ABSTRACT
Mindfulness includes an openness to new information, a heightened awareness of multiple perspectives in problem solving and the creation of new categories for structuring information. Mindful, or intuitive, eating can be a particularly useful practice for people engaged in food-related appearance struggles. Mindfulness practices promote the observation and description of situations, thus enabling an experience of these situations through a non-judgemental, neutral stance. Mindfulness is not concerned with getting rid of thoughts, as seems to be a common assumption. Mindfulness practices, therefore, may be astonishingly useful and life-giving to people experiencing appearance distress. Merleau-Ponty believed deeply that the key to overcoming our sense of disconnection from our selves and others is through the body. He also held the firm conviction that the truth of human experience is to be found in renewing our connection to perceptions and experience that precede knowledge and reflection.
