Mindfulness, ‘mouth orgasms’ – and how to achieve them

The following is an extract from ‘Cravings’: a Zeninspired memoir about sensual pleasures, freedom from dark places, and living and eating with abandon by Wanda Hennig (Say Yes Press). Available at Adams Musgrave, the KZNSA store and online

AFTER reading a draft of Cravings, Australia-based Helen Perry – clinical psychologist, cognitive behaviour therapist and co-author of Experiencing CBT from the Inside Out – sends me a Facebook message.

It’s to tell me about a visual analogue “mouth orgasm (MO)” scale she developed when “newly married and new to New Zealand, drowning in the rain, eating my miseries away and in the process gaining 20-plus kilograms”.

“You’ve got me thinking as to what might really have been going on for me,” she says.

Perry is no stranger. Once upon a time I was her high school counsellor at Maris Stella in Durban. Since falling down that hole, she got a handle on her eating, relocated to “sunny Brisbane” where she had friends and family, and moved on with her life. And forgot about the scale. Till she read my book.

“I was thinking, wouldn’t this be a nice way to improve one’s experience of mindfulness while eating?” she says. “To notice the effects on your pleasure centres.”

She points out that a visual analogue scale (VAS) “is by its nature idiosyncratic to each individual and therefore subjective: measuring only this person’s experience at this time, assessed by his or her own anchor points – as established from past experience”.

So she suggests I think of the most orgasmic thing I’ve eaten. “That could be your 10. The least orgasmic, your one.”

By way of example, Perry recalls her “10” from back then. The temptation that sparked the MO idea. It was a luscious minty ice cream.

She relates the sensual experience of eating it. And hey, couldn’t one view the anticipation and what she calls “the visual feast” – ogling the dark chocolate flecked with peppermint bits – as foreplay?

This followed by “the weighty feel” of the fat ice cream on a stick between her thumb and forefinger; cracking through the hard, thick chocolate with her teeth; the “hungry mouth and eager tongue” meeting “the cold, gorgeous, creamy ice cream”; the “first shudder of true delight” as the minted swirl of flavour hits her taste buds; the “melting in the mouth, when I have to cry mmmm! Followed by a second and third, mmmm, mmmm, mmmm”. And then the sugar high that hits “with a warm fuzzy pulsing through my whole body, probably as the endorphins are released”.

“The miracle of food,” she adds. I fancy I hear a contented sigh.

A “one” on Perry’s scale? “A plain boiled egg. Pleasant and satisfying but no shudders or warm fuzzies afterwards.”

Hmm. Wonder how she would have ranked my Scots grandmother’s egg flips.

Inspired by Perry’s example, and grateful for her gift – she tells me to take what I want from her VAS; to adapt it as I wish – I put it on my mindfulness menu. Try it. Play with it. And find all I need do is ask myself, with interest and curiosity, the obvious question: One through 10, where on the MO scale?

I find it “same” but “different” from the “food or sex” buzz phrase. More organic. Makes my mouth water even if there is no food in the picture. Makes me become “in the moment” mindful when food is present: just as Perry said.

At times, when I get into a relationship (seems an appropriate term) with something I consider a treat – into the whole MO experience as in seeing, smelling, texture, flavour, mouth-feel, thinking about how it makes me feel and whether it’s what I want to be chowing – I wake up to the fact that I’ve been seduced by a habit memory and what I’m eating is not so “sense-sational” after all.

Thinking “Mouth Orgasm” is fun. It’s easy. It’s instant. Doing it in company feels like a secret decadence. And this simple practice works as a natural barrier to overeating: feeling stuffed being the opposite of orgasmic, sensual or turned on.

I also note that depending on my mood and my hunger, what ranks as a nine on a Monday might switch to a five on Tuesday, which playfulness and unpredictability keeps the MO game fresh.

On a recent morning at the Buddhist Retreat Centre in South Africa, I’ve spooned gently bubbling oats from a jumbo pot into a bowl. I’ve dolloped on natural unsweetened full-cream yoghurt, plopped about a dozen raw almonds on top, added a handful of housemade muesli, some wheat bran and a scattering of linseeds.

Eating this in the quiet of the “noble silence” observed at breakfast, I note that on the MO scale, I am giving it a 10. Like a warm and comforting lover, it’s satisfying and sublime. Which is not to say a decadent dalliance won’t be the object of desire another time, another place. Part of the joy. It’s like the “do you want food or do you want sex” mantra has come full circle and transformed itself.

Thank you, Helen P.