AmalFood alone will not change the body. There are ways of living that stand alongside the food. Most of them were already in our houses; it is we who forgot them.
There are seven parts to this chapter. None of them is expensive; none needs equipment. But each one doubles what the food plan can do.
1. Yoga and breathing practice
Ten minutes a day is enough. The sun salutation, a few stretches, and savasana at the end. If you want more than this, learn it from a teacher.
The sun salutation is one of the oldest and most complete exercises there is. Two rounds of twelve positions. It strengthens and stretches every major muscle group; it puts pressure on the internal organs; it helps the lymph drain throughout the body; it aligns the spine.
Breathing practice
This matters more than the yoga. Our natural breathing is about fifteen a minute. By attention alone it can be brought to ten; with practice, to seven — which is of great benefit to anyone with high blood pressure.
The method Thirumoolar gives is simple. Draw the breath in slowly through the left nostril, hold it as long as you can, and let it out slowly through the right. The out-breath should be twice as long as the in-breath.
For counting, "Om Namasivaya" serves. "Om" is two beats; na, ma, si one each; "va" two; "ya" one — eight beats in all. Twice through, silently, while drawing in; eight times while holding; twice while letting out.
Why this works
Holding the breath raises the carbon dioxide in the body a little. That widens the small blood vessels and the airways. Blood flow to the hair, the skin and the fingertips increases. It is a fall in blood flow to the crown of the head that causes greying and baldness.
The flow of lymph has no pump like the heart. It is the movement of the diaphragm that drives it. When you hold the breath the pressure in the chest cavity rises and the flow is checked; when you let it out it is released at speed — like standing on a hose and then letting go. So breathing practice is essential for anyone who works long hours sitting down.
An interesting calculation. At fifteen breaths a minute, that is about 550 million breaths in seventy years. Bring it down to five breaths a minute for just five minutes in every hour and the figure falls to 520 million — thirty million breaths saved. In theory, four years.
On fast days, breathing practice reduces hunger. This is a truth you learn by experience. Try it on the new moon dry fast day.
2. The oil bath
Once a week — usually on a Saturday — rubbing sesame oil in and then bathing. In the Nila Nalam cycle this falls on day 21 and day 28.
| Step | What to do |
|---|---|
| Choosing the oil | Sesame oil, unrefined. If it does not agree with you, coconut oil or olive oil. |
| Preparing the oil | Heat it to about a hundred degrees and let it cool. Drop in a bead of water: when it sputters, the heat is right. You can prepare a bottle at a time. |
| Head | Take oil on the fingertips and rub it well into the crown of the head. More time should be given to the head and to the soles of the feet. |
| Face and ears | Apply gently. The outer ear too. |
| Neck and back | The front and back of the neck, and the upper part of the spine. |
| Arms and legs | Up and down along the long bones; in circles over the joints. |
| Chest and belly | A very gentle circle over the heart. On the belly, from the lower right round clockwise to the lower left — in the direction of the gut. |
| Soles of the feet | Last, and for the longest. Every nerve ending in the body is there. |
| Swilling | While you are rubbing, swill a teaspoon or two of oil in the mouth for three or four minutes and spit it out. |
| The bath | Let it soak in for forty-five minutes, then bathe in warm water with siyakkai or arappu. It is good to leave a thin film of oil on the skin. |
If there is no time, a minute or two on the head and the soles of the feet alone — that is enough.
Why this works: the skin is a large hormonal organ, joined to every part of the body through thousands of nerves. So a daily oil rub settles both the nervous system and the hormonal one. Sesame oil passes quickly through every layer of the skin and binds and carries out many toxins, harmful fatty acids among them. A third of the immune system sits in the skin.
What you will notice: sleep comes well, the eyes burn less, joint pain eases, dry skin clears. On the day of an oil bath, light food and plenty of rest.
3. Ayurveda and Siddha medicine
Allopathy repairs the body; Ayurveda tries to carry the body back to its natural state, says the writer Jeyamohan. There is no need to see the two as enemies. Allopathy in an emergency; Ayurveda and Siddha in the way you live day by day.
Jeyamohan himself draws a distinction — allopathic treatment, and the allopathic business. The first is a gift to humankind; the second is the problem. Keep that difference in mind and it becomes clear when to go to a doctor and when home remedies are enough.
What to keep in the house
| Meaning | What for |
|---|---|
| Dry ginger | Colds, wind, poor digestion. Dry ginger and coriander coffee. |
| Pepper | Colds and cough. It increases the absorption of everything else. |
| Long pepper | A long-standing cough, breathlessness. |
| Ajwain | Stomach ache, wind, indigestion. |
| Cumin | Digestion, balance of heat. The basic herbal water of Nila Nalam. |
| Fenugreek | Blood sugar, heat in the body, hair fall. |
| Turmeric | Inflammation, wounds, skin disease. Taken with pepper it is absorbed well. |
| Holy basil | Colds, fever, stress. |
| Thoothuvalai and kandankathiri | Diseases of the airways. Both of these are in every asthma medicine. |
| Gooseberry | Vitamin C, protection against ageing. First among the Ayurvedic rasayanas. |
These are things that are food and medicine at once. As Nammalvar said, medicine should be food itself; nothing that is not food should be eaten.
Kottamchukkadi thailam has been used for generations for body ache, headache and sleeplessness. But the name alone is not enough — it matters that you buy from a good maker. If the oil smells of mould or of rotting leaf, it is useless.
4. Ear, nose and throat cleansing
Gandhi says the nose should be cleaned daily, just as the mouth is. This is the advice he gives in the chapter on air in his book "Key to Health".
- Take clean, warm water in the palm of the hand. Add a little salt and there will be no stinging.
- Close one nostril with a finger and draw the water slowly up through the other.
- Open the other side and let it out. It has to be done slowly; no hurrying.
- To clean the back of the nose, bring the water out through the mouth.
Breathing through the mouth is a bad habit. The nose filters the air and warms it. Air coming in through the mouth goes straight to the lungs with neither of these done to it. Gandhi's own words are that the nose, the doorway of the airway, should never be shut.
Method 17 in this book (ENT cleansing) is the Tamil form of it. The onion and the coconut-oil chips together thin the waste settled in the ears, nose and throat and carry it out. It comes on the eighth day of the cycle.
5. Fresh turmeric
Fresh turmeric, pepper, shallots, holy basil leaf and garlic. Grind them all together. Swallow or chew a spoonful every evening; then drink a glass of water.
6. Earth, water, light, air
Gandhi tested the medicine of the five elements in his own life. Because the body is made of earth, water, space, light and air, his principle was that the medicine for illness lies in those same five.
The mud pack
Clean, unfertilised clay, dried, powdered, sieved, mixed with water and tied in a thin cloth. Three inches wide, six inches long, half an inch thick. On the forehead for a headache; on the lower abdomen all night for constipation; on both forehead and belly for fever. Gandhi writes that he tested this in hundreds of cases. It served for boils and for stubborn sores.
Water
Kuhne's hip bath — sitting waist-deep in cold water. The tub is thirty to thirty-six inches long, according to your height. It corrects digestion and constipation. Pouring a little cold water after the oil bath follows the same principle.
Sunlight
A few minutes in the morning sun. Vitamin D is made in the body itself. As Hyman says, vitamin D deficiency is directly linked to insulin resistance. And it is the morning light falling on the eye that starts the serotonin–melatonin cycle — which is to say the day's cheer and the night's sleep. Exercise in the sun and the benefit doubles.
Air
An open window, good airflow, and if you can manage it, sleep in the open air. A blanket is enough against the cold; but the blanket should not come above the neck. If the head feels cold, a separate cloth for it. Tight clothing should be avoided; loose clothes at night.
7. The quality of the food
How much we eat is what Chapter 5 talks about. Here it is what we eat.
What to avoid — Hyman's four
- Sugar in any form at all.
- All flour foods — bread, pasta, biscuits. These are absorbed quickly and drive insulin to its peak.
- Processed food — trans fat and high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) above all. HFCS enters the blood directly, without being digested at all.
- Gluten and milk — these are the chief inflammatory foods.
What to include
| Food | Per serving |
|---|---|
| Fruit | One medium fruit, or a cup of small fruit, or a quarter cup of dried fruit. |
| Starchy vegetables | A cup of pumpkin, or half a sweet potato. |
| Non-starchy vegetables | Three cups of greens, or a cup raw / half a cup cooked. No limit is needed on these. |
| Whole grain | A third of a cup, cooked. |
| Pulses | A third of a cup. No more than once or twice a week. |
| Nuts and seeds | A quarter cup, or a small handful, twice a day. Pumpkin, sunflower and sesame seeds. |
| Good fats | Olive oil, coconut, ghee, avocado. A teaspoon at every meal. |
Never eat starch on its own. At every meal put protein and good fat alongside it — only then does the insulin rise stay small. A few nuts with an apple; ghee and vegetables with rice.
By the natural-food principle the writer Jeyamohan records, food can be divided in three — starch food, flesh food and fruit food. Coconut and banana together give nearly all three. This is how Ramakrishnan, who put the principle forward, came to be called the "coconut-and-fruit swami".
These are the five rules the writer Jeyamohan learned from macrobiotics: whoever lives on a particular land should eat what grows on that land in that season; cook less; use very little salt and sugar; do not eat the same food day after day; and food should always be served so that it pleases the eye.
Eating with attention — five breaths before you begin. Thanks to the food, to whoever grew it and to whoever cooked it. The custom of the people of Okinawa is "hara hachi bu" — stopping when the stomach is eighty per cent full. They are among the longest-lived people in the world.