"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them." -Henry David Thoreau
Absolving fragmented situations and obtaining cohesion begins at a personal level. Luckily, the book "The Yoga of Eating" does not enforce suggestions, but artfully asks the reader to fully align to his or her true self. I find the passages worthwhile, and the author is passionate to "Transcend dogmas and diets to nourish the natural self." Charles Eisenstein is a Yale Graduate who currently teaches at Penn State University. He describes everything essential to trusting one's own body, while laying waste to diet books that enforce the reader to keep a "standard" for his or herself. He writes: "The need for nurturance is a genuine human need. To combat an unmet need with willpower is both foolish and futile. Only when we heal the wound of separation and accept and love ourselves without judgment does the need for external nurturance gradually whither away." He defines this Yoga as a "practice that brings one into greater wholeness or unity. The Yoga of Eating develops greater sensitivity to the body. We stop seeing the body and its appetites as the enemy, but instead listen to the messages encoded in cravings, appetites, and tastes. As we develop trust in these messages, we discover subtler levels of sensitivity and greater unity of mind and body. The Yoga of Eating does not sacrifice pleasure; on the contrary it uncovers unimagined dimensions of it."
To explain the nuances of listening to the body, Eisenstein (who is also an instructor for breathing) employs the metaphor of breath. Breathing is the ultimate illustration of a cycle in life. The foundations for deep breathing is natural breath - or breath that has been to free of its constraints. Therefore, natural breathing cannot be learned, but it can be found by un-learning Eisenstein writes:
"Forget any preconceived ideas about what constitutes proper breathing. Do not try to breathe deeply, or slowly. Without trying to change it, observe where your breath is going in your body, how your body expand and contracts with each breath. When you become familiar with the feeling of your breath, then begin to notice ways in which you might be holding, constraining, or channeling it. Any kind of tension has a strong effect on breathing as well. When you have totally relaxed around your breathing, it feels like the breath is breathing your body, not your body breathing the breath."
In India, "Prana", which means "vital life" from the Sanskrit word "Pra" (to fill) is the type refers to life-sustaining Air, and Pranayama describes different techniques of breathing.
De Antro Nympherum by William Blake, 1821
I often feel that we, as a species, have been thrust into a world suffering the abuse of relentless competition. While athletics are a healthy environment for such a situation, society and populations as a whole are not. The competition this refers to is one of success or failure - with only limited room for success in most cases. This is not an environment we should passively accept. Neighbors, classmates, acquaintances are all caught in the crossfires of mass judgment, apprehension, and insecurity. What the world needs today is an equal force on the people's behalf to counteract this competition - cooperation.Absolving fragmented situations and obtaining cohesion begins at a personal level. Luckily, the book "The Yoga of Eating" does not enforce suggestions, but artfully asks the reader to fully align to his or her true self. I find the passages worthwhile, and the author is passionate to "Transcend dogmas and diets to nourish the natural self." Charles Eisenstein is a Yale Graduate who currently teaches at Penn State University. He describes everything essential to trusting one's own body, while laying waste to diet books that enforce the reader to keep a "standard" for his or herself. He writes: "The need for nurturance is a genuine human need. To combat an unmet need with willpower is both foolish and futile. Only when we heal the wound of separation and accept and love ourselves without judgment does the need for external nurturance gradually whither away." He defines this Yoga as a "practice that brings one into greater wholeness or unity. The Yoga of Eating develops greater sensitivity to the body. We stop seeing the body and its appetites as the enemy, but instead listen to the messages encoded in cravings, appetites, and tastes. As we develop trust in these messages, we discover subtler levels of sensitivity and greater unity of mind and body. The Yoga of Eating does not sacrifice pleasure; on the contrary it uncovers unimagined dimensions of it."
To explain the nuances of listening to the body, Eisenstein (who is also an instructor for breathing) employs the metaphor of breath. Breathing is the ultimate illustration of a cycle in life. The foundations for deep breathing is natural breath - or breath that has been to free of its constraints. Therefore, natural breathing cannot be learned, but it can be found by un-learning Eisenstein writes:
"Forget any preconceived ideas about what constitutes proper breathing. Do not try to breathe deeply, or slowly. Without trying to change it, observe where your breath is going in your body, how your body expand and contracts with each breath. When you become familiar with the feeling of your breath, then begin to notice ways in which you might be holding, constraining, or channeling it. Any kind of tension has a strong effect on breathing as well. When you have totally relaxed around your breathing, it feels like the breath is breathing your body, not your body breathing the breath."
In India, "Prana", which means "vital life" from the Sanskrit word "Pra" (to fill) is the type refers to life-sustaining Air, and Pranayama describes different techniques of breathing.
Prana Exhalation by Robert Venosa
Eisenstein continues that breathing "is a tool, because breath is a powerful link between mind and body; it is a bridge spanning various levels of one's being. Breath is much more fundamental than such things as thought as emotions. As such, breath is an excellent vehicle for accessing deeper levels of the self. Liberating your natural breath demands in the end that you liberate your natural self as well; natural breathing is a pathway to self-liberation." He then continues with detailing the exercises of The Knee-Down Twist, Maha Mudra Breathing, Sun Breaths, and The Tree.
The book then advises to enjoy the eating process in its totality. As a concept, food embraces the concept of totality: "Starting with milk from the mother's breast, food is a physical expression of connection to source.Food, an expression of Mother Nature's unconditional love and generosity, makes us feel nurtured and cared for. Food is the primitive reminder that the world is good, that the world will provide." Eisenstein asks the reader to notice the aroma, texture and temperature of food before tasting it. Rather than deriving pleasure in segments, he says that the flavor of food is a "multidimensional experience extending through time." If one bite has not been thoroughly chewed before another is taken, then the process becomes incomplete. However, there is no need to enforce any sort of bodily guidelines on chewing (which would convert the pleasure into a disciplined chore). Rather, it must be like breathing: "Exercises will foster deep breathing, but it is not forced; rather it is only a byproduct of patience and awareness in breathing, thorough chewing will happen naturally when you maximize your pleasure in breathing." This deeper eating experience means that simpler food will be needed, as it will become more pleasing to eat.
For eating toward satisfaction, Eisenstein recommends, near the end of a meal, to "pause for a moment with mouth empty and experience a deep, unhurried, complete breath. This automatically puts you into closer communication with your body. " The threshold of eating is this satisfaction, which may arise after the meal, or during. The book enters territories of self-love, fats, meats, sugars, and finally an application to our global conditions. He writes: "No genuine healing of society or the planet is possible without a concomitant transformation on the individual level. Even if the planetary environment were miraculously restored, in the absence of a transformation we would just go about ruining it again. You can't build a solid house on a rotten foundation. If a utopian socialist state were imposed without eliminating the roots of greed and competitiveness in each one of us, the old injustices would quickly reappear. In fact, one could argue that all such attempts have failed precisely because a social revolution cannot revolutionize the deepest reaches of the human heart: that the urge to power, to domination, to profit can only be cleansed from the inside out." This is both our symptom and our solution: the foundations to inner-love naturally give rise to the foundations of selfless love. There are no need for limitations when it comes to the self, just love-motivated motivations! Sometimes it takes a little stencil graffiti to show the way...
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