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What Sattvic Food Actually Means
Not bland, not raw, and not a diet. A short guide to the principle behind the food served at an ashram kitchen.
Guests often arrive expecting ashram food to be an endurance test. It is usually the thing they ask for the recipes of. Sattvic cooking is not about restriction, it is about choosing food that leaves the mind clear enough to practise.
The three qualities
Ayurveda describes food, like everything else, in terms of three qualities: sattva, clarity and lightness; rajas, stimulation and restlessness; and tamas, heaviness and dullness. A sattvic kitchen leans towards the first without pretending the other two do not exist.
- Fresh, seasonal and local, cooked the day it is eaten
- Vegetarian, with dairy used lightly
- Little onion, garlic or chilli, these are considered stimulating
- Nothing reheated, fermented beyond yoghurt, or left standing
- Food that is warm, moist and easy to digest
The test of a sattvic meal is not how it tastes. It is how you feel sitting for meditation two hours later.
Eating at fixed times
Regular timing does as much work as the ingredients. Digestion, in the Ayurvedic view, is strongest in the middle of the day, which is why the main meal is at lunch and the evening meal is light and early.
If you have specific needs
Vegan, gluten-free and most allergy requirements can be accommodated in a kitchen that is already cooking from scratch, but tell us when you book rather than on arrival.
