Mindfulness in the Kitchen

In this moment I am rejoicing in the visual beauty of food.

As promised, this is installment 2 in a series on the topic of mindfulness and food. Enjoy!

When we prepare meals mindfully, we are expressing love. Yep, that’s the gist of it. Hey, did I really summarize this whole post in one sentence? Wow, I just impressed myself. Okay ego, calm down (sheesh).

So if you stop for a moment and think about it, you may notice that humans often treat food simply as sustenance. Food is sustenance, yes. But it is so much more than just something that fills our bellies when they grumble. We are living in a society where preparing and eating food has become a rushed, stressful, and unhealthy activity - psychologically and physiologically.

Sometimes I just want to shout “Slow down, world!” because there is nothing that is so important that it’s worth risking your or your loved ones’ health (and potentially life). This is a lesson that I myself have had to learn. At one point in my life, I was working 50-60 hours a week, taking 3 college courses, and coordinating a research project for a non-profit. I was overwhelmed, and my nutrition (and my family’s) seemed to get the raw end of the deal. I became very sick with non-epileptic seizures that were completely debilitating. Yikes! I was definitely not living in the moment. I have slowed down (the universe must have been looking out for me, because it put the right circumstances in my way) and I have had an opportunity to experience the beauty of life on the slow side (Luke, I am your father. Come to the slow side.). I feel as if this opportunity has led me to be more committed to a practice of mindfulness and deliberateness in my beliefs, decisions and actions.

So, have you ever eaten something that you knew was cooked with love? I mean love, people. The kind that makes you fill your lungs with breath and gives you tingles throughout your body (oh, the pleasures of oxytocin). Stop for a moment and let that feeling wash over you anew. Focus. Breathe. Be in the moment. Experience love and well-being. C’mon really. No one will know. ;)


How does that feel? Believe it or not, you can create that feeling of oxytocic well-being anytime you want to (after all, you just did from reading a few words on a screen). When I had hit a low point in my health, I wanted to embody that feeling and bring health back into my life. So I started to create that experience through food. In retrospect, it seems like a logical place to start, but it was more of a spontaneous process that ultimately became a critical component of reconnecting with my body and mind and with others in a healthy way.

Sometimes Jiro, the sushi chef nutcracker, helps me stay mindful in the kitchen. If Jiro was in your kitchen, you'd be mindful too!

So here it comes. Brain talk. I mean, can we really talk about food without it? In our everyday world, we usually associate food with our sense of taste, but our other senses are very much at work and they are a ripe opportunity for mindfulness during food preparation.

In the brain, it’s the olfactory pathways that receive and process our sense of smell. An odor molecule comes into the nose and is translated into signals that move along an olfactory nerve bundle which end at the septal area. The septal area is considered our brains’ “pleasure center” and it’s part of the limbic system that regulates emotions. The interaction of olfactory nerves and the septal area is what causes us to have strong emotional responses to smells. Therefore, one of the easiest ways to deliberately create a loving cooking experience is to focus on various smells that are encountered during the process. When we stop and smell something wonderful, we can simply notice that our brain focuses on the scent and turns off thoughts and other input, even if it’s just for a brief moment. Allow yourself to try this delightful experience of just being with smell (I know, the words just come out wrong. I cannot do the experience justice.).

Seriously, can the smell of these bring you back to the moment?

Similarly, sound can be a powerful tool for being in the moment. Our brains are constantly hearing, categorizing, and labeling the sounds around us. During food preparation, notice the sounds of your process; the knife slicing through a melon (it’s a beautiful sound, can you imagine it now?), or the sound of boiling soup (which sounds different from boiling water), or the singing sound of sizzling. Even the clang of metal on metal, cupboard doors banging, the refrigerator opening; these are interesting and sometimes fascinating sounds. Experience them as they are, without labels or judgments. If you notice categorizing or labeling going on, stop and refocus on the sound, just the sound. Practice right now. Close your eyes. Let the sounds just come and go. No one will know, I assure you.

Chop vegetables, pour water

Did you notice that when you focused attention on just the sound, thoughts and other sensory input vanished momentarily? Ah, being in the moment. There’s nothing like it. Try it also with your sense of touch.

Your sense of touch is very powerful

Okay, so back to my zingy introductory sentence. What does all of this have to do with expressing love? First of all. When you allow yourself the gift of being in the moment, you are giving yourself love. When you give yourself love - truly, deeply and without reservations (thanks for that, Anthony Bourdain), then you start to come from a place of love in your interactions with the world. I don’t mean conditional love, where someone has to believe or behave in ways that you want. I mean, you will just love, period.

Funny how one thing can lead to another like that.

So, if you’re living the crazy life and want to make a change. Stop, focus your attention, be in the moment, be love. Can you do this a little bit every day? Say it with me “Challenge accepted!”

Postscript: Did Darth Vader really believe the dark side was better? I mean, c’mon!