What is a Yoga Diet?
Yoga diet is an essential part of any yoga practice. However, a yoga diet is not your typical weight-loss plan: it does not require calorie counting, going without, or extensive menu planning. Rather, a yoga diet is an approach to eating, a way of redefining your personal relationship with food in order to achieve emotional and spiritual balance. Constituting its own branch of yoga known as “Anna Yoga,” yoga diets are all about how the food you eat affects you and how it helps or hinders you from reaching your spiritual goals.
While yoga diets feature foods that are highly nutritious, they are also very diverse, meaning they can be tailored to suit anyone – vegetarians, meat eaters, people with digestive conditions, and people with allergies.
Contents
Yoga Diet: The Tri-Gunas
Effects of Food in the Yoga Diet
Yoga Diet Food Choices
Examples of Sattvic foods:
Examples of Rajasic foods:
Examples of Tamasic foods:
Yoga Diet in Moderation
Yoga Diet: The Tri-Gunas
In keeping with the philosophy of yoga, eating the right food is considered an essential component in achieving physical, mental and emotional balance. The yogic literature speaks of three “gunas” or “tri-gunas” (elemental forces of nature):
Sattvic: Foods that are beneficial to us (pure)
Tamasic: Foods that are stale or rotten (impure)
Rajasic: Foods that are spicy/stimulating
In the ideal yoga diet, impure Tamasic and Rajasic foods are avoided, while Sattvic foods are embraced.
Effects of Food in the Yoga Diet
Based on the premise that what we eat affects us internally and externally, a Sattva diet – that is, a diet rich in fresh, natural (chemically unaltered), whole, and non-spicy foods – is conducive to higher thought and deep understanding, as well as to a body free from disease.
Conversely, tamasic and rajasic diets – that is, consumption of extremely spicy foods, unrefined sugars, and alcoholic beverages – are said to stimulate cravings, passions, and uncontrolled desires of the lower animal brain. These foods thus inhibit the mind from elevated thought and the attainment of profound understanding.
Yoga Diet Food Choices
Since our minds and bodies must be properly nourished to remain alert and energized, the practice of yoga should be coupled with eating the right and avoiding the wrong kind of foods.
Sattvic foods nourish the body, helping the mind maintain a peaceful state, helping the body function in maximum health, and producing a balanced flow of energy between the mind and body. A Sattvic diet is comprised of non-animal foods with the exceptions of dairy products such as milk, cheese, yogurt, butter, and eggs.
Examples of Sattvic foods:
Whole grains and cereals
Fresh fruit and vegetables
Pure fruit juices
Legumes
Nuts & seeds
Honey
Herbal teas
Milk, butter, and cheese
Rajasic diets – foods that are hot, bitter, sour, dry or salty – over-stimulate the body, make the mind restless,
