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Chapter 1

Personal Nutrition

At Kripalu, we are committed to helping our guests transform their health by deepening their understanding of food and nourishment. Our nutrition philosophy combines current scientific research with the wisdom of the yogic tradition, which views food as a source of prana, or life force. All of our dietary recommendations are geared toward increasing energy and vitality, improving digestion, boosting metabolism, and, if you have one, enhancing your yoga practice. We support a diversity of dietary choices but have one recommendation that applies to everyone: eat the highest-quality food possible. In the Kripalu Kitchen, that means enjoying the freshest, most nutritious, least-processed foods, and buying food locally, seasonally, and organic whenever possible. To help you bring balance to your food choices, we encourage what we call compassionate self-observation, a gradual process of accepting one’s behavior without judgment and allowing transformation to occur naturally. Food is powerful medicine, and wise choices can improve not only your personal health but also the health of your environment, relationships, and community.

East Meets West Nutrition

What constitutes a “healthy diet” is a hotly debated topic. The truth is that there is no single way of eating that will always be healthy for every person, at every stage of life, around the globe. We all have slightly different dietary needs, depending on whether we are trying to lose weight, gain weight, boost immunity, reduce inflammation, or prevent disease. However, there are general patterns of eating that can be considered healthy for everyone. One of the world’s most widely studied eating patterns has come to be known as the Mediterranean diet. This way of eating emphasizes plenty of vegetables, fruits, and other plant-based foods. These foods are often prepared with olive oil but are otherwise minimally processed. In this diet, whole grains and legumes (beans and peas) are favored along with moderate amounts of fish, poultry, and dairy products. Red meat and sweets are kept to a minimum.

Among the many diets out there, the Mediterranean diet has some of the most valid and reliable science backing up its healthfulness. Meta-analyses of several long-term studies have shown that this whole-food, plant-based eating pattern may help lower the risks of various major illnesses, including heart disease (the leading cause of death in the United States), cancer, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease.

In many ways, the Mediterranean diet mirrors the eating patterns that have long been espoused by health practitioners in India. For thousands of years, these practitioners have emphasized eating whole, minimally processed plant foods as part of a general approach to health known as Ayurveda. Ayurvedic healers recommend enjoying these foods in season and in moderation. Yet, they go one step further. Ayurvedic practitioners advocate a personalized diet optimized for your particular health needs. In this way, Ayurvedic eating patterns are applicable to various modern dietary preferences ranging from vegetarian and vegan to low-carb, high-protein, gluten-free, grain-free, dairy-free, and sugar-free.

Core Principles of Ayurveda

Originating more than five thousand years ago in India, Ayurveda is the oldest continuously practiced healthcare system in the world. Ayurveda translates to the “science of life” and takes a holistic view of health. A key concept in Ayurvedic medicine is the universal connectedness of individuals to each other, to their environment, and to the universe itself. Ayurveda sees your optimal diet in the context of your body, mind, senses, and spirit, including factors such as your age, activity level, lifestyle, emotional state, and even the weather around you at any particular time.

While many contemporary medical practices focus solely on treating disease, Ayurveda also focuses on preventing disease. From the Ayurvedic perspective, being healthy is more than just the absence of disease: healthy people radiate vigor and vitality. The key to restoring your good health is regaining balance and moderation in both diet and lifestyle.

The soaring rates of stress-induced illness among Americans coupled with conflicting nutritional advice has led many Americans to revisit the ancient healing methods of Ayurveda. Now that medical professionals around the world have acknowledged diet and lifestyle as key components of disease prevention and health maintenance, the teachings of Ayurveda have found renewed importance. In fact, American interest in Ayurveda has grown so strong that the U.S. National Institutes of Health has devoted substantial resources to studying its effectiveness, sponsoring clinical trials on various Ayurvedic practices ranging from yoga to anxiety treatments.

Know Thyself

While Ayurvedic practitioners advise everyone to eat whole, minimally processed foods in season and in moderation, the details of personal recommendations are based on each person’s unique “constitution.” Ayurvedic texts describe how human beings are made up of the same elements as everything else in the universe. Yet, as individual human beings, each of us has a distinct mix of elements that compose our unique self.

Ayurveda identifies five essential elements of the universe: ether, air, fire, water, and earth. Ether is considered to be the element of space; air the element of movement; fire the element of transformation; water the element of cohesion; and earth the element of structure. These elements come together in three basic combinations that Ayurveda calls vata, pitta, and kapha. Vata is a combination of ether and air, and it has distinctive qualities, including dryness, lightness, coldness, mobility, and subtlety. Pitta is a combination of fire and water; its distinctive qualities are oily, sharp/penetrating, hot, and spreading (dispersing). Kapha combines earth and water, and its qualities are heavy, dull, stable, cool, and sticky. These basic combinations of the elements are known as doshas. Together, the three doshas constitute your body and mind, and determine your overall health and growth. The doshas can be thought of as mind-body types. While Ayurvedic texts describe how the three doshas fluctuate in each person according to factors like the time of day, the time of year, and your stage of life, everyone has his or her own unique combination of doshas or personal constitution.