In his book “The Hunger Habit”, Dr Jud Brewer talks about “The Secret Raisin Society” – a tongue in cheek reference to a MBSR mindfulness practice first introduced by Jon Kabat-Zinn.
I first learned about this practice from Geneen Roth, whose work I hungrily devoured as I was looking for my own way out of food suffering.
For those of you who haven’t been initiated into this Super Secret Raisin Club, it truly is a way to rediscover our ability to have a beginner’s mind.
The task is simple – slowly study and eat a single raisin.
With this practice you can see a raisin as if it’s the first time you ever saw one – observing each wrinkle on its surface like it’s the face of a loved one.
You get to listen to the sounds it makes. (they are fun!)
You get to smell it and discover it actually smells like whisky and dirt, and something that is slightly rotten…but in a good way.
You get to feel it with your lips…both smooth and sticky and scratchy…
And finally, the apex! You get to taste the explosion of sweetness and sourness that hits you all at once…magic! Did raisins always taste this way?
I have my own Secret Raisin Club story to tell, and then I’ll share why the super secret raisin business isn’t always helpful.
Travel in time with me.
This happened in California, 12 years ago, when I was invited to teach a mindful eating workshop to a group of women who were struggling with emotional eating.
I knew very little about what causes emotional eating at the time, but I was already initiated in the secret raisin society, so I thought it may be a good practice to offer the ladies as a part of our workshop.
There were 4 rows of chairs and probably 20-some women sitting in them, so when I asked them to pass along a small packet of raisins, and for each of them to take one and place it in the palm of their hand, by the time the packet came back to me, at least 5 minutes had passed.
I put one raisin in my own hand and commenced with explaining what we were about to do next.
“I invite you to place the single raisin right in the center of the palm of your hand”, I said!
Half the women looked at me, then at each other, then anywhere else they could.
“I ate mine already…”, one of them finally giggled…
“Me too!”
“Me too!”
“Me three…!”
More than half of the raisins were gone. Laughter, tears….and tears of laughter followed…
Of course, we did a second round and handed out more raisins and continued with the practice. Not to worry, I got you!
While we laughed and cried about it all, something was becoming clear to all of us – eating was happening on auto-pilot.
It’s not that easy to be aware and to be mindful about food.
There are many good reasons for this. And no, you are not broken.
I really would like you to hear me about this.
When you begin asking your body about information – it will give it to you.
Here is the catch – you get to ask questions, but you don’t get to choose the answers.
When you connect with yourself you are not just going to get information about what you are noticing about the food you are choosing, you will get information about anything in your body that is currently arising to be witnessed.
It’s like this: you ask about a raisin, but the body has more stories to tell than just what’s happening with the raisin.
When I open my senses, for example when I want to notice whether my stomach is empty or full, I also open myself to sensing whether I am tense or anxious or upset – all signals coming from the same area.
When our nervous system is wired for survival, it’s most natural for us to go on auto-pilot – not noticing much of what’s going on around us or inside of us – this is how we make it through the hard times.
To ask ourselves to pay attention to food is synonymous with asking ourselves to pay attention to what is happening outside of our bodies, inside of our bodies, and where outside and inside meet.
If you’ve experienced overwhelm and your survival wiring is running your day-to-day relationship with your body, you are more likely to just eat the raisin, without ever hearing that we were going to do a practice with it, and not even noticing that you ate it. It’s just gone!
We do so many things automatically – you drove to work and don’t remember a single traffic light. You cleaned the bathroom and you don’t really recall where the paper towels are now. You organized your desk and now you can’t find a single thing. Your plate is empty, but you have no recollection of whether that fish was moist or dry and what the spices were.
I really believe that there are two versions of the Secret Raisin Society experiment.
One, where the body is available for the experiment. You follow the instructions and you are able to recalibrate how you relate to food and take the lesson home with you.
But for the kinds of people I work with, this doesn’t work. The auto-pilot mode still has the body in its grip.
The body still needs a lot of our care before mindful eating is possible.
In fact, when I teach I use the term bodyful, instead of mindful, in honor of including our whole body, not just the meaning channel and the senses.
What did I learn from these wonderful women in California?
I learned that I had a lot more learning to do before I could really support people to connect with food (indeed it took 5 years after that to feel equipped to do so!)
I discovered that they needed a safe way to connect with their bodies and the messages of their bodies first. The raisin business came later.
This is why we talk very little about food in my 6 month program.
This is just not the time. The program is the time to organize the biology, so that the food conversation and food experiments which will teach us all we need to know about ourselves become possible.
Ready to join the next small group and embark on organizing your biology, so you can better connect with your body and the signals it gives you? You can learn more about how I work and apply for a group here.
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