The Yoga of Food
By Mehtab, Founder of YOGA YOGA
March 2010

The first thing I learned about yoga and food was to not eat a bunch of watermelon and do shoulderstand.
Eventually I discovered the 2-hour waiting rule about practicing yoga after any meal.
My life-changing revelation about yoga and food came months later when I realized not only was I eating differently because of yoga but that food itself was an instrumental part of doing yoga.
Years later I discovered the secret behind yoga and food. It was simple but, just like yoga, life-changing forever.

(( CLICK HERE TO READ THE SECRET ))

The ancient yogis understood that the basic purpose of food was to supply vital life energy to the body so it would be healthy enough to undergo the transformational practices of yoga. More importantly, they discovered that consciousness itself was also dependent upon this vital life force found in both food and the breath.
This life energy is called “prana” and it is the foundational force behind the practice of yoga as we know it in the western world.
The secret of food and yoga is that the more prana we get through food, the more we realize the benefits in health and consciousness that yoga offers.
So how to get more prana from food? There are three simple rules:

Eat fresh food.
Eat unprocessed food.
Eat food well-prepared.

Fresh food contains high life force. Foods that were just growing, newly harvested, and in-season have the most prana. That certainly argues for consuming as much local food as possible, as close to the source as you can.
Sometimes we have to rely on dried foods or frozen foods because of the seasons, particularly if we grow our own food. But there is a point where foods held too long in storage or even naturally preserved lose their prana. Which brings me to the story of the 25-year old chicken.
My step-grandmother was the world’s worst cook. One day in 1988 she was rooting around in the bottom of her freezer and triumphantly pulled out a frozen chicken. “Look what I found! I bet it still tastes good.”
The freezer date said 1963. The chick had croaked with the birth of the Beatles and re-surfaced near the end of Disco. My grandfather ate it, never realizing it was older than most of his grandchildren. Amount of prana: Minus Zero.
Eating fresh for prana means we should also avoid left-over foods more than 24-hours old (or in my grandmother’s case, 24 years).

Unprocessed foods in their whole or natural state also contain the greatest amount of prana. This simply means limiting the amount of any packaged or machine-made foods we eat. If it comes in a box or would not be readily identified as a food item by an aborigine native, we should not expect much prana per mouthful.
The consumption of highly-processed, or actually non-food “food items,” reaches its highest expression in the midway snack foods served each year at the Texas State Fair. The focus here is on fried foods, possibly one of the most destructive cooking processes for making sure your meal arrives DOA and prana-free.
Here are the winning foods served each year at what is proudly proclaimed as the Fried Food Capitol of Texas:

2005 Fried PB, Jelly and Banana Sandwich
2006 Fried Coke
2007 Deep Fried Latte
2008 Chicken Fried Bacon
2009 Deep Fried Butter

Ideally whole foods should be processed as little as possible before eating, o at least have a whole baked potato with your deep fried butter and chicken fried bacon toppings.

Finally, foods that are well-prepared will contain the highest amount of life force or prana. Food preparation was considered to be a scared art among the yogis. Mantras were offered before and during preparation and the conscious of the cook was as important as the quality of the food itself for transmitting prana. Paying someone to cook your food was like paying for sex. I was impressed that when some of our visiting yoga teachers come to Yoga Yoga and prefer a meal cooked in a student’s home than going out to a restaurant.
Understanding how to prepare your own food as well as food for others to enjoy was part of the original yogic lifestyle. In the early years of his arrival in the United States, my teacher Yogi Bhajan often spent as much time in the ashram kitchen as he did teaching a yoga class. Food was like medicine and he knew how to prepare meals to bring out the healing qualities and increase the vital life energy in the body.

Most people eat at least three times a day. Few people do yoga more than once a day. If you can make food part of your yoga practice, amazing things will happen in your life as your overall level of prana increases and consciousness changes.
And if you don’t believe that, I have a 25-year old chicken I would like you to meet.

(For more information on healthy food preparation, reference the link to the Natural Epicurean classes in WHYY)