Mindful eating: eating with the five senses

Of the five senses, the one most closely related to food is taste, active in the tongue. But we know that when we eat, the other senses are also in action: smell (with the nose), sight (with the eyes) and touch (with the hands).

Hearing is also important: for example, 'at the table' is often the call that makes our mouths water, even the clinking of plates and glasses can induce a certain frenzy.

Making the sensory experience conscious

Experience teaches us, therefore, that eating - like any activity - is part of the vital flow of the senses, in which various elements are inseparably interconnected.

But we can agree that, as mindfulness meditation, which comes from Buddhist philosophy, teaches us, there is also a sixth sixth, the mind: the sense that coordinates and transforms the inputs coming from all the others, associates them with experiences and thoughts and directs them towards the purposes of living.

(On this subject read also: I can't tell when I'm hungry: achieving awareness).

Our 'sixth sense' may be the mind

The same teaching refers us to the idea of a co-existence (co-creation) between organ and object in each of the senses. In seeing, for example, the eye does not exist without the thing seen and vice versa. The mind, too, exists only insofar as it is inhabited by sensations, perceptions, thoughts. And these cannot emerge unless there is a mind that feels, perceives and thinks.

The Mindfulness approach comes from Buddhist thought

Buddhist thought, from which the mindfulness approach derives, is an extreme and paradoxical way of understanding reality, but also - if we try to focus on it a little - very realistic.

The six 'sensory consciousnesses' that our deepest perceptions activate function as a neural (or neuronal) 'network' with many different interconnected nodes, subject to switching on and off at any given moment depending on the information they receive.

Are the senses our software?

This is how sensory processing works, it should be added, for better or for worse. For us humans, the activity of the senses is far from being like that of a highly efficient computer.

The functioning of the senses, including the mind, depends on many different intertwined and confusing conditions, in which the mental states and emotions of the present moment, the sediments of past experiences and, to use another Buddhist expression, the accumulation of multiple 'healthy' and 'unhealthy' factors converge simultaneously.

What are 'healthy factors'?

Unhealthy' are, for example, sensory drives that move us towards a dysfunctional relationship with food. A simple packet of crisps may appear to us as a precious commodity that we cannot deprive ourselves of.

The craving to devour that particular 'object' can cause the 'taste' sense to grow out of all proportion and pull in others, including hearing (involved in the crunching of the packet) and including mental awareness (powerless to correct the stimuli coming from that object).

Improving responses to sensory stimuli

The willingness to eat as much as necessary and to do so consciously can only begin with a gradual deepening, which each person must do for themselves (if necessary with some outside help), of the complex interaction between the senses.

Applied awareness

This in-depth study has little chance of yielding useful results if it remains abstract, linked to 'reasoning', perhaps peppered with moralising and technicalities (diet charts). And if it remains separate from the rest of life, not open to perceiving the body, mind and behaviour as guided by sensoriality.

The way of meditative practice

More plausible is to rely on meditation, which works from within, starting with the senses themselves, i.e. the most typical question of meditation: "what do I feel?".

A question with which one does not want to open an unnecessary inner dialogue with the moralistic tyrant (or the inner critic) who opposes the unleashing of the senses with respect to food. (On this topic read also: Why mindfulness can make you lose weight).

Recognising what you really feel

"What do I feel?" is instead the question addressed to the senses themselves. The question that introduces us to "feeling the senses", listening to the effects they cause in different parts of the body (belly, tongue, and more), in mental manifestations (anxiety, craving, guilt, and more), in behaviour (avoidance, hiding, and more).

Mindful eating nurtures the dialogue between body, mind and awareness, which mediates and harmonises the data coming from sensory awareness. (On this topic, read also Listening at mealtimes guards against emotional hunger.)

Eating consciously is also - and perhaps above all - about unmasking those false truths and harmful habits that come from our automatisms.

Training ourselves to listen more subtly

The listening we are referring to is not a superficial listening, especially since, under the wave of the senses, the mind works more than ever in an intermittent way and is often occupied by the thoughts produced by the moralistic tyrant (or severe inner critic).

Instead, it is a useful and beneficial listening, which can keep the body-mind engaged in a 'suspensive' contact with the senses.

The goal is deep self-knowledge.

The commitment is no longer "I have to change" but "I have to really listen": to grasp the many aspects of the senses related to food that I know little or nothing about. "I have a lot to learn" about these five, or six, senses.

Does this have anything to do with the taste of food... or the disgust of food? With feeling that you can't do without it.

Or with wanting to be able to control it? ... Yes, and a lot, especially when we call upon meditation to help us, which helps us to suspend our direct hold on action and guides us to know in depth.

Giving us the chance to look more objectively and better understand how our mind and consciousness work in relation to ourselves and our emotional food.

(On this topic read also: Becoming a spectator of your own emotional hunger)