Mindfulness Food

Post By: Aditya Amar
June 10, 2021

Cottage Nirvana is our best wellness retreat in Uttarakhand and we encourage people to come to us for Yoga and Meditation holidays, Ayurveda treatments, Panchakarma treatments. Lot of guests have benefited from our nature cure therapies as Yoga and Ayurveda treatments in Himalayas is the best of both the worlds. At Cottage Nirvana, apart from traditional treatments and Panchakarma, we also focus on Satvik (healthy)food on a serious note.

We have our own cultivation of various organic and chemical free farming and fruit orchards at Cottage Nirvana and we also have been teaching people how to eat, yes “How to eat”. Majority of us, unfortunately, don’t understand the fundamentals of food, like, why do we eat?, where does our fruit comes from?, who harvests your food?, how is the food digested?, what does good or unhealthy food does to us? Etc.

First and foremost, we encourage people to ‘dirty their hands’, in the farms, people should know the science behind cultivation of food, we need to appreciate the hard work and effort that goes behind cultivation, right from preparing the earth, putting chemical free manure, putting seeds, watering regularly, taking weeds out of the earth. Now we wait patiently for about 100 days for five elements of nature to do the magic, we wait for sunshine, we want rain, we want heat and air at a certain temperature and yes mother earth is nurturing our crop all this time. Finally, we are blessed with the crop or food that gives essential nutrients to our body and mind, Prana the vital energy.

And for a moment, think of a situation, when you reach home stressed from work and you want to eat with TV in front of you and you also get few important phone calls during the process of eating and where does it lead you? Even your wife was waiting for you in the evening and she prepared the food thoughtfully, as she is concerned about your health and well being.

This is why we teach people how to eat at Cottage Nirvana; we need to understand food and then only we will be able to respect food. We should eat peacefully, without using any electronic gadgets. Mindfulness food teaches us to sit in a serene environment, preferably don’t talk while eating, be present there, we should enjoy the process of eating and not just satiate the taste buds.

Mindfulness food also teaches us to understand what does food does to our body, how does food converts into nutrition and energy, what is healthy food and unhealthy food, why should we chew more and eat in peace, what does it means? We should use all our senses like we should eat with hands so that we can touch the food, we should smell the food, let the smell build appetite, we should chew slowly as the process is crucial for certain acids to mix with food and that helps in proper digestion, we should not gulp our food quickly. Yes the food becomes alive and vibrant when you treat the food this way. Only in such precious moments, the ancient sages must have declared : Annan Brahm:the food is god. We should eat until we fill only two-third of our stomach, it teaches us to relish the taste and yet leave some space for easy digestion.

We have made the habit of eating into a completely mechanical practice, one has to put the food into the body and leave the dining table, in fact many people prefer to eat in their beds. On the body level, the food should be healthy, non-violent,non stimulating to our senses, and on the psychological level,the mind should be in joyful state, graceful and at peace. And third is, at the level of soul, there should be a feeling of gratefulness, of thankfulness to the farmer, the nature. These three things actually make food, the balanced food.

Even if you are a “foody”, we all need to know that whenever and whatever we are eating, we should chew more, because the taste or enjoyment is just above the throat, the taste is over the moment you gulp the food. So relish the taste and chew more. Smell is very important, in fact many experiments have proved that if your nose is blocked and you eat something, you just can’t taste it. So taste is more of smell instead of taste. The color of the food has to appeal your eyes, try closing your eyes and you won’t like the taste.

So eat slow, eat healthy, touch the food, admire food, smell food and let it nourish your body and soul.