Harvard School of Public Health<\/a>. \u201cTo control our weight, we also need to first understand who we are, how and why we arrive at this circumstance, and how we relate to food. Buddhist teachings on mindfulness help us better understand our true nature: our body, our feelings, our mind, and all that is around us.\u201d<\/p>\nCheung met Nhat Hanh \u2014 whom The New York Times considered \u201csecond only to the Dalai Lama\u201d among the most influential Buddhist leaders in the West \u2014 in 1997 at one of his retreats. \u201cAs he was explaining the Buddhist perspective on nutriments to the attendees \u2026 I realized that I had the missing pieces to complement what I had learned from nutrition science about the difficulties people face in changing their food consumption and lifestyle habits,\u201d she recalled.<\/p>\n
Then and there, Cheung scribbled down in her notebook the idea for a book that has now come to fruition. She showed Nhat Hanh an outline of the book in 2005, when she asked him to co-author it. \u201cTo my amazement, he said, \u2018Why not?\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
Cheung and Nhat Hanh encourage mindfulness practice \u2014 being present in everything that we do \u2014 as a way to cultivate awareness of our eating and activity habits, and ultimately uproot undesirable habits to improve our health. It may sound difficult, but they show in fact how easy it is to incorporate mindfulness practice in our daily routines. We can breathe, walk, listen, cook, and eat mindfully.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you sit down to eat a truly mindful meal, you will see far beyond the rim of the plate,\u201d said Cheung. \u201cLook closely at your salad, and you will see the farmer who planted the seeds, the rain and sunshine, the rich earth that nourished them as they grew. Mindful eating can help us approach the core Buddhist concept of \u2018interbeing,\u2019 the recognition that everything and everyone is interrelated. With this as our foundation, we realize that it is important to eat not only for our own health, but in a way that promotes the health of others around us, as well as the health of the planet.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur appointment with life is in the here and now, where we have the opportunity to transform our being. We need to learn to stop and look at what is in front of us,\u201d said Cheung. \u201cIt is in engaging the present moment that we can change, while finding peace and happiness.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You\u2019ve heard the old saying: Anything\u2019s possible if you set your mind to it. Mindfulness, the Buddhist principle of being fully aware of the present, is at the heart of Lilian Cheung\u2019s collaborative book \u201cSavor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life,\u201d written with Thich Nhat Hanh, a renowned Buddhist monk and author of \u201cPeace Is Every Step: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4175,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-442368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4175"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=442368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442368\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=442368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=442368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=442368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}