Meal time is free time for most of us, leading busy & hectic lives. Why just meal time, these days we are not living any moment while in it. All the time we are running hap hazard. When we are eating we are thinking about work, when we are working we are thinking about something else… what seems like living a life is actually not true. We are so busy that often we just let life pass us by. We stand on the side and watch it go by. Isn’t it?
Coming back to eating, while eating most of us are have programmed ourselves to do something else on the side, like, watching our favourite program on television, talking over the phone, discussing & talking with people in whose company we are having our meals, swiping mobile, checking updates, checking social media…or something else.
Have you ever tried eating your meals in silence? Try it. It is a great way to relax mentally and physically, enjoy your meals, digest well, and above nourish your soul. These days many yoga camps, spas or spiritual retreats that people attend they are taught to eat in complete silence. This concept at first sounds bizarre to most people, used to using this vacant spot to catch up on socialising, meeting friends, etc. People are trained to treat meal time strictly as meal time.
Many of us would remember our grandparents telling us to eat in piece. It had a scientific reason to it that people are beginning to wake up to. We’re eating our meals in cars while on the run. This is neither right nor good for our bodies and souls.
When we do mindful eating, we focus on food that is kept in front of us and serve ourselves and eat fully aware of what is going into us, what we are serving ourselves and how much, when we inhale the aroma or the food we serve ourselves, we notice the colours of food is when we experience food completely. Science says that when we eat being aware of what we are eating we tend to eat slowly, chew well, and eat small. This overall is good for our weight as well as digestion.
When we’re not chatting with people or aren’t over phone while eating our meals we are in a relaxed state of mind. We are physically more relaxed it works well on our digestive enzymes and their functioning. Whereas when we do other things while eating we eat without thinking and tend to overeat. And the harms of overeating or not properly chewing etc need not be explained.
So learn eating in silence, whether you’re in the company of people or eating alone. Keep the mobile on silent mode, switch off the T.V and learn to eat in peace. Try eating your breakfast in silence and see how this silence centres your energies and readies your mind to face the entire day. Once you experience the benefits of silent meals, it will change your life in many ways.
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