How to Eat Like the Earth Is Alive

When mindful eating isn’t about digestion—it’s about devotion, remembrance, and restoring relationship.

Do you gobble your food?
Do you read, scroll, or watch something while you eat?
Do you sit down with your family, partner, or friends and have great conversation—sharing the little yay!s and oof, that’s hards of your day?

Well, I do all those things.

I know they say that paying attention to your food as you eat—chewing slowly, savoring the textures and aromas, appreciating the colors, breathing, not distracting yourself with screens or conversation—does all kinds of good things for your digestion. It activates the parasympathetic “rest and digest” system. Enhances nutrient absorption. Helps you register satiation. Supports a healthy gut biome.

All the stuff we know we need.

And still, after the first bite, I often barely taste it.

The tangle of eating

Eating is such a complicated, loaded part of life for me, and probably for most people. What to eat and what not to eat? How much to eat? When to eat, or not eat? What to eat together, and what to never eat together? Organic? Local? Home grown? Travel miles? Fair trade? Juicing, fasting, raw, oh my!

I once spent 45 minutes standing in front of the wall of chocolate bars at my local co-op, considering all the options, reconsidering, reading labels. Tears streamed down my face and I finally left, paralyzed, heartbroken, and emptyhanded.

I’ve made my peace with the organic/conventional dichotomy, the environmental and justice “options”, the virtue signaling, the foodie in me. And shopping, cooking, eating have become a little less stressful.

But lately, something new has come into my awareness.

Actually, it is Awareness. It’s connection. It’s Remembering and Listening in a new way.

Martin, Remembering and Beings

I recently re-listened to Martin Prechtel’s opus book, The Unlikely Peace at Cuchumaquic, and was destroyed by it again.

Of all his books, when someone asked me which of his books they should read (Note: you should read all of them, and I’m not kidding), it’s been the hardest for me to remember what it is about.

And that’s because it lives in the liminal. It cannot really be summed up. It is Everything, all of his teachings. It can’t be remembered without being Re-Membered, piece by piece, bone by bone. (If you’ve read Toe Bone & the Tooth, aka Stealing Beneficio’s Roses, you know what I mean.)

The last third of the tome is dedicated to enumerating the Seeds of his teachings. But for me, the essence of the whole book and all of his books and teachings is Re-Membering.

Remembering the the unseen beings who’s bodies are the Flowering Earth that we live in.

The Beings. Everything that we see and interact with is a Being. Not represents or holds a Being. IS a Being. Remembering the unseen beings whose bodies are the Flowering Earth we live in.

A carrot is a Being. The Carrot Being.

The apple tree in your backyard is a Being, both the individual tree that you nap in the shade of and pick fruits from and rake the leaves under, and the Apple Tree Being, who’s pink-white petaled flowers shower children and lovers and shopkeepers all over the world in the springtime.

I would say that all of the practices outlined in Martin’s book are practices of Remembering. And Martín’s teachings—like most animist ones—are not about belief but relationship. Real, remembered relationship.

Remembering ourselves to those Beings who we share our world with, who’s bodies our bodies are made of.

Who, throughout deep time and more acutely in recent history, have been mostly used and abused and forgotten by the humans who depend upon them for their very lives.

They only want us to remember them. To Re-Member them.

Eating as Re-Membering

So this is what I’ve been playing with since re-reading Martin’s book.

I began with just one food. One Being. I don’t remember who was the first, but one of them was Sweet Potato. Sitting down to my dinner, after appreciating the cooks and giving thanks for the food in the usual way, I paused with my first bite on the fork and remembered the being that I was about to eat. About to take in and make part of my Self.

I closed my eyes and said, “I remember you. I Re-Member myself to you.”

And I listened.

I opened myself up to connect with the Being, who is so much more, just as we are, than her body.

I felt an impression of grace, like the graceful lines of her tubers, and then of Rootedness. She brought me down under the soil. I felt more deeply connected to my own rootedness through her. I spent a timeless moment with her.

And then I put her in my mouth and chewed.

Delicious. And I stayed more present with my food throughout the meal. Talked less.

My attention, though I was camping with others and the opportunity for being social was there, continued to return to the Sweet Potato as I ate. As if she were part of our group, sitting there in the long golden light of sunset, surrounded by shushing aspens, solemn sacred mountains, and the liquid song of the ruby-crowned kinglet.

Not every ingredient, but every meal

It’s overwhelming to think of connecting in this way with every food, every ingredient, not to mention the cooking pot, knife, cutting board, grocery store, shipping container, gasoline, farmer, farm soil, hoe, and irrigation water. Especially since I am a foodie and love to have many complex and subtle flavors in my foods (strawberry balsamic basil with a touch of lime popsicles are this week’s delight!).

So I don’t.

Each meal I pick one new Being, one I haven’t connected with before, to Remember, to reach out to, sit with, listen to. If there are others present in my meal that I’ve connected with before, it’s easy to touch in with them briefly as well.

I remember you Basil and Strawberry, good to be with you again. Balsamic I haven’t sat with yet.

Maybe I’ll sit with her next time.

An invitation

What’s your relationship with food?

Have you ever connected deeply with a food plant or other more-than-human Being? What was it like? How do you remember the world back together—or yourself back into the world?

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