Increasing Health & Happiness with Ayurveda - Part 1 Fresh & Vital
Ayurveda is the manual for life. It tells us how to keep healthy (or get healthy again if we're already sick), how to keep a level head and happy heart, how to preserve and maintain our body and live a long life.Here's a little series covering some basic tips to feel better and live longer with Ayurveda...
Part 1 - Eat Fresh to Stay Fresh
We truly are what we eat. Ayurveda takes this very literally and that's one of the reasons those who follow an Ayurvedic Lifestyle don't eat meat. Eating a dead body - the corpse - of another living creature does not represent fresh vital health. Sure you can get iron from meat and other nutrients too, but Ayurveda states that these are of a lower quality than getting nutrients from fruits, vegetables, grains and dairy products.As mentioned before Ayurveda advises us to care for our minds as well as our bodies. Meat eating is dulling to the consciousness and destroys our ability to experience and exhibit true compassion and understanding for other living creatures.
Canned or processed foods are also considered "dead" foods in both Ayurvedic and Chinese Medicine, that's because they are stripped of their vital energy - prana (ayurveda) or chi/qi (Chinese Medicine) - this vital energy is absorbed into the body from the foods we eat, the water we drink and the air we breathe. If we want to stay vital, we need to eat vital foods. It is this vital energy that keeps food fresh, once it is lost the food starts to decay, hence the heavy use of preservatives in the food industry, but preservatives don't work for us; the way we preserve our bodies and prevent them from decay is to make sure our diet consists mainly of fresh foods that are high in vital energy.So step one for a long, healthy and happy life is to eat fresh, natural grains, vegetables, fruits and nuts - these are Ayurveda's recommended fuel for the human body.
Heaven's Banquet by Miriam Hospodar is a great source of information and international recipes for eating the Ayurvedic way...
Photo by thebittenword.com
This article is part of a series called: Increasing Health & Happiness with Ayurveda