The Raw Foods and Yoga Connection
by Darlene Paris
Every month this year yoga instructor and holistic health consultant Jessica M. King invites beginning yoga students to her private yoga studio located in her Pompano Beach, FL, home for yoga day — an afternoon seminar of sorts where novice practitioners can learn more about the many benefits of yoga.
During yoga day, King reviews the philosophy of yoga, introduces the group to the Sun Salutation — a series of yoga poses that are linked together in a continuous flow — and even performs a yoga dance for the eight to ten people who consider themselves lucky to have been invited to her home.
King's reason for asking groups of people to attend is for the purpose of introducing them to yoga but also to expose her guests to a lifestyle most of them have never experienced. After yoga class is over, King introduces the group to raw and living foods. "Dessert is about to be served," King announces after one yoga day seminar held in her home earlier this year. "Homemade ice cream and cookies," she exclaims.
The ice cream is made with frozen bananas, which becomes soft with the help of a Champion Juicer. The end result looks a little like soft serve, but tastes better than any ice cream one could imagine. The cookies are a mixture of flax seeds, figs, and dates. The ingredients are shaped flat like a cookie and dehydrated; they're chewy and mildly sweet, but taste great.
King's guests are amazed that the dessert tastes so good —and that the food they're eating isn't processed or cooked. She says the reason she introduces raw and living foods to her students is that she feels the lifestyle of a yogi and that of a raw foodist complement one another.
"When I began eating these raw and living foods, full of prana or the life force, my body wanted to move more into my yoga practice," says King, formerly a vegan. "After three months of eating foods without heating, I noticed that I had boundless energy. It became easier for me to concentrate and I just melted into my yoga postures," says King who moved from Schaumburg four years ago to establish a holistic center in a warmer climate. "The moment I began eating these wonderfully alive, sprouted, and living foods, my yoga and meditation practice began to flourish."
King isn't the only yoga practitioner whose yoga practice improved once they began eating a fresh and raw food diet. California-based yoga instructor Shekhar says that he also noticed a change in his practice when he became a raw foodist a year and a half ago. "I was on a transition diet for about two months during which time I ate 80 percent raw and living foods and 20 percent cooked foods," Shekhar says. "I really didn't notice a difference in my practice during that time, but when I went 100 percent raw, I could feel the difference in my practice in a matter of just a few days."
How is it that yoga practitioners are able to get more from their yoga practice once they start eating a fresh and raw diet?
According to David Wolfe, an authority on the raw and living foods lifestyle, the reason raw foods works so well for yogis is that eating raw and living foods bring about a balance of acidity and alkalinity within the body. "We need both alkaline and acid forming foods to be healthy," writes Wolfe in his recent book Eating For Beauty.
Acid forming foods are typically regarded as negative, says Wolfe, also the author of The Sunfood Diet Success System. People associate meat, eggs, and soda with acidity. Yet, bananas and some nuts and seeds are also acidic. "Acid forming foods are not, in and of themselves, bad. They are simply acid-forming." Wolfe explains. "An excess of acidity, however, is quite harmful over the short and long term as it leads to inflammation, contraction, stiffness, and tissue degeneration."
Wolfe recommends a diet full of green living food for beginning raw foodists to help the body achieve more of an acid/alkaline balance. For example, green juice — a mainstay for some raw foodist is alkaline, says Wolfe. "It loosens us up and opens constrictions and deactivates acids. Acidic foods constrict whereas alkaline foods create space and flexibility."
Thus, yogis who consume lots of green vegetables or green juices are bound to become more flexible and open, Wolfe says. He suggests drinking green juices such as celery and apple juice or a combination of kale, celery, spinach, and apple before they begin their yoga practice. "You'll find that when you drink these juices two hours or so before your yoga...your practice will be more powerful," he says. He also recommends eating alkaline fruit such as papayas, pomegranates, and melons.
Wolfe, who practices Ashtanga yoga, and is featured in a yoga video entitled Raw Yoga, says the raw food diet has made his body more flexible. "I can put the back of my wrists down to the floor whereas I couldn't even touch my toes when I first started practicing yoga," he said.
Raw foodists say that not only will your yoga practice increase as a result of eating fresh and raw foods but your spiritual life will also expand. Shekhar, Wolfe's personal yoga teacher who accompanies him when he gives seminars on raw food and conducts yoga and raw food retreats around the country, says that the lifestyle of a yogi and that of a living foodist are two different paths that lead to the same place. "A lot of what yoga is about is emptying out what we don't need. It's about lightening up. The same thing happens when we adopt a raw and living foods lifestyle.
For King, the process of becoming lighter can bring us closer to our divine. "The old statement goes 'you are what you eat.' People think that statement is a cliché. I used to think so too, but I now know, since becoming a raw and living foodist that this statement is true. I am more calm. I am more peaceful. I am more loving. I am more healthy. I am younger and younger everyday. My mind is sharp. My mental state is clear. My hair is luscious. My skin is radiant. My energy is amazing and all of it is because I'm taking in unadulterated fruits and vegetables in my body. I am partaking of the divine."
That's what this lifestyle does for me," King continues. "The living food lifestyle along with yoga brings me closer to my divinity...it also brings me closer to the divinity within all living things."
Get More Info
For information about upcoming yoga and raw food retreats and seminars, contact the following sources:
Jessica King, http://www.wildquest.com
Shekhar, http://www.happyyogi.com
David Wolfe, http://www.rawfood.com/events.html
Darlene E. Paris is a freelance writer, teacher, Reiki Master, and the author of Healthy and Natural Living in Chicago: The Best Alternative Resources in the City and Suburbs (Chicago Review Press, 1998).
