Food

Because Yoga is practiced mostly as a form of fitness in this country, it is inevitable that the subject of food will arise. Fitness and Food always go together. On the other hand, when approaching yoga from a more spiritual perspective, the subject of food will also come up. How to nourish ourselves is deeply related to spirituality, especially when one considers the human body a vessel for the spiritual journey.
I've been thinking about food a lot this month since I began working with a personal trainer who has asked me to track everything I consume on a daily basis for a few weeks to see how my diet affects my energy levels. This has been an interesting experiment in Satya and Bramacharya, Truth and Moderation.
Picking up this month's issue of Yoga Journal, lo and behold, there is an article about this very topic! Funny how things work out that way. The author is writing from the perspective of having been an over-weight child and teen and learning to come to terms with food as nourishment for the body rather than medication for the mind. She talks about Satya and Bramacharya and how they play an enormous role in this transition.
Food is a hot topic and one that people are very passionate about, especially those (like myself) who are inclined toward health and fitness. So it is not uncommon for people to really duke it out, in a philosophical "food fight" of sorts, over the topic of what to eat, or what not to eat. This really gets dicey.
Full disclosure: I am a carnivore. This comes as a shock to some in the yoga world. A lot of yogis fervently believe you must be a vegetarian to really practice yoga. I was a vegetarian once. It made me fat and depressed. It has taken more than a decade for me to find a diet that truly suits my physiology. You may have noticed from my little "bio" above that I refer to myself as a "Food Fundamentalist". This is a term I lifted from somewhere off the internet, I don't remember where, from a raving individual who had had it up to here with "Liberal, Yuppie, Subaru-driving food fundamentalists from Vermont". I laughed so hard, recognizing myself immediately, that I have since come to describe myself that way every time I get the chance. A food fundamentalist is someone who only wants the highest quality of food available and has the income to purchase it. Think organic, farmer's markets, raw milk, and you get the picture. Well, that is me. I raise my own chicken for eggs, travel 40 minutes out of my way once a week for raw milk from traditional dairy cows (i.e. not Holsteins), and buy most of my meat, fruit and vegetables from local farmers. I spend a great deal of money on food. But I digress.
The point I am trying to make here is that the one truly yogic approach to food and nutrition is, you guessed it, paying attention. It is not up to others to tell you what you should or should not ingest. It is entirely up to you. It is, in fact, one of the greatest responsibilities you have to yourself. Your physiology is unique to you, and what I eat may not necessarily be good for you. What works wonders for you may be poison for me. Read, learn and experiment with your diet. How does it make you feel? Does your energy crash at some point? Are you holding on to too much body fat? These are issues we all must eventually confront if we want to nourish ourselves optimally. However, if we require a change, the prescription will most likely be different for each one of us.
My personal trainer asked me to limit my daily caloric intake to 1600 for a few weeks. She kept asking me, "how do you feel?" I kept thinking that she meant, "are you getting enough to eat at that level". Eventually I figured out that what she really was talking about was my day-long energy level. When I eliminated sugar and grain from my diet and kept as close to the 1600 calorie limit as possible, I started bouncing off the walls with energy. I finally got it. What my trainer was teaching me is that moderation done properly will give me sustained energy levels. She asked me just yesterday if I wanted to go another week counting calories and I said Yes. Not because I truly want to keep counting calories, which I think is a pain in the butt, but because it is an exercise in Satya and Bramacharya. It is a form of Tapas, or self-discipline which I feel I am greatly benefiting from at this point in my life.
Choosing the diet that is correct for your unique physiology can at times conflict with your practice of Yama and Niyama. As a carnivore, I have to reckon with ahimsa: non-violence. Yogis often choose vegetarianism for this very reason. On the other hand, a high-carbohydrate vegetarian diet is a form of violence to my own body, trapping me in a vicious cycle of blood-sugar swings and robbing me of vital energy. How then do I practice ahimsa with regard to other animals? First and foremost I travel and spend money looking for farmers who raise their animals on a proper diet (e.g. grass) and take great care of them, which in fact extends to the way they even choose to slaughter. When we choose to raise animals, for whatever reason, we bear the responsibility for their proper care. For that reason, where I purchase animal products becomes a very important decision that takes into consideration my values regarding not only my own health, but the health and welfare of the animals involved. That may not seem like an adequate "excuse" for meat-eating to some vegetarians, and that is okay. It is simply the way I reconcile caring for myself as well as for others according to my yogic value system. Caring for the vessel that carries us through our spiritual journey requires a form of Satya that we may not always be comfortable with. But then again, Ashtanga Yoga never promised the path would be easy.

Santosha

Contentment. Practicing contentment can be more difficult than it would seem. We live in a fast-paced, success-oriented, consumerist society which seems to be sending the same message over and over again: you are not yet complete without the latest (fill in the blank). At what point, then, are we complete? When we've maxed out our last credit card?? I think a great many people have already tried that and guess what? It doesn't work! Practicing santosha means practicing regular reflection on what we have, not what we don't have. We do tend to do this from time to time: saying grace before dinner, saying blessings for our family, etc. But most of the time we get caught up in the rat race of status and consumption. Santosha is more than saying grace. It is remembering all day long what we are grateful for. Not obsessing about the car we want to have but rather reminding ourselves of how lucky we are to have a car that gets us where we want to go. Santosha means celebrating the healthy body you have rather than despising our legs that don't look good in skinny jeans. Get the gist? It is simply a matter of turning around the negative thoughts: they are only one side of the coin. Focus on the other side instead. It saves a lot of energy and helps you develop a far more satisfying life.
A radical example of practicing santosha is that of a friend of mine in the yoga community whose house burned down a few years ago. She lost all of her possessions. This is everyone's nightmare. But what she walked away with was her life and her daughter's life. Neither was injured. Within one week she began to experience a feeling of great freedom and contentment. She no longer had all the clutter of everyday life, just the things that mattered, her daughter and herself. This is not such an unusual story. Many people have reported that same sense of freedom once they finally lost all their "stuff". We tend to cling to our belongings and fear losing them as we've identified with them as an integral part of ourselves. But once they are gone, we realize we are so much more than the sum of our belongings! Aparigraha, or non-hoarding, is practiced for this very reason.
Every day we need to re-evaluate our contentment. Sometimes we are not healthy or we do not have a car. And sometimes we need to just kvetch and get it out of our system. But Satya, or truth, is a major component here. If we are truthful with ourselves about what is, we are more likely to cultivate contentment than if we simply sulk about what is not and long for something that no longer is or was never meant to be.

Satya - Truth

This is a good one. Satya is the second Yama. Just how truthful are we in our daily lives? Now if you know yourself to be someone who never lies, then congratulations, you have passed level one in truthfulness. Now you are going to have to look a little deeper to do the level 2 work. A good example comes from yesterday's post about Ahimsa, where I had to determine whether one more interval would be violent to my body or helpful to my fitness. I was tired. I wanted to quit after just four. But I made myself do one more. That is because I dealt with the truth of the situation -- I wasn't at all on the verge of injury, I was just wimping out. Whether I did the extra interval or not hardly mattered: what mattered was that I was at least truthful to myself about why I did or did not do it.
That is an example of both ahimsa and satya at work together. I love when this happens! The Yamas are always reinforcing each other.
Here is another example: two adult sisters are expecting a visit from their elderly parents. One sister is jealous that the parents have chosen to stay at the other sister's house during their visit. The jealous sister says, "why do they always stay with you when they visit?". The other sister replies, "Because I invite them!" So what is going on here? This is a classic example of feeling sorry for ourselves because it seems someone else always has the luck. Dig a little deeper and we realize that what appears as luck on the surface is really just a consequence of a particular action (Ah, Karma!). Had Jealous Sister extended an invitation, the parents might actually have stayed at her house during their visit. This is really a tough one. It is much easier to believe that others have all the luck than to try to figure out what we may have done or not done to deserve our lot in life. Now this is really Yoga - if we want to improve our lot, we are going to have to do the work (sort of like running the intervals!) to figure out which actions we can take, or eliminate, in order to change an outcome. That requires Truth. Satya.