Yoga – Page 11 – The VeganAsana

Living is Dying is Living Playlist

By theveganasana | March 26, 2013 - 10:35 am | March 26, 2013 Yoga

You Are, And Are Not, What You Eat

By theveganasana | March 15, 2013 - 9:48 am | March 15, 2013 Veganism, Yoga

Photo by Cassidy Curtis

A few years ago, I spent 2 months as a raw foodist. The idea of eating that diet appealed to me, because all of the food was so fresh and clean, and it caused me to appreciate the flavors of fresh natural items without sauces or condiments. Ultimately, I stopped for three reasons. First, it didn’t do what I had hoped for the rheumatoid arthritis. Second, it was too difficult to maintain at work-function meals that I have to attend regularly. Finally, I was frequently being very very upset by claims made in the raw food community about health. The basic idea is that all disease comes from one source, body imbalances caused by toxins that we introduce through the body, primarily through food. Beginning with this idea, raw food “gurus” would make claims regarding prevention or causation of all manner of health issues, including the obviously food related, like heart disease or high cholesterol, but also things that don’t have that obvious connection, like all forms of cancer.

Yesterday, I was speaking with a woman who is undergoing chemotherapy for cancer. Recently, as she was eating a wrap that contained some thin sliced roast beef, one of the only things that appeal to her right now, a colleague approached and told her that she was “feeding her cancer,” and that she could provide her with a nutritional consultation to tell her how to stop doing that.

Two months ago, I was asked to review a book about veganism. The text was being re-issued for it’s 25th anniversary. I read the whole book, but it was a struggle due to the claims made in it. The author had made statements that were true and reasonable about a vegan diet’s positive impacts on animals, on nature, and on health. But then he repeatedly went beyond, as far as I was concerned. He made arguments that all health problems relate to eating meat. Cancer of all types and arthritis were both mentioned. Even AIDs was included in that discussion.

Claims like this, as far as I am concerned, are (pardon my language) crap. They represent wishful thinking, with absolutely no credible evidence. They negate completely the value of the science which has isolated causal factors for a wide variety of illness (and no, I am not saying that science is the only way to truth or that it’s always right, but it has to be just as bad to fully ignore it as to fully accept it). They neglect any consideration of all of the environmental factors in life besides food. They are also hurtful, not helpful. To tell someone who is suffering, “It’s your fault because of what you did in the past,” has no utility. He/she cannot go back and fix the past. How is that helpful?

Food matters. It is important. A healthy diet can have very positive impacts for any individual. It can significantly reduce many health risks, create better day-to-day health, help the body fight off infections and viruses, reduce the number of toxins you are exposed to, and make your life more enjoyable.

What it is not is a panacea. It can help, because there are many medical conditions that have been shown to be correlated with diet. But, correlation is not simple causation and a good diet does not provide 100% protection. We don’t have all the control over what happens to us, even if we wish we did. Food, like our behavior, comes back to impact us. You could call it karma. But, there are other things that impact us, like the environment around us, other people’s behavior, genetics, etc. There are raw foodists with medical issues. There are vegetarians with MS. There are vegans with heart problems. Heck, there are vegan marathoners with cancer.

So, eat a good diet not as a fool-proof prophylactic against disease. Do it to keep the body you are in as healthy as it can be, no matter what issues you are dealing with. Eat vegan to show your body, the animals, and the earth love. Do it because it feels right to do it right now, not because of some promise of a perfect future.

A Body Incredible

By theveganasana | February 23, 2013 - 12:59 pm | February 23, 2013 Inspirational, Yoga

6 Comments

Image: Body Electric by Atomicjeep on Flickr

I am not always happy with you, body. You have bits that wobble in a way that I don’t like. You have marks and discolorations that annoy. Your blood pressure is fussy. You have rheumatoid arthritis and the associated pain. Your hamstrings are tight and your lower back is too. You grow hair in places I could pass on, but not in the areas where I would like some. Some days I would happily trade you in for another.

But, look what you have done:

46+ years of heart beating, 60-100 beats per minute or more, on and on through over 24,500,000 minutes.
The same length of time in breathing, in and out, chest rising and falling knowing on your own when more is needed or less.
Countless meals digested and processed into energy to power the movement, the breath, the heartbeat, the thoughts.
The care and growing of six full beings. Six FULL beings that developed there, with precision, with care.
Moving through waiting tables, bartending, teaching, and other tasks with little obvious direction required.
Accomplishing the art of balance, mostly on the soles of two feet that represent a tiny portion of the overall surface of the body, micro-movements occurring in every instant to maintain the fragile balance. Sometimes even balancing on hands or head or one leg, or on a narrow surface, or while negotiating a tricky path.
Shifting and changing to accommodate the life changes around, belly growing and shrinking in pregnancy, center of balance moving when needed, producing this hormone or that one, more stomach acid or less, heart pumping harder or slowing.
Helping me to find my way to new modes of being in the body that create and support new modes of being in the mind and the heart.
Healing wounds and bruises and viruses, mostly with only the internal mechanisms of cell growth and immune response.
And so much more…

And still more to do.

So, body, you are pretty impressive.

O my body! I dare not desert the likes of you in other men and women, nor the likes of the parts of you,

I believe the likes of you are to stand or fall with the likes of the soul, (and that they are the soul,)

I believe the likes of you shall stand or fall with my poems, and that they are my poems,

Man’s, woman’s, child’s, youth’s, wife’s, husband’s, mother’s, father’s, young man’s, young woman’s poems,

Head, neck, hair, ears, drop and tympan of the ears,

Eyes, eye-fringes, iris of the eye, eyebrows, and the waking or sleeping of the lids,

Mouth, tongue, lips, teeth, roof of the mouth, jaws, and the jaw-hinges,

Nose, nostrils of the nose, and the partition,

Cheeks, temples, forehead, chin, throat, back of the neck, neck-slue,

Strong shoulders, manly beard, scapula, hind-shoulders, and the ample side-round of the chest,

Upper-arm, armpit, elbow-socket, lower-arm, arm-sinews, arm-bones,

Wrist and wrist-joints, hand, palm, knuckles, thumb, forefinger, finger-joints, finger-nails,

Broad breast-front, curling hair of the breast, breast-bone, breast-side,

Ribs, belly, backbone, joints of the backbone,

Hips, hip-sockets, hip-strength, inward and outward round, man-balls, man-root,

Strong set of thighs, well carrying the trunk above,

Leg fibres, knee, knee-pan, upper-leg, under-leg,

Ankles, instep, foot-ball, toes, toe-joints, the heel;

All attitudes, all the shapeliness, all the belongings of my or your body or of any one’s body, male or female,

The lung-sponges, the stomach-sac, the bowels sweet and clean,

The brain in its folds inside the skull-frame,

Sympathies, heart-valves, palate-valves, sexuality, maternity,

Womanhood, and all that is a woman, and the man that comes from woman,

The womb, the teats, nipples, breast-milk, tears, laughter, weeping, love-looks, love-perturbations and risings,

The voice, articulation, language, whispering, shouting aloud,

Food, drink, pulse, digestion, sweat, sleep, walking, swimming,

Poise on the hips, leaping, reclining, embracing, arm-curving and tightening,

The continual changes of the flex of the mouth, and around the eyes,

The skin, the sunburnt shade, freckles, hair,

The curious sympathy one feels when feeling with the hand the naked meat of the body,

The circling rivers the breath, and breathing it in and out,

The beauty of the waist, and thence of the hips, and thence downward toward the knees,

The thin red jellies within you or within me, the bones and the marrow in the bones,

The exquisite realization of health;

O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul,

O I say now these are the soul!

~ Walt Whitman, ‘I Sing the Body Electric’