Ayurveda, Yoga and Diet

Food is the first and most important form of medicine. Without right food no other healing modality can be effective. Ayurveda recommends sattvic (pure) diet because it creates balance, eliminates harmful factors and helps reduce all the doshas. Eating is our first interaction with our environment. If that is not based upon love and compassion, all our other actions are bound to suffer.

The basis of sattva is the attitude of non-harming (ahimsa). Sattvic diet is first of all vegetarian, avoiding any products that involve killing or harming of animals. Sattvic diet additionally emphasizes natural foods, foods grown in harmony with nature, on good soils, ripened naturally, cooked in the right manner and with the right attitude of love. Such foods are carriers of prana (life) and consciousness. Meat-eating is something that any student of yoga should reduce, if not avoid altogether. This is particularly true of red meat. Of course, the main reason is that meat eating violates the yogic principles of ahimsa or non-violence, which is the first of the lifestyle disciplines of yoga practice. If our yoga practice is based upon harming other creatures, it cannot go far.

The human body, teeth and digestive system are that of a vegetarian animal. Vegetarian diet provide the ideal nutrition to build up our human sensitivities through a refined physical and astral body. Human beings cannot readily break down animal tissues into the right components for absorption into human tissues. Instead of digesting and transforming meat into the appropriate human tissue, its animal energies are preserved and become substituted for our human tissues.

Meat increases the animal fire in the body, bringing the samskaras or tendencies of carnivorous animals to function within us. This promotes anger, lust and fear and other negative emotions. Meat diet communicates the energy of destruction to the cells, which in turn promotes processes of disease and decay within them. The lives of the creatures we have eaten weigh down the astral body with their negative feelings and impressions. Meat produces a heavy or tamasic type of tissue that clogs the channels and tends to make the mind dull. This does not mean that spiritual practices will have no effect for a meat eater but that if these are successful, which is less likely, there is a danger that the meat in the system, which is a crude form of fuel, may cause the person to overheat or create a kind of smoke that distorts any higher experiences. Not only violence and crime but religious intolerance has historically been more common among meat-eating groups. If we add the damage that the meat consumption is doing to the planet through the destruction of the rain forests, pollution of land and water, and the increasing difficulty of sustaining a meat diet for an ever-growing human population, then the magnitude of this problem cannot be glossed over.

Also, when we are choosing food most suitable for our lifestyle, if it is not in its original and most natural form, then it is processed food. And processed food is very hard for body to digest (if it gets digested at all), bringing along other complications. If you are changing diets, try to eat foods in its as natural form as possible. We are all very aware now a days of what we need to put in our bodies. There are many trends for foods and diets these days. But try to choose food that is nourishing and in its most natural state (as nature intended). There are many substitutes for meat, poultry and non-vegetarian diets now but remember, most of them are processed very heavily to closely resemble their original counterpart. If you look at the ingredients at the back, most of them are proteins, oils, flavourings, chemicals and emulsifiers all churned together to make the substitute. Body finds it really hard to digest such foods and they lead to complications and toxins in the body. If going vegan, try to eat fruits, vegetables, grains, lentils and beans in their natural or cooked form. If opting for meat substitutes, remember they all are non- natural processed foods.

(Source: Yoga & Ayurveda: Self- Healing and Self- Realization by David Frawley)