We have just completed our 5 week Ayurvedic Yoga Detox and we’ve learnt lots about this ancient science called Ayurveda. A big part of Ayurveda is what you eat, how you eat and what foods are particularly good for your body type. And all this knowledge beautifully ties in with our Yoga Retreat which is on in a couple of weeks (20-22 November), where for a whole weekend we do yoga, meditate, laugh and feast on Ayurvedic food.
An important aspect of preparing the meals for the yoga retreat (many of the curry masalas can be prepared in advance and frozen) is the mood of the cook who is catering for the retreat. Ayurveda believes that the mental state of the person preparing the food directly affects the body and mind of the person eating the meal. This isn’t a new idea. Talk to any successful chef or mother and they will both vouch that the mood of the cook affects the taste and enjoyment of the food. Food should be cooked with love because emotions are transferred to it and therefore nourish the subtle aspects of the human being (mental, emotional and spiritual). This is why we crave the food cooked by our mothers throughout our lives.
The yogis would say you transfer your own pranic energy through your fingers as you handle and prepare the food. The act of preparing food relates to the state of transforming matter. Cooking alters its chemistry for easier digestion and the emotional state of the cook becomes part of the transformation process. When anger prevails, these emotions can cause the food to affect our psychology – especially over long periods of time.
And rather skip a meal if you know the cook was unhappy. This is why the advanced spiritual teachers of the East never eat food prepared by anyone other than their own disciples.
You can take this idea right back to where the raw food came from. The vegetables (organic or pesticide laden, local or full of air miles?), the bees and insects, the farmers, the greengrocers and finally the cook. It’s a very different way of viewing eating which in Western society has been reduced to fast food (grab it from that branded food chain oligarchy, gobble it down in chunks and keep running). When you take the time to seek local, home grown ingredients for your meal, you start to support and nourish a whole circle of people involved in your meal preparation.
So as we feast on pumpkins from Witheren, sourdough bread from the local bakery, rhubarb from Tamborine Mountain, we connect into this wonderful chain of events from the bees all the way to that sumptuous dessert. Meals taste extra delicious. Yogis would agree that food prepared and eaten like this can be likened to Love made edible.