Dietary Control

Control of diet with the restriction of the time of eating, is an important part of hatha yoga. Because of making excuses for wrong diet and ill-placed eating times, some students neglect to discipline the self about food consumption. Usually, one becomes addicted to certain tastes, and time of eating, during the infant and juvenile stages of the body. These habits may be deep rooted, not just from the parents, but from the past life of the yogi, where the tendencies for eating disorder surface in the mind as a definite need.

Some students resent a teacher who makes suggestion about dietary monitorship. Due to not wanting to oppose the teacher openly, such students maintain a sharp-edged grudge to the teacher, because of suggestions made about changing the diet and adjusting the time of eating.

Actually, the teacher has little to do with it. One should act for self-preservation, which means to act in one’s long ranged interest. For instance, when this body was in the boyhood stage, there were no objections made by its seniors, as to eating many sweet or over-ripe fruits. The short-ranged result of this was the pleasure of sugary fruits, The long-range effects could be a diabetic condition in the elderly years.

There are many instances for resentment for either dietary restriction or the lack of it. Here I list three examples.

• resenting seniors for not providing sweet fruits during infant and adolescent years
• resenting oneself for not ceasing the sugary foods intake during the adult years after the seniors relinquished their social control
• resenting oneself or parents for the negative results which manifested as incurable diseases in the elderly years

It is difficult to nudge these resentments because they are instinctual in formation. They bully the self as mandatory urges in the psyche. A person rarely understands how these energies are formulated. There is little objectivity when they gush out of the self with intentions to hurt someone else.

One is born with a sense of taste which is involuntary, thus who can conquer the sense of taste?