (often instantly, unconsciously, and largely as a result of conditioning rather than conscious reasoning). In fact, the untrained mind is known in Buddhist circles as the 'monkey mind' which not only ceaselessly moves from topic to topic, desire to desire, concern to concern, but causes suffering in its incessant busyness and difficulty reaping the basic joys and gifts of the here-and-now.
Savoring food is a means to prioritize the present over the abstract rush to the future, tasting its nuances of flavors can satisfy our longing for variety and novelty (and helps us with the temptation to seek this in other places and to overconsume), relishing a meal can contribute to a feeling of satiation and fullness.
Deep mindfulness can transform these rewarding states of being from the agreeable satisfaction of physical hunger to having a global means of accessing a satisfying human experience. Through the application of mindfulness to all of our experiences, 'good, bad, and ugly', presence is valued over what is classified as 'my preference' and 'taking this wild ride called life' becomes an end in itself, worth participating in fully.
To dig deeper into this application, check out 'three keys to healthy, mindful eating', elaborated by physician Sheila Patel who blends conventional medicine with the ancient Eastern wisdom tradition known as Ayurveda. Keep in mind that the first pointer ('optimizing our digestion') and third pointer ('paying attention to how we eat') are ideas that might be seen as aligned with traditional mindfulness, while the second, which introduces 'doshas' as mind/body types that are differentially affected by food and exercise, is heavily influenced by Ayurveda, which may be either intriguing or irrelevant to you.
As we must eat everyday and can reclaim eating as a basic source of enjoyment and nourishment, mindful eating seems an obvious first choice. Since nutrition is also involved in so much mental health symptomology such as fatigue, depression, anxiety, poor motivation, and brain fog, eating mindfully also presents an opportunity to develop an intuitive approach to refining the ability to take care of ourselves, getting adequate amounts of calories and nutrients, and steering away from toxins and foods that make us feel bad.
In true fashion, mindfulness does not require you to overhaul your life circumstances to profoundly encourage a different experience of life. Mindfulness, as a mental attitude, a method, and a set of practices encourages an inner shift that affords its practitioners with a capacity to, as suggested by spiritual author Mark Nepo, ‘fall in love with the life you already have.’ It also allows you to make more intentional changes. Increased awareness and ability to discern complex situations help facilitate means to deal with them more flexibly, effectively, and ethically.
Mindfulness concerns the ‘how’ not the ‘what’. It’s about paying attention in a new way and at a deeper level. Eating mindfully can develop this kind of attention and awareness that transcends the way the untrained mind typically reflexively "chooses" and reacts (often instantly, unconsciously, and largely as a result of conditioning rather than conscious reasoning). In fact, the untrained mind is known in Buddhist circles as the 'monkey mind' which not only ceaselessly moves from topic to topic, desire to desire, concern to concern, but causes suffering in its incessant busyness and difficulty reaping the basic joys and gifts of the here-and-now.
Savoring food is a means to prioritize the present over the abstract rush to the future, tasting its nuances of flavors can satisfy our longing for variety and novelty (and helps us with the temptation to seek this in other places and to overconsume), relishing a meal can contribute to a feeling of satiation and fullness.
Deep mindfulness can transform these rewarding states of being from the agreeable satisfaction of physical hunger to having a global means of accessing a satisfying human experience. Through the application of mindfulness to all of our experiences, 'good, bad, and ugly', presence is valued over what is classified as 'my preference' and 'taking this wild ride called life' becomes an end in itself, worth participating in fully.
To dig deeper into this application, check out 'three keys to healthy, mindful eating', elaborated by physician Sheila Patel who blends conventional medicine with the ancient Eastern wisdom tradition known as Ayurveda. Keep in mind that the first pointer ('optimizing our digestion') and third pointer ('paying attention to how we eat') are ideas that might be seen as aligned with traditional mindfulness, while the second, which introduces 'doshas' as mind/body types that are differentially affected by food and exercise, is heavily influenced by Ayurveda, which may be either intriguing or irrelevant to you.
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