3-4-2014 Bhoj Kriya: How to Eat Consciously for Good Health | 3HO Kundalini Yoga - A Healthy, Happy, Holy

- A Healthy, Happy, Holy Way of Life

Bhoj Kriya: How to Eat Consciously for Good Health

Excerpts from a lecture by Yogi Bhajan, August 13, 1992,
Espanola, New Mexico

This is a very special kriya taught by Yogi Bhajan about nineteen

years ago. If you practice this kriya, you will experience how to
eat consciously to create good health. To do it, you will need to
have food available that you can eat with your hands. The kriya is
divided into several sections: mental preparation and prayer,
eating slowly and consciously, meditation on digesting, eating
unconsciously, and cleaning up. It is a unique and effective tool
for raising awareness about how we eat. It takes about 50-60
minutes to complete. Relax and enjoy.

Yoga gives extraordinary energy. There are so many aspects of

yoga. Today, we will do one simple thing. Its called Bhoj Kriya.
Bhoj means food. Kriya means how to eat it.

You eat to live. You should not gobble food, because the
secretion of the stomach is ordered by the pituitary and on the
command of the pineal, so when you quickly fill your stomach,
bloat it up immediately, and give it a shock, then it gives your body a shock for the next three hours.
This is what we call an upset stomach. For f ood to be rejuv enati ng and to gi v e s trength to
k eep the body y oung, y ou hav e to us e the s al i v a of y our mouth. I f y ou do not mi x s al i v a
i n ev ery mors el of y our f ood, y ou are eati ng poi s on.

I f y ou proc edural l y eat the f ood whi c h y ou us ual l y gul p i n f i f teen mi nutes , i t wi l l
bec ome y our bes t f ri end, y our bes t s trength, and y our bes t s el f . Usually when you eat, your
entire nervous system moves and you move your mouth and tongue together. But you just swallow
things, you dont eat them. When y ou s wal l ow f ood that i s not c hewed properl y , i t s wal l ows
y our s trength, y our l i f e. Then nothi ng i s l ef t of y ou. Sl ow eati ng i s one of the bes t
medi tati ons on thi s Earth.

Mental Preparati on

1. Bring the dish you like the most. Put it before you as though you are being served in a restaurant.

2. Now please sit calmly and fold your hands in Prayer Pose, and close your eyes and feel you are
going to be blessed. Calm down and empty yourself to receive the gift of God. If there is no
emptiness, nothing will come in. It is for your nourishment, for your acceleration, for your healing, for
your purity. It is something today, at this moment, marvelously wonderful, blessful, blissful. Please
concentrate. Bow your head in prayer a moment.

3. Please open your eyes and place your hands on your shoulders, right hand on right shoulder, left
hand on left shoulder a sign of strength. Then place your hands on your kneesa sign of strength.
Then place your hands over your heart, one hand over the other a sign of compassion. Then touch
your forehead with the palms over the eyes.

4. Place your hands, palms down, over the food to bless it. Concentrate and bless your own food.
Calmly and quietly make a relationship with your food and your spirit. There is God in youfeel it, feel
the food piece by piece, touch it, and request of it, that when you become part of it and it becomes
part of you, there is a union.

Eati ng Cons c i ous l y

5. Now please, with your hands, choose what you are going to eat. There is no spoon to be used. You
have to use your hands only. When you put each morsel in your mouth, it should have the touch of all
five fingers. Idyou, Jupiter, Saturn, Sun, and Mercury. Whatever little portion you have, put it in your
mouth, like a kiss. Chew it totally, freely, openly. Your lips do not have to be closed. It must have
twenty-five percent of its size mixed with saliva. Saliva is the most nurturing, health-giving, young-
making stuff. Its right in your mouth. Chew it, dont swallow it.

6. Now with your tongue feel the food. If there is any hardness, keep chewing. When the food is soft,
like jelly, bring it to the tip of the tongue you will find out that it is sweet. If its not, keep chewing it.
Food should not go to the throat or into the stomach until it is sweet to your tongue.

7. Very slowly, take it in. Then clean the inside of your mouth with your tongue, including around your
teeth until there is no food left. There should be not one trace of food left in your mouth.

Now calmly and quietly, using this procedure, please eat. Keep eating and keep relating, keep
meditating, keep talking to your food. Your entire mental energy should be in the food. Just imagine
you are sitting in the heavens and God is serving you with food and you are nurturing your self. Each
time you take in food, you have to repeat this process.

Continue for thirty-five minutes. Dont totally finish all the food because I have to show you the

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difference, so keep some part to eat little later.

Medi tati on on D i ges ti ng

8. The hand you used to eat with, take that hand and bring all the fingers together in a point, and put
that in the palm of the other hand. Close that hand like a fist over the food hand. And feel it. Meditate.
This is a healing by your own food. Your hand has touched the essence of the food. And concentrate.
Continue for 3 minutes.

Now go deeper and further inside, and digest your food. Turn it into nectar. There is a saying: If you
cannot bless your food, and cannot befriend it, you have no relationship with your own life. You have
two minutes to feel light. Your food must digest by the will of your mind. Continue for 4 minutes.

Eati ng Unc ons c i ous l y

9. Now please open your eyes and see the food you still have left. Eat the food any the old animal-like
way, gobble it. You have to do that now. Become as animals, gobble it, go, go, go, go, go. Fast,
unchewed, swallow. Grab it, put it in. Just see the difference. Go, go, fast, finish it, so that your body
will create a resistance to this animal-like eating. There is an animal way of eating and there is a
human way of eating. There is also an angelic way of eating. Angelic eating is sattvic bhoj. Continue
for 4 minutes.

Cl eani ng Up

10. Now you have to get up. Go wash your hands, face, elbows, eyes, earlobes, above the eyebrows,
and the back of the neck. And take the water and sprinkle it on your face.

Your power is in your mind. Your body is just a vehicle. You are not eating food, you are eating for
your health, your vitality, your energy, your prosperity, your strength, your fatehyour power to
conquer. When you eat food, it is Gods own self. Bhoj Kriya, done correctly, makes you healthy,
mentally powerful, physically sturdy, and spiritually absolutely very beautiful and saintly. If you eat
like this every day, you will be skinny. You dont have to diet at all. You can eat one good meal during
the day like this and take about an hour. It doesnt matter what you eateven stonesit will make
you healthiest. Your life will be long and your power will be great if you taste every morsel of the food
you eat.

1992 The Teachings of Yogi Bhajan

Photo by Satsimran Kaur

[Previously published in Aquarian Times, Summer 2004]

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