Interview with a Naturopath! - Dr. Achyuthan Eswar

*What inspired you to become a Naturopath?

When I was twelve years old, I had a nightmare that I was stranded on a desert island, I was so ill I couldn't move and I was all alone. I heard wolves howling all around me and vultures circling overhead. I woke up scared and sweating and had a thought - if I could find a system of health care that treats illness without medicines, would that not be the most powerful system of health care? Anyone can heal themselves anywhere, any time! After many years of learning different healing modalities like relaxation, meditation, reiki, pranic healing, autosuggestions, etc., and interning at an ayurveda hospital, I finally stumbled upon Naturopathy and Yoga - the only drugless, yet complete system of health care in the world.

Ever since I graduated, the hundreds of people who have cured themselves of diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, cancer, allergies, asthma, arthritis, infertility, menopausal problems, etc., just by returning to Nature, without any medicines, have only strengthened my belief that I have chosen the right path.

*How can we, as students, start off with slow food?

The best age to start off with slow food is when you are a student. Most adults don't have too much imagination, and are just not interested in trying out awesome food! Let me tell you secret #1.

Think about this - what makes us eat? Have you ever thought about it? There are so many reasons why we eat.

After a long day, after a tough workout, after a long walk, after a sun bath and a cold shower, you feel hungry and you eat. A physical sensation of hunger drives you to find food and eat.

When you’re bored, tired, upset, angry, irritated or stressed, you eat. Your mind makes you crave for tasty food. Taste is the second reason why we eat. Comfort food, we call it.

Any other reason you can think of will fit into one of these two categories.

Have you noticed, when you’re hungry, anything and everything tastes great? All you need to do is get your hands on some food and you’re ready to gobble it down!

But let’s talk about taste.

We all have our favourite food. Most of us have multiple favourite dishes! We crave for these, we feel happy when we eat them. We even have favourite restaurants, specific restaurants for specific dishes, favourite dishes to cook, flavours we like and flavours we don’t. Most of us will also agree, nothing can ever beat amma’s cooking. Cooked and served with love - that gives a whole different flavour to the dish, doesn’t it? The entire gastronomic world is build around the way food - or food products - taste. Today I'm going to show you the first steps of this method. Our secret weapon is called Mindful Eating.

It’s a simple yet powerful idea that can radically transform your relationship with food - for many people, for the rest of their lives! We have evolved with a tongue so that we can enjoy eating good food! Don’t you agree? What’s the point of living if you can’t even taste good food anymore? The problem is, our definition of ‘good food’ and ‘tasty food’ today are two opposites.

Without further ado, let’s get set!

Mindful Eating simply means enjoying your food completely. Every morsel, every chomp, lick and bite! Sounds awesome, doesn’t it? Many times - most of the time actually - we eat something because we think we like, without allowing ourselves to fully experience it. When we do this, we are robbing ourselves of the complete enjoyment, the complete experience.

One of the questions we ask every person the first time they walk into our clinic is, “What do you do when you eat?” We get a whole bunch of answers -

I watch tv

I read the newspaper

I read books

I talk to the person sitting next to me

I text

I call someone

I plan for the day

I think of work, family, kids etc.

Nobody ever says “I just eat, I don’t do anything else”.

In fact when we ask them to do this, the first thing that we hear is ‘this is going to be very difficult’, simply because they’ve never really done it before.

So, how do you enjoy food?

Here’s the first step:

Focus completely on eating.

This means that you must not do anything when you’re eating, regardless of whether you are eating a meal or a snack. No watching TV, reading newspaper, talking or listening to anyone, reading a book, checking your email, answering or making a phone call or any other activity except for eating.

Activity #1: Mindful Eating

Today, eat whatever you usually eat. Don't make any changes to your diet. But, eat it mindfully. Here’s how you do it:

Prepare: Take everything you’re going to eat, on a plate or bowl. If you don’t do this, you may need to get up in the middle of your meal to take more food.

Sit: Find a comfortable place to eat, without noise or disturbance. Explain to the people sitting with you what you’re going to do, invite them to join you for this activity!

Look: Look at the food. Take a piece in your hand, feel the texture, the temperature.

Smell: Take a sniff, inhale the aroma of the food. Enjoy this for one deep, long breath.

Close eyes: Put it in your mouth and close your eyes. Closing your eyes is eye-opening, literally! When our eyes are open, we are so distracted we can never focus completely on food. Make sure they are closed after you put food into your mouth (This does not mean you close your eyes throughout the meal, and end up eating an insect! Please open your eyes to see what you’re putting into your mouth. Once food is in your mouth, please close your eyes to enjoy it completely.)

Focus: As you chew, concentrate on the taste of the food, the texture, the temperature. Completely enjoy the sensation of eating yummy food. Once you’re done chewing, swallow the morsel and take another mouthful.

That’s it!

This are the first six steps to enjoying your food completely, the first six steps to eating mindfully. Please do this exercise for one snack or meal, do it completely, throughout the meal. Invite your family and friends to join in!

When you eat every food mindfully, you'll find that you are only able to enjoy the foods that are healthy for you. This is the secret of every wild animal's fit, healthy body - and can be the secret of yours too!

*In this day and age, where home cooking is replaced by food from street food hawkers, do you find any pros at all?

A. There was a time in India when the word 'restaurant' was non-existent. Every home cooked food every day. If you were traveling for any reason, you packed your food and took it along with you. You had extended circles of friends and relatives at whose homes you could drop in and eat a hot meal. Every home cooked a little extra, to feed the guest who might walk in any moment. Athithi Devo Bhava. The guest was equivalent to God, and would be served first, before the family ate, irrespective of the financial status or other situations of the family.

If you had no home to eat at, temples and Dharmashalas opened their doors to hungry travellers every day. You could randomly walk into any one on your way and eat a full meal.

Whether it is a home or a temple, the focus of the food was health. Would you serve your guest poison? Would you serve something that could give them a stomach upset? Would you serve them something that would give them a heart attack soon? No. Would you serve them food that reverses their problems and gives them health as they eat it? Yes.

"I do not have time to cook my own food" - time is subjective. If you have time to put on your moisturizer and layers of makeup, check Facebook ten times a day, laze around in a hot bath, you very well have time to cook.  Eating out is a compromise.

Eating at home itself is a compromise today, because of the processed ingredients in every kitchen. Eating out is even worse. Baking soda, MSG, white rice, wheat, sugar, added colours, preservative, flavours... A compromise contributing to infertility, obesity, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, strokes, cancers, autoimmune disorders - even if there is a small pro to this, it is insignificant.

*In your view, how big can the slow food movement benefit the society at large?

A. The slow food movement is nothing new to India. It aims at preserving traditional and cultural practices. These are already ingrained in every aspect of our daily lives. Locally produced foods, local businesses and local consumption of produce - this was the way we have lived for many thousands of years.

Commercialisation has stripped our food of its nutritive and medicinal properties. The green revolution has given us white rice, hybridised wheat, milk laced with antibiotics, poisoned fruits and vegetables, hybridised produce that lacks the nutrition of naati varieties, tea and coffee, herbs that don't work as well they used to...

Speaking of processed food, the food we eat at home is processed food. Not many realise that an idli made from white rice is worse than even white bread. Coconut burfi with sugar is as bad as ice cream. This is must change.

The only way to reverse it is to go back to our roots. We still have a chance if we act now. All we need to do is ask our grandparents what they did in their childhood, and we'll be able to understand the immense magnitude of lifestyle change we have undergone - and how badly our health is affected because of that. The Slow Food movement can be a major step towards reversing the lifestyle disease epidemic looming large in India, and lifestyle clinics like ours are aimed towards exactly this.

*In your view as a doctor, how much has the concept of a healthy meal changed in Bangalore? In the case of these health concerns effecting our daily lives And thereby effecting our work...

A. "Unave Marundu", "Let Food be Thy Medicine" - Hippocrates.

Unfortunately, today, for most people, medicine has become food. Whether or not they eat a meal, they make sure to eat their 10 medications every day.

Health was incorporated in our traditional lifestyle, including food. Nearly everything that was eaten two generations back and the way it was eaten was aimed towards health. Today, there are mistakes being committed everywhere from the farm to the dining table that give us disease.

Here's a brief overview of these changes:

Farm:

·        Natural Farming to chemical farming

·        Freshly plucked fruits and vegetables to old, stored fruits and vegetables

·        Groceries only 3 months old to Groceries more than 6 months old

·        Naati varieties to hybrid and GM varieties

·        Multiple varieties to mono variety (ex: sona masoori rice)

·        Naati breeds of animals, grown with love, fed natural diets in their natural environments; to hybrid breeds of animals, grown in cages, fed processed food.

Factory:

·        Hand pound rice to white rice

·        Unrefined, cold pressed nut oils to refined vegetable oils, industrial waste oils and animal fats.

·        Forest honey to high fructose corn syrup

·        Unrefined jaggery to sulphurised white sugar

·        Fresh fruits to packaged juices, preserves and candies.

Shop

·        Locally grown food to imported food

·        Seasonal food to non-seasonal, preserved, artificially ripened food.

·        Kitchen

·        Water-based cooking to oil-based cooking

·        Slow cooking to fast cooking - microwave, induction, pressure cooker, etc

·        Clay, copper and iron vessels to Aluminium, non-stick vessels

·        Huge diversity of ingredients to diversity of dishes with limited ingredients

·        Serving food within 3 hours of cooking, to overnight refrigeration.

·        Cooking animal foods once a week or on special occasions, to cooking animal foods every day

Dining

·        Food eaten in the order of fruits > cooked vegetables > cooked cereals to eating it all mixed and eating fruits for dessert.

·        Eating with hunger, to eating without hunger & overeating

·        Oota/Khana to Nashtha/Thindi - two meals a day, to 3 or more meals a day

·        Eating breakfast rarely, to eating heavy breakfast daily

·        Mindful eating after washing face, hands & legs, to rushed, mindless eating

·        Eating seated silently on the floor, to eating while walking or driving in a noisy place.

This is a very brief idea of how much the concept of healthy food has changed today. Every one of these changes has a profound impact on our daily lives. Can we walk for hours on end without getting tired or thirsty? Can we work every day in a farm without any back pain? Can we lift and move heavy loads without getting exhausted? Can we sit for hours and meditate? Can we calculate huge sums in our mind without any calculators? Can we remain calm and peaceful in all situations, even when someone is shouting at us for a mistake we made - or didn't make? Can we go to sleep the moment our head hits the pillow and wake up by ourselves, without an alarm, early in the morning feeling absolutely rested and fresh? Can we live without any fear of developing any lifestyle disease? Can we give birth without pain, without any need of surgery? 

From concentration to will power to strength to endurance to flexibility to peace to physical health to good social connections, our food today has impacted us profoundly. The way back is simple. You take one step towards Nature, and Nature will take a thousand towards you.