Conscious Consuming: The Raisin Exercise and Guided Meditation

Have you ever ever discovered your self reaching for a bag of chips or a sweet bar with out even realizing it? Or perhaps you’ve eaten a whole meal whereas distracted by your cellphone or tv? Right here’s a aware consuming guided meditation.

It occurs to us all! One technique to apply aware consuming is thru the “raisin” exercise, a aware consuming guided meditation that may assist you to develop into extra aware of your consuming habits.

Do not forget that meals is a lot extra than simply the bodily nourishment for our our bodies, it’s additionally about enjoyment, connection, custom, social expertise, cultural expertise, artistic expression, and pleasure! It’s regular for us to expertise consuming alongside feelings or distraction. 

Conscious Consuming: The Raisin Exercise and Guided Meditation

Many people wrestle with mindless eating or consuming with out being totally conscious of what we’re placing in our our bodies. However there’s a resolution: aware consuming. By practising mindfulness whereas consuming, we will be taught to savor and luxuriate in our meals extra totally, construct a extra balanced and peaceable relationship with meals, and even enhance our total well being. 

This train is a implausible technique to apply aware consuming and it may be accomplished with any meals!

I realized this apply from my current coaching in MBSR (mindfulness-based stress discount). The raisin exercise is a typical mindfulness train used within the context of aware consuming. Whereas it isn’t solely clear who first developed this exercise, it’s usually attributed to Jon Kabat-Zinn, a professor of drugs and the founding father of the Mindfulness-Primarily based Stress Discount program on the College of Massachusetts Medical Faculty. Kabat-Zinn is well known as one of many pioneers of recent mindfulness apply and has contributed considerably to its integration into mainstream drugs and psychology.

What Is The Raisin Exercise?

The raisin exercise is a guided meditation that entails utilizing all your senses to mindfully eat a single raisin. This train is designed that can assist you decelerate, take note of your meals, and savor each chew.

Once more, if you happen to don’t get pleasure from raisins or don’t have them available, use any meals you want and have.

Right here’s tips on how to do the raisin aware consuming meditation: 

1. Begin by discovering a snug and quiet place to take a seat. If in case you have a particular or devoted meditation space in your house, use this area. Be sure you received’t be disturbed for the subsequent 10-Quarter-hour.
2. Take just a few deep breaths and focus your consideration in your physique. Really feel your toes on the bottom and your again towards the chair. Enable your self to calm down and let go of any rigidity.
3. Take a raisin and maintain it within the palm of your hand. Study the raisin together with your eyes, taking note of its form, coloration, and texture. Discover any ridges or wrinkles on the floor.
4. Deliver the raisin as much as your nostril and take a deep breath. Discover any scent or aroma that the raisin offers off.
5. Slowly place the raisin in your mouth, however don’t chew it but. Discover the feeling of the raisin in your tongue and the within of your mouth. Enable it to take a seat in your mouth for just a few seconds.
6. Start to chew the raisin slowly and mindfully, taking note of the feeling of every chew. Discover the feel and taste of the raisin.
7. Swallow the raisin and spot the feeling of it happening your throat.
8. Take a second to replicate in your expertise. How did it really feel to eat the raisin mindfully? Did you discover any new sensations or flavors that you simply wouldn’t have observed in any other case?

The raisin exercise is a strong software for practising aware consuming. By bringing your full consideration to the act of consuming, you’ll be able to domesticate a deeper appreciation on your meals and develop a more healthy relationship with it.

Why Observe Conscious Consuming?

There are a lot of advantages to practising mindful eating. For one, it will probably assist you to develop into extra conscious of your starvation and fullness cues, permitting you to raised regulate your meals consumption and keep your distinctive balanced weight.

Conscious consuming may also assist you to get pleasure from your meals extra totally and scale back emotions of guilt or disgrace round consuming. Moreover, practising aware consuming may also help you develop into extra conscious of your emotional triggers round meals and develop more healthy coping mechanisms.

Ideas for Practising Conscious Consuming

Along with the raisin exercise, there are various different methods to practice mindful eating. Listed below are just a few tricks to get began:

1. Eat with out distractions: Keep away from consuming whereas watching TV, utilizing your cellphone, or working at your pc. As an alternative, focus all your consideration in your meals.
2. Decelerate: Take your time whereas consuming, and chew every chew completely. It will assist you to savor the flavors and textures of your meals.
3. Take note of your physique: Test in together with your physique earlier than, throughout, and after consuming. Discover how these sensations really feel in your physique with no judgment and numerous self-compassion.