Does anyone have a mindful eating mantra they’d like to share? Recently I’ve been feeling very grateful for my food, and nourishment, I almost want to start praying to thank someone, maybe mother earth for providing the soil we need for our food.

[Trent]

Does anyone have a mindful eating mantra they’d like to share? Recently I’ve been feeling very grateful for my food, and nourishment, I almost want to start praying to thank someone, maybe mother earth for providing the soil we need for our food.

Discussion

[certifiedfairwitness]

I had a Buddhist friend who had this concept of “hands”. Sometimes she’d just start picturing how many people’s hands would have worked to bring an item to her. For food it would be the cashier and stocker at the grocery store, the delivery trucker, the gasoline producers and truck mechanics, road pavers, packers, packaging manufacturers, quality assurance, pickers, growers, seed developers, fertilizer producers, extension research officers, water managers… obviously this turns into a mindfulness meditation real fast. I’ve already left out so many. Thank them all, and consider how much it takes to have what we do. It’s a long chain, and we already had a taste of what might break it.

[wildpapillon]

I like:

“Blessed be the earth that grew this food

Blessed be the rain that watered it

Blessed be the sun that nourished it

Blessed be the hands that brought it to my table

Blessed be”

🙂

[HopefulDandelion]

My personal favorite has always been “Rub-a-dub-dub, thanks for the grub.”

But then, I subscribe to a simple approach.

[SaucyBossBebe]

Thanking mother earth is wonderful plus the farmers who tended it and food itself for nourishing your mind, body, and spirit.

[thegreenfaeries]

My favorite for special occasions is a poem called Food Blessing by Martin Prechtel, author of Long Life, Honey in the Heart.
I won’t write it all out here, but it begins:

all of you gods there:
Our mother-parents-Father-parents!
We, your flowers and sprouts

Hopefully that’s enough for you to look it up and see if you like it.

Every meal, with my kiddos, however is a shorter blessing: “Blessed be this food, may it nourish us so that we can do good things in the world.”

In Reclaiming traction of witchcraft there are a handful of food blessing songs to sing before communal meals. If you like ecstatic traditions, you may find a song or two you like. I enjoy the Harvest Chant most of all.

[Mattysanford]

A great practice I learned in high school that has stuck with me since, is mindful eating. To expand on what u/certifiedfairwitness proposed – as you eat, think on the sheer cosmic miracle that has been the journey of your food from a seed in the soil, or an animal being born (if you eat meat), and how that food grew, nourished by sun, soil and and water. All of the microcosmic trials that living thing had to overcome to survive and thrive, and then be harvested, transported, perhaps cooked or served, by all those other lives and hands. It has always really put into perspective for me the incredible circle of life through eating.

[nickelchrome2112]

Goddess is great.
Goddess is good.
And we thank her for this food.
By her hand,
We all are fed.
Thank you for our daily bread.

[georgewitech]

i thank the animals whose lives were taken in order for me to grow and receive their energy, i name everything that’s in my bowl/plate, those who got my food, the place i’m at, anything that i can think of before digging. (i read this in a green witch book n tweaked it to fit my personal life n choices) it sometimes takes me a minute or two but i feel much better, at times i forget and begin thanking a few bites into my meal but it’s better than eating animals without appreciating their lives. i’m trying to go veggie tho😩