Mindful Eating on the Go: Practices for Eating with Awareness, Wherever You Are by Chozen Bays Jan

Author:Chozen Bays, Jan
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781611806335
Publisher: Shambhala
Published: 2018-12-23T16:00:00+00:00

12

what is your tongue doing now?

the exercise

While eating or drinking, become aware of your tongue. Pause periodically and ask yourself, “What is my tongue sensing or doing right now?” If you have difficulty noticing what your tongue is doing, stop it from moving and then slowly start it up again, almost like a freeze frame, moving it one step at a time. Watch carefully how it works. Or try chewing without moving your tongue, and see what happens. Then bring your tongue back online slowly to investigate how it is involved in chewing.

reminding yourself

Put a picture of a tongue or a note saying “What is my tongue doing?” in the places you usually eat or drink.

discoveries

This is such an interesting exercise. We find that our tongue is a busy little creature! Although it lives right inside our head, ordinarily we ignore it completely—unless we bite or burn it. I sometimes encourage people to make a list of all the jobs of the tongue and see how many they can find. Besides asking how it helps us chew (which is fascinating to watch), you can ask yourself many more questions: How does it get food off a fork and into your mouth? Does it go on top of the fork or underneath? How does it help move liquid from a cup into your mouth? How is it involved in swallowing? How does it decide that it’s OK to swallow now? You may need again to slow the process down and ask the tongue, “Are you ready to swallow yet?” If it says “no,” then ask, “Why not?” What are its criteria for “ready to swallow”? What does it do after you finish eating?

Even when you are not eating, you can bring attention to the tongue to discover what that little “person” inside your mouth is up to now. What is it doing while you are reading these words? It seldom rests. Over the many years I’ve done this exercise, I’ve always discovered new things about the life and loves of my tongue.

After bringing awareness to their tongue, people often express a feeling of gratitude. They realize how difficult life—eating, speaking—would be without a tongue and how cruel the ancient punishment of cutting off tongues actually was.

deeper lessons

Once you become aware of your tongue, you realize that it seldom rests. Between meals it is doing its janitorial duties, checking out your teeth, making sure there are no food particles stuck there or new rough spots. A researcher told me that when we are thinking, our tongue is subtly moving. One way to ease your mind and deepen your meditation is to relax your tongue and let it lie still in your mouth. During meditation I sometimes spread my tongue out so it rests between my back teeth. It helps keep it still and prevents me from unconsciously clenching my jaw. Our tongue has always been with us, has always been taking care of us, since before we were born. (As fetuses, we swallowed amniotic fluid, which helped develop our tongue and digestive tract.

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