Students and staff

Savouring

Savouring

Introduction

The exercise should be practised if we wish to develop our skills of focusing on something pleasant, using our senses – sight, smell, taste, touch, hearing.

To practise it, there should be a real object, which can be touched/heard/smelt/tasted, for example, a raisin or a slice of bread, or anything else that is organic or living – a flower, a leaf of a tree, a chestnut, an acorn, a berry etc. It can also be an object that is one-sense-oriented, for example, hearing-oriented (music).

The main rule in choosing the object of positive perception is that it is pleasant to you.

The exercise is related to cognition and emotions – thinking, perception, imagination and inner speech.

During the exercise, you will complete 4 steps:

1. Savouring/sensing.

2. Self-reflective flow of thoughts/associations.

3. Delving into your thoughts and emotions.

4. Gratitude

Instructions

  1. Take a perceptible pleasant savouring object, for example, a slice of bread or a raisin, or a dried plum/apricot. Take the raisin (or another selected object). Feel with your senses what you like about it – observe, touch, listen, smell, if possible – taste. Formulate a focused thought – I LIKE IT!
  2. Enjoy it with different senses for as long as you have associations with what exactly you like, for example, images that appear from memory or imagination, caused by the smell, the taste etc. Think – there is nothing else in this world except for this raisin and my sensations, I put everything else aside.
  3. Prolong the feeling of enjoyment. Delve into it, looking consciously for something else that you like, something else to feel happy about – smell, associations, images of touch, images of smell, thoughts that come to your mind, a thought – why this is important to me etc. Find your main pleasurable sensation and hold on to it for at least 5 minutes, don’t hurry. Formulate a message that is important to you!
  4. Then put the thoughts of gratitude in the foreground – search consciously for names of the people you would like to thank. Say thanks, for example, to those people who made it, grew it, collected it, dried it, delivered it, cooked it; thank the nature, the situation in which this object became available to you etc. And then thank yourself – thank you for the opportunity to sense and feel! Thanks for the fact that I have such an experience! Thanks for the wish and ability to learn.