How To Slow Down Your Eating

Marj was a stickler for manners.

And today I am writing about how she showed me to slow down my eating. I often think that I trained twice – once on a STAT-sanctioned course in London in the 70’s; then again with Marjorie Barstow in the late 80’s and early 90’s.

Marj had manners – and she wanted me to have them too. One was about eating – she was always telling me:

“You ate that too fast!”

She believed a person should finish eating at the same time as others at the table. I struggled a lot with that, but I tried. Mindfullness isn’t even half of it!

One day she innocently invited me to dinner. 

“I’m paying,” she declared – so I decided to find an expensive restaurant.

Marj ordered veal. When it arrived, it was an enormous slab of meat. Huge.

“Oh my,” Marj intoned, “there is only one way I can eat that – and that is slowly.”

(SLOWLY!@!#!! I thought. My god, Marj is already the slowest eater on the planet.)

It took her an hour. An hour!

Meanwhile, I had ordered a vegetarian dish and I was hopelessly trying to slow down my eating. I would start with a baby carrot. Then I would cut the baby carrot into three tiny pieces. Then I would put one of the pieces on my folk, put it in my mouth then place both my folk and knife back on the table. All the while I was calibrating my eating behaviour against Marj’s slowly diminishing portion of veal.

Slowly I realized why I had been invited to dinner. It was my test. 

During her Sydney visit – it was January, 1987 - Marj had obviously been watching me struggling with fast eating habits.  This was my litmus test – my final ordeal.

And it was nearly over. Phew!

I had got to my last baby carrot, and Marj had a few more mouthfuls of veal left.

But Marj had a big surprise waiting – and I was about to fall into her devilish trap…

Some teachers struggle to bridge the gap between the “positions of mechanical advantage” and the emotional life of their students. While it might be clear to you personally, how do you help a student more directly with the problem, say – of getting a headache every time their mum rings? Or feeling claustrophobic in elevators?

ThinkingBody is the course I developed to show my trainees how emotionally driven behaviours benefit directly from conscious constructive thinking. There are two courses, each with 10 modules containing several videos. This is a like a summer course – take your time with it. It can inspire new changes in the way you work with your Self and others.

Read more about it here:

https://bodychance.mykajabi.com/store/TGFBWut4/