Notes on the Teachers

Nothing said in this book is my discovery. It is a gathering of what I learned from my parents, from a few books and from a few teachers, tested in my own body. By way of thanking them, I have brought together here the essence of what they said.

At the end of the note on each person there is a section called "where this sits in Nila Nalam". It says what I took from them, and on which page of this book it appears. Acknowledging what is borrowed is not only honest; it also shows the reader the way back to the source.

In brief

1. Mr Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi — "Key to Health"

This is the book Gandhi wrote in 1942–44 while imprisoned in the Aga Khan Palace. Written in Gujarati, translated by Dr Sushila Nayyar, it appeared in 1948. He defines health as being free of illness and able to walk ten miles a day without tiring, to do ordinary physical work, and to digest simple food.

Because the body is made of the five elements — earth, water, space, light and air — his principle was that the medicine for illness lies in those same five. A mud pack settles a headache, a fever and a boil; Kuhne's hip bath corrects the digestion; a sun bath and sleep in the open air clean the blood.

In the chapter on air he says that one should breathe through the nose and not through the mouth, and that the nose should be cleaned daily with water just as the mouth is — a direct forerunner of the ENT cleansing in this book.

That indigestion and constipation are the root of countless illnesses is his firm view. He tells us to leave aside spices, tea, coffee and intoxicants, and to eat uncooked or lightly cooked grain, vegetables, fruit and nuts. His remark that a well-ordered life is worth more than complicated postures is the foundation of this book.

Gandhi did not use fasting only as a political weapon; he saw it as a method of cleansing the body. But he himself gives a warning — fasting has to go together with discipline of the mind; without that it is mere starvation.

Where this sits in Nila Nalam

• The whole of the "earth, water, light, air" section in Chapter 7 is his — the mud pack, the hip bath, the sun, the airflow.
• Method 17 in Chapter 6 (ENT cleansing) is the Tamil form of his advice on cleaning the nose.
• The title sentence of the "seven habits" section in Chapter 5 is his own — a well-ordered life is worth more than complicated exercises.
• The reason the fast of silence is joined to the new moon dry fast is his warning — that fasting is not for the body alone but for the mind.

2. Dr George Washington Carver — the peanut man, American botanical scientist and educator

Born into slavery, he rose to become one of America's finest agricultural scientists (about 1864 – 5 January 1943). Born in the town of Diamond in Missouri, he taught at the Tuskegee Institute for forty-seven years.

Growing nothing but cotton year after year left the soil of the American South stripped of nitrogen and barren. His answer to it was crop rotation — planting peanut, soy and sweet potato between the cotton. These returned nitrogen to the soil, and became food for people as well.

His aim was that poor farmers should become self-sufficient. Over forty years he published 44 practical bulletins. The most famous of them was "How to Grow the Peanut and 105 Ways of Preparing it for Human Consumption" (1916). He wrote six bulletins on the sweet potato.

In 1921 he presented his peanut research to the United States Congress. In 1923 he received the Spingarn Medal; in 1941 Time magazine called him the "Black Leonardo".

The lesson he gives us is this: a way of cropping that impoverishes the soil will impoverish the people too. Real food security is the health of the soil, local food and many kinds of crop, all together.

Although no meeting ever took place between him and India's father of the nation, Mahatma Gandhi (Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi), there was a deep mutual friendship and an intellectual connection between them through their letters.

Between 1929 and 1935 the two of them exchanged letters. Through that connection they shared advice on health and on ways of eating.

Because of the hunger strikes Gandhi kept undertaking, he was suffering from severe anaemia and ill health.

This connection came about through Charlie Andrews, a close friend of Gandhi's.

Dr Carver gave Gandhi a good deal of advice on improving his health, and on how to live well while following a vegetarian or fully plant-based (vegan) diet.

Carver drew up for Gandhi a list of nourishing foods made from soybeans, peanuts and local grains.

It was through Gandhi that I came to know of Dr George Washington Carver. From that peanut man I learned all the benefits of the peanut — above all its low cost, the many kinds of nourishment in it, and its quick and lasting energy. So I always keep some on my office desk for my team.

Where this sits in Nila Nalam

• His idea of "crop rotation" is the thinking behind the name of this book. Grow the same crop continuously and the soil tires; eat the same food, in the same amount, in the same rhythm, and the body tires too. The cycle is the recovery.
• The rule in Chapter 7 against eating the same food day after day came from here.
• This is why there is a different vegetable and a different juice on each day in Chapter 4 — beetroot, pumpkin, bottle gourd, gooseberry, betel leaf, tender coconut, in rotation. The quality of each of these foods is different too. They shift the acid and alkaline states in the body by different amounts. And so the warmth of the body, or the water in it, changes.
• Peanut and sweet potato — eating what is available locally, in that season, and cheaply — is the reason there is not a single imported ingredient in Chapter 6 of this book. But ingredients from elsewhere that answer to these may be used just as well.

3. Mr Ko. Nammalvar — "Let Us Celebrate Illness"

Ko. Nammalvar (1938–2013) is called the father of the organic farming movement in Tamil Nadu. Trained as an agricultural scientist, he stood in the field against chemical fertiliser and pesticide for more than thirty years. He wrote many books, among them "Thaai Mann", "Uzhavukkum Undu Varalaru" and "Nellai Kappom".

The very title of his book, "Let Us Celebrate Illness", tells you his view. Illness is not an enemy; it is the body's attempt to clean itself. Fever, vomiting, loose motions, a cold — these are not the illness but the body's answer to it. Suppressing them with medicine is like locking the rubbish inside the house.

He says our body is full of wisdom, meeting its own needs through hunger, through thirst, through sleep and in many other ways. So if the body stops the hunger when illness comes, it is saying do not eat; forcing food in at that moment is a mistake.

That the health of the soil and the health of a human being are one was the central idea he put forward. If there are no microbes in the soil there is no nourishment in the plant; if there is no nourishment in the plant there is illness for whoever eats it. So health does not begin in a hospital — it begins in a field.

Where this sits in Nila Nalam

• The most basic assumption in this book is his: give the body rest and it will put itself right. All twenty-seven methods do one and the same thing — get out of the way.
• The fasting methods in Chapter 6 (18, 19, 20) are the direct form of this idea. Fasting is not punishing the body; it is making room for it.
• The white coating on the tongue, the bad breath and the mild headache that come in the middle of a cycle — looking at these not as a "side effect" but as "the body at work" is the way of seeing he taught (Chapter 4 — changes you can expect).
• My Puthukural 18 — that pesticide kills not only the insect but the microbes in our own body — is entirely his idea.

4. Mr Jeyamohan — "Nalamarithal"

"Nalamarithal", written by the writer Jeyamohan in 2021, is not a medical book; it is the notebook of a man observing his own body. He begins by saying that once he began to observe his body he began to observe his food, and he says that medicine is the result of the conversation human knowledge holds with the human body.

He does not reject modern medicine outright. He says he divides it in two — allopathic treatment, and the allopathic business. He regards allopathy's success in lifting the suffering of old age as a gift. But he criticises sharply the state of affairs in which a worker hands over everything he earned in thirty years to a hospital in his last years, and then dies.

Allopathy repairs the body; Ayurveda tries to carry the body back to its natural state — in that one line he sums up the difference between the two traditions.

Out of his experience of natural food he records Ramakrishnan's principle that eating cooked food is an invitation to death, and the rules of macrobiotics — eating only what grows on that land in that season; cooking less; using very little salt and sugar; not eating the same food day after day; serving food beautifully. His own experience is that good food gives peace, and gives good thoughts.

This is his most honest admission: that he could not keep to it completely. A life full of travel. And more than that, the pull of the tongue. But so far as he did keep to it, it did him good.

Where this sits in Nila Nalam

• That last admission is what seeded the eighth chapter of this book. If completeness is not possible, then a method is needed that does not demand completeness. That is the cycle method — making "it did good so far as it was kept" the goal itself.
• The approach in Chapter 7 of separating Ayurveda and allopathy without making enemies of them is his.
• The five rules of macrobiotics in Chapter 7 are taken directly from his book.
• The advice in Chapter 4 to write your own experience down — that is exactly what he does throughout his book. Not arguing, but observing and recording.

5. Mr Krishnamachari — Sri Ramakrishna Math, Chennai

In 2001, when I was in Chennai, I learned yoga, meditation and pranayama from Krishnamachari at the Sri Ramakrishna Math, at the Ice House on Marina Beach. Six months of it, every Sunday.

The most important lesson I learned in those six months was not a technique but an order. The posture prepares the body; the breath settles the mind; meditation stands in that stillness. These three must not be seen separately — they are three steps of one practice. Sit without the postures and the body will ache; meditate without the breath and the mind will wander.

The second lesson was about continuity. The class was only one day a week. But that one day was not missed for six months. Doing two hours a day and stopping after a fortnight yields far less than doing it once a week and keeping it up for six months. For the last 25 years I have done ten minutes almost every day.

The third — keeping quiet is a practice in itself. In the atmosphere of the math, sitting without speaking was very hard at first. If I am able to keep the fast of silence on the new moon day, it is because the first practice of it happened there.

Where this sits in Nila Nalam

• The order of the "yoga and breathing practice" section in Chapter 7 — posture, then breath, savasana at the end — is the order he taught.
• He is the reason yoga and prayer come together in method 27 (WWYP) of Chapter 6.
• Chapter 6, method 20 — the new moon fast of silence.
• The idea in Chapter 8 that continuity matters more than completeness came from here.

6. Dr Sundar Balasubramanian — "PranaScience: Decoding Yoga Breathing"

A cell biologist working at the Hollings Cancer Center of the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC); founder of the PranaScience Institute. He was the first to establish scientifically the link between pranayama and biomarkers in saliva.

Out of the 3,000 verses in Thirumoolar's Thirumandiram, this book takes only the fourteen that speak of pranayama (564–577) and explains them alongside modern biology.

Our natural breathing is about 15 a minute. By attention alone it can be brought to 10, and with practice to 7 — which is of great benefit to anyone with high blood pressure. The breaths allotted to us across a lifetime are about 550 million; he explains with a banking image that breathing fast is emptying that account early.

Drawing the breath in and holding it (kumbhaka) raises the carbon dioxide in the body a little and widens the small blood vessels; blood flow to the hair and the skin increases. The flow of lymph has no pump like the heart; it is the movement of the diaphragm that drives it — so kumbhaka helps immunity as well.

He explains how calorie restriction lengthens life by way of the protein pathway called mTOR. If food keeps going in continuously, the brakes on that pathway are released, and along with the proteins that are needed, those that are not needed pile up too. Only with a cycle of fasting and feeding does it stay in balance.

Where this sits in Nila Nalam

• That mTOR cycle is the biological justification for the thirty-day plan of this book. Not eating without a break, but rising and falling, is what is natural.
• The whole of the breathing-practice section in Chapter 7 comes from his book — the Om Namasivaya count in beats, the out-breath twice as long as the in-breath, and the 550 million breath calculation.
• It was his own observation that breathing practice reduces hunger on fast days that made pranayama central to the new moon dry fast day (method 20).
• My Puthukural 2, 10, 15 and 20 — all four are about the breath. Every one of them came from this book.

7. Dr Mark Hyman — "The Blood Sugar Solution"

One of the pioneers of functional medicine. He coined the term "diabesity" for the combination of obesity and diabetes, and calls it the largest non-communicable disease in the world.

His central argument is that it is not the symptom but the whole system that must be put right. Treat the soil, he says, not the plant; when the soil is healthy, neither fertiliser nor pesticide is needed. This is Nammalvar's point said over again.

Sugar, flour foods (bread, pasta, rice, potato), processed food, trans fat, high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), gluten and milk are what create insulin resistance and inflammation. HFCS enters the blood directly, without being digested at all, and drives insulin to its peak. In America corn is grown in three months in very little sun and made into HFCS. There is now hardly a food here without it.

His well-known line is that food is information; it governs how your genes behave, your hormones and your metabolism. The same calories, the same protein, the same fat will still raise insulin and add weight.

The practical measure he gives is simple: waist ÷ height × 100 — for men 46–53 is normal, for women 46–49. An HbA1c of 5.1 is excellent; above 6.0 is diabetes. His conviction is that diabetes can be reversed.

His seven "UltraWellness" steps: raise the nourishment; balance the hormones; reduce inflammation; improve the digestion; increase the clearing of toxins; strengthen energy metabolism; quieten the mind.

Where this sits in Nila Nalam

• Both the "four to avoid" in Chapter 7 and the table of food quantities are his.
• The waist-to-height ratio and the HbA1c target in the "what to measure" table in Chapter 5 are his.
• The rule never to eat starch on its own — this is the reason ghee is added on every rice day in Chapter 6, and why the vegetables are eaten before the rice.
• His remark that being connected to other people is one of the raw materials health is made from is the basis of the "working together" section in Chapter 8.
• The last of his seven steps — quietening the mind — appears in this book as prayer and as the fast of silence. Rest, he says, matters just as much as breath, sleep and food.

8. Dr B. M. Hegde — Indian cardiologist, professor of medicine and writer

Belle Monappa Hegde (born 1938) is one of India's senior cardiologists; former vice-chancellor of the Manipal Academy of Higher Education. He has received the Padma Bhushan (2010) and the Padma Vibhushan (2021).

He questions the very method of diagnosis followed around the world. His best-known sentence is that what you eat does not kill you; it is the thoughts that eat you that kill you. Because the mind is the body's climate, love, compassion, the support of a community and satisfaction in work are the real medicines. Negative feelings raise blood pressure, heart rate and the rate of breathing at once.

His book "What Doctors Don't Get to Study in Medical School" points out that modern medicine is driven by science, technology and consumerism, and that the cost of treatment works out in the doctor's favour rather than the patient's.

He is strongly against measuring a symptom alone and handing out medicine for it. Rather than chasing the cholesterol number, the blood pressure number and the sugar number, he says, one must look at the whole person. His advice is that anyone who wishes to live free of illness should set right their thinking, their food and their sleep, rather than running to a doctor.

Where this sits in Nila Nalam

• He is the reason mood appears as one of the measures in the "what to measure" table in Chapter 5. Measuring weight and sugar alone is not enough.
• Keeping a fast of silence along with the dry fast on the new moon day is the practical form of his view that rest is needed not only by the body but by the mind.
• My Puthukural 19 — that removing the sickness in the mind lessens the illness in the body — is entirely a summary of his idea.
• He is also the reason Chapter 8 insists that a review is not an occasion for blaming yourself. Guilt is a form of inflammation.

9. Mr Scott M. Johnson — Agile coach, Midlands Technical College, South Carolina, USA

The backbone of this book, the "cycle method", came out of the Agile method of the software world. The man who taught me that method was Scott M. Johnson, an Agile coach at Midlands Technical College in South Carolina.

The central idea of Agile is simple: do not try to reach a large goal in a single effort. Break it into small cycles (sprints), release a small benefit in each cycle, stand at the end and look back (a retrospective), and use what you learned in the next cycle.

In 2015 we carried out a project at my office by this method. What three large firms had tried and failed to do over twenty-five years, we finished easily. That was when a question occurred to me: if this makes hard work easy, why would it not work on the body?

Four lessons from this method run through the whole of this book. One — do not hesitate to change the plan; change it according to what the body tells you. Two — continuity matters more than completeness. Three — at the end of every cycle, write down what worked and what did not. Four — do not do it alone; your family and your friends are your team.

There is one thing he says often: the aim of Agile is not to avoid failure; it is to reduce the cost of failure.

Where this sits in Nila Nalam

• The whole of Chapter 8 is his — the sprint, the backlog, the planning, the daily standup, the definition of done, the velocity, the retrospective, the impediment.
• Thirty days is simply the length of one sprint. In the software world it is usually two to four weeks.
• The section "what to do if you slip" in Chapter 5 is the direct result of that thinking about reducing the cost of failure.
• The reason every method in Chapter 6 carries a line saying "why it works" is Agile's principle that only someone who knows the reason can change the plan properly.

10. Mrs Krithika Tharan — Hepta Senz / Hepta Academy, Bengaluru

A nutritional psychology counsellor and a Zenlp practitioner. She founded Hepta Senz and Hepta Academy in Bengaluru. She has more than fourteen years of experience, and a long career in corporate training and consultancy.

The central idea of her approach fits into one sentence: half the gym is waiting inside the kitchen. However much exercise you do, if what happens in the kitchen is not right, there is no benefit.

What makes Hepta distinctive is the view that controlling food is not merely an arithmetic of calories but a psychological matter. Why we eat, when we eat, which feeling drives us to eat — boredom, loneliness, stress — recognising these is the first step.

Hepta Happy 100, RMBR (a 365-day food plan), the NEMURU sleep plan, "Stress to Strength", a plan for adolescents, plans for before and after marriage, a plan for old age — there are separate plans for every stage of life. Her principle is that a change in the way one lives lasts better than a restrictive diet.

Where this sits in Nila Nalam

• The question "why do we eat" is the heart of the "awareness" section in Chapter 1. That is the very question the child eating while watching the moon lost.
• "The four seasons of a life" in Chapter 5 — the idea that the plan must change with age — comes from Hepta's life-stage plans.
• The line in Chapter 8, "no food plan has ever succeeded while at war with whoever runs the kitchen", is an echo of his idea.
• My Puthukural 13 — "deceiving your own self" — comes from his view that food is a psychological problem.

11. Dr M. Ramesh Rangarajan — Sri Sai Yogalaya, Pune

Born in Tamil Nadu in 1984. A sportsman who turned to yoga in 2002, at the age of nineteen. His first teacher was Yogiraj Vethathiri Maharishi; he trained at the World Community Service Centre.

He holds a diploma in yoga therapy from the Indian School of Yoga, Chennai (2008), a master's degree in yoga and naturopathy from Dr Asana Andiappan College (2012), and a doctorate in traditional yoga from the International Peace University, Stuttgart (2020).

At the Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute in Pune he trained deeply in therapeutic yoga for eight years under Geetaji S. Iyengar and Prashant S. Iyengar, of B. K. S. Iyengar's family. He has studied many other traditions as well — Kundalini yoga, Kaivalyadhama and the Art of Living.

In 2017 he founded Sri Sai Yogalaya in Pune. The aim of the institute is to spread the value of yoga, the varma arts and naturopathy, and to build a medicine-free society through yoga and varma naturopathy. He is an expert in giving yoga therapy for every kind of illness using props and supports.

Where this sits in Nila Nalam

• His aim of "a society without medicine" is the founding belief of this book — that illness is better prevented by a way of living than suppressed by a drug.
• He is the reason the sun salutation is taken as the foundation in Chapter 7 — in one exercise it takes in every muscle, every internal organ, and the flow of lymph.

12. Mr Andreas Moritz — "Timeless Secrets of Health and Rejuvenation"

This is a book written joining Ayurveda to modern physiology. It is the chief source for both the "daily plan" and the "monthly plan" chapters of this book.

He explains, with evidence from physiology, that within twenty-four hours the three doshas — Vata, Pitta and Kapha — each hold sway for four hours, twice over. At six in the morning the adrenal glands release cortisol; at midday the digestive fire is at its peak; from ten at night until two the liver carries out its more than 500 tasks.

He says the two hours of sleep before midnight are the deepest — in them the body's oxygen consumption falls by eight per cent and the growth hormones are released in quantity. After midnight this deep sleep is never to be had.

He also sets out in detail what happens when the rhythm is broken. Sleep until eight in the morning and Vata's waste-clearing movement turns about, and the waste is pushed back inside the body. A German study shows late rising as a risk factor for heart attack.

He connects the moon's four phases to the body. The new moon is like breathing out — fast for that one day and the body will clean itself; it is also the best day for giving up a habit. Nourishment given in the waxing moon pays back more. At the full moon the body holds water. In the waning moon digestion works well and the body heals quickly.

His warning about dehydration is an important one: a body that has gone a long time without water must not suddenly be given a great deal of it; it should be increased by one glass a day.

Where this sits in Nila Nalam

• The thirty-day cycle of this book was shaped out of his section on the moon. A dry fast at the new moon, no hard cleansing at the full moon, reduction in the waning moon, nourishment in the waxing — all four exactly as he set them down.
• The whole of Chapter 3 is his — the six dosha periods, the proportions in which waste leaves, what happens when the rhythm is broken, how to drink water, the rules for eating, the order of food, the daily routine.
• The reason for the order "vegetables first, rice after" in method 22 of Chapter 6 is his observation — that the stomach holds food in layers, in the order it was eaten.
• The times for drinking water in method 27 of Chapter 6 (half an hour before a meal, two and a half hours after) are his as well.

All of these people lived in different countries, in different times, in different fields. But every one of them points the same way — it is easier to create the conditions for health than to chase illness away. This book is only one attempt at that.