Your Gunas are affected by what you eat. A simple light food can balance your mental constitution and keep you calm and relaxed.
As per the principles of Ayurveda your mental constituents or Gunas are affected by the food you eat.
Food is energy and it affects both your mind and body. Once you understand how food’s impact your well-being, you can use it as a source to gain positive emotions and good mood.
The key is to be mindful of what you eat.
Down below, is a detailed description of how food affects your Guanas. Scroll down to find the exact link between them.
Table of Contents
How Food Affects Your Gunas?
Ayurveda experts and yogis elevate their mind and develop a sense of gratitude. They do so by changing their diet and lifestyle.
They consider food not in terms of nutritional value but in terms of three Gunas (sattvic, rajasic, and tamasic).
The highest guna is sattva as it is calm and peaceful. To give you a better understanding we have divided the food according to their gunas i.e. we have made a list of sattvic food, tamasic food, and rajasic food.
Read the below to find which the relation between food and gunas.
1. Sattvik Food
Sattvic food is light and easily digestible. And it creates passion, excellence and a great promoter of clarity in your perception.
The sattvic is purely vegetarian as sattva belief in not harming the animals. It includes fresh fruits and steamed vegetables—cereal grains, pulses, and legumes. Also, unpasteurized fresh milk and milk products ghee, butter, raw honey and herbal teas.
This kind of food is well-cooked, fresh, and organic. It also has the essence of all the five taste sweet, sur, pungent, bitter, and astringent. Including all the five taste is mandatory for the body systems.
Sattvik food promotes digestion, develops a peaceful mind. These foods raise one’s consciousness, develops positivity, helps in deep meditation.
Ayurveda scholars and yogis eat sattvic food to balance their mind and body. Majorly due to their food habits the monks and yogis always are sattvic persons.
Sattvik food is cooked with love and eaten with full awareness and gratitude. It builds up ojas and gives vitality to prana (life-force).
By adding Sattvik food to your diet you can elevate your conscience to a higher level.
2. Rajasic Food
Rajasic food is that is over-cooked, salty, hot and spicy. It creates irritation and simulations in your body. Mostly, rajasic foods are tempting such as fried potato chips, salty crackers, etc.
It includes foods with onion and garlic, Also, coffee, soft drinks, cola drinks, energy drinks, tea come under this category. Sweet dishes and brown or black chocolate, spicey chutney, salty pickles, fast-foods. These all stimulate your senses.
These foods may give you a pull in energy which doesn’t last long. Regular intake of rajasic foods increases aggressiveness, hate, and anger in your mind.
Mostly, rajasic food habit spoils your mind-body equilibrium. You will experience poor digestion. Something surprising that most of the people of this age are rajasic minds.
3. Tamasic Food
Tamasic foods are generally heavy, sedating and not easy to digest. If taken in excess, it creates dullness, depression and leads to deep sleep.
Foods like any animal meat – beef, dark meat, lamb, pork, thick cheese. As well as alcoholic beverages and cooked foods preserved for overnight also become tamasic. Even sattvic food turns tamasic when over-processed or fried.
Tamasic foods create laziness and inertia. Regular consumption of tamas foods may lead to obesity, increased cholesterol and liver disorders.
Alchohol, drugs, and weed fall in the tamasic food category. If these substances are taken regularly, they cause an imbalance in mind and may eventually lead to psychological disorders.
You can find your current state of Gunas by using this simple Ayurvedic Guna Test analysis application.
What Kind Of Food Should You Take?
Sattvic Food is recommended for all of us. You can only lead a healthy happier life if your food habits are right.
Ayurveda suggests most of the food that you eat should fall under the sattvic category. These foods uplift you, make you feel light and keep you emotionally balanced.
The sattvic food contains real vegetable, fruits, wholesome, grain, legume, nuts, and seeds that keep your body nourished, stabilized, and grounded.
The other category of food that is Rajasic and tamasic foods have a stimulating effect on the mind. They tent to make you feel agitated and irritated. So, these foods should be minimal or completely avoided for a healthy being.