For more great books on mindfulness, check out our list of 15 of the Best Mindfulness Books. Feel like giving it a try? Here is a quick mindful eating exercise. Take your favorite fruit and set aside a few minutes to enjoy it with your other senses before it reaches your tongue. Pretend it’s the first time you’ve ever seen the fruit. (You may want to do this when you’re alone, so you won’t feel self-conscious about looking perplexed by, say, a strawberry.) What does it look like? How does it feel in your fingers? What does it smell like? Does that smell remind you of anything else? Now, close your eyes, take a bite of the fruit, and chew it slowly. Notice the taste, the way your teeth feel on the fruit, the smell as it passes your lips and into your nose, the way it feels as it passes your teeth and into your throat. Even if you have eaten a thousand strawberries, taking time to eat one mindfully can feel like a discovery. If that exercise whet your appetite, here are eight mindful eating books to help you develop a mindful eating practice. Some of these books borrow from Buddhist mindfulness practices but other are fully secular. Happy eating!
