Dwapara Yuga: Cooking and Yoga

Two centuries ago, apart from bread basket areas around the Mediterranean, the selection of foods and recipes was severely limited, for example, the monotony of pork, potatoes and cabbage in areas of Gemany and Poland with associated ill health and shortened lives.

Pork products have long been avoided by Hindus, Muslims and Jews for these very reasons. Yogananda described the sweetness of pork as being due to its 'puss-filled' nature. Gandhi recounts at length his early detours in diet in his autobiography.

With the French Revolution, the cooks left the chateaux and set up in town, part of a process of sensitizing the general populace to quality ingredients and preparations, in line with the breaking down of barriers in Dwapara Yuga.

To the French, psychological development has always been associated with cooking knowledge, much as in India and China. Sri Yukteswar placed special emphasis on cooking in his Ashrams as did Yogananda during his lifetime, with recipes figuring prominently in his teachings, along with martial arts and athletics as well as the importance of taking the sun - part of a rounded lifestyle.

The recent EAT study on children's diet in the US indicates that families eating together improves children's diets, another facet of 'breaking bread' which is well known in the world of business and sales but ignored by many overly busy families and friends.

In the US, much as Britain, the variety and quality of ingredients available and types of restaurants has growth exponentially from the burger and fries of the 1970s, driven by a number of leading cooks, to today where even small town America have Indian, Thai and Japanese foods as well as fast foods. Ironically, the most successful restaurant chain in France is McDonalds but this is more of a reflection on the lazy, unclean, indulgent nature of many of the chefs in so-called fine dining establishments there who have lost the plot of catering to people rather than some image of themselves inflated after the collaboration and destruction of WWII.

Gordon Ramsay, the Michelin Three Star British chef, regularly gives lessons to troubled restaurants (often with French chefs) that apply not just to the restaurant business but (in spirit) to business in general, and even basic human relations in being focused to the individual customer:

- Simple menu of understandable, well-done, fresh dishes

- Be known for a particular dish

- Place an emphasis on cleanliness, quality, service and value (actually the motto of McDonalds but often ignored in the restaurant trade in general)

- Have a welcoming ambiance

- Be consistent

SRF initially served the community with a restaurant in Hollywood, a great inspiration of Yogananda. The project was later dropped (for reasons unknown, perhaps the increasing focus on monasticism, even though many monasteries were and are known for their culinary skills in Europe) but taken up by many other groups such as the Hare Krishnas where it is an important outreach to non members.

SRF recipes have been made available in the last few years by a third party and Ananda has its own cookbook also.

In the 1920s, Yogananda was a regular contributor to health magazines, espousing themes which have only really taken hold from the 1960s and even then only in college graduates. In the 1920s regimes of diet and exercise were regarded as eccentric and faddish, as can be seen in movies like Chariots of Fire, where even having a trainer was regarded as unsporting during the 1924 Olympics.

Today the question is not 'what is yoga' but rather 'which yoga', as large numbers of especially educated, urban women tune into the benefits of Hatha Yoga. In his early years, Yogananda often had demonstrations of Hatha Yoga for all men and women (not simply the Yogoda exercises now known as Energization Exercises). One of his recorded speeches of the time includes a long explanation of the dangers of smoking, practiced even by some of the monastics. As Dwapara advances, more and more people will look into the remaining steps outlined by Patanjali, specifically meditation, not simply doing postures in a normal or heated room and calling that Yoga, a somewhat distant union with God.