The Yoga of Eating: Transcending Diets and Dogma to Nourish the Natural Self

Fictional works aside, I don't think I have never in my life have I so vehemently disagreed with some of the foundational assumptions of an author and yet agreed with so much. The Yoga of Eating is just such a book. My first time through, I couldn't stop reading and I had to wait for my second and third times through to actually take the time to fetch my underlining pen and highlighters. My biggest disagreement with Mr. Eisenstein is his premise that there is no Creator and the body itself is a fountain of divine wisdom if we'd only just listen. However, I found that when I substituted the idea that God had made our bodies with the ability to communicate to us what we needed to stay healthy and balanced and that we should just listen, I had a foundation I could work with. There were still places and ideas that absolutely didn't fit with my personal belief system; nevertheless, there was a lot that I think I needed to hear.

For example:

"The proper function of willpower and self-discipline is to extend wisdom and insight into times of imperfect clarity."

"Often we use self-discipline to tell our inner voice to shut up, preferring to trust in the rational mind and its received beliefs. This is unfortunate: What if our inner appetites and urges are telling us something important?"

"Second-guessing and ignoring the body is what has gotten us into this mess in the first place, and we will not get out of it by imposing on the body yet another set of dietary principles, no matter how new-and-improved they might be."

"Healing then is not the fixing of a miscreant body, but the removal of the impediments to self-healing, an unleashing of the body's natural repair systems."

"If the body and soul are not separate, then to heal the body at the deepest level is a work of the soul."

In short this book was a fountain of really good ideas for someone like me who in fighting a weight problem has increasingly picked up the bludgeon and turned it on herself. When a completely anonymous instructor on a completely impersonal video suggested that my wieght might be a reflection of a mind-body disconnect, I said (aloud) "well DUH!" At this point I don't even think of my body as part of ME. It's IT! And I am really unhappy with IT right now Thankyouverymuch. After so long a fight, so long a struggle, it should be patently obvious that it isn't diet or exercise that is my problem...or I would have be "fixed" a long time ago. This book has given me some real food for thought and perhaps the motivation to put down the bludgeon and just listen for a while. To be still. To be grateful.

So what am I doing with what I learned so far? I am eating organic, minimally processed foods as much as possible (but not being dogmatic about it)...so that the signals my body receives from what I eat are as true to what God intended as possible. I have started calling artifical addditives "food lies" to increase my distaste for them. I am eating when I am hungry but paying attenion to what I am eating for as long as I am eating it. I am drinking when I am thirsty. And I am resolutely ignoring all of the myriad diet tips/dogmas that show up at this time of year. I am also pretending that this is just to make me healthy and balanced not to lose weight. Maybe if I pretend long enough I can make that last part true.

If you have decided that you need to re-work your relationship with your body, with yourself, with food, this book can give you some very sound food-for-thought (in EVERY sense) for a new foundation to buttress that new relationship. STOP being pushed around by people who haven't spent a single second with your body and start to listen to your mind-body-spirit about what it needs to heal and be healthy AND support the way in which God you wants to be present in the world.

I'd like to second the reviewer who wrote... "if we lived in a sane world, this book would be a bestseller".
And we can only hope that this day will come!

If you have ever felt confused about how to make sense of the contradictory recommendations of all the external dietary authorities out there as to what "eating healthy" involves, this book could really change your life. It is all about learning to access and trust our body's great intelligence and messages about what we each need to eat, rather than preferring to trust the blanket prescriptions and advice of all kinds of external authorities or traditions. This book offers profound (and I really mean profound) reflections about the relationship between food and consciousness, between our eating practices and our spiritual growth (as individuals and a society). It totally challenges the very foundations of our current culture... which is very much at war with our bodies. It offers a very inspiring and surprisingly simple alternative.

I just loved this book. Reading it was an exhilarating, liberating and healing experience all at once.
While it definitely goes against the grain, it offers the kind of simple and elegant truth that one ends up immediately recognizing as right on!

Eisenstein challenges the separation of body and spirit which has resulted in a war on the body and the use of willpower to control it. He shows that reliance on willpower reveals a distrust of one's self. His book is fine training in trusting your own body. Though practical, the book is also meditative and spiritually inspiring. I highly recommend this book.