A calm head and a sharp knife
Meditation, breathwork, books and a growing obsession with nutrition and the brain: how I try to keep my head as sharp as my knives.
I’m a chef, not a doctor. This is what I do, not advice. If you have a health condition, talk to your doctor first.
Every cook knows the moment: tickets piling up, pans hissing, someone calling for plates. Right then, the sharpest knife in the world won’t save you if your head is all over the place. A sharp knife needs a calm hand, and a calm hand needs a calm head.
That’s why I train my head as well as my body. Here’s what that looks like for me.
Meditation: sitting still on purpose
Meditation doesn’t have to be complicated. At its simplest, you sit, breathe and notice what your head is up to. Thoughts come and go, and the whole job is to notice them and come back. It’s a lot like prep: unglamorous, repetitive and the foundation for everything that follows.
Breathwork: the pause before the rush
Your breath is the one tool you always have with you, in the kitchen or anywhere else. Breathwork is simply paying attention to it on purpose. I like it because it’s the most portable tool I know: no gear, no stone, no subscription.
One sensible rule: do breathing exercises somewhere safe, sitting or lying down. Never in the water, never behind the wheel and never anywhere it would be dangerous to feel light-headed.
Reading: one thing, all the way through
Reading is the opposite of scrolling. A book asks you to stay with one thing for a while, and these days that feels like a luxury. Cookbooks count, of course, but lately my curiosity has wandered well beyond the kitchen, towards the brain and the body.
Food and the brain: my newest obsession
I’m a chef, so food is my home turf. What’s new is that I’ve become a proper nerd about what happens after the meal: nutrition and neuroscience. I listen to podcasts like Huberman Lab and read whatever I can get my hands on, and the more I learn, the more I realise how much there is left to learn.
You won’t get health claims or meal plans from me. I’m a beginner in these fields, and there’s enough confident nonsense online already. What it has done is make me even more curious about the basics: good ingredients, cooked with care and eaten with people you like. Food as fuel and food as joy. As a cook, I don’t think you have to choose.
Where the knife comes in
There’s a reason I love sharpening. Even strokes, a steady angle and the same movement again and again until the edge is right. You can’t rush it, and you can’t do it well with your head somewhere else. In a way, it’s meditation with a stone.
If you’d like to try it, my sharpening method is on riceknife.com. I founded RiceKnife, so I’m not neutral, but I’ve put a lot of myself into that method. For the basics, start with my guide to caring for a Damascus knife.
Chef, not doctor
I’m a chef, not a doctor, so this is what I do, not advice. If you’re thinking about changing your diet or have a health condition, talk to your doctor or a registered dietitian first.
Calm head, sharp knife, good food. That’s the whole recipe.