How to eat a raisin

The first time that I went to a mindfulness meditation retreat, after several days had gone by, our teacher took us through a very cool mindfulness exercise entitled “meditation on a raisin.” In this exercise, you are given a raisin and asked to eat it as mindfully as possible.

The process here begins long before you taste the raisin. As a starting point, after you have been handed the raisin, before you eat it, you are instructed to carefully notice how the raisin looks, and the feeling that it generates as you hold it in your hand.

Only after this initial observation process feels complete should you even think about bringing the raisin up toward your mouth. But, during this step, you are to slowly and mindfully experience the process of moving your hand and arm and the sensation of holding the raisin in your hand during this. (Actually, as I write this, I’m realizing that these initial steps in the process are vaguely reminiscent of foreplay; did you notice that too?)

Then, when the raisin first touches your tongue, you are instructed to notice the vast world of sensations generated by the raisin on your tongue. You really don’t want to start chewing here right away, because there is so much pleasure and life available simply by noticing what the folds of the raisin feel like on your tongue, and you really don’t want to miss out on that.

Only when you feel complete with this prior step should you begin chewing. Here too, you want to go slowly – fully experiencing every moment and fully appreciating the beauty of the moment.

There are several more steps here before the raisin is fully consumed, but I’m imagining you have the idea of how the process works by now, so I’ll stop here.

You might want to try this exercise some time. When done correctly, it takes about 10 or 15 minutes to eat a single raisin. More importantly, though, if you’re like me, you might want to try to use this process as a metaphor for how every moment of your life can be lived. What this exercise clearly illustrates is that there’s a universe of sensations and life available in every moment if we just slow down enough to notice it.

Today I plan to try and live all my moments in the same way that I learned to eat a raisin; I hope that you do so as well.