The Yogic Diet

 

 

- Traditionally a lacto-vegetarian diet.

- Living food, prana, and nutrient rich diet.

- Plant-based diet with high raw food content and some lightly cooked vegetables (ratio of raw verses cooked depends somewhat on one's constitution).

- Organic foods.

- Variety of leafy greens, herbs, vegetables, fruits, legumes, whole grains, nuts, seeds, and dairy (ideally dairy that is pure, organic, and unpasteurized).

- Pure water (Often adding a pinch of sea salt to water is recommended for electrolyte content, and also to help bring back the structural integrity of denatured water).

- Diet supplemented with things such as freshly juiced vegetable juice, miso soup, seaweeds, quality multi-vitamin, ayurvedic herbs / teas, flaxseed oil, ghee, and raw, organic honey.

- The yogic diet is a sattvic diet. This means a diet that brings health, nourishment, and energy to the body; clarity, calmness, and contentment to the mind; and a greater energetic attunement to the earth and nature. This is in contrast to a rajasic or tamasic diet.

- A rajasic diet is one which overly stimulates the mind and body inducing various desires, and in excess also compromises the health of the body (ex. coffee, black tea, overly spicy foods, garlic, onions, and refined sugars).

- A tamasic diet is one which depresses the mind and body and brings about low energy, dullness, inertia, and disease (ex. overly cooked foods, stale foods, fried foods, overly processed and refined foods, overly ripe or rotten foods, drugs, and alcohol).

- The general idea is to aim towards maintaining a sattvic diet as much as possible, according to one's own capacity.

- Moving away from old, unhealthy eating and lifestyle habits takes first being informed, then inspired, and then it just takes time, perseverance, will-power, and a lot of love and compassion.

- From the yogic perspective, bringing the mind and body into a more balanced, clear, and sattvic state is ideal for helping one open up to the deeper meditative aspects of the practice, and for knowing one's true, eternal, and boundless Self. We must first balance the gunas (qualities of nature - rajas, tamas, sattva) and then we are able to more clearly recognize and abide as That which is ever free and independent of the gunas.