living yoga

Many of us develop a particular relationship to food.  Food is not only a way to feed ourselves, it has many other important roles.  Food is a way to experience pleasure, it is a way to find comfort, it is a way to express our creativity, it is a way to feel pride, it is a way to express love or affection, it is a way to communicate.  Food has different functions around which we create habits.  By the same token, food is also used to manipulate us, to stimulate us, to trigger our more basic instincts and unfortunately, to numb us.  That is probably why our relationship to food is so complicated.  Or maybe if it is so complicated, it is because we still have a lot of work to do to break free from the hold it has on our behavior.  The importance our mind gives to food is probably a reflection of how far society has taken us in changing the meaning of food, and yes I will acknowledge that society is only a reflection of our inner struggles that we have expressed through a change in the food industry which is validated through advertisement or marketing.  So why can’t we just simply come back to the basics?  Why can we no longer just have a “simple” meal that is good for us?   The food industry has gone far but with more and more movements towards healthier eating and more organic ways of farming we can hope that we are realizing the importance of change and are willing to make that statement through our food shopping patterns.  We have so mistreated our earth, our environment, our animals, our fish, our crops that we have developed some of the worst sicknesses.  Cancer is a perfect example.  We can no longer survive in the environment we have created so it’s time for change, it’s time to heal and it is time to bring awareness to our eating habits.  We need to break our patterns that are creating obesity in too many children and adults, we need to understand truly that many of our chronic pains are linked to our diet.  I know this is a difficult thing to accept but as we start modifying our diet and start breaking the habits patterns we realize that indeed, our physical pains can subside.

So what is my relationship to food?  I have a sweet tooth, I eat more than I should and I seem to have no limit for the foods that I enjoy (which are usually cookies and chocolate).  I have regular cravings for “junk” foods.  Though because I tend to have a sweet tooth, I am not one of these people who enjoys prepared meals, fast foods or chips of any kind, it is more the candies and sweets.  During the course of my life I have gone from healthier periods to less healthy periods of eating habits.  I have not been a real follower of diets of any kind.  I love eating and during my first pregnancy I gained a lot of weight.  For the rest of my adulthood I have tried to adjust my diet and find healthy combinations but regardless of how much I try, I seem to get right back to my weak spot, the cookies, candies and chocolates.

In the course of the last year my diet has changed substantially.  After returning from India, I have stayed vegetarian.  Though I am not sure how long that will last, the less I eat meat the less I have a taste for it.  I have continued eating fish but I am becoming allergic to a few fish – a puzzling development at this point, but maybe a way to help me align more to my environment?   The products I use are for the most part organic and I eat far more fruit, vegetables and spices than I use to.  I have also agreed that if I were to have cookies or cakes or any sweet desert, they would have to be home made.  I have stuck to that pretty well (I bake a lot!!!).  Little by little the items in my food closet have changed.  This means that even the kids have had to adapt to the changes!

When I eat well, I feel so much better.   Yet I do find moments when I need the sugar.  In part the sugar for me is a booster.  The days are long, I am constantly on the go, and when I am tired there is nothing that boosts me faster than some chocolate or a sweet treat!  I know though, that a fruit or nuts would have the same affect yet it is often still difficult to make the switch.  For a long time, what was difficult in making the switch is that I had the attitude of finding it good to “please” myself.  I would justify it by saying that I ate healthy overall and that if I wanted to please myself then I should feel that I could.  This sense of pleasure is unfortunately the wrong one.  I would actually feel worse after, needing another boost and follow a cycle of eating sweets to boost myself and then feeling more tired shortly after and therefore needing more sweets….  This went on for a while.  When the sweets are not available at home, it becomes much easier to pick the right food.  The problem lies with a few other points I mentioned at the beginning.  My choice of food has also been a way for me to treat my children.  I would buy these foods with the excuse that I wanted to share them with my children (I mean I really did share them but I would have quite a bit of them too!)  The point is that yes my kids love nutella and if given a choice between museli or Froot Loops, they will not hesitate for a moment.   How many times have we sat around chocolates, cookies, or ice-cream sundaes thinking that these were the best moments.  Food has become something we share, something we can bond around.  The salty eaters vs. the sweet eaters.  Because our kids thrive on these foods (the marketing is great there, but we as parents play the first role around food), we feel that we are being so nice to our children by treating them to sweets.  There is sometimes a deviant attitude with it that connects you to the other person: “come on, forget the homework, don’t you just want to watch a movie have pop corn or chocolate cake and just relax….”  Sometimes we use it as our bargaining tool, giving the unhealthy food a better reputation than the healthy food: “if you eat your vegetables you can have a cookie”.

With awareness brought to the foods we chose, that has slowly changed in our family.  There is a greater awareness that is around “if I love you then I will prepare a well balanced meal for you, because that is really how I can show you that I love you”.

At first glance my eating habits did not seem driven by moral issues.  I eat healthy because I want to be healthy.  Thinking about it further though, when I first became a vegetarian, I did so because of the way animals were treated and slaughtered.  This has certainly influenced my move to bio foods.  I have also been appalled by the pesticides used on crops and I support organic farming and that has also driven my habits.  In a more subtle way, rejecting the marketing messages and not wanting to be manipulated by advertisement is certainly another reason that changes my eating habits.  So in a way I guess I do have moral issues that drive my behavior. The primary reason for changes in my diet are health related and when aligning my body to my environment, it becomes difficult not to apply ahimsa to my eating habits, and that extends to the entire food process.  It simply implies that the guiding principles I have chosen for my life need to be applied to my eating habits.

As 2011 comes to a close it is always a good time to reflect on the events that have marked the year (no matter how pleasant or painful).  It is a time to observe how we have grown thanks to these events.

With yoga, I have developed a more precise understanding of the principles that guide my life.  Or at least, the principles I believe should guide my life.  I have been able to understand more clearly what it is I have been searching for and there are a set of “virtues” or “standards” that I have identified as being fundamental to my being.  I have started measuring my actions against them.  They are constant and are a point of reference that does not change with time.  The only thing that changes is the way I live these principles, the way my life starts reflecting them.

These principles are not unique to “yoga”, it is just that through the discipline I have been able to grasp them more.  Practice and discipline, learning to be focused and studying myself have helped me understand these principles more deeply and start living them.  Living these principles starts with the realization that within us, within all living things, there is a particle, a nucleus of energy that is part of the greater cosmic energy.  If we understand that we are more than matter, that we have an immortal element within us that is the source of our life as we “know” it (the source of the creation of matter), then we are ready to feel a connection with the world around us, we are ready to recognize that all living things have that nucleus and are as we are.

With that, we are ready to apply our first principle: COMPASSION.  If we can understand that we are part of all living matter, that we are the result of the shift of energies from which matter is created, transformed and absorbed, that we are therefore connected to all matter, then we must care and feel compassionate.

If we are compassionate, it becomes natural to apply the second principle: AHIMSA (NON-HARMING). This second principle can be applied at various levels and also has to be applied to oneself in thought, word and action.  This principle is a crucial one as it permits us to explore how we bring gentleness, patience and tolerance into our world.

These qualities enable us to be truer to ourselves, bringing us to the third principle: SATYA or TRUTHFULNESS. As we continuously work on uncovering our True Self, we come closer to SATYA.  It becomes more obvious to lead a “true” life, one that is aligned to our principles.  As we take away the layers of Avidya (ignorance of the True Self) we find Satya.  The closer we get to SATYA, the more FEARLESS we become because we can let go of all the pains, constraints, limits that come with attachment.  If we can let go of all that we believe defines us (job titles, financial successes, fame…) we will find who we truly are.  By the same token, if we can let go of our expectations, if we can understand that all that matters is what we do in the present moment, we can stop worrying about what we should expect from our actions.  We should just act in the present moment in accordance with our principles, regardless of what we think/hope we will gain from it (let’s get rid of greed while we are at it!).

I know it is such a cliché to stress the importance of the present moment but ultimately, there isn’t much you can do about the past and you can’t predict the future.  Our only true freedom lies in the present moment.  Once we can understand that, we can also start understanding that how we live our present moment helps determine our future.  We need to take responsibility for what we do in the present.  Swami Rama expresses it quite well when he says: “if you plant an apple seed you will grow apples.   No matter how hard you pray, you will never get a pear from an apple seed”.  If our actions are aligned to our guiding principles, if we can apply NON-ATTACHMENT and start trusting our present, then we can have faith that the universe will handle the details.

So these are already a few guiding principles that I believe are fundamental to my life today.  With these comes one last principle:  GIVING. Little by little we realize that our life is about giving (sharing is an important element of giving).  Giving does not require any effort, it becomes the way we live our life.  And we do not give with the expectation of a return on our action.  We give because we understand and apply the previous principles and giving is just the way we express them.  We give because we love, we give because we have compassion, we give because we believe that all are worthy of that attention and support.  We give not only to other people but to all that surrounds us, to our environment.  We give because we recognize our connection to the world around us.

In order to live by these principles, we have to continue to understand the binding effects of the mind, the emotions, the foods we eat, we have to strive for a balance that will bring us to that deeper peace.

Wishing you all a healthy and peaceful 2012!