Thursday Kitchen: The Yoga Diet

(from www.ayushveda.com)

I have heard pretty often that yoga changes the way you live... the obvious fitness that arrives in the body, the calm that you can take out of the class with you and then into the world... but what I've heard most recently refers to how we eat.

During my teacher training, there was an amusing day in our yogic philosophy class in which a debate broke out between the professor and the student. Our teacher had just relayed his story about why he's a vegetarian (no eggs, fish, or meat). He had a traumatic experience in school during a biology lab... the class dissected frogs. At the time, frogs were brought in alive, and the teacher demonstrated how to kill it (picking it up by the legs and whacking it in the head against the desk) and open it carefully and quickly so one can see the heart beating. Our professor got up, walked to the door, opened it, left the room, and took a walk around the grounds.

"That was the day I decided that I would never eat anything that had a mother or a face," the good doctor said.

That's what started it. One of our trainees had worked for a gourmet restaurant in New York and learned all the things you would expect from a Cordon Bleu sort of education. She argued about how amazing properly prepared meat tasted.

"It just makes me feel sorry for you that you'll never know what really great filet mignon should taste like or how beef carpaccio just melts in your mouth," she protested.

Our professor, ever so politely, returned his sentiments.

The conversation turned to the inevitability that one goes vegetarian as his or her yogic practice advances (though my trainee peer does not seem convinced). According to the official "yoga diet," there are three different kinds of food (all together, these types make up what is referred to as "the gunas"). Sattvic food consists of "pure food" which calm the mind and heal the body. These Sattvic foods include cereal, wholemeal breads, milk and cheese (must come from animals that are treated well... there is a difference in the quality of the food if the animals are mistreated), fresh fruit and vegetables, nuts and seeds, herbal teas and honey, and pure fruit juices. Secondly, there are Rajastic foods which are hot, bitter, sour, dry or salty food and believed to destroy the equilibrium between the mind and the body. It is also considered to be eating Rajastic food if one is shoveling it down too quickly. The Rajastic foods include sharp spices, stimulants such as coffee and tea, fish, eggs, salt, and chocolate. Lastly, there are the Tamastic foods which are connected to foods that neither benefit the mind nor the body. One eats in a Tamastic way when he or she overeats. Examples of Tamastic foods include meat, alcohol, oinons, garlic, stale foods, and fermented foods such as vinegar.

Now, the goal to the Yogic diet is to eat more pure foods (Sattvic) and fewer impure foods (Rajastic or Tamastic). One can aim for the balance of these three branches or learn to focus on the Sattvic branch. One does ocassionally hear about some amazing yogi up in a mountain village in Tibet who only eats a bowl of rice once per day... but, aside from him, most of us are deriving our diet from all the branches. The recommendation is to abstain from most of the foods in the second and third category while trying to live the Sattvic way.

The Yoga Diet might sound extreme and maybe some of you are wiping your brows grateful that you don't take yoga at all... but even non-yoga promoting thinkers promote this way of eating. Micheal Pollan's book IN DEFENSE OF FOOD has one basic moto: Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly Plants. I have not completed the book yet, but Pollan advocates a fresh food diet in his extensive explanation of why it's better for you and how we came to this processed freezer food age in which we currently live. He advocates an idea that one comes across in THE OKINAWA PROGRAM (Wilcox, Wilcox, and Suzuki) to try to eat only until you are 80% full... a concept that most Americans probably have some trouble conjuring in this, our land of plenty. The Okinawan diet also prescribes fresh foods and "the right kind of carbs."

While I've always striven to eat healthy (you can ask my mother if you don't believe me), I haven't eliminated meat entirely from my own diet. I try to eat my meat consciously, in terms of getting free range chicken or grass fed beef... I tend to buy my meat from the Farmers' Market during summer and talk to the farmers themselves about the treatment of their animals. Even with that consideration, meat is treated more like a side dish at home with the vegetables featuring as the main attraction.

I'm not sure how much of my eating habits are "the yoga talking" or how much of it is my getting older and changing my tastes. Admittedly, in summer, I tend to back off of meat anyway. It just sits so much heavier on the body when it's hot outside. However, I will admit that since I've been a more adamant student of yoga that I naturally lean towards wanting vegetables. I did have a craving for a cheeseburger the other day... and promptly upon satisfying that craving, I was sorry that I did. Meat "feels" different. Tastes different. It's just not appealing. I'm still good with sausage, fish (I doubt I'll ever give up on sushi), and some poultry, but red meat is more than likely on its way out.

I flipped through the pages of SKINNY BITCH (by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin) once to see what the secret must be... and the secret is basically veganism. They paint a pretty grim picture of what it means to eat a dead carcass (not delicate writers... not particularly good writers either). Still, if one reads ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MIRACLE by Barbara Kingsolver, one learns that, even if we all, all over the globe, ceased to consume meat, the species would actually suffer. We've spent more years than I can count basically conditioning these animals to be dependent upon us for survival. If we set the cows and the chickens loose, we might eliminate them altogether or they could become a pestulence to the planet. Obviously we should still be advocates for the ethical treatment of livestock... both the bitches and Barbara would agree that what you injest changes depending on the happiness of the animal.

I think the yogis have a good basic formula though... living on the Sattvic branch... but I think there's room for picking from the other branches once in a while... To borrow from the Greeks, All things in moderation...

More information: http://www.yogadiet.com.au/
http://www.abc-of-yoga.com/diet/
http://www.lifepositive.com/Body/Yoga/yoga-techniques.asp