Purity in Food
“Ahara-suddhau sattva-suddhih, Sattva-suddhau dhruva-smritih, Smritilabhe sarvagranthinam vipramokshah.”
The purity of food follows the purification of the inner nature, on the purity of the inner nature the memory becomes firm and on the strengthening of memory follows the loosening of all ties, and the wise get liberation thereby.
A Pranayama practitioner should observe Samyama (control) in food and drink. Practice Pranayama before eating any meal. Also, when you are very hungry, then also you must not practice Pranayama. Go to the water closet and empty the bowels before you begin Pranayama.
Those who are strict and regular in diet derive immense benefits during the course of their Pranayama practice. They get success quickly. Those persons who suffer from chronic constipation can practice Pranayama in the early morning without answering the calls of nature. They should try their level best by some means or other to get an evacuation of their bowels in the early morning.
Food plays a very important role in Yoga Sadhana. An aspirant should be very, very careful in the selection of articles of diet, in the beginning of his Sadhana period. Later on when Pranayama Siddhi is obtained drastic dietetic restrictions can be removed.
Yogic Diet
The Pranayama Practitioner’s instinct, the voice within, will guide them in the selection of articles of diet. You are yourself the best judge to form a Sattvic Yogic menu to suit your temperament and constitution.
Charu
This is a mixture of boiled white rice, ghee, sugar and milk. This is a wholesome combination for Brahmacharins and Pranayama practitioners.
Milk Diet
Milk should be just scalded, not boiled. The process of scalding is that the milk should be immediately removed from the heat as soon as the boiling point is reached and steam starts to rise. Too much boiling destroys the vitamins, the mysterious nutritive principles and renders the milk quite useless as an article of diet. Milk is a perfect food by itself, containing the different nutritive constituents in a well balanced proportion. It leaves very little residue in the bowels. This is an ideal food for Yogic students during their Pranayama practice.
Fruit Diet
Fruits help concentration and easy mental focusing. A fruit diet exercises a benign, soothing influence on the constitution and is a very desirable diet for Pranayama Yogins. This is a natural form of diet. Fruits are very great energy producers. Bananas, grapes, sweet oranges, apples, pomegranates, mangoes, Chikkus (Sappota) and dates are wholesome fruits. Lemons possess anti-scorbutic properties and act as restoratives to blood. Fruit juice contains vitamin C. Chikkus increase pure blood. Mangoes and milk is a healthy agreeable combination. You can live on mangoes and milk alone. Pomegranate juice is cooling and very nutritious. Bananas are very nutritious and substantial.
Food Recommended
Barley, wheat, ghee, milk and almonds promote longevity and increase power and strength. Barley is a fine article of diet for a Yogi and Sadhaka. Barley is cooling. too. Sri Swami Narayan, the author of ‘Ek Santka Anubhav’, who wears a Kaupin of gunny bag, lives on bread made of barley. He recommends barley bread to his disciples. It is said that Emperor Akbar lived upon barley.
Eat wheat, rice, barley, milk, bread, cow’s milk, ghee, sugar, butter, sugar candy, honey, dried ginger (Soont), green pulse, Moongdal, Panchashaka vegetables, Peypudalai, potatoes, raisins, dates, light Khichdi of green dal. Khichdi is a light food and can be agreeably taken. The food should be reduced in proportion to the increase in Kumbhaka. You must not reduce your food by much in the beginning of your practice. You must use your common sense, all throughout the Sadhana. Toor-ki-dal can be taken. The Pancha Shaka belongs to the species of spinach. They are excellent vegetables. The thick succulent young leaves are boiled and seasoned or fried with ghee. They are five in number, viz., Seendil, Chakravarthi, Ponnangani, Chirukeerai and Valloicharnai Keerai.
When the Pingala or Suryanadi runs in the right nostril, this is the best time to eat food. Suryanadi produces heat. It will digest the food well. You may take jackfruit, cucumber, brinjal, plantain stem, Lauki Parval and Bhindi.
Food Not Recommended
Highly seasoned dishes, hot curries, chutnies, meat, fishes, chillies, sour articles, tamarind, mustard, all kinds of oil, asafoetida, salt, garlic, onions, urad-ki-dal (black gram), all bitter things, dry foods, black sugar, vinegar, alcohol, sour curd, stale foods, acids, astringents, pungent stuff, roasted things, heavy vegetables, over ripe or unripe fruits, pumpkins must be avoided. Meat can make man a scientist, but rarely a Philosopher, Yogi or a Tattva Jnani. Onions and garlic are worse than meat. All foodstuffs should contain a small quantity of salt. So, even if you do not add salt separately, the system will derive the necessary quantity of salt from other food-stuffs. The giving up of salt will not produce deficiency of hydrochloric acid and dyspepsia. Salt excites passion. No ill effects are produced by the giving up of salt. Mahatma Gandhi and Swami Yogananda had given up salt for over thirteen years. Giving up salt helps you in controlling the tongue and thereby the mind also and in developing willpower, too. You will have good health.
Sitting before fire, company of women and worldly minded people, Yatra, long walk, carrying heavy burdens, cold bath in the early morning, harsh words, speaking untruth, dishonest practices, theft, killing animals, Himsa of all kinds either in thought, word or deed, hatred and enmity towards any person, fighting, quarreling, pride, double-dealing, intriguing, back-biting, tale-bearing, crookedness, talks other than those of Atman and Moksha, cruelty towards animals and people, too much fasting or eating only once every day are not recommended for a Pranayama practitioner.
The Yogic Diet
A diet that is conducive to the practice of Yoga and spiritual progress can be rightly termed ‘Yogic Diet’. Diet has an intimate connection with the mind. The mind is formed out of the subtlest portion of food. Sage Uddalaka instructs his son Svetaketu as follows: “Food when consumed becomes threefold, the gross particles become excreta, the middling ones flesh and the fine ones the mind.” Again you will find in the Chhandogya Upanishad: “By the purity of food one becomes purified in his nature; by the purification of his nature he verily gets memory of the Self, and by the attainment of the memory of the Self, all ties and attachments are severed.”
Diet is of three kinds, viz., Sattvic diet, Rajasic diet and Tamasic diet. Milk, fruits, cereals, butter, tomatoes, cheese, spinach are Sattvic foodstuffs. They render the mind pure. Fish, eggs, meat are Rajasic foodstuffs. Rajasic foods excite the passionate nature of humans. Beef, onions, garlic are Tamasic food stuffs. They fill the mind with inertia and anger. Lord Krishna says to Arjuna in the Gita (XVIII: 8-10): “The food which is dear to each is threefold. Hear thou the distinction of these. The foods which increase vitality, energy, vigour, health and joy and which are delicious, bland substantial and agreeable are dear to the pure. The passionate man desires foods that are bitter, sour, saline, excessively hot, pungent, dry and burning and which produce pain, grief and disease. The food which is stale, tasteless, putrid, rotten and impure is dear to the Tamasic.”
Food is of four kinds. There are drinking liquids; solids which are pulverised by the teeth and eaten; some solids which are taken by licking and soft articles that are swallowed without mastication. All articles of food should be thoroughly masticated in the mouth. Then only they can be readily digested, easily absorbed and assimilated in the system.
The diet should be such as can maintain physical efficiency and good health. The well being of each person depends on perfect nutrition than on anything else. Various sorts of intestinal diseases, increased susceptibility to infectious diseases, lack of high vitality and power of resistance, rickets, scurvy, anaemia of blood, beriberi are all due to faulty nutrition. It should be remembered that it is not so much the climate, as food which plays a vital part in producing a healthy strong man or a weakling suffering from a host of diseases. A knowledge of the science of dietetics is essential for every man if he wants to keep up physical efficiency and good health. He should be able to make out a cheap, well balanced diet from certain articles of diet. Then only all the members of his family will be hale and hearty. What is wanted is a well balanced diet, but not a rich one. A rich diet produces diseases of the liver, kidney, pancreas. A well balanced diet helps a person grow and turn out much work, increasing body weight, supporting efficiency and a high standard of vigour and vitality. You are what you eat. This is a truism indeed.
Food is required for two purposes:
1) to maintain our body heat
2) to produce new cells and to make up for the wear and tear of our bodies.
Foodstuffs contain proteins, carbohydrates, hydrocarbons, phosphates, salt, various kinds of ashes, water, vitamins, etc. Protein substances are nitrogenous. They build the tissues of the body. They are present in abundance in dal, milk, etc. They are called ’tissue-builders’. Proteins are complex organic compounds which contain carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen and sometimes sulphur, phosphorus and iron. Starches are carbohydrates. They are present in abundance in rice. Carbohydrates are ‘energy-producers’ or heat givers. Carbohydrates are substances, like starch, sugar containing carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrocarbons or fats are present in ghee and vegetable oils. Fats are compounds of glycerine with fatty acids. The human machine of the body necessarily needs lubrication. Butter, cream, cheese, olive-oil, ground nut oils, mustard oil are good for lubrication.
A well-balanced diet is one in which the different principles of diet that go to keep the body and mind in perfect health and harmony exist in proper proportions. Milk is perfect food, because it contains all nutritious principles in proper well balanced proportions. The protein, fat and carbohydrate should be in right proportion. They should be of the right kind. If a diet contains too much of one thing or too little of another, if it is faulty in one way or the other by being deficient or preponderating in one or more important constituents of food, then it is called an ill balanced or faulty diet. This will lead to malnutrition, stunted growth, physical deficiency, etc.
Many diseases take their origin from malnutrition. If the food is nutritious, wholesome and well balanced, one has good power of endurance and physical efficiency. If a person has a physical efficiency they can turn out more work. Some take milk as an animal diet, while some others regard egg as a vegetable diet. All these people are under a delusion. Egg is an animal diet. This is the emphatic declaration of learned sages. Yogic students should give up eggs. All the nutritive principles are found in milk, butter, cheese, fruits, almonds, tomatoes, carrots and turnips.
The important digestive juices are saliva in the mouth, gastric juice in the stomach, and pancreatic juice, bile and intestinal juice (succus entericus) in the small intestines. Saliva is alkaline. It is secreted by the salivary glands. Saliva digests starches. Gastric juice is acidic. It contains hydrochloric acid. It is secreted by the gastric glands. Gastric juice digests proteins. Pancreatic juice digests starches, proteins and fats. It contains three kinds of digestive ferments. It is manufactured by the pancreas. Bile is secreted by the liver. It digests fats. The food stuffs are rendered into chyle by the action of these digestive juices, which is absorbed by the lacteal of the small intestines.
Gluttons and epicureans cannot dream to get success in Yoga. The Yogi who takes moderate diet has regulated their diet can become a Yogi. That is the reason why Lord Krishna says to Arjuna: “Verily Yoga is not for him who eateth too much, nor who abstaineth to excess, nor who is too much addicted to sleep, nor even to wakefulness, Arjuna. Yoga killeth out all pain for him who is regulated in eating and amusement, regulated in performing actions, regulated in sleeping and waking” (Gita, VI: 16,17). Take pleasant, wholesome and sweet food half stomach full, fill the quarter stomach with pure room temperature water and allow the remaining quarter free for expansion of gas. This is moderate diet.
All articles that are putrid, stale, decomposed, fermented, unclean, twice-cooked, kept overnight should be abandoned. The diet should be simple, light, bland, wholesome, easily digestible and nutritious. The person who “lives to eat” is a sinner but those who “eats to live” is a saint. The latter should be adored. If there is hunger, food can be digested well. If you have no appetite do not take anything; give rest to the stomach.
Vitamins
Now a word now on vitamins. Vitamins are also required in the diet. They build the bodies. If they are absent or deficient, the body cannot grow and deficiency diseases result. They are present in very small quantities in foods. They are like a spark which ignites the fire of nutrition. There are four important kinds of vitamins: Vitamin A, Vitamin B, Vitamin C and Vitamin D. Vitamin A is present in milk. Vitamin B is present in the unpolished rice and tomato juice. Deficiency of Vitamin B causes beriberi. Those who eat polished rice get this disease. Vitamin C is found in vegetables, fruits and green leaves. This vitamin is destroyed by cooking, tinning. Sailors suffer from scurvy, because they cannot get fresh vegetables and fruits during long voyage. They generally take with them the juice of lemons. This prevents the development of scurvy. Vitamin D is present in milk, butter, eggs, cod-liver oil, etc. Absence or deficiency of vitamin D causes rickets in children.
Conclusion
Food is nothing but a mass of energy. Food supplies energy to the body and mind. If you can draw this energy from your pure will, if you know the Yogic technique of absorbing the energy directly from the sun or cosmic Prana, you can maintain the body with this energy and can dispense with food altogether. The Yogi gets Kayasiddhi or perfection of the body.
Simple, natural, nonstimulating, tissue building, energy producing, nonalcoholic foods and drinks keep the mind calm and pure and help one in Yogic practices and in the attainment of the goal of life.
From the book The Science of Pranayama by Swami Sivananda