Eating is a moving meditation. "Meditation"? Some of you may say, "We meditate in our yoga class during Savasana". Sitting and breathing meditation in lotus position might be a daily routine for some of you. There are many forms of meditations and you may be practicing one of them. For some of you, not only yoga exercise in the gym, but also reading, gardening, knitting, sawing, drawing, painting, or even cooking, may be meditative. And all of you are right. Any activity you feel totally into, forgetting about anything, else, is a meditation. You can recognize a meditative activity by how you feel afterwards. You feel refreshed with a renewed spirit or pleasingly tired with feelings of accomplishment, enjoyment or satisfaction. Meditation strengthens self-esteem, self-confidence and brings you overall happiness. Meditative activities keep you in the present moment where there is no worry and stress. The bottom line is, it doesn't matter what kind of activity you do as long as your head is thinking about the activity you are doing.

Mediation means doing one thing at a time. If we can put our mind into talking to our girlfriend about the latest shopping deal we made with all of our passion, why couldn't we use the same level of focus when we eat? Let's face the truth…eating, with our life running in the fast lane, became secondary to most of our activities. Let's see another point of view how taking time to eat and chew could help you to lose those extra pounds.

Chewing is also meditation. Imagine yourself in your favorite restaurant and tasting the sensational magic in the air, the aroma of great food. The first bite of the mixture of the velvety and crunchy leaves leaving a rather bitter flavor of the mescal greens waking up your taste buds in your mouth. You are so ready to take the first bite of the golden brown cedar planked salmon. The sharper, outside, spicy-salty taste blends with the rather sweeter and softer taste of the center part as the bite falls apart in you mouth. "But wait! Something is missing." Of course you need a drop of lemon to make this experience magical. Now, with the sour taste of the lemon, the bite feels complete. After a few bites the delight feels overwhelming, the taste needs to be broken with something more bland. "Oh, I will just take a bite of my roasted garlic mashed potato." The magic continues. You feel the velvety soft texture of this paste-like substance, soothing the spices from the fish. Perfect match! What a joyful and satisfying feeling! Then the bite of the bittersweet crunch of velvety dark chocolate, covering the completely ripe, sweet-and-sour tangy strawberry-- puts you right over! You even forgot that "hot" guy sitting at the bar. You just want the magic to last forever. You just want to keep chewing to discover more. The only thing you were thinking about is your action of chewing and tasting the food. You totally focused on doing one thing at a time.

Chewing brings out the flavor of food. Chewing and holding the food in your mouth longer allows you to experience the magic behind the flavors. By chewing you experienced all six tastes - bitter, sweet, salty, sour, spicy (pungent), and paste, like astringent (potato) - in your meal in perfect harmony. The tastes balanced each other out to leave you there not wanting anything else. You feel satisfied with what you had.

Balancing the tastes brings satisfaction. "Boy, when I eat all those salty tortilla chips I need to switch over to something sweet!" The other day that hot-and-sour soup at the local Thai restaurant left you screaming for the relief brought on by a slice of cucumber. These are just a couple examples of opposing tastes. When we eat too much of one taste we start craving for the opposite taste to feel in harmony again. The next time you feel something is missing and you keep looking for something else to eat, even though you are full, check what you ate before. See if you had all six tastes present or if you indulged on something. A few bites of that missing taste will bring you back to harmony and keep you away from eating all night long.

Thoughtfully designed meals with a little chewing bring you joy and happiness every time you eat. They say good food is better then sex! I think it is up there…they both bring satisfaction…

Practice: Count the tastes in your next meal. Did you taste all six? If not - How did you feel after the meal? What was missing?

Suggested reading: "Perfect Health" by Deepak Chopra, M.D. (Harmony books/ New York, 1991)
Chapter: Diet - Eating for Perfect Balance