The Yoga of Eating is a practical and inspiring manual that offers original insights on the physical and spiritual functions of sugar, fat, meat, and other foods; fasting, dieting, processing, willpower, and the deeper principles of self-nurture. This book appeals to a higher authority--your own body--and shows how to access and trust the wisdom your body has to offer.

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In fact, if I hadn't donated most of the health books I've read over the years to Goodwill, the CasaDay garage would be filled to the rafters, and my wife wouldn't have any space left to store even more junk that we continue to accumulate as we march through our 33rd year of matrimonial bliss.

Well, today I want to write a few words about a book on diet that won't be headed for t garage or the Goodwill discount shelves, a book that has gained instead a permanent place in my natural health library: "The Yoga of Eating" by Charles Eisenstein.

And, no, you don't have to twist your body into weird-looking contortions to enjoy Eisenstein's book.

All you have to do is sit back, open your mind, and settle in for what I predict will be one of the most pleasant and enlightening reads about living and eating that you've ever enjoyed.

Subtitled "Transcending Diets and Dogma to Nourish the Natural Self," Eisenstein's book teaches you how to listen to your body and how to interpret the constant signals it's sending you on what to eat and how to live.

Most of us - stumbling our way through a world that's paced too fast and full of too many distractions -- never shut up or slow down long enough to even hear (much less pick up on and interpret) the messages our bodies send out every moment of our lives.

Messages that can make us happy, keep us slim, and guarantee us long, healthy, and useful lives.

To give you a better sense of Eisenstein's insights, here are a few key passages that I highlighted in my copy of "The Yoga of Eating":

Often the information we get from our bodies contradicts received beliefs about what is and isn't healthy, virtuous or right. Then our trust is put to the test. But the body is wise, and the rewards for trusting it great.

The body will first be attracted to foods that meet its most urgent needs. A starving body will hunger for anything, even rotting meat, to meet the raw need for calories. As the grosser needs are fulfilled, subtler appetites and aversions come to the fore. In my late 20's, after a prolonged period of near-veganism combined with a profound lack of inner nurturance, my body hungered deeply for animal foods, a hunger which at first I ashamed denied. When I finally let myself eat meat I was suffused by intense waves of pleasure and well-being. Eventually, when I caught up with my body's pent-up need for animal protein and, especially, animal fat, I discovered that sometimes meat, particularly conventionally-raised chicken, had a certain stink to it; when I paid attention, it didn't taste so good after all.

When you listen to your body, it will guide you toward the diet that is right for you.

Pretty good stuff, eh? Here's more, this time tackling cravings and will power...

If it is a true, body-based appetite, then every time you deny it, it gets stronger. If it is a superficial craving, not serving a genuine need, then every time you resist it, it gets weaker. The same applies outside the arena of food. If your soul is calling for something, and you deny it, the call will wax in volume until life becomes unbearable. But if you resist a habit that distracts you from a joyful, creative purpose, its compulsion will diminish. The first time is always the hardest (but it may never be easy).

In communicating with the body, allow yourself to totally trust the results. Vow that you will accept your body's answer. Don't attempt to use this technique as a way of quelling or fighting the craving. Let go of any expectation that you will eat less or differently. We got where we are by not listening to and trusting the body. Any fundamental reversal of this state of affairs demands far greater courage than to simply apply willpower. Willpower is a very small thing, really. It involves no risk, for it comes from who we already are. Surrendering, trusting, allowing change to happen without a program: that is something much greater.

Eisenstein has quality chapters on the following topics:

Food and Personality
The karma of Food
The Natural Breath
Making It Practical
Discovering the Right Diet
Loving the Body, Loving the Self
The Yoga of Cooking
Relaxing into Change

... and a whole lot more.

You can add all 175-pages of "The Yoga of Eating" to your library for under $12 at amazon.com, a tremendous buy for one of the best books on health, diet, nutrition, and living a satisfying life that I've ever read.

56 of 56 found the following review helpful:

Finally, a book written for sentient beings!!!Dec 25, 2003
By Edward Yu
As far as I know, this is the first book dealing with eating, which puts the reader in the driver's seat. It is not about following rules laid out by "experts" and people with advanced degrees, but rather about listening to and learning to trust your own senses. As Mr. Eisenstein puts it so eloquently, until the modern era, humans had been using their senses for millenia in order to "make sense" of the world and to discern needs, wants, likes and dislikes. These days we disregard our senses, and therefore ourselves, and rely on people with the correct titles to make decisions for us on diet, health, medical care, religion, drugs...
People who are interested in yoga as a discipline for discovery and freedom rather than a competition will find this book inspiring and empowering. Moreover, to the lay public this book will make you feel in control again and eager to learn more about tasting food, increasing pleasure and breathing deeply.
This book is hugely groundbreaking and follows in the tradition of the ancient yogis (and the ancients in other discipines), as well as modern pioneers such as Moshe Feldenkrais, Milton Erickson, Maria Montessori, Rudolf Steiner, Thomas Hanna and Don Hanlen Johnson in its advocacy of learning through feeling, sensing and moving.

45 of 45 found the following review helpful:

Attention all PractitionersJun 30, 2004

As a clinical nutritionist, I have found this book to be spectacular in helping patients overcome fears and blockages about eating. The average patients shows up at my door with a million preconceived notions about "healthy eating", and a mental t-chart of which foods are "good" and "bad". This obsessive line of thinking in many cases does more harm than good, and leaves the person feeling desperately miserable at mealtime instead of joyous and hungry.
The book gives people permission to eat what feels right in their bodies, and explains clearly what this means and how to go about it. It "desconstructs the dogmas" about diet, and rigid they are, that are everywhere in our country, and only seem to be growing in number, even since the book was published.
As a clinician, I have found it outrageously daring and enjoyable to watch my patients figure out for themselves what to eat on a daily basis; how empowering!
As a healer, I have found it to be a beautiful gift to patients in need of emotional healing as well. This book is about a lot more than eating. It is an invitation to all of us to live in a way that is dynamic, vibrant, real, and fully alive. As a professional who is devoted to helping patients heal their bodies, and transcend their limitations, I can think of no better book to stock.

33 of 34 found the following review helpful:

Need a new relationship with food? With your body? Get this book.Jan 13, 2006
By T. Avallone
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.

27 of 28 found the following review helpful:

A Must ReadNov 26, 2004
By Short Bald Yogi
When I bought this book, there were no reviews posted. Returning today I am happy to see that it is being read and appreciated.

This is an important book that should be read by anyone living, or hoping to live, a "yogic" lifestyle. Eisenstein asks, and answers, the right questions. For example:
- If one believes the universe to be a single, living organism, what is the real difference between eating plants and animals? Who are we to decide who, or what, is sentient?
- Which act is more, or less, ethical? Eating a free-range chicken? Or eating fruit grown on a pesticide-laden farm, picked by abused immigrants paid slave wages?

Eisenstein looks at all sides of these and other issues in a "fair and balanced" assessment that has given me permission to more closely examine my vegetarianism. He takes a gestalt approach to eating, pointing out that one's nourishment is simply, but critically, a single part of one's relationship to the world that affects all other parts. Therefore, simply bringing your diet in line with a perceived universal truth does little to rectify other aspects of your being that you may be avoiding.

Please read this book, and if you'd like to discuss it, contact me at kenjmi@aol.com.


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