Food And Yoga: The Power Of Prana

The other evening, I was chatting over the backyard fence with my next-door neighbor, who I like and admire. She is strong, kind and has a wonderful family.

As is often the case during our chats, the topic was one of our favorites: food. Over the years, she and I have exchanged recipes, dishes and memories associated with the meals our families toss together during the week and labor over on weekends and holidays to keep us bonded, satisfied, and grateful. No one on this planet will argue that food isn’t a powerful force. On one level, it keeps us alive. Beyond that—and more and more we are seeing food in the news, from restaurants to recalls—it can take on a life of its own.

In our conversation that evening, my neighbor shared with me changes she is making to her diet. In the name of improved health, she said, she has gotten professional nutrition counseling. She’s changing the foods she eats and her approach to meal planning, and getting her family involved right along with her. She talked quinoa. I talked sprouts. She talked goat milk. I talked flax seed crackers. 

We are learning so much about food in this generation that a sea change seems to be occurring. From two distinct fronts, food issues stake their claim. First, the need for our food to be clean, local, fresh, and whole has created communities of small farmers, marketeers, and restaurateurs who bring us food for an optimal diet. As Clevelanders, we know our city is making a phenomenal showing in this realm. Second, the need for food to be equitably distributed so that even the most disadvantaged have access to it is driving the food industry, from fast foods to slow foods to factory farming, toward changes via protests, ramped-up fundraising, farm-animal rights, and legislation.

Food is no longer just a casual affair, like the Jell-O salads my grandmother used to make. It is science. It is political. It is both intensely personal and wildly global.

And in that sense, the food movement is very much like the yoga movement.

One of the most meaning-packed words associated with yoga is prana. Prana means, literally, breath, but it also means life force. Similar to the Chinese word chi or the Greek word spiritus, prana is the yogic concept that ‘We breathe; therefore we are,’ but it is also deeper than that. It is that because we are, we are a source, and force, of prana. 

We have prana and we are prana. The air blowing on our skin is prana, the flower is prana, the volcano is prana, the old theater is prana. We share prana with the entire world. We are one with the world and the world with us simply because we are all alive and because, simply, we are alive at the same time.

The food we eat, especially if taken in its natural form or close to it, is rich in prana, in its own life force. Yogis notice that when we eat fresh fruit and vegetables and whole grains, we have an abundance of natural, easily accessible energy. Good food is filled with prana and blends easily with our own prana to keep us strong and vital.

So, yes, we are what we eat. And what we are, if we eat as well as possible, is strong and vital. And when we are strong and vital from the foods we eat, we are poised to do the real work we are meant to do: help others with their lives, their own pranic power. 

This is exactly the purpose of yoga as well, and the yoga movement on this planet shows us this more and more, from the individual practicing on her mat every day to the groups of American yoga teachers volunteering their time to teach yoga to the disadvantaged in Africa.

Food and yoga, like a marvelous tour guide, take us on an invaluable personal and communal journey. So even if you do not practice yoga, take a yogic stock of your eating. A pranic-rich diet will give you energy to feel alive and to live a life of great purpose.