HOW TO REJUVENATE YOURSELF Advanced Part II by Paramhansa Yogananda
REDUCING DIET:
Practice recharging exercises six times, twice a day, and the stomach exercises twenty times each, three times a day. Command your will, during tension, to burn up the superfluous tissues. Practice the running exercise 50 to 200 times a day. Eat mostly raw vegetables and one-half a boiled yolk of an egg a day. Abstain from starchy food, fried foods, and sweets. Do not drink water with meals. Every three days fast one day on orange juice.
Extremely stout people have derived much benefit from fasting on orange juice seven days and then going on the nine-day cleansing diet, a normal diet being resumed gradually thereafter. If there should be need for further reduction of weight, this procedure should be repeated after an interval of two weeks.
FATTENING DIET:
The following foods are of high nutritive value and have been found beneficial for those who wish to gain weight:
Bananas with cream 2 eggs
Oatmeal with cream 1 large raw vegetable salad
4 glass cream 1 tablespoon olive oil
2 slices whole wheat bread 3 1/2 oz. butter
Weight has also been gained by eating bananas in abundance, and for one month drinking two glasses of water (moderately hot or cold, not iced) with each meal.
Some of the foods from the above list should be added to the usual dietary.
GENERAL DIETARY RULES:
To have faith in God’s healing power through the mind, and obey dietary laws, is better than just to have faith in God and mind and disregard dietary laws.
Every day, for beneficial results, eat green-leafed vegetables, including a carrot with part of its stem, and drink a glass of orange juice (including pulp) with a tablespoonful of finely ground nuts. Mix good salad dressings made of thoroughly ground nuts, cream, a few drops of lemon juice, orange juice, and honey with all salads. Thousand-Island dressing is good. A little curry sauce with boiled eggs or vegetables, once in a while, is a good salivary stimulant.
FOOD COMBINATIONS:
For best results, one should abstain from all beef and pork products. Do not make a habit of eating even chicken, lamb, or fish every day. Once a week, or better, once a month, is enough, if your system demands flesh foods at all. Nuts, cottage cheese, eggs, milk, cream, and bananas are very good meat and fish substitutes. If you eat chicken, lamb, or fish, have a vegetable salad with them. (Chicken, lamb, or fish should be thoroughly baked, stewed, or broiled, and eggs should be hard boiled before eating in order to destroy any harmful bacteria which they may contain.)
Do not eat too much white sugar. Eat only Nature’s candies, such as unsulphured figs, prunes, and raisins. The ingestion of excessive quantities of sweets causes intestinal fermentation.
Remember, foods prepared from white flour, such as white bread, white-flour gravy, and so forth, also polished rice and too many greasy fried foods, are injurious to your health.
Try to include in your daily diet as much raw food as possible. Cooked vegetables should be eaten with the juice in which they were boiled.
Fast regularly, using your best judgment as to proper diet, in accordance with the instructions given above. Eat less, and follow dietary rules when you eat. Make sunshine, oxygen, and energy a part of your regular daily diet.
THE DAILY DIET:
Your daily food intake should be chosen from the following list of foods which contain all the elements needed for the proper maintenance of the body:
1/2 apple 1 baked, or half-broiled, or steamed vegetable with its juice
1/4 grapefruit 1 lemon
1 lime 1 raw carrot, including part of green top
1 orange 1 glass orange juice with tbsp. finely ground nuts
6 leaves of raw spinach 1/4 heart lettuce
1 small piece fresh pineapple 1 tsp. olive oil
6 figs, dates or prunes* 1 glass milk
1 handful raisins 1 tbsp. cottage cheese
1 tsp. honey 1 tbsp. clabber#
* These fruits are wholesome only when they are unsulphured. Ascertain whether they are unsulphured before you buy them.
# Milk which has been allowed to stand in a warm place, preferably in an earthen vessel, for a day or longer, until it has soured or curdled.
Eat at least some of the foods listed under Daily Diet every day, distributing them over your three meals. For instance, you may take the milk at breakfast, bread and egg and vegetable salad at noon, and the ground nuts and fruits at night.
Catarrh of the alimentary canal often results from overeating at night, also from eating excessively of candy or other foodstuffs which have an irritating effect on the mucous membranes of the stomach, duodenum, and so forth.
Individual food habits may be taken into consideration, but if they are bad gradually change them. At any rate, add some of the foods in Daily Diet list to what you are used to eating. Omit those foods mentioned above which do not agree with you, eating only very lightly when you feel the need of nourishment, and gradually accustoming yourself to a more wholesome diet.
You may increase or decrease the quantities given in “The Daily Diet” in accordance with your individual needs. It is, of course, obvious that the person doing strenuous muscular work requires more food than the sedentary worker.
Whenever one is hungry, he may take a large tablespoonful of thoroughly ground nuts in half a glass of water or in a glass of orange juice. When thirsty, drink a glass of orange juice or water, preferably distilled or boiled. However, Nature’s distilled water – undiluted fruit juice – is best. Do not drink too much ice water with meals. Ice water should be taken sparingly at any time, but especially during and after meals, as it lowers the temperature of the stomach, thus retarding digestion. Never drink ice water when you are over-heated.
THE MAGNETIC DIET
As a rule, the word “food” is used only in connection with physical nourishment, but there are other kinds of food, namely, mental energy, or concentration, and Divine Wisdom. The first (material food) recharges the body battery; the second (concentration) recharges the mind battery; the third (Divine Wisdom), the Soul battery.
Have you ever analyzed your magnetic mental diet? It consists usually of the thoughts which you are thinking as well as the thoughts you are receiving from the close thought contact with your friends. Peaceful thoughts and peaceful friends always produce healthy, magnetic minds. It is easy to tell whether a person feeds on a quarrelsome or a peaceful environment. Inner disquietude and worries, due to the wrong sort of friends or unappreciative immediate relatives, produce an unwholesome, gloomy mind. The magnetic diet also consists of such food substitutes as rays and oxygen, which can be easily assimilated and converted into energy by the latent Life Forces in the body. Magnetic foods give energy more quickly than solids and liquids, which are less easily converted into Life Force. Vitamins are different kinds of rays, when you are eating, you are eating energy. The ultraviolet rays which one absorbs in one whole day at the bathing beach exert a beneficial vitalizing effect on the body which lasts about three months. Sores and wounds can be cured by exposing them for one-half hour daily to the sunlight. The treatment with artificially produced ultraviolet and infracted rays also supplies the body with magnetic nourishment. Much benefit may be derived from it if it is taken under the guidance of a specialist. In order to receive electronic energy from the ether, expel the breath, remain calm while sitting in the erect posture, and feel the electronic energy surrounding your body and entering through your body cells, or receive energy through your fingers while your hands are lifted over your head.
Rubbing the whole naked body vigorously and rapidly with the palms of the hands before taking a bath generates Life Force and is very beneficial.
Occasionally charging the body with electricity by holding onto two electrodes of a battery is a good method of supplying the body with free energy. The electric current should be very weak. Bathing in a sunlight-heated or ultraviolet ray saturated water is also very beneficial. When using a sun lamp on the affected body part, concentrate your entire thought upon the feeling of warmth and know that you are absorbing the energy into the atomic composition of the body, and thus electrifying your cell batteries.
HEALTH CULTURE NUTS
In order to increase the digestibility of nuts they should be eaten in moderate quantities and should be well masticated. They should also be taken in combination with fruits and vegetables rich in sodium, especially green leafy vegetables. Nuts should never be used as a dessert after a heavy meal because they require the full action of the digestive juices. When taken after a heavy meal they may prove quite harmful, but when combined with fruits or vegetable salads, nuts make a complete meal in themselves. Their indigestibility in most cases is due to lack of wisdom in the choice and quantity of food eaten with them.
Nuts should constitute a real part of the menu and not be used as a mere supplement. They are best taken in the form of unroasted nut butters and from three to four ounces is a sufficient supply for an adult.
