The Sattvic Diet Promotes a Healthy Body & Mental Wellness

The term Satva means essence or purity. And this term is highly regarded in Ayurveda when it comes to one’s diet. Ayurveda and sattvic diet: For a Healthy You is essential for mental, physical and spiritual well being of a person.

The practice of a Ayurvedic and sattvic diet is all about incorporating foods in their purest or fresh form. Some common sattvic foods are fruits, vegetables, rock salt, honey, milk, and mild spices like turmeric, cardamom, and cumin. Food that is less processed or not processed; and has moderate amounts of oil, spices, and salt is sattvic.   

Yoga, which espouses an agile body and a calm but alert mind through specific physical activities, also advocates eating sattvic food for a sound mind and body.  

There is a strong body-mind connect

Before we go to sattvic foods, we need to understand the three broad human qualities or trigunas, which, according to Ayurveda, determine one’s personality and mental health. They are classified as satva, rajas, and tamas. 

People with a predominant sattva guna or nature quality are generally calm, and full  of harmony, spirituality, positivity, and self-control.  

Persons with rajas as the main guna maybe aggressive.  

People with dominant tamas are usually dull, sluggish, slothful, and inactive both in body and mind.   

Likewise, foods also fall into three categories based on their qualities:  

• Sattvic food is in its pure and fresh form 
• Rajasic food is overly spicy, oily, or salty. 
• Tamasic food is cold, frozen, and stored or not fresh.

Ayurvedic and sattvic diet is highlighted by fruits and vegetables. Foods under this category are rich in nutrients such as antioxidants, zinc, vitamins C, E, and K, and beta-carotenes; they are also associated with fighting age, the onset of diseases, and psychological disorders by providing anti-inflammatory action. 

It is a myth that Ayurveda is a vegetarian system of medicine. Despite espousing herbal medicines and foods, Ayurveda also talks about meat as food, called Mamsavarga. However, when it comes to a sattvic diet, any form of meat or seafood is excluded.  

Ayurveda cautions against unhealthy dietary habits – such as eating food that is not good for your health; which is of poor quality without nutrition; which is polluted; and incompatible or conflicts with other foods that one is having, such as ghee and honey; and habitually eating less food than one needs. Such habits, it says, can cause conditions such as insanity (unmada), epilepsy (apasmara), and psychic perversion (atatvabhinivesha).   

Sattvic Diet & Yoga 

Ayurveda and yoga have their roots in the Vedas (ancient Indian literature) and share some similar theories. The concept of the three qualities of mind (triguna) is common to both the systems and so is the sattvic diet.  

Yoga, which espouses an agile body and a calm but alert mind through specific physical activities, also advocates eating sattvic food for a sound mind and body.  

We can attain a balance through yoga, meditation, and practices that add to the sattva guna of the mind. 

Ayurveda and sattvic diet: For a Healthy You is attuned with yogic principles and foods that are natural, seasonal, and organic.