Yogic diet is a vegetarian diet, there are a lot of different ways to be vegetarian, but the yogic diet is a sattvic diet. It means the diet most suitable for development of consciousness, for spiritual elevation, for sharpness of the mind and for physical fitness.There are three forces of nature, they can be described according their effect, of there qualification on everything in nature. The first energy expression of this principle we call sentient energy. Sentient means that what brings lightness, joy, peace to the mind. The second principal energy is mutative, restlessness, activity, constant movement. The third of this three forces is static, as the word implies, static is bringing decay, darkness, ignorance, dead. This tree energies exist in everything, in our self, in nature and in the food that we eat.In the ancient days, yogis experimented on their inner bodies, minds and also on the food that they ate, and so they where able to categorize foods according to the predominance of one of the three energies within that particular food item. That is how the yogic concept of diet has evolved. In our body we have seventy-three trillion cells, some of them last as long as one year, and some as short as four hours, an average cell will last for twenty-one days. Cells are composed of the food that we eat, that is way you often hear the sentence “You are what you eat”. Every single biochemical activity of the body is performed by cells having different functions, in different places in our body. It is particularly important when we talk about holistic well-being, mental development, that the food that we eat is carefully selected. Therefore in the yogic system the diet is based on its effect, first for the mind and second for the body.Example of these three food categories:Sentient: these foods are good for the body and for the mindGrains, milk products, nuts, seeds, legumes, beans, honey and natural sweetenersMutative: this food may be good for the body but not for the mindCarbonated drinks, coffee, tea, chocolate, and strong spicesStatic: this food may or may not be good for the body but is not good for the mind. This food may activate the lower instincts and bring laziness in the mind.Meat, fish, eggs, onions, garlic and mushrooms.These tree principals, these three energies, you may understand them more easy with the analogy of a flower. When a flower is growing it is in the process of developing, it is dominated by that movement, that activity, the mutative energy, when the plant manifest its beauty, the form of the fruit or the flower then it is dominated by this sentient energy, that brings joy and happiness. With time the flower decade, the petals are falling, the flower loses its beauty and that is the predominance of the static energy.Carefully choose your food, it is important that what you eat is in harmony with Mother Earth. Always try to eat as much as possible organic food. We are responsible for the cleanness of our environment, fair trade is especially important, try to stay away as much as possible from multinational companies, it is good to support the local organic farmers.
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