We are often very concerned about what we eat. Our food indeed plays a significant role in our health and well-being. But in this blog, we will go a step ahead and talk about how to eat. This aspect is often neglected but is at least equally important.

Osho’s insight is very simple: just live the taste of the food you are eating. He says, “We eat very unconsciously, automatically, robotlike. If the taste is not lived, you are just stuffing.”

So how do we start? Two basic things: Go slow. And be aware of the taste of the food. As you start doing this, just become the taste. Osho’s words on this:

“When you feel sweetness, become that sweetness. And then it can be felt all over the body – not just in the mouth, not just on the tongue, it can be felt all over the body spreading in ripples.”

As you do this, you will chew more and digest more. Or simply you will live the taste of your food more. The same goes with drinking. For example, when drinking water, feel its coolness spreading from your mouth across your body and filling it. This also makes your eating and drinking a meditation!

Of course, this means you can’t be using your phones or watching TV when you are eating. You are simply so much into the taste of your food to allow any distractions. Sometimes it helps even if you have your eyes closed as you chew.

As you bring awareness to your eating, your body will become more and more sensitive. When you start tasting your food, you also start feeling more. Feeling your feelings more. And move from the yakety-yak thoughts in your head into your body. Osho says there will be many surprises if you really become your tongue, just your taste buds when you are eating. Osho’s words:

“First you will become aware that you cannot eat more than is needed. You need not diet, only foolish people diet.”

He explains that the simple reason we overeat is that our hunger for taste remains, so we go on stuffing more. “If you really taste, soon you will be satisfied, contented. Soon the body will say, ‘Stop!’ And if you are alert you will be able to listen when the body says stop.”

So just by totally tasting the food, the food becomes divine and you enter meditation. And the side effect is that your body also becomes more fit. Next time you eat or drink, just remember to slow down a bit and to become the taste.