Sadhguru: This is something we have been talking forever!
But now they discovered it with a billion-dollar research.
And I've seen hundreds and thousands of people who just become healthy and well.
If something appears on my plate,
if I just feel this, I know what to eat and what not to eat.
You eat something today and see,
just learn to observe how agile and how active
your body feels after eating this food.
Sadhguru: The simple thing right now that's a rage in the world is,
if you come to our ashram,
all the people there who are physically immensely active,
eat ten o'clock in the morning, seven o'clock in the evening, two meals.
How many doctors have been telling me
that they will die of malnourishment,
this will happen, that will happen, you must do this, you must do that.
I eat only one meal a day, most of the days;
one big meal I eat and that's it
and doctors telling me, "No, no, Sadhguru, the way you're traveling,
this will happen, that will happen.
You must eat at least once in four hours, something you must eat."
I said, "Leave me alone, I'm doing fine."
But now a big university
in America comes up with this called “intermittent fasting”-
it's not nonsense, it's good.
But they rediscovered something that we have known forever.
Now everybody's saying there must be a sixteen-hour gap,
then all your ailments will go away.
What the hell were we saying all these thousands of years?
The simple thing is…
There are many, many aspects to this,
psychological, physiological, but now cancer is on the rise in the world.
A cancerous cell is like a criminal in the society, all of us have in our bodies,
only if they become… their concentration becomes more than what they should be
or they gang up and loc… locate themselves in one place,
they become like organized crime.
There are pickpockets in Kochi, I am sure. Hello?
There are small time criminals,
individually operating, operating in two's and three's;
we don't take it very seriously, we'll leave it, because it happens,
but suppose all hundred of them got organized into a organized crime,
now we will crack down,
because we know now it becomes a threat to the society.
Similarly cancerous cells are like this –
criminals, they're moving around doing some damage,
their only problem is, right now,
they're generally eating about eight to twelve times more
than what the other cells are eating.
So if you just give sufficient break between one meal and the other,
most of them will die, because they cannot survive.
This is something we've been talking forever,
but now they discovered it with a billion-dollar research.
And I've seen hundreds and thousands of people
who just become healthy and well,
simply because they're not fueling up all the time when the tank is spilling.
In the yoga center, all the time people are physically active.
So everybody is very hungry by the time it's 3:30 – four o'clock in the evening,
they are extremely hungry,
but we learn to live with that.
because empty stomach and hunger are two different things.
Hunger means your energy levels start dropping.
but empty stomach is a good thing.
In the yogic sciences – today modern science also is coming in line with this,
but what we know by our experience,
you will spend a billion dollars to come there,
because research is all about “How many million dollars?”
that's how it is.
Your body and your brain works at its best only when your stomach is empty.
So we always make sure, we eat in such a way,
how much ever we eat,
our stomach must be always empty
within two to two-and-a-half hours’ time maximum.
So we go to bed hungry always.
People think they cannot sleep – they can sleep!
On an average, for twenty-five years on an average,
I slept only two-and-a-half to three hours.
These days, I'm getting little lazy and
sleeping anywhere between three-and-a-half to four-and-a-half hours,
in spite of the level of travel that I have.
When I say level of travel,
if I say my level of travel in the next few days, you will fall off your chair.
Yes! Should I tell you?
No. Not necessary (Laughter).
Because in the next ten days,
I'm in five different countries,
doing I don't know how many events, all kinds of events.;
So you are able to keep this up simply, because you don't overeat.
It's very, very important.
Everybody eats two meals; I generally eat only one meal,
4:30 – 5:00 in the evening
because I don't like to sit in front of the plate
and worry about how much to eat.
I like to eat well.
So 4:30 – 5:00 in the evening if I eat a meal, it's only next day.
Is this enough? Am I looking okay? Hello?
Participants: Yes.
Sadhguru: Because any correction and purification that needs to happen in the body,
your stomach needs to be empty – it's very, very important.
Otherwise, the purification on the cellular level will not happen.
You pile up things and then you have all kinds of problems.
When you… When you don’t touch the food, you do not know what it is.
If food is not good enough to be touched,
I don’t know how it’s good enough to be eaten (Applause).
Dr. Mark Hyman: So we should not have listened to our mothers
and we should eat with our fingers
because touching our food helps us stay in contact with it.
Sadhguru: You can… the cleanliness of your hands is entirely in your hands.
The cleanliness of the fork is not entirely in your hands (Laughter/Applause).
Dr. Mark Hyman: This is true.
Sadhguru: And nobody else but you have used these hands (Laughter),
so there is an assurance as to how clean or not clean it is, right now.
The fork, you do not know who has used it,
how they’ve used it, for what they used it
and all they have to do is wipe it with a tissue
and give it to you and it looks pretty clean (Laughter).
Above all, you don’t feel the food.
The first thing that’s been taught to us is,
if food appears in front of you,
to hold your hands upon the food for a few moments,
just to feel how the food is.
If something appears on my plate,
if I just feel this, I know what to eat and what not to eat.
What I should not eat,
I don’t taste it and then reject it, I just don’t eat,
because my hands are the first level-
not tasting in the sense, the tongue tastes but knowing the food.
First thing is knowing the food.
You want to know a person, you guys go and shake their hands (Laughs).
I’m usually avoiding that, but… (Laughter)
Mark Hyman: That’s a good strategy (Laughs).
Sadhguru: But the food that’s going to become a part of you,
first thing is your hands,
even if you physically don’t touch it –
just being conscious and being there,
it clearly tells you how the food will behave within you.
Whether this particular food, on this particular day,
should it go into you or not
because every day your body is not the same thing.
Every day, every moment it’s different. If you feel the food,
you just know whether this food has to go into you on this day or not.
If that much awareness is brought in,
we don’t have to go on telling people, what they should eat.
Every meal they must decide what they should eat in that meal.
There is no one prescription that, “This is what you should eat for your life.”
That will feel too claustrophobic that “only this I can eat.”
Sadhguru: Your selection of food and consumption of food also must happen consciously.
More than what you eat, how you eat it is also equally important.
When I say, “How you eat it?”
These are all live substances,
every one of them had a life of their own,
whether it is a plant, animal, vegetable, every one of them had a life of their own.
Now in some way, you are making food out of it,
you must consume it with utmost gratitude.
If you approach it with a certain sense of gratitude
and reverence towards the food that you eat;
when I say reverence it may feel like too much for you,
but I’m asking you,
let’s say we put you in a room and you had nothing to eat for five days.
If God appears in front of you, what will you ask for?
Food? So that is how important it is.
You must understand,
the food on your plate is not just a substance,
it is not a material, it is not a commodity, it is life.
It is the life-making material for you.
So you must treat it as such.
Right now, when it is on the plate, when it is out there,
it has no value
but the moment you consume it and it becomes your flesh and blood,
now suddenly it’s of immense value. Why do we live like this?
It is very important when it comes on your plate itself,
you must treat it as a part of yourself.
With great reverence you must consume.
Just the way you consume it, if you change that,
food will behave very differently within you.
This is what consciousness means.
If people say, “Your consciousness has no impact on your life,
only chemical structures have impact.”
I’m very sorry for them, because that is not how life works.
Human consciousness has a deep and profound impact
on everything that we touch,
especially the food that we are making another life as a part of ourselves.
When we are doing such an act,
it is very, very important we treat it with utmost gratitude and reverence.
I want to tell you there is no such thing as good habit and bad habit.
Habit means you are functioning unconsciously.
If you are functioning unconsciously
that’s a bad thing, because
the whole thing about being human is
we are capable of doing things consciously.
That is the beauty of being human
that we can do everything consciously.
What an animal does unconsciously
we can do the same thing consciously.
We can eat unconsciously or we can eat consciously.
We can breathe unconsciously or we can breathe consciously.
Everything that we can do, we can do it consciously.
The moment we do something consciously,
suddenly that human being looks very refined and wonderful.
Just because somebody walks and speaks consciously,
doesn’t he become a beautiful human being?
Yes or no? Participants: Yes. Sadhguru: That’s all.
So why is it that we are trying to develop habits as if this is a good thing?
Habit means fixed realities,
where you don’t have to think.
You get up in the morning and it’ll happen to you.
No, don’t try to automize your life.
That is not efficiency. That is the efficiency of the machine.
This one is supposed to function intelligently and consciously.
Nobody is expecting it to function like a machine.
So about food and stuff –
food must be suitable for the body that we eat for –
it is for the body.
This is the building material for this body, the food that you’re eating.
What is the appropriate food,
unfortunately is all messed up right now.
Traditionally we ate very sensibly in this country,
but these thousand years of invasions have brought other kinds of food cultures
and today the national diet is pizza or pasta. What is it?
Which is one, I don't know, both were competing.
So we are losing our sense about food.
It’s definitely time to look at what is the most suitable thing.
If I go into that food, it's a very long process,
but you must experiment with food,
not just by the tongue,
but by the body. You eat something today and see,
just learn to observe how agile and how active
your body feels after eating this food.
If it feels like it wants to go to the grave,
that’s not good food.
If it feels like it wants to be alive after eating this – except coffee,
because that’s a stimulant –
if you eat food and your body feels very agile and alive,
that means it's good food, body is liking it.
If you eat something, it feels dull
that means it's not liking it. It’s having difficulty with it, that’s why it feels dull.
So just on this basis. There’s a much,
I mean this is the very simplistic way of putting it.