We Are What We Eat

It's been a week since I packed up to head out the Blue Mountain Resort for the detox retreat. With the cold and rain that has been blown in since last Friday, it seems like my Saturday afternoon reading and chatting in the sun was eons ago.

As we were detoxing on fruit, veggies, nuts and juices, interesting conversations about food arose. Do we eat out of habit or need? How in touch are we with our feelings of hunger? Are we choosing the right foods for our bodies? How did dinner become the biggest meal of the day?
It's all food for thought (no pun intended). Ayurvedic practitioners suggest that at the changing of every season we should engage in some type of cleanse to initiate the transition of our bodies and lives to accommodate nature's natural shift. As someone who has had a dynamic relationship with food my whole life, I am fascinated by the idea that there is a natural order to how we should eat. With aisles full of digestive aids, a growing rate a child obesity and disease on the rise every day, there certainly seems to be grounds for an argument that in terms of our consumption habits, we may be working against ourselves.

This summer I read the fascinating Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. by Barbara Kingsolver. It's an account of one family's attempt to live only off of what they can grow and buy locally for one full year. Not only a funny and eloquent account of her family's journey into the forays of tomato canning, poultry breeding and a year free of bananas, Kingsolver's book is packed with factual and anecdotal passages on the financial, environmental and moral struggles associated with the US agricultural industry. She argues that we are a land without a food culture; a people who have lost our connection with where our food comes from; a nation raising children who can't decipher between a January store bought tomato and a fresh one in the height of its August ripeness.

Reconnecting to the natural order of things can seem foreign and daunting. Navigating our way back to something we may never have really been in touch with and that goes against the grain of our society can leave us feeling a bit lost for direction. It's a topic and a journey that has completely captured my attention. How can our lives change if we stop and pay a little more attention to the seemingly haphazard orderliness of nature? Hopefully Sol Yoga's seasonal detoxes will become a staple of our calendars - helping to guide us on this journey.