During the contemplative practice on chocolate, my thinking focused on the origins of the cacao and how I take my ability to indulge for granted. Overall, the practice made me feel guilty. I contemplated swearing off chocolate, but couldn’t entertain the idea for long and tried to forget the practice. However, when examining the variation of typical foods in a… Read more »
The most impactful contemplative practice for me was the first one. Eating a raisin. To be honest, I have never really been a raisin fan, they’re too sweet and I find the texture to be a little bit disturbing. Regardless, I shovel fistfuls of Trailmix into my mouth between classes and bites of raisins sneak in there. That’s normally the… Read more »
When living in such a fast-paced, rapidly globalized world, I find it difficult to cultivate a sense of self-awareness about issues that blur past me. Even when educated on contentious and deleterious topics, I find it rather arduous to be exceedingly concerned about global problems that don’t directly affect me. It’s not because I hold apathy for pressing issues, but… Read more »
Partaking in the contemplative practices is an interesting experience. I’ve found that it requires me to step back and not take myself too seriously. It’s kind of ridiculous in the same way that volunteering at a preschool is. Sometimes you have to do weird dances or walk like a bear with preschoolers, and I feel the same inhibitions in these… Read more »
When it was announced we will be trying cacao nibs, I remembered the bag I bought of amazon still taking up space in my over-crowded pantry. In my quest to be more health conscious and reading up about plant based sources of nutrition, I have definitely not been very conscious of my ecological footprint. Though I was trying to move… Read more »
Most of the contemplative practices we’ve done in class have been insightful and useful to me. The most impactful one was the one where we had the raisins and were thinking about industrialized food. It helped to put food in perspective for me and think about how such a simple food could have so much processes and workers and miles… Read more »
How can the thought of a raisin be thought-provoking? Experiencing my first, true contemplative practice, I assumed the intention of the activity would be silly or farfetched. Without any actual context, all the students in the lecture put the raisin in their mouths. Throughout the contemplative practice, I could completely centralize my thinking to the topic of the raisin. The… Read more »
Contemplation and self-reflection are not unusual for me. However, food is not something that I have dedicated a great deal of thought to. I tend to be very functional in my approach to what I eat, regarding it simply as fuel. Recently, during a guided contemplation regarding our industrialized food system that employed the particularly mindful enjoyment of a single… Read more »
The one contemplative practice that sat with me the longest was the raisin practice that we did. During class, we watched a video all about raisins; how they are made, what processes they go to, and the benefits of eating raisins. I never actually took the time like we did in class to learn about one food, and I certainly… Read more »
In general, I have not felt that the contemplative practices we have done throughout class have been overtly helpful in enhancing my relationship with the course material. I think the main reason I feel this way is due to the fact that I have been exposed to much of the material throughout my time here at UW;… Read more »