Let’s talk about food.
After a long travel, holidays with family and a forced hotel quarantaine I’m finally home. The kitchen hasn’t been used in 7 months and I forgot how to hold a knife but now I can finally cook the food I know is good for me. Does it taste amazing and will it get me a ‘michelin star’? No… but I will feel great tomorrow morning when I start my Sadhana.
How important food is, I only realized during the training at Isha. ‘Food is medicine, medicine is food.’ This words were repeated many times and the food we were served was delicious and healthy at the same time. All my digestion problems disappeared after couple of weeks and I forgot I even had any.
At one point in the training we were given a list of positive and negative pranic foods, and trust me the more you know the less you want to listen! Garlic and onion were easy for me to give up as I was never a great fan, but potatoes…?! Others had tears in their eyes saying goodbye to coffee and tea…
But the list of negative pranic foods is actually very short and there are so many great foods that are good for you! The problem is, that those bad ones are what we love! Bye bye my mum’s delicious potatoes stuffed dumplings, mashed or fries….
The temptation is always there but my body feels younger, my joints are flexible and I never feel sleepy or lethargic even after a full meal. So the choice is simple.
It’s not only what you eat but how you eat. For the first 15 years of my life I was skinny and underweight, after hitting puberty I suddenly gained 10 kg in a year and the struggle began. I developed terrible eating habits, was constantly on diets and food became my obsession.
By some miracle it didn’t turn into a disorder but I was always unhappy about the way I looked. The bad eating habits continued, and I kept gaining weight.
After graduating university I moved across the world to China, started a new job and found an accepting partner and somehow my weight dropped without me even trying. For the past 10 years I maintained somewhat healthy weight and I stopped struggling with my self-image.
But that fear of slipping back has always been there.
Until yoga.
Now I actually listen to my body and see how it responds to the food I eat. If I indulge in that bucket of chips tonight I will not be able to touch the forehead to my legs tomorrow morning and I will have only myself to blame. So instead of binging on the food in front of me I make a conscious decision based on experience.
It’s a working progress and I still slip now and again, but I try to be better. Maybe I can even chop some carrots with that forgotten knife?
