Keep It Simple: Eat to Live!
The Balispirit Festival is a brilliant international gathering of yogis, dancers and musicians currently in it’s 6th year. One of the most amazing things about this event is the diverse community that convenes. People from all over the world who share a vision of community and celebration attend the festival to experience the gifts of some of the most accomplished teachers in the world.
Today, on the first day of this dynamic event, I had the opportunity to sit quietly and to think more deeply about the art of feeding my body. Hillary Hitt, is a health and nutrition educator from the United States.The first thing I noticed when I walked into her workshop titled, The Art of Proper Food Combining, was her solid presence as a pioneer in health and her commitment to the practice of eating intentionally. Hillary is a self-taught nutritionist and educator and has been guiding people through spiritual fasting and detoxification for more than eighteen years.
About 35 people sat in a semi-circle around this humble woman, whose philosophy is mainly based on the idea that the sole purpose of food is to give the body more energy. Hillary soundly critiqued the raw food movement’s emphasis on excess. Hillary believes that “The raw food movement is not about nutrition anymore.” She suggested that the impact of the marketplace has created an excess that has turned raw food into cuisine. The reason why this may be less than ideal is because there’s a lot of bad food combining taking place that isn’t necessarily about achieving optimum health. This radical statement resonated with me because of my own experience. I switched to a primarily raw food diet after a long period of fasting to heal from a personal health crisis. After buying all the tools for raw food preparation and a bunch of popular raw food cook books, I began to feel like simple was better.
Hillary confirmed my instincts when she said that , “The most ideal way to eat is one food at a time.” Most humans are inspired by colorful dinner plates filled with varied flavors and textures. Hillary admitted that eating more simply is a spiritual practice and takes time to develop. In the meantime, she advised a that we should eat fruit alone, avoid drinking liquids at least twenty minutes before and after a meal and avoid eating carbohydrates with meat protein.
Toward the end of the workshop, Hillary invited us all to listen more closely to what our bodies want because food and the art of eating is not a one-size-fits-all system. The more we intentionally become aware of our eating habits and listen to our bodies, the more self-love automatically arises. And the more self-love arises, the more space we have to express love in the world in general. After eighteen years of nutrition-based practice, Hillary is seeing a new trend; a return to the basics. Judging by the enthusiasm of those in the workshop, change is in the wind. It’s becoming more clear that eating for optimum health is revolutionary and all we have to do is keep it simple.
Hillary is doing a series of health and nutrition workshops here at the Balispirit Festival.Tomorrow, she’ll talk about fasting. As a faster myself, I’m excited to have more access to Hillary’s beautiful wisdom.
Written by : Jaguar Mary