– Becoming aware of Eye Hunger

When we sit down to eat it is advised to take few moments to look at the food. Notice colours, textures, shapes, arrangements on the plate. Focusing on what do the eyes like about the food. Our eyes do get hungry when we are distracted and not really looking at things, we feel dissatisfied and disconnected. When we stop and look with awareness, we connect again.

Try making a mindful meal once a week for yourself as you were a guest. You could get out your best plates, small vase of flowers and a candle. Arranged food appealingly, as if for a guests. As you eat, let your eyes “feed” on not only the food but the other aspects of your table.

– Feeding Eye Hunger without Eating –

Sometimes you will discover that when you feel hungry, it’s not that your body wants food but that your eyes are hungry for beauty. Experiment with feeding eye hunger by itself, without eating any food. Find something that is lovely or at least interesting to look at. Stop and really look at this something for few minutes ‘drinking’ in with your eyes. It could be anything like coloured petals of flower, trees outside. Imagine that energy that radiates from this sight enters your eyes and is absorb into your body. Feed you eyes as long as you like

Three of the seven tend to be more problematic in our lives then the others. They are mouth, heart and mind hungers. These forms of hunger often cause us to overeat – but only when we remain unaware of them and of how to go about satisfying them.

Now that we have explored the seven types of Hunger, we can develop an essential skills of mindful eating: assessing the level of each kind of hunger whenever the desire to eat arises. In order to know which kind of hunger we are feeling, we can make it a regular practice to ask the question, “Who in there is hungry?”

To find this out, we have to pause before we eat. At first assessing the seven hungers may be difficult, but once we learn the skill, it will take only a few second, and you will be able to do it the company of others without their noticing.