The kitchen is our medicine cabinet & the cook our doctor.
The kitchen is the soul of our homes. What we cook, how we cook it, how we consume it – all are part of what makes nourishing food.
All of it is an art, an expression of creativity, that blossoms from deep within. It may sound very philosophical. But when we choose to tune into the importance of the kitchen, the food, the cook, then we can realize what an opportunity we have in our own homes to heal our bodies & minds and sparkle our souls. This is what provides nourishment when we eat.
After all, there is a cosmic power, a Goddess who presides over the kitchen and works through the cook, Annapoona Mata. And there is a God of health, Dhanvantri Deva, who prescribes healing through the power of what Earth provides. The power of nourishment when we eat and its healing abilities are as rooted as our existence on Earth.
So then, what does it mean to eat like a yogi? Eat consciously.
There is a food prayer from the Bhagavat Gita that we chant before meals. It honors the food as divine, the one eating as divine, the digestion as divine. By divine, we mean God, purity, ultimate consciousness, however you want to say it. A yogi not only chants this, but practices it. And so food is pleasurable in a totally different way than most of us know & the nourishment when eating is deeper than getting daily doses of nutrients.
Our initial interaction with food is its fragrant, its beauty and generally whatever pleases our senses even before it gets to our tongue. There is nothing wrong with this except that it’s incomplete. We have perfected our senses to the point where they drive us. To eat like a yogi, we just need to practice going beyond this. No, we don’t have to stop admiring food, watching cooking shows and taking pictures of our beautiful meals.
But let’s choose to go beyond. Enjoy the aroma, enjoy the beauty and then also enjoy the one who is enjoying.
Contemplate on that…who is the one enjoying?
So with that, I hope that our content on food nourishes your appetite for good food & for your search in understanding yourSelf.
Happy eating, Yogi!