A Balanced Diet

by Debra Bokur | photography by Andrew Purcell

More and more, we’re told that finding and maintaining equilibrium in our lives is key to overall health and wellness. Evidence continues to mount that we should strive for balance in all areas, from work and relationships to leisure pursuits, exercise, and nutrition. Seem a little overwhelming? You can take a few steps in the right direction within the comfort of your own kitchen, by applying the principles of Ayurvedic balance to the foods you prepare for yourself and your family.

“A meal should delight the senses, be easy to digest, and be made with love,” explains Amadea Morningstar, BS, MA, and author of Ayurvedic Cooking for Westerners (Lotus Press, 1995), and (with Urmila Desai) The Ayurvedic Cookbook (Motilal Banarsidass, 2003). “In nature-based Ayurveda, each of the senses is associated with an element: taste with the water element, smell with earth, sight with fire, touch and texture with air, sound and ambiance with ether/space.”

Morningstar adds that each element is sacred and needs to be nourished. To achieve this, an Ayurvedic meal includes all six tastes – sweet, sour, salty, pungent/spicy, bitter, and astringent. In this way, she says, we feed all the elements, as well as the essential energies that exist within each.

Madeleine Marentette, founder and president of Grail Springs Health & Wellness Centre in Bancroft, Ontario, has developed a cookbook filled with balancing, delicious meals that also help detoxify and balance the body. After suffering for decades from a debilitating stomach disorder, Marentette found healing through a combination of herbal medicine, meditation, and – in 2003 – by changing her diet to a pH balanced acid/alkaline approach to nutrition.

“In my early twenties,” offers Marentette, “I started to understand the reality of the body-mind connection. Meditation and the study of energy medicine led me to the revelation that we are made of energy and matter. We are energy transformers. We take in necessary oxygen, hydration, minerals, and nutrients through food, water, and the air we breathe. Acknowledging our cellular life, recognizing that it functions the same way we do, and ensuring that it gets what it needs, is key to maintaining optimum health.”

At Grail Springs, Marentette guides guests towards better health with a program that encompasses seven main elements, designed to ensure optimum health for body, mind and spirit: Assessment, regular detoxification, right nutrition, breathwork, fitness, meditation, and support.

“Food plays a significant role,” she emphasizes, “and is probably the one thing most of our guests are struggling with, and are most interested in changing. Food has such an emotional attachment for so many of us. Understanding how to maintain pH balance internally is imperative to maintaining excellent health, as well as for disease prevention and to maintain a balanced weight.”

At Grail Springs, all meals are based around a formula of 75 percent alkaline to 25 percent acidic foods. Most North Americans, says Marentette, consume the reverse of that. When she speaks to groups and individuals, she asks them to incorporate an easy exercise into their grocery shopping.

“Hold your food choices in your hand,” she says, “and ask this question: Is this choice serving my body energetically in a positive way, or is it not serving me? You will intuit the answer. My hope is that the idea of diets ends forever, and that we start to lean on our own intuition to live a balanced, healthy, and beautiful life.”

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