The art of cooking, and how it is being done has a huge impact on our mind, body, and soul during good times and bad times. Food is the most fundamental of needs for our survival and almost every major event in our lives revolves around it.
Ritualistic Cooking Can Enhance Mindfulness
Most people suffer from the daily grind of life together with billions of others around the world. The affinity with attentive living is not based on scientific research of any kind— rather on constant self-analysis. Most of us find cooking to be a means to this journey of conscience. It has been said that cooking and cleaning are the only occupations that are more important than sitting. (Meditation). Cooking is a good way to exercise sensitivity. Spirituality is an active open-minded condition of the moment. It just means to live in the moment and the awakening of experience. And to be mindful of it takes practice. I find it strengthens when I eat ritualistically regularly. And it takes practice to be mindful. Researchers found that an individual who ritualistically cooks regularly has enhanced their ability to be mindful of everything else they do.
In one instruction that says “When you boil rice, know that the water is your own life.” How do we nurture the mind that cares about an ordinary thing as profoundly as water, as it cares about our own life? Sounds simple— but it’s pretty hard to go ahead and try it out. It comes from throwing our entire heart into these simple tasks, thinking intensely, then consciously and thoroughly doing them. And when we are conscious, it helps us to connect better with the following:
- Past – What we have completed
- Present – The task at hand
- Future – How our task at hand moves us forward
When we think carefully about the foods we use, how they are cooked, what we bake and how we eat, we will contribute to the development of consciousness. In developing social interactions and social relationships, it plays a vital role. Food is considered sacred and that the food cycle is empowering and informative. Even though most people are not educated professionally, cooking has become a joyful past time and hobby.
The food cycle has taught us to be attentive, promote creativity and strive for mastery Here are a few lessons that might help the next time you reach your kitchen think differently. It goes beyond the anxiety issue. Studies have demonstrated that cooking can be a beneficial practice. Even baking cupcakes or something simple has been shown to improve the mindset of an individual.
The reason is simple: you stimulate your senses when cooking. The taste of the new flour you bought on the shelf, the scent of those fresh strawberries, the whisk pounding noise, all these things can stimulate your senses, which makes you get more endorphins, those feel-good chemicals that put a smile on your face. And when a person feels good it radiates in you, that pleasant feeling will undeniably lead you to be imaginative or creative. The other factor is that you can’t fixate about your issues if you concentrate on the present moment, your ingredients; you have to set them behind (although for a couple of minutes). This helps you to be stronger emotionally and happier overall as a result.
Conscious Openness Is At the Heart of Any Creative Process
Most of us don’t ever follow a recipe for cooking. Others like to experiment, mix and match, and ‘design’ their meals, making decisions based on availability, eating companions, and the hour or time of the day.
Over the years this awareness (during cooking) of resource, audience, and need helped me hone how an individual thinks. The first time you get to the kitchen, just like life, you are unsure of the kitchen. After some time you try to ‘create’ food with confidence. It is entirely natural to mix and match ingredients and apply your creativity to your dishes.
IT CAN BOOST YOUR CONFIDENCE
When you think about it, you’ll spend hours baking a cake, correctly weighing each ingredient and planning the icing to decorate it. When cooked and cooled, you start icing and decorating the cake just as you want. Finally, you feel a strong sense of pride and you can be proud that you were the one who did it when you finally cut it into the cake and share it with your family. That’s a little like when you get that boost of confidence every time you complete a task and show others the outcome.
This simple achievement will improve your self-esteem and develop the confidence to try new things in life, hone your creativity particularly if you weren’t a good cook to start with because you know you can do stuff that you weren’t good at the beginning with a little effort.
IT CAN HELP WITH DEPRESSION AND OTHER MENTAL ISSUES
On a more serious level, the previous benefits of cooking are so powerful that cooking is also used, in many mental health clinics, as part of the treatment for a bunch of mental conditions such as anxiety, depression, and addiction. When cooking, patients can focus their minds on something more positive. This whole process helps to curb negative thinking, boost their confidence and awakens creativity.
IT BRINGS YOUR FAMILY TOGETHER
Cooking is a fantastic way to get the whole family in one place and enjoy a delicious meal, no matter how close your family is. Imagine it for a moment; your entire family is visiting for the evening, some of them are watching TV together, the kids are playing in your backyard, and some of them are sharing gossips and news in the kitchen and helping you prepare. This is the epitome of bringing together a family.
Some of the benefits of cooking for your family are:
- Good food is a good way to get people together and socialize.
- You can discover different flavors when you create a cultural dish and allow your family to experience different types of food that they would never have tasted otherwise.
- Imagine walking around a new store and finding ingredients you’ve never heard of before. Purchase them without thought.
This may seem like a strange thing to do, but if you buy ingredients you’re unfamiliar with, you can prepare a recipe you’ve never cooked before and had fun doing so. The thing about culinary training is you need to learn how to cook familiar dishes that we’ve all come to know and love. It’s a safe audience fun to do this, but there’s no originality here. Cooking should be considered an art and in a way the masterpiece that will “wow” your family is whatever you are cooking. With new ingredients, you can explore new areas of cooking and can surprise your family with a meal that they will have never seen coming. Creativity starts from there.
Cooking need not be a step-by-step “follow-up” operation. You don’t even have to prepare something directly from a book on the recipe (or from a website on the recipe). The thing is, after a couple of months of cooking good food, you’re going to start getting the hang of it, and you’re going to learn a range of different cooking methods. You can start exploring your cooking at this stage and come up with your recipes and dishes and let go of your imagination juice. Ultimately, you’re going to make dishes that have specific tastes that your family looks forward to eating and that you alone can make. Your creativity will undoubtedly keep your family back for more.