‘Food is Memory, Eating is Remembering’ Maya Tiwari
Maya Tiwari writes about why your kitchen is the most sacred space in your home.
What do we remember?
Food – the sadhana way- teaches us how to live simply and love completely. When food is prepared with loving awareness, we enhance the positive vibrations of the five elements and remember our symbiotic connection to Mother Earth.
In the practice of sadhana, we are awed by nature’s intelligence, we learn and improve our inner medicine prowess. Wise Earth teachings are as much about doing as they are about learning. Sadhana practices see us in the kitchen grinding spices, kneading bread whilst chanting a healing mantra, building a devotional space and offering prayers and gratitude. These are not new ideas but they may not be part of your current rituals and routines. Wise Earth Ayurveda teachings remind you, reconnect you and help you serve yourself and your friends and family beautiful food imbued with the power of Shakti prana.
Sadhana is being present with everything we do.
In the kitchen – the most sacred space in every home – considered as such because the greatest opportunity for blessings and nourishment can happen here several times each and every day. We are taught to use our hands (the five elements dominantly course through our hands) when enjoined by stone, straw, wood, crystal, brass, copper, and everything material majestic the earth produces, and like our ancestors we grow into reverence for the infinite number of gifts Mother Earth provides us. In this way, food preparation becomes firstly an offering to Mother Earth. This awareness sets the tone for investing our good and loving energy into the food. Food – the sadhana way – teaches us how to live simply and love completely.
Sadhana is a universal prayer.
When we approach the sanctuary of our kitchen, our very being becomes a sankalpa – a prayer. There is an intention to heal the farmers, the land, the sky, water, air, to heal everything and everyone; we stand poised with the knowledge that food for one must be food for all. We join force with Mother Earth’s blessing that can even convert poison to nectar – that is, when we fully own our power as light beings. The act of sadhana drums out the unchanging melody of the cosmos. We learn that food is connected to breath and breath to sound, and these three foundational principles correlate with the universe’s five elements (space, air, fire, water, earth) that sustain creation. Only the act of sadhana replicate these three components together in every action.
Sadhana leaves no carbon footprint.
We use our limbs and hands to pound, grind, roll and marry human sentience into every morsel. We avoid using unnecessary electronics and electrical energy that can so easily tamper with the core vibration and energetic configuration (tanmatra) of nature’s food.
Sadhana safeguards all creatures.
Sadhana is central to the principle of Ahimsa. We live with the seasons, close to the earth, cognisant of the wellbeing of all of nature’s creatures that surround us. Sadhana teaches us to live from love for one and all and not for fear of disease caused by contaminated food sources. Wise Earth Ayurveda teaches us that wholesome food is the birthright of every person, animal and tree. Healthy food is borne from the action of sadhana and it creates a healing body and serene mind. A salubrious meal does not belong only to the privileged, and the elite of our society. Food for one must be food for all.