Yoga Health Secrets

A healthy vegetarian diet for Yoga

This is a book about Hatha Yoga and I am writing it mainly from the point of view of your health. However, the body and the mind being inseparable, in showing you how to discipline the one I cannot but mention from time to time the effect upon the other. As Yoga gives your body a new lightness and suppleness you will find that you have gradually become a more spiritual person and food will be of less importance to you than before. You will become more sensitive to the feelings of others and therefore stop to consider the feelings of helpless animals in slaughterhouses up and down the country.

You who long to be slim, to regain your youthful suppleness and vitality, are going to be helped to this end not, as I warned you at the beginning, by any magical or ‘crash’ diet, but simply by adjusting your eating habits and way of thinking. Where to begin?

First of all remember that our bodies are only nourished by food which they can break down and assimilate and that, ideally, all food should be laxative. This is far from the case, however, and far too much devitalized and unnatural food is being consumed in this modern world with the result that an appallingly high percentage of the population suffers from constipation and other disorders of the digestive tract. As I said at the beginning of chapter eight, the Yogis name constipation as ‘the Mother of all diseases’, and here we might aptly name devitalized food as ‘the mother of all constipation and digestive disorders’.

What is devitalized food and why are the Yogis so against it? Dead and devitalized foods include everything that has been preserved, bottled, bleached, refined, canned, pickled, or polished. When I say avoid eating white flour products, white sugar products, and polished rice you will ask why. What is wrong with these substances? Simply that in their refined state they are unsuitable as foods and are actually harmful to the human body. What is wrong with eating raw sugar, whole wheat flour products, and unpolished rice? They may prove somewhat dearer but who in his right mind would try to economize on good food? And in the case of raw sugar be careful that you are not buying refined sugar that has simply been coloured brown. And try, for a change, to sweeten your food with honey. More easily assimilated than any other food, it is especially beneficial to older people and those of you who are suffering from digestive troubles of any kind.

Being a lifelong honey eater I cannot impress on you too strongly how wholesome and nutritious a food this is. The purest and most natural of foods, it is cheap and plentiful and yet so few people recognize its enormous value.

I seem to hear protests in my ears already. Do you say that you once bought a jar of honey, and you tried to eat it and what happened. It simply would not go down. You dislike the stuff and that is that. But wait. Perhaps you once bought a pound of sour apples. Did you then decide never to buy apples again because you disliked the taste of sour ones? There are very many different honeys. Maybe the jar you once bought was a blended honey, better used in cooking. Why not try one of the dark honeys, brown as a nut, with the strong and heady sweetness of sunshine? Why not try one of the mild, creamy white honeys, thick and subtle flavoured? There is such a bewildering variety of honeys from all over the world that I could not possibly name them all, but perhaps the most delectable of all, though it is a matter of personal preference, are the clover honeys, smooth and mellow as butterscotch, and with an unforgettable bouquet, and the dark-toned, exotic honeys of the Caribbean.

And do not, please, think that honey is always clear golden or biscuit coloured. Honeys are as multi-coloured as a rainbow. The French honey that is gathered from the blooms of gooseberry and sycamore trees is an exquisite sea green. The flavour, need I say, is beyond words. From Brazil comes a black honey, from Africa a clear, pale green, and from Texas comes one of the most unique honeys in the world, the remarkable guajillo honey which is crystal white with a pearly reflection like new milk. Not always available in American “health-food” stores, but to be looked for at any rate, is the exotic lotus honey of India. It is as exciting, as mysterious, and as health giving as Yoga itself. I could go on for a whole book writing ecstatically of the wonder and the glories of honey but let it suffice to say that if you think you dislike honey then try all the different ones you can find. If you fail to find one you like you are indeed unique.

If you feel I was becoming lyrical over honey I am going to be just the opposite about its greatest rival-sugar. Why, I wonder, did we abandon honey, nature’s most nutritious sweet food, in favour of dry, sterile, refined sugars? I am afraid that there can be only one answer-sheer ignorance of the basic needs and capabilities of the human organism. Because, up to about the year 1700 sugar was the exclusive amenity of the aristocracy, it came to be greatly prized by the masses as a delicacy. It had a certain social significance as, say, caviar has today. So when a new process was discovered of refining sugar cheaply and in large quantities honey began to lose its popularity as a sweetening agent and became increasingly less available as sugar became more so.

Then physicians in America and Europe began to realize that a tragic dietary mistake was being made and that the over indulgence in artificial sugars was causing increasing ill health. New digestive and nervous disorders began to make their appearance, and the instance of diabetes shot up alarmingly.