Eating With Your Dominant Hand

Eating with the Non-Dominant Hand

Switching up which hand you use to eat can make you more conscious of your eating habits.

Try eating at least part of each meal with your non-dominant hand. Work at doing this with all drinks and more meals each day.   If you’re up for a real challenge, try using the non-dominant hand to eat with chopsticks.:)

How To:

Without a doubt, you’ll be eating with your dominant hand before you realize it.  So to help you remember try putting a picture of a hand with an X through it in your lunch box or near where you usually eat. Or put a Band-Aid on your dominant hand or a rubber band around your wrist to remind you to switch to using your non-dominant hand. You could also place a sign where you eat that says “left hand” (if you are right-handed). Or use an unusual color of nail polish on your non-dominant hand, to signal, “use me!”

Notice

When I first did this ( and most others too) I started to laugh a little.  Usually our non-dominant hand is quite clumsy.

It’s like we are 3 years old again.  Our dominant hand might be forty years old, but the non-dominant hand feels much younger. We get to learn all over again how to hold a fork and how to get it into our mouths without stabbing ourselves. 😊 We might begin to eat with the non-dominant hand, and then, when our attention wanders, our dominant hand will reach out and take the fork away

We suggest just doing this exercise while you are eating for the sole purpose of simply having you notice things.   Being more attentive, moving slower etc.

Deeper Lessons

Using the non-dominant hand could reveal our impatience. Isn’t it interesting that we become impatient with eating, one of the most pleasurable things we do every day? Why are we anxious to get it over with quickly?

If you step back and simply observe how your two hands work together as a team in routine tasks such as eating.  Keep your journal close to you as you do this exercise.  Write down ( with your dominant hand so you can read it later😊 , what comes up for you.  Lessons, words, feelings, results…anything .  It will be interesting what you discover.  Writing these things down helps to solidify them in your memory too.

published 2019 IHC of Charlottesville by Kirk Childers