By Sadhguru
Sadhguru: In Yoga, categorize food in three ways: positive pranic food, negative pranic food, and zero pranic food. Positive substances are those which add prana, or vital energy, to the system. If you eat positive pranic food, your energy will reverberate in a dynamic way. If you eat negative pranic food, it may stimulate your nervous system, but it will take away prana and cause certain deviations in energy. Zero pranic food neither adds nor takes away; it is only eaten for taste.
Vegetables, fruits, nuts, sprouts and dry fruits are all positive. Let us look at the negative pranic foods because it is a short list.
• Garlic: Garlic is definitely a very powerful medicine if it is used properly. But if you put it in everyday food and eat it, it can cause much damage to you. If you wish to know how much damage, just make an ounce of garlic juice and drink it on an empty stomach. The reaction will be so violent in the body that we will have to take you to the hospital for a stomach wash.
• Onion: Like garlic, similar reactions will happen if you drink onion juice. But even before you consume onion, the body definitely says no to onion; it doesn’t like it, your eyes get irritated and tears flow.
” You can experiment with this: Don’t eat any chili for 30 days and after that, put a little chili into your system; you will have diarrhea immediately. The body treats it like poison and wants to throw it out.”
Sadhguru
• Brinjal or Eggplant: Brinjal actually has some poison in it, a certain substance which is capable of damaging the hypothalamus. Brinjal should be avoided, especially for children.
• Chili: You can experiment with this: Don’t eat any chili for 30 days and after that, put a little chili into your system; you will have diarrhea immediately. The body treats it like poison and wants to throw it out.
• Coffee/Tea: These are very powerful nervous stimulants. Constant abuse of nervous stimulants will destroy your stamina in the long run, as your ability to store energy will be lost.
Other nervous stimulants including drugs, as well as alcohol and other intoxicants, are negative pranic.
Many negative pranic foods have medicinal qualities. In fact, anything, even what we normally consider as poison, can be used as medicine in the right hands. But it is one thing to use a substance as medicine, and a totally different thing to use the same thing as a foodstuff.
If you consume negative pranic foods in too much quantity, they will create a certain volatility within you; they generate energy but with imbalance as they play on your nervous system. If you avoid these, then you will see, you can very easily attain emotional balance.
This is not about becoming some kind of health food freak, “I will not eat this, I will not eat that. I have to eat like this; I have to eat like that.” It is just about being conscious. One day if you want to drink one cup of tea, it is all right. But you must know why you are doing what you are doing, and it should be by choice, not by compulsion.
