What is more subtle? Next, bring your nose close to this newly discovered offering. Breathe in deeply through your nose, capturing the smells. What do you notice? Is there anything familiar about the smell? Anything new?

Can you sense temperature? Linger for a moment on your olfactory sense. As you continue paying attention to the sights and smells before you, consider the immense amount of energy in resources and labor it took to bring this meal to your table: the sunshine and water to grow the food; the many hands and machinery required to cultivate, pick, process and package the food; the time, fuel, and care to safely ship, unload, and store the food.

You may choose to bring gratitude for everyone and everything involved in the meal in which you are about to partake. Feel free, if it is part of your practice or spiritual tradition, to bring your own gratitude or blessing to this moment. Now, with a utensil or with your hands, whichever is appropriate for the food you are about to enjoy, take a small, intentional bite.

After placing your utensil down, begin chewing slowly, bringing awareness to the textures, taste, and temperature. Notice how these factors change, and how the flavors evolve as you slowly chew. Feel the different parts of the mouth involved in chewing. Sense the smoothness, hardness, crunchiness, or stickiness, as you chew.

Notice the sounds and movements of the mouth and face. If you can, chew times before swallowing. When you swallow, notice the path that the food follows from your mouth and throat into your stomach, paying attention to tastes that may linger in your mouth.

Connect again to your body and your breath and notice your experience in this moment. Repeat this process of taking a bite, placing your utensil down, chewing times, and swallowing, all with great intention and awareness, before moving on to the next bite.

Feel free to continue this for as long as you would like. Click here to learn about practices that boost mental, physical, and emotional health, enhancing productivity and reducing stress for a more balanced life.

The following questions and process can be applied to your eating on the job once you have established a foundation in the mindful eating using the guide detailed above. This program is supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration HRSA of the U.

Department of Health and Human Services HHS. The contents are those of the author s and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement, by HRSA, HHS, or the U.

For more information, please visit HRSA. In the medical field, science and skill are paramount, but what about the crucial art of dealing with grief and loss?

Physician David Sandweiss shares his transformative mindfulness journey through the profound impact of presence and compassion, and how it has reshaped his approach to patients. Well-being expert and physician David Sandweiss explores the tangible sensations of earth, water, fire, and wind within you.

Each element guides your awareness to the solidity of your bones, the fluidity of your breath, the warmth of your being, and the gentle breeze of your breath. By immersing yourself in these elemental experiences, you'll cultivate a profound sense of presence and gratitude for the miraculous intricacies of your own existence.

an inititaive from University of Utah. About Submission Guidelines All Articles. Photo by Dan Gold on Unsplash. Physician David Sandweiss shares the transformative power of mindful eating in the chaos of health care.

Amidst the hurried pace and stressful conditions, health care professionals can find solace in savoring each bite with intention, bringing gratitude to their meals, and rediscovering the joy of food.

Learn how this practice offers moments of tranquility in the midst of clinical chaos. Quick Guide. Mindfulness in Medicine Toolkit. What is Mindful Eating? Practicing Mindful Eating If you are new to mindful eating, a good time and place to introduce yourself to the practice is when you are not under significant time pressure, not self-conscious about eating slowly, and able to put your phone down and step away from the computer.

Mindful Eating — A Guided Exercise. Pause Next, bring awareness to the sensations in your body as you prepare to eat. Mindful habits. Pause Next, bring your nose close to this newly discovered offering. Pause As you continue paying attention to the sights and smells before you, consider the immense amount of energy in resources and labor it took to bring this meal to your table: the sunshine and water to grow the food; the many hands and machinery required to cultivate, pick, process and package the food; the time, fuel, and care to safely ship, unload, and store the food.

Pause Now, with a utensil or with your hands, whichever is appropriate for the food you are about to enjoy, take a small, intentional bite. Pause Repeat this process of taking a bite, placing your utensil down, chewing times, and swallowing, all with great intention and awareness, before moving on to the next bite.

Mindful movement. Reflections on Mindful Eating Now take a few moments to reflect on this mindful eating exercise: How was this experience the same or different from how you normally eat?

What, if anything, surprised you about the experience? What did you notice about the food in terms of sight, touch, sound, smell, and taste?

In our effort to be ever-more-efficient, we skip meals or eat while rushing to the next event, driving, watching a screen, or multitasking in some other way. Is this the best we can do? Is there value in reconsidering another approach? Would slowing down and focusing on our eating bring more satisfaction to our lives?

Do we ascribe a proper level of gratitude to the activity of eating? With the holidays nearly upon us, it occurred to me that this season provides the ideal opportunity for us to consider the benefits of adopting an attitude of gratitude, specifically towards food, and how to establish it.

On Thanksgiving, we set everything else aside to consider the great blessings of food, family, and friendship. But what if we chose to think of it not as a once-a-year tradition, but as an opportunity to elevate our daily mealtime routine and relationships to their rightful place in our lives?

Could we carry this into a mindset that lasts all year, instead of just one day? It turns out that there is a whole practice already established, studied, and researched that blends mindfulness and eating.

Unsurprisingly, it is called mindful eating. What is mindful eating? Mindfulness is a term that describes bringing our full attention to an experience — like the child completely absorbed as she watches a caterpillar crawling on her parsley plant! And eating , well there is a lot to eating — the selection of what we consume and why, the act of growing or collecting our food, the actual process of ingesting food into our bodies, and the satisfying feeling of fullness that food gives us.

So when we put those together, mindful eating involves shaping a holistic awareness of our eating practices, paying attention to what we are eating, and its effect on our bodies.

Mindful eating brings our full focus to eating, and it can transform our relationship with food. We were made with the ability to enjoy our surroundings using our five senses. In mindful eating, we employ all of our senses to elevate the experience of eating, connecting with our body to savor the flavors, textures, aromas, and even the appearance of our food.

You know how your grandma always told you to chew each bite 25 times, and you thought it was unnecessary or silly? Well, grandma was right — again!

Not only does this practice help prime our body to produce more digestive juices, it slows us down to eat consciously, not mindlessly. Mindful eating also encompasses our selection of what to eat.

Are we eating in a way that is true to what we value and what we believe? When we eat mindlessly, we may eat in response to emotions, rules, habits, or convenience.

We set up an unsettling inconsistency within ourselves when our actions do not match our intention, purpose, and values.

Ideally, mindful eating means we consider what was involved in growing the food we eat. Was the selected food produced with integrity?

Did its growth bring life to the soil and land, thereby ensuring long-term health and wellbeing for generations to come? Food should be sustainably produced in a way that supports a healthy ecosystem and healthy bodies.

For us at Azure, that means organically and without genetic modification. Pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and other toxins have no place in our food supply or our environment. Mindful eating invites us to consider the impact of our choices on the earth as a whole.

Another facet of mindful eating is finding connection with our food, because it makes it more enjoyable and meaningful. We may not be able to grow all our own food, but even planting a few herbs can enhance our connection. Supporting friends and local growers, foraging, and working to preserve and store our own food also creates connection.

We can avoid contributing to corporate models that exploit workers, and instead choose to bolster small independent companies and family businesses that make healthy, nutritious food available and affordable to all. Mindful eating can also mean that we recognize all the work involved in bringing this food to our table.

A simple question to ask ourselves is, who is supported by my food choices and does this match my values? MINDFUL EATING — A FORM OF SELF CARE When we give our full attention to our sensations, feelings, and thoughts, we are caring for ourselves.

Mindful eating invites us to listen to the feedback of the body and mind, which tell us what supports us. This process is not about judging or defining what you should eat or think or feel.

Mindful eating builds our confidence in trusting ourselves and our ability to care for our body. In this way, we value our food and our bodies. The ultimate goal of mindful eating is better health — mental and physical. When we eat mindfully, we notice the subtle effects of food on our bodies.

We observe what nourishes us, which foods give us a feeling of fullness and satisfaction and energy, and which foods drain us or make us feel uncomfortable and irritable. Our bodies speak to us with demands that become more urgent the longer we ignore the signals.

We recognize how food restores and heals us — from the cellular level to organs and body systems, and ultimately to the whole person.

As we understand these things, we cherish each ingredient, each mouthful, each meal. Mindful eating is not a diet or approach to weight control, because it is about bringing your full attention to the action more than it is concerned with forcing a particular outcome.

However, it often results in moderating weight because it changes our overall approach to eating.