A common experience, among those who have practiced some form of yoga (or qigong or meditation) for a sustained period of time, is the experience of having ones weight stabilize, and maintain itself ~ almost magically ~ at the “perfect” level. This has certainly been my experience … Regardless of what I eat (and granted, my diet is, my most standards, quite a “healthy” one), my weight has appeared, over many years, to fluctuate no more than a couple of pounds in either direction. I don’t have scientific “proof” of this, since I almost never weigh myself on a scale … but it is my perception, which I’ve grown to trust. Basically, I feel comfortable in my body, and most of the time what I want to eat is what my body needs … After I’ve eaten what I have desired, I feel nourished, satisfied, and energized by those choices.
But this sort of natural equilibrium, around weight and food choices, for most people takes a while to cultivate. So, in the meantime, what to do about this eating thing? This body-weight thing? Based upon advice I’ve received, over the years and from people I trust, I’d like to present two practices: one very simple (in terms of its mechanics, at least); the other a bit more involved. What they have in common is this: you’re not required to change WHAT you eat, in any way. Sound intriguing? Read on … !
The first practice, designed specifically for those who would be healthier & happier if they weighed less than they do now, is to follow one simple “rule,” which is: don’t eat anything after 5 p.m. This is a strategy that was transmitted to me by one of my teachers (herself a yogini, in the Sikh tradition) in Chinese medical school. What she noticed was that, almost universally, those patients of hers who were able to do this one thing, did indeed lose the weight that they needed to, without doing anything else. The explanation for this (common to both the Chinese and the Ayurvedic medical models) is that our digestive “fire” is hottest at high noon, and from there begins its daily descent … reaching its low point at around midnight. To be in alignment with this natural cycle of our digestive system, it’s best to eat our largest meal at around noon, and definitely to avoid those fashionably late dinners, or midnight snacks. Now actually doing this may require some inconvenient if not downright painful (emotionally, socially) shifts & changes in your habitual eating patterns … But if you’re able to work through that piece of it, it’s a very simple thing!
A more involved meal-time practice ~ which still does not require you to change what you eat (though over time, this may indeed, and quite naturally, begin to happen) ~ is to bring a new level of mindfulness to the entire eating process. This sort of practice begins with the commitment to simply eat, when you’re eating, i.e. to avoid meal-time multi-tasking (you know: reading the paper, checking you email or voice messages, driving the kids to school at the same time as you’re having breakfast, lunch or dinner). Then, once you have your food on your plate, to pause for a moment or two to consider where the food has come from: to think of all the plants, minerals, animals and human beings without whom this food would not be here in front of you. So to remember: the farm-workers, the sunshine & minerals which were food to the plants that you’re about to consume, the plants which were food to the animals you’re about to consume, the workers in the supermarket and in the slaughterhouse … As we deepen this practice, we come to understand that the food we’re about to consume could not be here were it not for the entire universe! Then we say a prayer, of acknowledgement and of gratitude, for what we’re about to consume. This could be anything that you’d like it to be. A traditional prayer from the Hindu tradition is as follows (first in transliterated Sanskrit, then the English translation):
brahmaarpaNaM brahma haviH brahmaagnau brahmaNaa hutam.h .
brahmaiva tena gantavyaM brahmakarmasamaadhinaa ..
“A process of offering is Brahman, the oblation is Brahman, the instrument of offering is Brahman, the fire to which the offering is made is also Brahman. For such a one who abides in Brahman, by him alone Brahman is reached.”
The essential message of this prayer is: we and the food and the process of eating & drinking are all made of the same “stuff” … and as we come, directly, to realize this, we and our food and our entire world is revealed as Divine (Brahman). In other words: you are God, eating food which is God, which is digested by God, and if you really get this, you will have reached God!
So now ~ at long last! ~ we take our first bite … and chew it long enough to really taste it, and perhaps even long enough to notice how the taste changes as the food begins to break down in our mouths. And we allow ourselves to notice: is this an enjoyable or less-than-enjoyable taste? And allow ourselves to enjoy the whole process … and to marvel at its miracle: at some point (where exactly is that point?) this food ceases to be “food” and becomes part of “my” body!
These sorts of “mindfulness of eating” practices are a potent way of waking up the body’s own intelligence … and as such, are likely, over the long run, to have balancing and stabilizing affects on all of our physical (as well as emotional and spiritual) systems. Give it a try … and bon appetit!
Elizabeth Reninger, M.S. (Oriental Medicine) has been exploring Yoga/Qigong – in its Daoist, Buddhist and Hindu varieties – for upwards of twenty-five years. She maintains a private acupuncture practice in Boulder, Colorado, and is a published poet. For more of Elizabeth’s writing, on related topics, please visit http://taoism.about.com
