Inside Yoga 88 (11/11/13)
Food is a major feature of our lives: it provides the fuel we need, it nourishes us and helps us stay healthy – well, not necessarily, as food can also be a source of torment or unhealthy comfort, which leads to either under or over eating – and unhealthy eating.
I mentioned last week how some twisting postures, eg matsyendrasana, help the internal organs around the stomach area to function through the massage effect of a twist. The stomach and intestine receive a squeeze that stimulates their function as does the liver and kidneys benefit from the compression of the torso through twisting.
Twists are a good reason why we do not eat a meal just before practice, as it might cause discomfort and nausea. The general advice is to leave a 3 to 4 hour break after a large meal, and about 2 hours after a light meal/snack. This is a sliding scale as it depends upon our own constitution and speed of digestion among other factors.
A steady and regular practice teaches us about our body’s rhythms; yoga is a practice that teaches us to be more aware of not just our mind but our body. And this is not just in terms of learning how to stretch and exercise, it teaches us about what we eat and drink. As we develop our yoga practice we begin to notice what food types make us feel better and which types of food make us feel heavy and tired. It is subtle process but one that really helps us to connect with our body.
As many of us will have noticed, a yoga practice helps us to feel lighter and more at ease with ourselves by the end of the session. So equally, as we develop a yoga practice we begin to see what food works well with us, and many yoga practitioners, recognising how we feel through diet and practice start making changes to our diet.
This is not, however, about losing weight and crash courses in new regimes to suit some sort of vanity exercise. This is about well-being and realizing that yoga goes deeper than just some physical exercises.
In yoga the related medical and scientific approach to all this is found in Ayurveda, which means “knowledge or understanding of life”. In India this was the science that taught the population about health and well-being long before the Europeans – or rather the British – came along and imposed their form of medicine and health upon the population. Things are better now, and modern medicine is more open to the views of ayurvedic medicine and health advice.
One major feature of Ayurveda which I found illuminating and useful was its advice on what we eat. Ayurveda does not tell us ALL to stop eating this and eat that, it looks at us as individuals and based on something called our doshas it works out the constitution we were born with, and then it works out based on the season we are in, and other factors, the types of food that will maintain our own physical, psychological and emotional balance.
So for example, someone high in Vata, will be advised in winter to eat one-pot stews, to help a poor digestion (vatas often find digestion difficult); while someone high in kapha would be advised against eating a lot of dairy (eg ice cream) which, of course, they love – because kapha types tend to put on weight easily, but a vata can eat lots of ice cream as their tend to be underweight.
This is a simple example, while the whole analysis to discover your ayurvedic constitution involves a series of questions, about body type, mental processes and so forth. There are three doshas – vata, pitta and kapha, and we all are a mix of these three. When all the questions are added up, we reach the overall figure which reveals a percentage ratio between the three. Most of us are high in one dosha, with the others coming out lower, for example, I am a double dosha, being high in bother vata and pitta. Someone who is equal third in all three, tends to be blessed by good health and temperament, as all three are in balance, though having said this, the overall figure is just that, an overview. Within this figure there will always be aspects that are high or low. For example, one can be high in vata with digestion, but their body type might exhibit a high pitta.
We then adapt our diet and lifestyle to suit this dosha ratio, and also, we can tailor our yoga practice to suit this. It is something that can be followed religiously or loosely, as we do tend to notice when we have gone off the rails and need to get back on track!
If you would like to know more about Ayurveda: here are some books I have read about the subject –
Prakruti – Your Ayurvedic Constitution, by Dr Robert E Svoboda
The Complete Book of Ayurvedic Home Remedies, by Vasant Lad
Yoga and Ayurveda by David Frawley
I realize that anything about food is opening up Pandora’s Box, so please email or write comments on this blog, if you have any questions. And if you would like to learn what your ayurvedic constitution is please contact me, as I offer one-to-one sessions (I can also do this with a small group) devoted to this, where we find out your ayurvedic constitution and I can then explain what this all means to you, as an individual.
