We can reminisce about the past and plan for the future, but the only time you experience life is right here, right now. This is as good as it gets. So when you eat, do you relish the experience of being nourished, or do you inhale food so you can get back to work? Or maybe you berate yourself over the food choices you made, making a whip out of food to beat yourself up?

The gazillion-dollar diet industry has played into our neurotic relationship with food. Eating should be an easy thing—we’re hungry, we eat. But food becomes mired with all sorts of baggage we’ve collected over a lifetime.

When I wrote the book Infinity in a Box, using Yoga to Live with Ease, the whole premise was to help you (and, yes, me) live a deliberate life. And this living deliberately certainly applies to eating.  

So let’s apply the EASE process to eating mindfully.

Step One: E
E stands for experience, the ability to fully connect with the experience you’re having in a given moment. Explore all there is to know about the moment of now. Food is full of diversity. It’s rich with texture, but many times we just skim the surface, not fully experiencing all that food offers. When you eat, fully experience the food. Feel the texture of food in your mouth, see the food arranged on your plate, smell the aroma, notice if your body is tense or relaxed, hear the crunch

Step Two: A
A stands for awareness, the ability we humans have to expand our view beyond our initial limited construct. Just when we feel smug because we think we have fully experienced the food, we realize there are more layers to uncover. What are your thoughts in relation to the food? Do you judge it as “good” or “bad”? Where is your attention? In other words, what else is there in this moment of eating?

Step Three: S
S stands for self-reflection. The next time you eat, ask yourself what you are feeding. Are you feeding boredom or anxiety? Are you feeding hunger? Are you feeding habits and conditioning? The answer creates a conscious, deliberate path for mindful eating.

Step Four: E2
E2 stands for elect or choose. When you have answered the question of what you are feeding, you can experiment with your ability to choose to feed something that is consistent with your inner values. Choose with this meal, with this piece of food, to feed a way of being that is consistent with what you want to create.