When you are seated and you overeat, often you don’t know it until you rise from the table. Then you think—oh- oh, I ate too much. In other words, what you are experiencing at that moment of awareness is a natural sensation of fullness. This gives you a gauge by which to measure how much is too much. However, when you stand to eat you never know when you’ve had enough. You lose your natural sense of how much food it takes to satisfy you.
In the early stages of medicine, during the era of Hippocrates, Eastern and Western medicine were very similar. Both were grounded in practical knowledge and common sense. Both taught the importance of diet and life style in creating good health. In those days, health advice included instructions for properly handling all aspects of life. People were taught to sit up straight when eating and to chew their food thoroughly. These guidelines were considered rudimentary. Then, as the East moved toward a more spiritual way of life and the West gravitated toward science and analysis, their commonly held ideas became increasingly divergent. However, certain of these ideas—like sitting down to eat and chewing properly—were passed on from one generation to the next in both the East and the West.
Ideally, a meal time is for nourishing and balancing oneself. Meal time is meant for relaxation, openness and receptiveness to nourishment and these attributes don’t mix well with activity. Eating while doing other things such as reading, working, watching TV, talking on the phone, driving interferes with our ability to receive nourishment. Light, quiet conversation is fine because it makes you more open and receptive. (Heavy, loud conversation tightens you up and closes you down.)
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