What benefits can people derive from practicing Zen eating?
In this video, Momoe explores the multitude of advantages that Zen eating offers, highlighting its positive impacts on both our physical and mental well-being.
Zen eating aligns your mind, body, and spirit
Nick: That is obviously one of the benefits of Zen eating. So would you like to share other benefits of Zen eating?
Momoe: It is a good question. Yes, there are so many benefits. The easiest one is physical benefit, like people who come to me to practice Zen eating, some people have problem with obesity, or want to lose weight, they obviously can be more aware of how they eat, how much they.
So say for example, when you place your hands on your stomach, which I usually recommend to everyone, and then ask your stomach how much you want to eat now; the amount that you want to eat today may be different from yesterday.
So you always ask your body each and every time so that you can be having friendly attitude to your body. So you start not hating your body even if you think that you're chubby. But you start having this friendly relationship with your body and as well as your food, a friendly relationship with your food.
So rebuild that relationship with food, with your body, and as a result, with your life as well. That's physical benefit. Mental benefit as well: joy, calmness, playfulness, and feeling connection—living in connectivity will give you ultimate calmness, deep calmness, but with joy. So that's, I think some of the benefits.
Nick: Well, that's really interesting about the conversation with your tummy. Because I think in Japan, Japanese people see the gut as a second brain of the body. So it's like two brains having a conversation. That's a very non-threatening way to think, ‘Oh, What is my stomach really feeling?’ And I’ll say, ‘Oh, well, I'm a little bit hungry, but I don't need that much.’ And maybe start being healthy.
Because I guess emotional eating is a big problem: we get stressed, so we grab something, and that's usually something full of sugar or a comfort food, which might not be healthy. So this slower, more gentle conversation with your guts, or your tummy sounds really positive.
Momoe: Yes. So you can choose, before doing this emotional eating. And when you start having conversation with your second brain, you can open up, you can wake up your body wisdom, your body intelligence, and you are able to unleash your unlimited potential by waking up your body intelligence.
Because if you live with your brain only, or if you live with your mind only, then it is so limited. But if you make alignment of your body, mind, soul, and spirit, you can unleash your full potential and you can live so energetically, which happened to me. I was happy before, but I feel like this alignment makes me so energetic, and a lot of my clients experience something similar.