Ben Ralston

What Your Body Needs (Once a Year). ~ Ben Ralston

Want more Magic?
January 2001 I went to India and trained as a Yoga teacher. The hardest, roughest, toughest, most grueling, painful, and downright miserable month of my life also marked a turning point – when I began to take responsibility for myself, find my path, and really live.
Since then, I’ve taken and led many retreats. I can’t imagine going more than a year or two without one now.
My body needs it.
So does yours.
Modern life is fast and super-stressful. We get sucked into the mundane before we can say ‘must-be-mindful’. Spat out again on the other side of a lost year, all those unresolved resolutions shored up in our subconscious, we end up waging war with ourselves, not realizing that the real enemy is the system that we allow ourselves to get caught up in – thinking that we need it.
We don’t need it – it needs us. We don’t need anything. And that’s what you realize – deeply – when you go on a retreat.

You realize that you’re fine just as you are.

No WiFi, no cell phones, no media blare – nothing but nature.
And of course, there’s the Yoga (or Tai Chi), the fresh, healthy food, the conscious relaxation, the sense of being surrounded by like-minded people (you know, community), the deep breathing, and the space and time to simply enjoy.
These are things that human beings need daily, and that most people are starved of.
The moment it hit me that retreats are actually important – was when I finished leading my first one. It was mid-Summer, on a Croatian Island, and we’d started the week (35 of us) holding hands standing in a circle, as I chanted a sacred mantra for auspicious beginnings.
At the end of the week we stood in a circle holding hands and I chanted a sacred mantra for auspicious endings, and then we walked out from under the canopy that covered us.
Everyone outside was standing looking up at the sky, open mouthed, pointing, in awe.
There was a perfect circular rainbow halo around the sun:
Pretty auspicious huh?!
I’d never seen anything like it before in my life – and it felt like (accuse me of having a God-complex if you will!) a divine omen, an (almost) neon flashing sign stating loud and clear:
“Yes, you’re on the right path, keep up the good work”
So I keep on taking and leading retreats. I believe that we need to break out of the system occasionally, remind ourselves of what’s important and what’s not.
And in the same way that we all know we need a weekend once a week, I hope that one day we’ll all retreat once a year (just like we get our cars serviced routinely). To step out of the mundane and remind ourselves that life is sacred, magical and mysterious, and to actively celebrate and participate in that awareness.
I’m running a retreat in August this year, on the Croatian island of Iž. Have a look at the beautiful video of Iž below, and if you’d like more information, go here.
And if not this year, then next. And if not one of my retreats, then someone else’s – you owe it to yourself and to the world around you to stay connected to the joy and wonder and magic deep inside of yourself.
Don’t get caught up in life. Live it – fully, heartedly, meaningfully. And if you’re not sure how, find out.

Our time here is precious, and all too fleeting.

Spread the love now – share this with the world.
Resource: The Sivananda Yoga Organization offers year-round retreats in all of it’s nine Ashrams around the world. They’re cheap, the teaching is of a routinely high standard, and food is excellent. It’s not for everyone – it’s a ‘no-frills’ experience. But if you really want to retreat – in the true sense of the word – then I thoroughly recommend it.

The latest Yoga scandal? Or prefer to read about Truth?

30 or so years ago I lied to my Father and he caught me out. I remember being afraid, and tensing up in anticipation of a whack or a stern rebuke. But there was just a very long pause, a pause that felt like falling, falling through space – no roots, nothing to ground me. Then he warmly and simply said:

“There’s nothing I despise more than a lie”.

He looked at me kindly and left it at that.
He wasn’t always such a magnificent teacher, but that day, he nailed it.
I’ve spent my whole life since searching for Truth.
At school I sat in countless classrooms watching the parade of old men whose life-blood slipped away while they bullshitted themselves (and each other, and my parents) that they were teaching anything worthwhile. There was no truth to be found there.
On the television endless advertisements, people with too-white teeth and too-wide smiles, trying to persuade me that they were honest and good and that I needed what they were selling. No truth there.
On the streets and in the shops and buses and trains I saw everyone trying to convince themselves that they were alright, happy, safe. But I saw through their deception. No truth.
In Churches and in Synagogues I listened to readings from dusty old books and I felt the disconnect between what was being read, and the person reading it. There was no truth there, no true Faith, only blind, wishful-thinking, and the wise child that I was wasn’t fooled.
(When I finally realized that my parents weren’t superheroes) I saw my Father struggling to balance his dignity with the daily grind of trying to become – what? A millionaire? A billionaire? And I failed to see the truth in that.
I saw my Mother’s sense of unfulfilled, unrealized potential, and the emptiness inside that she occasionally tried to fill with wine, chewing gum, or television, and I knew that she hadn’t found the truth that I was looking for.
So I spent many years knowing only what I didn’t want. I didn’t want my life to be a lie. I knew that with all my heart. I yearned for a not-lie. But I had no idea what that was. I had no idea what the truth looked like, or how it felt, or even if I would recognize it if it were right in front of me, with a big flashing neon sign:

Herein lies TRUTH.

Actually, I would have turned away. When you are so conditioned by delusion and hypocrisy… when all you have ever known is deception… when the fabric of your society is woven with pretense… then the truth is something to be feared!
I have another, earlier memory. Mr Morton may have been a rare example in my life of a good school teacher. He seemed very old to me then, with grey whiskers and a stooped gait, and when he sat at the front of the class he would interlock his fingers, rotating one thumb around the other in what seemed like a frantic attempt to slow down time… I had the sense that there was a great energy about to bubble up in him, about to boil over… and if he didn’t keep on twiddling his thumbs like that he wouldn’t be able to stop it.
One of my peers must have lied to him one day, because he exploded, whiskers shaking, mouth foaming, eyes bulging. When he’d finished there were some nervous  sniggers, but we all – each and every one of us in that room that day knew that we’d seen and heard Truth directly:
“When you start to tell lies you enter a very dangerous arena, a grey world where black and white blur into one, and right and wrong lose their meaning. And one day you will find yourself an altogether grey person, because you will have started to believe your own lies.”
We live in a grey world. Our society is very, very grey – phone hacking, money-makes-money banking, countries invaded under the guise of WMD that were never there. Soap operas and adverts and MTV and internet-filters and rigged elections and Arms Fairs and Oil dependency and Global Warming and… on and on. One scandal, one controversy after another.
This is what happens when spiritual practice is used as a vehicle for fame and fortune, when personal gain trumps respect for lineage, when the student proclaims himself teacher of teachers. (The link is to a post I wrote the other day about the corruption of Eastern spirituality by Western materialism, specifically – yoga teachers training more yoga teachers).
Does our society support a quest for freedom and truth, or does it encourage us to rejoice in the illusion of gossip and malicious rumor like pigs rolling in mud?
There is only one solution to the problem, and that is to stop relying on that society. It doesn’t mean that you can’t be part of it. You can still play the game – but by your own rules.
Be aware that Truth is the gateway to freedom. And don’t compromise in your search for, and expression of, that truth.
Not long ago a student asked me the secret to happiness. I answered:

“Never compromise”.

She was somewhat surprised, because let’s face it, most of us grew up being taught the opposite – that compromise is an integral part of happiness!
How many times were you told:
“’You can’t have it all’… ‘choose one or the other’… ‘dreams don’t come true’… ‘better the devil you know’…”
or variations of the above?
But I’m here to tell you differently: by all means, compromise with your partner over which movie you watch, or what you have for dinner; compromise with a colleague over how you go about completing a task. Compromise on the little things. Compromise your desires.
But when it comes to something big – love, work, your aspirations and dreams: don’t compromise – not one iota. Don’t take a single step off the path of meaningful, intentional life. Know what you want, and go for it, with 110% of your energy. And when something gets in the way, either jump over, or go around, or wait patiently until it moves away again, because it will move if your intention is strong.
Don’t lose sight of what is important to you – your values – and don’t compromise on them. If you do, the day will come when you look back on your life and see only a lies. I can’t imagine anything worse.
Mr Morton was right.
One lie leads to another. What starts out as a simple excuse for why you stay with the partner who doesn’t totally rock your world leads to a whole world-wide-web of self-deceit. That’s just the beginning, because next you have to convince the rest of the world about it too!
Before you know it, life is grey and foggy.
It takes a great deal of courage to be really honest with yourself. The very reason we deceive ourselves is because we’re afraid. So to be honest means to be doubly courageous – you have to have the cojonesto confront your fears, and to then carry on in spite of them. You have to ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’.
That might mean leaving a partner, or a job, or a home, or a college. It might mean coming out about your sexuality, or travelling the world, or learning a language, or whatever. These are big, scary things. But they are gateways – you can either go through that gateway to freedom, or you can stay hiding behind the door.
Hide behind that door and remain in a dark, shadowy, grey world where the search for love, peace, and freedom is utterly pointless. Death will come for you full of regrets.
But step through that door and be dazzled by full-spectrum multi-chromatic rainbow-colored Glory.
The choice is ours to make, and we are all making that choice, every moment of every day.

What do you choose?

If you’re feeling it, share it. ‘Like’ it up on FB, and leave a comment, please.

Why I don’t train Yoga teachers.

Swami Vishnu – he flew over war zones in this plane throwing flowers out the window. A true hero.
As a child my heroes were the khaki-clad men and women who gave their lives in WW2 (for a cause greater than themselves). I was completely in awe of anyone who put their own comfort and safety aside in order to ‘fight the good fight’. I believed there was no greater life to be lived.
Many years later I travelled to India for an intensive Yoga Teachers Training course. It was the most challenging thing I’d ever done – physically, emotionally, mentally, and above all, spiritually. I wrote about it here.

On that course, I found new heroes.

The ochre-clad men and women who gave their lives, day after day, for a cause greater than themselves.
The Swamis are the people we may thank for the access that we now enjoy to the ancient wisdom of Yoga. For thousands of years they have taken vows of brahmacharya – mastery of the senses, and renunciation of the fruits of the senses  – as they put their personal comfort and ego safety to one side in order to transform the world. There is no greater sacrifice.
Towards the end of my time in India I resolved that I would one day be a Swami. 5 years later I did indeed give away all my ‘stuff’: my old man got my ipod. My brother got my Raybans. A recent TTC graduate got my small yoga business including 20 yoga mats, my classes, students and mailing list… and with just a small bag of clothes I entered an Ashram and began training. Why am I not there today? The fist person I met in the Ashram that day was the beautiful Goddess who is now my wife. But that’s another story…
Altogether I taught Yoga full time for almost a decade.
I taught Yoga in exclusive hotels and gyms, hostels, schools, and festivals, to Hollywood celebrities and millionaires and old age pensioners. I once taught a guy who’d (to coin the wonderful Ram Dass expression) ‘been stroked’. The whole left side of his body was paralyzed. So in Sun Salutations he would grab his left leg with his right hand, and put it into position. It took a long time, but he did them, and he loved every minute of it. I’ve never met a more smiley and determined person in my life, and it was a great privilege teaching him. The classes he was in were some of the most memorable I’ve ever taught.
I must have taught many thousands of people during those 10 years.

I never had a single student get injured. Not one.

And my style of Asana teaching is dynamic and physical! So how is it that some people believe Yoga to be ‘dangerous’?! Many times over the years I’ve been asked this question:
“Why don’t you run your own Yoga Teacher Training Course?”
In our materialistic society it seems to be a real no-brainer! After all, that’s where the money is in Yoga! We all know that. So why not do it? I’ll tell you why:

I won’t pee in the well.

The well of pristine ancient wisdom kept by countless generations of Swamis.

Swami Sivananda – a Hero
Swami Vishnu-Devananda had a vision in meditation of the world in flames. It was that vision that led him to create the Sivananda Yoga Teachers Training Course (the oldest TTC in the West – around 15,000 graduates over 40 years). His main intention was not so much to create yoga teachers – rather, he intended to create world leaders with integrity. He wanted to create a generation of yogis who would be able to steer the world away from its current crisis with integrity, compassion, and service.
In India, before I realized I wanted to one day be a Swami, I knew without a doubt that I would try to honor Swami Vishnu’s intention – I would do my best to repay the debt I owed him.
So when I’m asked why I don’t run TTC’s what I say is this: there are places I can send my Yoga students to become Yoga teachers. Places run by people who are completely dedicated to doing just that. People who haven’t got kids, aren’t in relationships, and don’t go on vacation. They just train Yoga teachers. Day in, day out, all year round. Total heroes.
So how could I take it upon myself to train other people to be yoga teachers, when I know that I would be depriving them of the best training available? I would feel that I was cheating my students, and betraying the lineage that I am honored to be a tiny part of.
That lineage comes from a land whose entire culture is founded on spirituality.
Our entire culture is founded upon materialism.

Different worlds.

So I understand completely what has gone wrong – people who lack a profound understanding of the spiritual essence of Yoga are running TTC’s.
So the graduates of those TTC’s are even further removed from the lineage. The pond is polluted further and further.
No wonder there is endless controversy in the Yoga ‘blogosphere’. No wonder there are articles suggesting that Yoga may be dangerous. No wonder people really are injuring themselves!
I’ve seen many suggestions that the reason yoga has become dangerous is that not enough attention is paid to anatomy.
That’s a side issue. It’s also something that householder Yoga teachers who run TTC’s will say to justify what they do (“I teach good anatomy so that my student teachers are safe”). But in reality, to teach Yoga properly only a basic understanding of anatomy is required. You don’t need a degree in anatomy to teach yoga, because

Yoga is not gymnastics.

Yogasana is intended primarily to prepare the body to be comfortable sitting for meditation. If it’s taught as such, with emphasis on breath and inner awareness rather than physical ‘shape’ and external competition then it’s totally, 100% ‘safe’. Actually, it’s more than safe, it’s healing.
It is also, of course, a wonderful physical exercise – but that is a secondary benefit.

Yoga is a spiritual practice.

There are true heroes on this planet.
Find them.
Because the world  needs one more.
If you feel it, share it. Please leave a comment. Spread the love!

What happens when you do Yoga: part 1: Asana

10 amazing benefits of a regular yoga practice.

Asanas are the physical position, or postures, of yoga. Asana is a Sanskrit word.
Sanskrit is known as the language of the Gods. It is ancient, subtle, and complex.
The word asana means seat, or position: literally, the relationship that your body has to the earth. Sanskrit being Sanskrit, there is also an implied meaning: steadiness, and comfort.
So asana is a position that is held steady and comfortable.

Petra in King Cobra; Poorna Bhujangasana
What happens when you practice these positions in the right way (holding them steady, and relaxing into them) is that you (1) breathe deeply. Since any time you remain steady and relax deeply, your breathing will also deepen as a natural consequence.
As your body lets go of unnecessary tension (which is absolutely inevitable with practice, because it’s simply not possible to hold an asana whilst also holding on to stress) there is a deep (2) ‘letting go’. Emotional stress that was locked away in the muscles and tissues of the body, especially the fascia, dissolves. This is why people sometimes cry or feel emotional during yoga practice; usually however the ‘letting go’ is on a more subconscious level.

As the body breathes more and more deeply, the lungs expand and contract more fully, gently and rhythmically (3) massaging the internal organs and glands. They are toned; toxins are released; and all the systems in the body – the endocrine system (hormones); nervous system (stress + relaxation); circulatory system (energy) digestive system, and metabolism – are balanced.
As well as this internal massage, the yoga postures are also well known for the wonderful (4) external massage that they give: stretching. The muscular skeletal system is rebalanced completely; the main reason why yoga is known to be quite simply the best remedy for a bad back. Problems with alignment are corrected automatically, as the body remembers it’s proper relationship with all it’s various parts.
Another reason why yoga helps to fix a bad back, apart from the stretching aspect of the exercises, is that it (5) strengthens the body, especially the core of the body. The core muscle groups are the ones that hold the body internally, maintaining good posture and balance. Look at an experienced yoga asana practitioner, and you’ll see physical poise, balance, and lightness of limb. Yoga is known as ‘skill in action’, and certainly physical mastery is one of the results.

Inverted postures (such as shoulderstand and headstand) reverse the effect of gravity on the blood flow in the body, bringing (6) much needed nutrition and energy to parts of the body that may lack them, rejuvenating the upper regions – heart, throat, and brain.
The heart is especially benefited by these inverted postures due to the effect known as ‘Starling’s Law’, which states that the more the heart muscle stretches, the more it in turn contracts. The large volume of blood entering the heart (carried freely by gravity from the legs, pelvis, and abdomen) stretches it greatly so that it then contracts strongly, and is given wonderful exercise; without any stress on the nervous system and knees, which other more aerobic cardiovascular exercise is guilty of.
Heart disease, formerly thought to be irreversible, has been demonstrated to be not only reversible but also cure-able with the help of yoga.
I mentioned hormones above. Most people don’t realize how important the endocrine system (system of glands which produce hormones to regulate many of the functions of our organism) is: it is responsible for our moods. That’s why we sometimes put unpredictable behavior down to someone being ‘hormonal’!
In short, when you practice yoga, the endocrine system is balanced, toned, and stimulated, so that (7) the correct levels of specific hormones are produced: to dissipate stress, and induce relaxation.
I don’t mind telling you that before I became a yoga teacher many years ago, I was a party animal, living a fairly hedonistic lifestyle in London.
One of the things that ‘hooked’ me to yoga was that I realized the wonderful feelings and experiences I had using recreational drugs then, could be reproduced without the drugs.
To be specific: I attended a wonderful yoga class, and left the class one Autumnal evening feeling as if I had taken MDMA (ecstasy). My vision was sharp; my body felt as light as a feather; my thoughts were ‘crystal clear’; and my mood was one of calm, ecstatic, joy bubbling up and over me… in short, exactly the same experience I had had ‘partying’. As I walked home that evening through the streets of London, the streetlamps seemed as beautiful as the trees. The air I breathed was like nectar, and each person hurrying past was a being towards whom I felt infinite compassion. In one word: I was pure love. The next day there was no ‘come-down’; I knew I could tap into that feeling anytime I wanted, because the source of it was not something external – a drug – but something inside of me. My love affair with yoga continued on from there… and one of the reasons I teach it is that I want to share that incredible internal experience with others.
Yoga also brings our attention to any issues that we have – physical and emotional. It’s very hard to do a full yoga class and not notice tension in the body, or anger in the heart. The nature of these postures is that they (8) bring problems, weaknesses, and stress to our attention. By way of example: if you have a weakness in your knee, which may well go unnoticed until you run for the bus and damage the joint, practicing yoga will undoubtedly bring the problem to your attention. You will then have to adapt your practice to accommodate the injury, and soon you will find that the problem is gone, as the postures soothe, stretch, and strengthen the ligaments, muscles, tendons, and tissues around the problem.

Locust / Shalabhasana; don’t try this at home!
Finally, practicing the physical aspects of yoga brings clarity, focus, and balance to the mind. Asana practice is really meditation too. It brings us mindfully into the present moment, with ease and grace, so that (9) magic happnens: our body and mind integrate again. While most people think of themselves as a mind and a body; or perhaps a mind in a body; the truth is that the mind and body are one. There really is no separation between the two: they are like two sides of the same coin.
The reality is that human beings are pure consciousness, pure vibrational energy. The body is a dense manifestation of that consciousness. The mind is a subtle manifestation of that consciousness. Both are essentially pure consciousness. So what happens when we practice asana is that in some kind of magical way, perhaps as a result of the cumulative effect of all the above points together, we suddenly feel ourselves more integrated; more comfortable ‘in our own skin’.


There are in fact way more than 9 benefits. I picked the number 9 out of a hat (not literally) before I started, and worked around it. There are actually so many benefits to a regular yoga practice that I could write on and on about it for the rest of my life… but I don’t have time for that, and neither do you. But you get the picture. The only other thing I feel I should mention before I leave you is ENERGY: I mentioned consciousness before, and pure vibrational energy… well, that’s what you are. Sometimes, that energy gets kind of ‘twisted’, or blocked, and then we feel… well, not so good. Yoga practice gets the energy flowing properly. The consequence of that is not only that we feel better, but that our evolution is accelerated. That’s right, we become more evolved. Our consciousness is raised. You can put this a number of different ways: for example, you can say that the higher chakras are awakened, or balanced; you could say that the kundalini is awakened (for my own experience of chakraas and kundalini see here); or you could simply say that the vibration is raised. Either way, the effect is unmistakable. I’ll talk more about the energetic effects of yoga practice in part 2: pranayama.

You eat what you are?


So much more to us than meets the eye…




This was inspired by the recent debate (over on Elephant Journal, where I’m a regular columnist) on garlic. If you missed that, and would like to ‘catch up’, you can follow the links at the foot of this piece.

To cut a long story short: someone said that garlic is bad for meditation (he went so far as to call it a ‘brain toxin’). A lot of people were pretty upset about it; someone else wrote an article refuting their claims, and extolling the health benefits of garlic; then there was a refutation to the refutation, and so on.

Here’s what I think:
Garlic is toxic, but not to the brain – to our higher, subtle awareness. That awareness is not brain centered, although most people think it is.

 In this article:

  1. I want to explain how both parties in the recent debate about garlic are right!
  2. I also want to share some very useful information with you about the nature of your being, and
  3. I’ll share with you some practical tips, including a free, instant remedy for Jet Lag…

When I first saw the original article, …… I thought nothing of it, except that I was mildly pleased to see the subject broached on a popular forum.

I have not eaten garlic or onion for 10 years. However, I’m not obsessive about it; if I’m in a restaurant or at a friends’ home I’ll eat it without a thought.

I stopped eating garlic and onion when I trained as a yoga teacher in India in 2001. I learned many, many fascinating things on that course. For example: the ideal consistency of the feces of a healthy person is that of a ripe banana. Useful huh?! I thought so too…

Well, I learned a lot of useful information on that course. I recall thinking at the time that these things should be taught in schools – why, for example, did I have to wait 27 years, and travel to a distant continent in order to find out what my stools should look like? Why, after an expensive public school education in England, did I know the date of the battle of Hastings (1066) and various other utterly, utterly useless bits of information, but not these simple things that affect my everyday life?

During the month that I spent immersed in that course, from early morning to late at night, I felt as if my real education had just begun…

One of the things that I learnt is that according to the ancient yogic teachings, a human being consists of not just one, but three bodies: a physical body (which we’re all very aware of), an astral body (which sounds to many people like pure hokum, I know, but bear with me!), and a causal body.

Now, the 3 bodies have 5 ‘sheaths’ (if you thought the astral body stuff was hokum, you’ll love this!).

The physical body is composed of the Food Sheath (when you die: food for the worms!);
The astral body contains the Vital Sheath (think: energy); the Mental Sheath (senses, thoughts, doubts, and emotions, also the sub-conscious), and the Intellectual Sheath (analytical process, discrimination, decision making, and ego).
Finally, the causal body is composed of the Blissful Sheath (bliss, joy, calmness and peace).

Physical:

Food

Astral:

Vital (energy)
Mental (senses, thoughts, emotions)
Intellectual (analysis, discrimination, ego)

Causal:

Blissful (bliss)

The point of all this is: we are complex beings, ironically not unlike onions! We consist of many different aspects. Peel back one ‘layer’, and there is another underneath.

Now, the whole garlic-eating debate seemed to hinge on a basic misunderstanding that many people have (because it’s one of those things that they don’t deem important enough to teach us at school).

Our physical body is the densest, most material, gross manifestation of who we are. There is a subtler layer beneath it (or around it, or pervading it) known as the astral body, and an even subtler layer called the causal body.

Our society is focused (like tunnel vision and to the exclusion of all else) on the material. Awareness of the subtle aspects of our being is limited to small groups of people.

That’s my understanding of what Einstein meant when he said:
“The rational mind is a faithful servant. The intuitive mind is a sacred gift. We have created a society that honors he servant, and has forgotten the gift.”



The rational mind is concerned with, and grounded in the material world – our body, and it’s physical environment.
The intuitive mind is more concerned with, and grounded in the higher awareness – energy (prana, chi), emotion, intellect, bliss.

However, the tunnel vision of our society has not always been so. Thousands of years ago in India, the sages who developed Yoga had intimate knowledge of many things that our modern sciences are only now discovering.

For example, on my yoga teacher training 10 years ago there was a lecture by Amit Goswami, a now well-known professor of theoretical physics. (If you’ve seen the movie ‘What the bleep do we know?’ then you’ll have seen him). What he said blew my mind. In a nutshell, he explained that much of the knowledge of quantum physics that has emerged very recently in the scientific community was already known thousands of years ago!

Now, the misunderstanding that I referred to (as the cause for confusion in the ‘garlic-gate’ episode) is quite simply due to the lack of awareness that most people have about the more subtle aspects of themselves! (It’s understandable because we’re not taught about it – we learn about what happened when, and algebra, and oxbow lakes, and ‘stranger danger’, and grammar, and how to dissect frogs… but not about what our stools should look like, or what we actually are)!

Garlic of course has many wonderful health benefits (as the rebuttal to the original articles clearly showed) – including for the brain. However the ancient yogis never said (as far as I am aware) that garlic is bad for you physically; they said that it interferes with the higher, subtler aspects of the consciousness. They were not concerned with the physical health benefits of garlic, because they didn’t need them!



They almost certainly had optimal health (check the link for an very relevant article about what health really is), a highly robust immune system, and extremely strong, healthy bodies. They didn’t sit all day in cars and at desks; they didn’t have to worry about pollution, genetically modified vegetables, or genetically engineered (Franken) fish. They developed the practice of asana and pranayama and lived in harmony with their environment.

So, I’m confident in my assertion that they were healthy.

I’ve been practicing yoga (in all it’s aspects) for many years, and I find that I also don’t need garlic to stay healthy. If ever I need antibiotics, sure, I’ll get them from natural sources where possible: and garlic is one of those sources.

Yoga is personal development: in fact, one of the oldest methods of personal development; one that has stood the test of time; and upon which many modern systems are built – Pilates, auto suggestive relaxation techniques, various techniques for concentation and meditation, and so on…

Personal development means development of the person. And Yoga, as we’ve seen, takes the view that our person is much, much more than a body. So it means developing the physical, energetic, and causal bodies, so that we become truly coherent and integrated as a whole person.

When the physical body is healthy and you want to focus on developing your higher faculties through regular meditation; when you want to experience the world around you not only through your physical body but also through the astral and causal bodies; perhaps even, ultimately, to experience true, lasting bliss; then, it may be that garlic interferes with that purpose.

Certainly that’s what the ancient yogis thought, and who am I to disagree with the only teachers I ever had that taught me what my poo should look like?

Another very useful thing that they taught me, which I hope will demonstrate to you very clearly why I hold what they say in such high regard, is a cure for jet lag…

Anyone who has ever been seriously jet lagged knows how valuable this is: I’ve only been jet lagged once, but it was so bad I wished the earth would swallow me up.

I couldn’t sleep for a week, and was hallucinating from tiredness. In the end I got very sick. It happened when I flew to India…

Jet lag is your body clock out of whack. The ancient yogis knew what regulated the body clock. This is amazing, because our scientists don’t even know for sure (or if they do, they only just *very* recently figured it out) what regulates the body clock.

It’s the pineal / pituitary gland in the middle of our brains.

So the cure for jet lag is: headstand. It was known by the ancient yogis as the ‘King of the Asanas’ because it has such powerful restorative uses: in fact, it is written that one who practices headstand for 3 hours conquers death! I can’t testify to that – the most I’ve ever done is 10 minutes!

However, I can tell you that when I went to India I was jetlagged so badly I almost wanted to die… and when I left India, I stood on my head before the flight for 3 minutes, and after the flight for 3 minutes, and slept like a baby when I got home – no jet lag whatsoever.

Those ancient yogis sure knew a lot of useful stuff.

Were they right about garlic interfering with higher awareness? I’ve found it to be true, yes.

It’s good to first take care of your body and health, because that’ll give you a firm foundation on which to build your personal development. When you’ve done that, you may wish to take care of the other aspects of your self.

Meditate deeply, go beyond body consciousness, and experiment with your diet. You may find that garlic and onion suddenly seem less important.