Over and over this week, I feel like I’ve been bumping into an interesting concept – meditation through cooking.  If you’ve read either of my blog posts on my recent meditation retreat here or here, you’ll know that I was surprised to learn that mindfulness meditation can take place in many ways, through walking, eating, making your bed in the morning, really anything.

I also happen to not believe in coincidences, so the fact that I’ve come across a book, multiple articles, interviews and a TED talk all related to the subject of mindful mediation through cooking in the past few days (without actively looking, BTW), has definitely given me reason to pause.  Is the universe sending me a message?  Cook more?  Meditate more?  What?

As a naturopathic doctor and natural food expert, the concept of food as medicine is central to my belief system.  It is also the most powerful and most used tool in my toolkit.  The idea that my journey into meditation practice could somehow combine with food is pretty mind-blowing to me.

I say this a lot – the most powerful medicine tends to be the least sexy.  Plain old cooking and mindfulness won’t ever compete with a 30 second TV spot for a brand new shiny prescription drug, but I’m willing to place a bet that the former approach has the ability to more positively impact overall health in the long run than a cholesterol or weight loss drug ever could.

Here are some of the highlights from my week’s unexpected journey into mindful cooking:

Cooked, A Natural History of Transformation, by Michael Pollan.  A quote from Pollan, “The most important thing about your diet is not a nutrient, but an activity – cooking”.  You can read a nice review of the book here as well as an interview with the always amusing Steven Colbert on The Colbert Report.

Here’s a great TEDx talk from Cynthia Lair, CHN, a wholefoods cookbook author and faculty member of the nutrition department at Bastyr University for over 18 years.  I love Cynthia’s work and this TED talk is both funny and profound.

Finally, a more practical article from IntentBlog about how to incorporate the practice of mindfulness in the kitchen.

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Image by Another Pint Please…