The nurturing aspect of preparing a meal
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The nurturing aspect of preparing a meal
Preparing food is a task that we are presented with in some way or another on a daily basis. Whether buying a prepared meal or preparing it for ourselves or having someone prepare it for us, the way food is prepared plays a significant role when we look at it from a nurturing aspect.
What do I mean by nurturing?
The views on that might differ depending on which culture we are born into and what the traditions of our family, our village, our country, etc. are. On a basic level the understanding of nurturing might be about having enough to eat to sustain ourselves, but when hunger is not an issue‚ as is the case for most people living in Western societies, it might be about having a lot of variety or three meals a day, or we look at nutrients and how many vitamins are in a food and how healthy a food choice is in that regard. And of course these aspects are worth paying attention to as they might make a difference to our health, but they are not all that nurtures us.
Don’t we all know the feeling of a full stomach but still feeling empty and not truly nurtured? Which then leads us to craving a dessert, whether that is a sweet thing or an alcoholic beverage, a cigarette or a hot drink.
Doesn’t that make you wonder whether food is in fact what truly nurtures us when one can feel so very dissatisfied after a meal?
We live a fast-paced life and preparing food every day can be an arduous task if one is not enjoying it, as can happen with any repetitive task. But how does this affect the meal? We have the saying ‘cooked with love’, and often this is the ingredient that makes a meal outstanding. Everybody who cooks regularly knows the phenomena – you cook or bake the same mix of ingredients and it tastes and feels completely different every time, and when someone else uses the same recipe, it is different again.
So what is it that makes the difference?
Obviously the quality of the ingredients will play a role; have we chosen fresh or dried herbs, are the veggies in season or shipped in from overseas and therefore harvested early, etc. But there is more to the science of cooking and mixing ingredients together than you can weigh on a scale or grow in your garden.
The space we are in when we are preparing a meal plays an important role that is often ignored.
How is our head space? This is an interesting term, but is one that makes a lot of sense and is valuable to consider. Do we allow space in our head or is it crammed up with thoughts, emotions and undealt with issues from the day? Replaying conversations, thinking about what I could have said or should have done. So, are we off in our thoughts whilst we are preparing a meal, or doing anything for that matter, or are we present with each movement that is required for the task ahead? Sometimes it takes a cut or burnt finger to take us out of these intense personal reveries in our mind.
But presence is not all. It just allows you to feel more of WHAT your movements are, which is a good start. I notice sometimes they are jarred, out of sync, clumsy and overall it is not so enjoyable to be around myself. No wonder I try to run off into my thoughts.
When my movements are in flow with the task at hand and every next move is like a magic moment, that is when it is easy to be present and to enjoy each movement required for the task. Then I do not rush through to get it done, because the movement, the process is what gives me joy, not the end result.
So long as I am striving for perfection, trying to prove my worth, trying to reach somewhere or something, be that recognition or getting attention through failure (like, look at me, I always manage to stuff it up!), I am not enjoying the actual movement, but I am focussed on the end result, I want to get there to feel some kind of relief. This puts me in a rush and makes my movements hard and often jarred and out of sync.
The crux is when we stop and feel our movements in that moment, it is actually not so enjoyable because it feels sort of horrible in our bodies. When I start to be present with myself, I start to feel the effect my movements have on me and I may not want to feel that. But continuing to check out, mentally escaping the harsh feeling in the body, the lack of care going into the meal, the rushing, the resentment that can occur when feeding a family, leads us into a vicious cycle of repeating the same sort of movements over and over again.
This is where nurturing really becomes important. This is the moment to regather ourselves and focus on what truly matters.
When we want to step out of this cycle and offer ourselves a different way, we need to go through this moment of awfulness and admit WHAT we are doing to ourselves to then be able to renounce it, which simply means, saying ‘No’ and at the same time saying ‘Yes’ to another way of being when we do this simple daily task. The ‘Yes’ plays an important role, as ‘No’ would leave us with a gap, with an empty space, but WHAT will that be filled with? So the ‘Yes’ invites a different approach, a different set of movements to now replace WHAT has been chucked out.
It becomes a joy to fill this space and to allow the cup to spill over and every movement the body makes becomes a graceful touch that nurtures us and whoever else will eat our food. Every breath is a delicate breeze like a wind lightly touching your face. Every cell in the body tingles in joyful readiness for the next moment. What will it bring? I don’t know… but I know it will be divine.
Could it be, that through this approach, divinity can infuse even the most mundane aspects of human life?
In that sense preparing a meal can be very nurturing, even if I do not get to eat it afterwards, as can be any task that is done in that same quality.
So yes, the body needs nutrients to sustain it, no doubt about that, but food alone is not what fulfils us or gives us the feeling of being nurtured and cared for.
The connection to a quality of care and nurturing is innate, so when we give ourselves the space and care to consider and apply this to making our meals, we might discover what makes us feel truly content and nurtured in life.
Filed under
Conscious presence, Nurturing, Nutrition, Presence
