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Conscious Eating (or Yogic Eating) is a guide to the healthiest relationship you can have with food and with yourself, increasing your health and well-being. The body is a temple - the vessel of your soul in this plane of existence - take good care of it! EATING HABITS AND RELAXATION Before you eat, relax your body and your mind. Unhealthy eating patterns are often caused by tension and stress. When you experience stress or negative emotions, you lose energy (prana - see more info on this in the pranayama/breathing section). Unconsciously, you want to eat to replace that lost energy. You can lose more energy than you gain if you make poor food choices. You expend more energy processing the food than the food gives to you, and a low-energy cycle is created. Making wise food choices, relaxing before eating, and understanding your inner attitudes that prompt you to eat can help create healthy eating patterns. Relax before eating, to allow the digesting system to break down the food more easily. Learning to relax throughout your day and you will need less food. Tension drains energy, prompting you to eat large meals. Less energy is lost when you are relaxed, so your food intake needs are lower. Make healthy and wise food choices before you eat. Select foods that you know will increase the health of your body, and avoid the foods that just drain energy from the digestive process. Simple, whole, natural foods tend to be much healthier than highly processed foods. Begin to connect with your inner self. Learn to understand the attitudes which prompt you to eat. Notice tension, emotions and their affect on you, and you will gain a deeper understanding of the motivations that affect your eating patterns. When we are tense, we try to fulfill ourselves by indulging our senses. Food is an easy and fast way to satisfy that urge. Satisfying our desires for pleasure through food, sex, television and other pastimes hides the emptiness inside. That emptiness is spiritual starvation. Our soul needs fulfillment. There are many levels of our being, and we often do not take a holistic approach to fulfillment on all these levels. We often only see the easiest, surface level needs -and try to fulfill ourselves on a physical level. Our society is highly focused on food. There are many commercials for appealing looking foods, as well as many ads for digestive aids, antacid tablets, and diet aids and fads. This is a portrayal of our focus on food as gratification for inner emptiness, and the problems of overeating, unhealthy bodies, and poor digestion caused by this. NATURAL HUNGER The focus on food and using taste sensation to fulfill ourselves on a superficial level (ignoring our inner needs) has over stimulated us, dulling our awareness of the real physical needs of our bodies. Often we eat when we are not really hungry in the natural, physical sense of hunger. The hunger we respond to is produced by our minds, our craving for taste sensations. That craving is simply a desire to recreate previous experiences. Habits based on memories of pleasurable tastes. These habits decrease our health, rather than improving our health and well-being. Many of us are tense and not able to enjoy their lives fully, so we seek gratification from eating, losing their connection to their natural, true physical hunger. Losing this connection to true hunger is the main cause of overeating. If you have some old eating habits or behavior patterns like this, honor them as a coping technique that was useful for you at one time, but is no longer needed. Let them go. Create healthy guidelines to replace them. Make room for your more aware choices, now that you are living consciously. Notice when you are naturally hungry - when your appetite is stimulated by the pure physical hunger for food. You may have memories of times when you are outdoors in the fresh air, active physically. Then the most simple and wholesome food tastes gratifying, fulfilling and delicious. When you are sitting at a desk all day, under fluorescent lights, behind a computer, even the most delicious foods may not fulfill you. A physically inactive lifestyle is unhealthy, and we cannot experience complete satisfaction from eating. We try to compensate by eating more, and eating more ornate flavors and textures. When we do not experience the complete satisfaction that comes from eating with a natural hunger, we try to find other ways to reach that satisfaction. We eat elaborate foods - rich, spiced, with added colors, aromas, and flavors. We use cocktails and hors d'oeuvres to stimulate our appetite artificially. Additives and alcohols do not increase our health - if anything, they are detrimental to our health. Satisfaction and gratification only come from natural hunger, not the rich and elaborate tastes and textures of the foods we eat. FOOD AS FUEL An old saying is "Eat to live, don't live to eat." It holds true today. We eat food in order to provide energy to our body and sustain life. On the yogic path, this is so that our body is healthy and can support us in our quest to develop our highest potential. Our culture has distorted the basic function of eating from this life-sustaining process into a sense-gratification method. Even people who go to health food stores, shopping for organic, basically healthy natural foods, are prone to the risks of overeating and damaging the health. We need to remember that the role of food is as fuel, and to eat only when we feel the urge of natural hunger in the body. Even natural organic foods are marketed as "tasty delicious treats" that are "healthy for you." They are not healthy for you if your body does not need food right then. We need to take care to avoid over-indulging or eating poorly. The way to do this is to always be aware of the true role of food - to nourish our body. SUMMARY Remember - listen to your body. Follow the wisdom inherent in your own body to guide you to healthy food choices. Use discrimination when eating anything - even organic, whole, natural foods. Eat when you feel a natural hunger in your body. Be aware of your unconscious motivations when eating. Eat to satisfy the physical need of the body, not an emotional need. RELAX as much as possible before eating. Let go of tension you become aware of during the day, before it saps your energy (prana) and leaves you craving something to replace that energy. As you develop these healthy eating habits, you will notice incredible health benefits. Also, you will reap deeper rewards - a heightened awareness of conscious eating and listening to your body, and a deeper and more fulfilling experience of enjoying your food. Your life will be more rewarding as you begin to seek true contentment rather than instant gratification. Honor yourself for the healthy choices you make, incorporating yoga and conscious eating into your life. Namaste!
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