Blessing your food - Journey to Intuitive Eating
My boyfriend Omri has taught me so much over the time we have been together. One of the things he does which inspires me still every single day, is blessing his food before the meal. Even when very hungry, he takes a moment, to close his eyes and come back to the here and now.
Blessing our food
Blessing our food is a beautiful practise when we want to learn how to eat intuitively. When we take a moment to breath and arrive at the table with the meal in front of us, we are more aware to what we are actually doing. We are able to tune into our body and listen more carefully to its cues.
‘Take a moment to breath and arrive at the table with the meal in front of us‘
How to bless your food
There are many different ways to bless our food. Blessng our food is about appreciating the meal in front of us.
We can feel gratitude for the fact we have food to eat. That we can nourish ourselves.
We can feel love for the process of the food preparation and production. All the people and the all the effort that is put into these products before they became your dish.
We can bless our body for receiving and digesting this food well and enabling us to be here.
When I take a moment to appreciate my meal, I close my eyes and think about all the steps these products have made before me eating it. The farmers who sowed and harvested the crop of lettuce. The person in the truck bringing it to the supermarket. The people working in the supermarket, putting the vegetables out for us to purchase. The money I got to buy the product with. My friend/partner/loved one or myself, who prepared the lettuce into a tasty salad. All these steps make you realize what an effort is put in to something you get to have for dinner.
‘Thinking about all the steps these products have made before me eating it‘
We may think about the sun and the water who raised the vegetables and the nutrients that are inside of the produce.
We can take a moment to thank life/god/universe/our parents etc for the fact we get to be here and have food to consume.
Why to bless?
Blessing our food gives us to opportunity to welcome the food before we consume it. The most important thing when it comes to Intuitive Eating is to make conscious decisions and to stand after decisions we make. When we appreciate the food in front of us, we kind of open the gate to receive it fully. To enjoy it completely.
My Ayurvedic teacher dr. Sharma always told us:
‘'The most important thing when it comes to eating, is to be relaxed when eating. To want to be nourished by the food you are eating, so you welcome the food with open arms.'
When we are stressed out and not present before a meal or we are not feeling good about the kind of food we are eating, we might not fully welcome it. For our digestion to work optimally we have to be calm whenever eating.
Another BIG reason we want to bless our food, is because it brings us back to this moment. When we are present when eating, we are more likely to be satisfied afterwards and able to listen to cues of our body. Our body can tell us what amount to eat and if the type of food we are eating is what is actually what we are desiring right now.
Other great tools to use on your Intuitive Eating Journey are:
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