When I was younger, every time before I ate, I would do a religious hand gesture to “bless” my food. I would draw a cross in the air tapping my chest and head. That's what my parents did, what most relatives did and all catholic people I knew. I did this until my late teenage years, maybe early twenties; it stopped making sense early on but I was just doing it out of habit. I was just following my parents' teachings.
Drawing a cross, or any other symbol, across your body won't magically make the food holy, or more digestible, or more nourishing. Nor does The Absolute (God) demand that kind of silly worship.
The only purpose of a gesture like this is to bring your attention to the food. To help you remember the intention behind eating and giving thanks to the people who prepared it. For being lucky enough to have such food in front of you.
We certainly don’t need to draw weird religious symbols in the air to be grateful for our food, right? Can't we just appreciate the food and bring thoughts of gratitude and readiness to receive nourishment from such food?
How many of us are guilty of watching TV when eating dinner? Of scrolling through our instagram feed while eating lunch? Mindlessly chugging our food with little consideration and intention behind the act.
It is Yogi Ramacharaka who, in his book about Physical Well-Being, wrote:
"It is not what a man eats, but the amount that he assimilates, that nourishes him."
The Yogis were opposed to the idea of absurd ceremonies and rites attached to dogmatic beliefs created by theologists to please a deity whom they clearly don’t understand. And they also disapprove of the idea of mindless eating.
If you are a religious person and such gesture is going to help you concentrate on the food, if you really give thanks with intention, then keep doing it. But if you just do it out of habit without really thinking about the food, then what’s the point?
Hatha Yoga teaches that to extract the maximum amount of nourishment from food, we need to pay attention when we eat. To thank nature for supplying the ingredients; to think about and give thanks to the people who harvested, traded, transported, washed, stored, prepared, and served the food; to carefully look at every ingredient; to smell the aroma emanating from each of the things composing the meal; to start taking small pieces into your mouth and savor every bite; to chew thoroughly until the food swallows itself; to imagine all the nutrients and prana your body is absorbing through the process of mastication; to eat the food slowly, gently, and without distractions.
*Thank you so much for all of you who responded to the previous (and first) poll ever. Some of you not only responded but also wrote some beautiful messages. I loved that! I wish this platform would let me reply to each of you. Here’s another fun question:
