Helping parents bring mindful space to their days during the COVID-19 pandemic — 2
All this week we’re featuring tips from Mindfulness Connected Learning, as part of #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek. The theme this week is Kindness.
Practice self-kindness to yourself by bringing stillness into your life and slowing down to eat.
Tip 2 — Mindful Eating
So often we eat without awareness. Often only thinking about our next mouthful. We might overeat because of this habit of wanting more and feeling that we don’t have enough or as a way of distracting ourselves from pain or unhappiness. Quite often when we eat, we eat our thoughts, not our food. Mindful eating is a way of slowing down and appreciating each mouthful. It is a way of really savouring our food. Eating mindfully means bringing all our senses to the experience of eating. Begin by looking deeply at the food, exploring the shape, colour, patterns. We might then smell the food, noticing the different fragrances. Taking our time to finally taste the food, one mouthful at a time. We notice the texture and flavours. Chewing slowly and perhaps setting down our knife and fork between mouthfuls. People often report that they eat less and that they actually taste their food for the first time. This practice can be done with a whole meal, a few mouthfuls or even with a cup of tea and a biscuit. Use it as it fits with your lifestyle. It can be shared with your children in a light-hearted way. Finding ways of describing different tastes or textures of food.
Get your children to join in — we can use flavoured chocolate and ask our children to guess what flavour, encouraging them to close their eyes and really focus on the taste and texture and what is happening inside their mouths as they explore these sensations.
Have a mindful day.
Follow us across socials where we’ll be sharing Veronica’s tips to help parents practice kindness each day this week as part of #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek. Find us on our Instagram, Facebook and Twitter For more information on Mindfulness Connected Learning, check out Veronica’s website and Facebook page
