Improve Your Yoga Practice With Food.
Practicing yoga helps to promote a mind and body connection. We can improve our yoga practice (and elevate our consciousness) with the types of food we consume. Yoga combined with a well-balanced diet of pure, light and mineral rich foods can help us to re-create our bodies and minds to achieve optimal health and emotional balance.
Watch: David Wolfe – Yoga and Food
Eat to live instead of living to eat. 
Most of us have experienced emotional eating. When we eat more than we need to (or convince ourselves that we need that extra piece of chocolate cake), we are usually trying to push emotions that we don’t want to deal with deep down inside us. Learn to observe your cravings when you are tired, upset or angry and although you are feeling at your best, still try to make decisions that are best for your body and mind.
When we practice yoga (detoxification), we allow these deep emotions to come up so we can deal with them, accept them and then release them. An imbalanced diet is counteractive to this process. An indicator of this is if you find yourself constantly in emotional circles or if you feel your practice isn’t going anywhere.
Most of us have also experienced a sore head. Headaches seem to be the number one symptom of toxins being released from the body. A diet that consists of processed foods, caffeine, sugar and meats are working even harder to get rid of ingested toxic elements. These types of diets often make us want to eat more as they don’t have much nutritional value – the body will incessantly crave more trying to find it.
So, what is the yogic diet?
Well, there really isn’t one, aside from a zillion recommendations to do this or that. The real method is learning to follow our instincts.
There is a natural instinct within all of us to follow a healthy balanced diet. If we want to live optimally, we must learn to listen to our mind and body from deep within. Practicing yoga often and with sincerity helps us to stimulate these amazing natural instincts. Yoga helps us to break old bad habits and replace them with balance. Yoga is a process of normalization that brings us back to our truest selves.
Why do we eat?
We eat to give the body and mind energy. Choosing foods that are fresh, organic, raw and pure helps to optimize our nutrient and mineral intake. Stopping when we first feel the slightest bit full leaves us with a sense of lightness and control. We should not feel sluggish and heavy after a meal. Eating a vegetarian diet may help us to feel calm, as it is easier on the digestive system. And, drinking lots of pure water, herbal tea and fresh vegetable juices hydrate us and often quench false hunger pains.
Yoga is about purification and transformation. It is a process that brings us back to union. When we live lighter, cleaner and happier, our consciousness and yoga practice grows.
