My son has been taught at school how to eat things mindfully: instead of wolfing your food down in front of the tele, you should concentrate on the food's smell, taste, texture, you should chew consciously, etc. etc. Mindfulness has been a bit of a hype for some time now, but it's also prone to paradox.
I've noticed at the lunch or dinner table that when I instruct my son to eat something mindfully, he is so concentrating on being mindful ("okay, I need to slow down, chew ostentatiously, close my eyes, oh, and make some of those 'mmm...' noises, ...") that he is mindfully being mindful but not mindfully enjoying his food.
I wonder if it is ever possible to tell yourself to do something mindfully and thereby actually be doing that thing mindfully. In other words, it may be that you can only perform an action mindfully if you're not concerned with mindfulness in the first place.
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