To eat or not to eat, that is the question. During my travels throughout Asia and India, every guru, monk, meditation instructor and meditator told me the same thing when it comes to eating before or after meditation.
In this episode, I'll share the wisdom I learned on my travels. And, I'll share what I have found both in my own experience, as well as the experience of people I've taught how to meditate. While there is no wrong time or bad time to meditate, here are few pointers for getting the most out of your meditation and spiritual journey.
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Welcome to path to peace with Todd Perelmuter, where he shares the lessons he's learned. spending nine years living with gurus, monks, and shamans, across 35 countries and five continents. Join in the journey as he brings some healing wisdom for living your best life. The path to peace, love, health, and happiness starts here
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Hello, and welcome back to path to peace with Todd Perelmuter. I'm your host, Todd Perelmuter. And today, the question is, shall I meditate before or after eating? This is a super important question that often gets overlooked. In my experience, every single meditator, meditation instructor, Monk, or Guru has told me that it's best to meditate on an empty stomach, or at least not right after a big meal.
And the logic behind this was, you know, you don't want to be feeling really heavy, strong feelings in meditation that can be distracting, is part of it. And you want to be nice and relaxed. And that has been my experience that it's a more pleasant meditation when you're feeling nice and light and not weighed down and all your blood is flowing to your stomach for digestion.
Instead of having that energy to focus on your breath, or your mantra, but the real truth of the matter is, there's never a bad time to meditate. Sometimes after food may be the perfect time to meditate, maybe want to sit with that feeling. And just use it as an opportunity to you know, observe a new sensation.
And for some people, that may be the only possible time to meditate, maybe you finally dropped the kids off, and you finally have a free moment. If that's the only time you have available, and you know you had to eat something, then you can still get a great meditation and there's no bad time to meditate.
There's nothing to worry about when you're meditating. And each of the retreats and monasteries that I stayed at that incorporated meditation, there was always a break, after lunch or breakfast or dinner to before the meditation would begin to give ourselves a chance to digest first. So it's like half hour or an hour is enough to wait after eating.
But if you really want to meditate right afterwards, there's no harm. Sometimes it's a nice thing to do is meditate on the food digesting, on whether or not we're nourishing our body with everything it needs in the best way we could, noticing the effect of the foods we eat is so important.
However, if you have the option, then it's a really powerful thing to meditate before food, or even first thing in the beginning of the day. And then you carry that higher state of consciousness with you for a while after your meditation. And so you can be a more mindful eater, and become more highly conscious of all the subtleties and the flavors and the textures, things we normally miss.
And so if it's available to you, you can meditate first thing in the morning so that you have the most mindful meals and the most mindful day as you start the day in this mindset. And then if you meditate at the very end of the day, you know a little while after dinner, so you're not on a full stomach.
You can kind of process and digest Just the day mentally. Even though you're doing the same meditation, you're giving space for the mental processes to take place undistracted. And so you're kind of preparing for your day in the morning and you're processing and letting go of the day.
In the evening. You're eating mindfully, you're mindfully reflecting at the end of the day on how mindful we may have been eating. So it's just a great practice in general. But as I said, if schedules don't allow, if one becomes too difficult, simply fit the meditation in wherever you can. That is the only thing you have to remember with creating a daily consistent habit of meditation. Just doing it.
Thank you so much for listening. This has been path to peace with Todd Perelmuter. I'm your host Todd PErelmuter. Peace and love.
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