A healthy yogic diet is a source of energy for the body.

a healthy diet is a source of energy for the body. Yogic food is a vegetarian diet. It consists of pure, simple, natural, easily digested and assimilated foods that maintain health.

Everyone should have some knowledge of dietetics (see article on Ayurveda) to be able to balance their diet. The body needs five categories of nutrients: proteins, carbohydrates, fats, minerals and vitamins. Eating unprocessed foods, directly from nature (preferably organic, without chemicals), provides the body with the essential elements it needs, because processing, refining, or overcooking or overcooking for too long causes food to lose much of its nutritional value.

There is a cycle in nature that we call: “the food cycle” or “the food chain”. The sun is the primary source of energy for everything that lives on our planet. Plants, the first link in this chain, provide vegetarians with nutrients directly from the sun.

The yogic attitude towards food is simple: one must “eat to live” and not “live to eat”.

With his or her knowledge of nutrition and inner experience, the yogi eats food in appropriate quantities so that it has a beneficial effect on the body and the least possible negative effects on the environment, while at the same time trying to cause the least possible suffering to other beings. For one who sees the interdependence of all things, everything must be considered when thinking about how we eat: the problem of hunger, the suffering of animals, and the state of the environment. One of the first steps in acting responsibly towards the planet is to feed oneself while being fully aware of what one is doing.

Fasting is also part of the yogi’s diet. Fasting and rest is nature’s universal prescription for healing all illnesses, from fever to fractures. Accompanied by meditation, fasting is recommended for purification, self-discipline, and self-control.

The body is food

What you call “my body” is simply an accumulation of food that you eat. Therefore, the kind of food you eat should not depend on your values or morals or what you think about it, but on what the body needs. Food is about the body. If you are conscious enough, if you just touch a little bit of food, you will know how that food will impact your body.

When it comes to food, ask the body what kind of food it likes. Vary the experiences and see how the body reacts after eating. If your body is agile, energetic and enjoyable, it is happy! If your body is lethargic and needs to be stimulated by caffeine or nicotine to stay alert, it is unhappy.

If you listen to your body, it will tell you clearly what food it enjoys. But right now you listen to your mind. Your mind keeps lying to you all the time. Hasn’t it lied to you in the past? Today it tells you “I understand, I know”. Tomorrow you will feel ridiculous for believing what you considered to be the truth. Don’t follow his advice. You just have to learn to listen to your body.

Every animal, every creature, knows what to eat and what to avoid. The human species is supposed to be the smartest on this planet, but it doesn’t even know what to eat. Learning to listen to your body requires mental capacity and attention. Once you have developed that, you know what to eat and what to avoid.

Food is fuel

The first thing to remember is that food is basically fuel. To feed intelligently means to understand and provide the body with the food for which it was created, so that it can function at its best. If you want to fill up your car, you go to the gas station and choose the right fuel for the model to get the best performance. You could put kerosene in your car and it could run, but probably coughing and smoking, and not be able to accelerate at your convenience. It’s the same situation with people when they choose their food. To choose the right fuel, you need to know what kind of machine you are because what you ingest affects not only your physical health, but also the way you think, feel and experience life.

Sleep and food

There is also a link between the food you eat and the amount of sleep you need. As a general rule, doctors advise everyone to sleep around eight hours. If you get eight hours of sleep a night, that means you sleep a third of your life.

The body needs rest, not sleep. The kind of food you eat is one of the key factors that determine how much sleep you need. If you use the wrong fuel for your car, it will often go to maintenance. Similarly, if you put the wrong fuel in your body, it will need a lot of sleep (maintenance).

Yogi eats vegetarian

If we speak in terms of food quality, clearly vegetarian food is much better than non-vegetarian food. We do not judge it from a moral point of view. We just look at what is suitable for our body, we try to eat what makes us feel good in our body. Whether you want to work properly, study properly or do anything properly, it is important that the body feels comfortable. So the food that would allow your body to be most comfortable and best nourished is the food that you should eat.

Just experiment and see, when you eat vegetarian in its most “living” form, what impact does it have? The idea is to ingest as much live food as possible, anything that can be eaten “alive”. A living cell has everything it takes to sustain life. If you ingest live food, you will see how your feeling of health will be different from anything you have experienced so far. When we cook food, it takes away the life that is in it. Eating that which has undergone a process of destruction does not provide the same amount of life energy in the body. If you eat a lot of sprouted seeds, fruits or vegetables in their most living form, if you eat at least 30 to 40% of living food, you will see how much it will keep you in great shape, full of energy.

Being thankful for food

Above all, the food you eat is Life. Other life forms give their lives to allow us to live. The true joy of eating comes from your awareness that other life forms are merging into you to become you. This is one of the greatest pleasures a human being can experience. If you eat with full appreciation for the living things that have given their lives to nourish yours, food will behave differently within you.

Yoga and weight loss

Yoga regenerates the body and brings so much common sense that you won’t tend to overeat. When a certain consciousness develops in your body, you will eat only what you need. Nothing more. Not because you are trying to control or regulate your life or because someone tells you to go on a diet. If you exercise or diet, you are in control. With yoga practices, you don’t need to control yourself. You just have to do the practices. It will take care of your system in such a way that you will not eat more than you need to. That is the big difference in yoga.

With yoga, you don’t just look at muscle strength. The health of the organs is also very important. The system of yoga goes as far as taking care of the organs. Even if you have a lot of muscles, if your liver is not working well, what’s the point? It is very important that the body is flexible and useful. The muscular system is phenomenal. What our muscles can do is fantastic. And that can be improved by strengthening them, but also by making them more flexible. If you do a lot of weight training, your muscles will be big but not flexible. That’s because strength training provides raw strength. But you can build the same strength in a completely different way and above all, keep the body supple, which is very important. There are several aspects to well-being: health, energy, psychological and spiritual well-being. When we invest thirty minutes to an hour of sadhana in the morning each day, we want to see the benefits on many levels, not just on the muscular level.

So if you want to build muscle, should you give up melting? No, because physical activity and exercise have been removed from our lives by new technologies. No need to carry buckets of water, or anything else. It’s all done by machines.

But we don’t teach yoga for weight loss or as a fitness method. It’s not something you do to slim down or to treat a backache or a migraine. Indeed, this is part of the benefits (developing health, calmness, kindness) but these are only side effects of yoga. You don’t need to do yoga to lose weight. Eat a balanced diet, play tennis or swim. It will keep you healthy. You don’t need to do yoga. The purpose of yoga is to bring out a new living dimension in you that exists beyond the physical. Only when this dimension comes to life, does existence slowly open up to you in millions of different ways. Things that you never thought existed become a reality for you, simply because a dimension of life beyond the material has manifested itself.

Fresh Food

If you are interested in your well-being and that of your children, you must make sure that the food you eat is fresh. An average American eats processed foods that were prepared 3 to 6 months ago. In the culture of yoga, food is always eaten within 1.5 hours after it has been prepared. If it is later, a certain inertia sets in. If you eat food that creates inertia in the body, you will lose all your dynamism.

Local food

Food is a transaction. What was in the ground, is in the body. The body will function better if the food you eat comes from where you live. Suppose you live on a small area of land, grow your food, in less than a month you will see a big change in your health.

According to yoga, it is recommended to eat what is within a distance equivalent to what a man can cover on foot in a day. So the distance you can walk in a day should be the radius of where your food is. You should not eat food grown far from where you are, for the body you have is essentially a piece of this planet. If you eat food from where you live, your body and the Earth will be in constant interaction.

How does food behave in the body?

If you eat a fruit, it will be digested between 1.5 and 3 hours after consumption. If you eat cooked vegetables, it will take between 12 and 15 hours. If you eat cereals or other foods, it will take 24 to 30 hours. If you eat raw meat, it will take 72 hours to be digested. When food stays in the body for a long time, it will turn and cause too many bacteria. With such a choice of food, you are damaging the body. You will then take medication instead of eating healthy. You need medication because you are generating poison inside you. What you put in your body can make a big difference. If you have eaten bad food for too long, your body has become so lethargic that you don’t notice anything. In this case, fasting will do you good. It’s time for people to pay attention to what’s going on in their bodies.

Cooked or raw?

Not all the enzymes needed for digestion are present in the body. What we eat is supposed to help digestion. Cooking destroys many of these enzymes. Eating after this destruction process does not bring the same amount of vital energy into the body. The body will then struggle to replenish the destroyed enzymes.

Experiment and see, if you bring a little raw vegetarian food into your eating habits, the body will stay healthy and energetic. Start with 25% natural food and increase to 100% after 4 to 5 days. Maintain this 100% for a day or two, then return for 5 days to 50% cooked and 50% raw food. This is an ideal combination for most active people between 16 and 18 hours a day.

Natural food takes longer to eat because it requires more chewing. Therefore, you need to spend more time at the table to make sure you eat enough.

Water temperature

If you are on the path of inner transformation, you should only drink water about 4° above or below body temperature, i.e. between 32 and 40°. This is the best method. For students who are absorbing a lot of knowledge, 8° above or below body temperature is ideal. So approximately between 28 and 44 degrees. For those who are neither interested in transformation nor in studying, who simply want to take care of their home, they can drink water at about 12° of difference from the body. Water above 12° is not considered to be suitable for anyone.

How much should I eat?

Studies have shown that the brain functions better when the stomach is empty. Researchers have found that an empty stomach produces Ghrelin, a hormone that transmits information to the brain that the stomach is hungry. One interesting thing is that this hormone also has other functions. Ghrelin stimulates and increases the performance of the hippocampus, the region of the brain that manages learning, memory and orientation, keeping us alert, active and focused. This, of course, does not imply that we should never eat, but emphasizes that we should be aware of how much food we are eating.

It is not good to eat all day long. If you are under the age of 30, 3 meals a day are appropriate. If you are over 30, it is good to reduce to 2 meals a day. Our body and brain function best when the stomach is empty. Be conscious and eat in such a way that after 2.5 hours food leaves the stomach, and after 12 and 18 hours it is out of the body. If you maintain this simple attention, you will have much more energy, agility and alertness. These are the ingredients of a successful life, regardless of what you choose to do.

Chewing food

Chewing food well plays an important role in digestion. Studies show that for starchy foods, 40% of digestion should take place in the mouth.

In accordance with yoga, it is said that if you eat a piece, you should chew it 24 times. There is a whole science behind this, but essentially, the food is pre-digested in the mouth and will not cause heaviness. If you chew it 24 times, all the information about that food arrives in the body and every cell will be able to judge what is good and not good for you, not in terms of taste but what is good for your body. If you do this for a while, each of your cells will learn what it likes and dislikes.

Drinking water, yes, but how much and how?

Sipping water all day long leads to too much water being absorbed into the body and can cause swelling in the brain. When you’re thirsty, it’s best to drink just a little more than you need to quench your thirst. Water can also be kept overnight in a copper carafe. This destroys bacteria and energizes the water considerably. Copper surfaces in hospital intensive care units destroy 97% of the bacteria that can cause hospital-associated infections.

Drinking while eating

It is also advisable to avoid drinking during meals. You can drink water a few minutes before a meal or 30 to 40 minutes after the meal.

Choosing your food according to the seasons

Choosing your food according to the season is very important. This is an established fact in Indian culture as well. In summer, the body is hot, so cold food is consumed. For example, in South India, people drink pearl millet in the summer which refreshes the body. In winter, everyone eats sesame regularly. This keeps the body warm and the skin clean. With some heat in the body, the skin does not crack.

Raw food

When you eat raw, be sure to soak the food in a little salt water and then immerse it in cold water. This removes harmful organisms from the food.

Sleeping after eating

After a meal, leave at least two hours before going to bed. Digestion increases metabolic activity. If you sleep in this state, you won’t sleep well and you won’t digest well either! Depending on what you eat, up to 80% of food can remain undigested if you sleep directly after a meal.

When to eat fruit?

Fruit should be eaten 1.5 to 2 hours before a meal. It is best to eat fruit during its season and where it is grown.

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