Pre-meal Breathwork: Remember when we used to take a moment before eating?

From Guinea to NYC: Going back to the dinner table 

Some of the best conversations I've had are with my Uber drivers. There's something poetic about it — many of them crossed oceans, left behind families and entire lives, chasing something better. And here they are, navigating the streets of New York City – still in motion – still searching – still on their way somewhere. Being a passenger in their continued journey has been one of the more humbling things about living in this city. On this particular drive, I was heading to Central Park to see the cherry blossoms with my pup. My late maternal grandmother passed during this season, so every year I make the trip — to sit with her memory, to feel grateful for the time I had with her, and to let the cherry blossoms be the place where I still get to be with her.

My driver had moved to New York from Guinea in West Africa about twenty years ago. He loved the city, he said, but when he retires, he wants to go back. I asked him why he wanted to go back if he loved NYC. He smiled and said — I miss my village. My community and family. He said he had 8 brothers and sisters. Back home, we drink tea and talk deep into the night. We make fun of each other and just laugh and laugh. There was a soft nostalgia in the way he said it — the kind that only comes from truly loving and missing something from a distance.

I could understand what he meant. I grew up in a small town in Missouri — a village in its own way — and spent years dreaming of the big city. I got here, fell in love with it, and then slowly started craving this part of the things I'd left behind. That sense of closeness. Of knowing people. Of having a table that people came back to. I told him how I'd started cooking more at home, having people over, trying to recreate some of that. He looked surprised, then a little sad. He said — no one is cooking anymore. Not even in Guinea. They all want to go out now to eat. It was my turn to be surprised. I asked him how he felt about it. Not good, he said. It is leading to the decline of the family structure. I too felt sad at this slow erosion. 

I sat with that for the rest of the ride. Even in a village in West Africa, the table was disappearing. This wasn't just a New York problem or a city problem. 

Eating but Running on Empty 

The intent behind why we eat has shifted so dramatically. Food used to mean something beyond the meal itself. It was nourishment, yes — but it was also the way a family came together at the end of the day. The way a community builds bonds. Feeding someone was an act of love. Preparing a meal for another person meant: Join me. I see you. I care for you.

Now, we pick up our phones and order. We eat because we're bored or sad. Or because it's there. Food has become a trend — something to consume the way we consume fashion or content. Take matcha. I'll be the first to admit I can’t help but curiously eye every week when I pass by Blank Street the latest matcha trend, such as the lemon loaf or carrot cake matcha. They’ve done a fantastic job of marketing matcha in a way that appeals and continues to keep you coming back— the combination is unexpected, the sweeteners get you hooked, and it photographs well. But matcha in its truest form was never meant for a colorful ad or a pump of blueberry syrup. It was a ritual of focus, clarity, and presence. Now it's a symbol of being in the know — the new coffee cup in hand, the new way to signal that you're current.

Food has become like this too. A flex. A trend cycle. Something to post. 

And Our Bodies Are Paying the Price

And the cost of that is real. We spend more money on food than ever and somehow feel less nourished. The supplements industry is booming precisely because our bodies aren't getting what they need from what we're actually eating. 

I've seen it in my patients — young people with cyclical vomiting, chronic GI discomfort, symptoms that don't have a clean diagnosis. So much of what we eat is ultraprocessed, consumed quickly, eaten in a state of stress or distraction. Our bodies are trying to tell us something. We've just stopped listening at the table.

I'm Not Immune to This

I'm not immune to any of this. If I look at how I eat now compared to how I grew up eating, the difference is hard to ignore.

Growing up in a Korean family, meals had a shape — and a clear purpose. The way food was presented, portioned, and shared wasn't just cultural, it was nutritional by design. My family still raises an eyebrow at my modern eating habits, and honestly, they're not wrong. Back then, breakfast was eaten sitting down at the kitchen table even if it was urgent that you rush out the door. Lunch was shared on the cafeteria benches with friends. Dinner together with the family, sitting down, talking, and passing food around. It was ordinary. I didn't think twice about it.

Now, I don't eat breakfast. I drink black coffee and fast until noon, sometimes later depending on my patient load. There's actually a Korean concept for this — "hungry jung-sheen" — the idea that hunger sharpens your focus and drives you toward your goals. But there's a difference between intentional fasting and just not feeding yourself because it interferes with your productivity. My first real meal usually comes mid-afternoon, eaten standing between patients or scarfed down leaving my stomach constantly wanting and my brain not having registered satiety. By the time dinner comes, I've either pushed it so late that eating means disrupted sleep, or I skip it altogether. My meals are inconsistent, rushed, or eaten in the middle of doing something else entirely.

What Skipping Actually Does to Your Body

And the body keeps score. I noticed it in the cortisol spikes, the sugar crashes that hit me hard around 4-5 pm when my defenses are lowest. I noticed it in the way I'd overeat — not out of hunger exactly, but because I'd been running on empty all day and my nervous system hadn't slowed down enough to actually taste what I was eating. When your body is in fight or flight, it doesn't register satiety the way it should. The pleasure pathways that are supposed to tell you this is good, this is enough, gets drowned out. So you keep eating. And somehow still feel unsatisfied.

The gut and the brain are in constant conversation. When we disrupt one, we disrupt the other. Poor digestion doesn't stay in the stomach — it travels. It affects focus, mood, energy, hormones. The body was never designed to eat the way most of us eat now. And yet we wonder why we're exhausted, why we feel inflamed and bloated after meals, why we can eat and eat and still feel like we've had nothing at all.

So What Do We Do?

Here's what I've come to believe: we don't need an expensive, niche diet, detox regimen, or a refrigerator full of superfoods to eat healthy. We need to relearn something much more basic. We need to come back to the act of eating itself.

There are a handful of things I keep coming back to — simple, almost embarrassingly simple — that have genuinely changed the way I feel.

Eat with others when you can. There's something that happens naturally when you share a meal with another person. You slow down. You talk. You pause between bites. The meal becomes a conversation instead of a transaction. Community and nourishment were never meant to be separate things.

Sit down and be present. Put the phone face down. Turn off the show. When we eat while scrolling or watching something, our brains are dividing their attention — and the pathways meant to register pleasure, fullness, and satisfaction from food get interrupted. 

A simple trick if you find yourself eating too fast: try chopsticks. It sounds silly, but forcing your brain to learn a new skill naturally slows you down and brings your attention back to the meal. Obviously don’t do this if you’re in a rush or have minimal patience. You’ll end up throwing your chopsticks at the wall and inhaling your food in a ravenous rage. 

Chew your food. Actually chew it. I know that sounds almost too obvious to say — but bear with me. I remember my nun in Catholic school telling us to chew our food ten times before swallowing. At the time I thought it was the strangest exercise. Now I completely understand what she was doing. Digestion doesn't begin in the stomach — it begins in the mouth. The more thoroughly you chew, the less work your gut has to do, and the more nutrients your body can actually absorb. But beyond the mechanics, chewing slowly forces you to taste your food. To notice it. To be in the meal rather than just moving through it. When was the last time you actually tasted what you were eating — not just the first bite, but all the way through? Chewing is where presence begins.

Breathe before you eat. This one is the one I come back to most. There's a reason so many cultures, across so many traditions, built a moment of pause before eating — a prayer, a blessing, a word of thanks. You don't have to be religious to honor that instinct. At the very least, we can acknowledge that having food in front of us is not nothing. That our bodies are about to receive something. That we are in this moment, okay.

When we eat in a parasympathetic state — calm, present, breathing — our bodies digest differently. Our hormones respond differently. The meal actually lands. Eastern medicine has understood for a long time what Western science is only beginning to quantify: the way we eat is inseparable from what eating does for us. Food is medicine. But only if we're present enough to let it work.

Our Practice at the Dinner Table

I've been making a more deliberate effort lately. Cooking at home more. Sitting down at my actual table. Putting my focus on the meal in front of me instead of the ten things I still need to do. It's not perfect. But I notice the difference — in how I feel after I eat, in how much I enjoy it, in how my body settles instead of braces.

Wellness doesn't have to cost what we've made it cost. It doesn't require the most expensive ingredients or the trendiest ritual. It starts at the table. It starts with a pause or a refocusing breath before the first bite — a moment of arrival, of intention, of recognizing that eating is not just consumption. It is one of the most fundamental ways we care for ourselves and for each other.

The table has always been where bonds are built. Where families hold together. Where strangers become a community. Where we slow down long enough to actually feel like humans instead of machines running on caffeine and cortisol. 

So come back to it. Not as a trend. Not as a flex. As a practice. As a form of self-care that has always been available to you — long before anyone tried to sell it back to you.

From a village in Guinea to the streets of New York City, the story is the same. We left the table looking for something better. But the thing we were looking for was always there — in the sharing of a meal, in the passing of a dish, in the simple act of sitting down together. The table was never just about food. It was about us. 

Cheers to coming back to it. And to our health.