This much has become clear:

Either you’re lining up or you’re not.
Two steps forward, one step back is still  lining up in my book.

Nature can’t not nourish you.

(Thank you Douglas Brooks for introducing me to the power of double negation.)
The more I start eating out of the woods the more food I notice. When you start to eat the plants in your woods, fields, prairies, and swamps, the landscape becomes the tissues of your body. Your body will literally pull you back to those places when those plants are ripe for harvest. Your mind will be blown. Your grocery bill will shrink. You’ll wonder why everyone else is spending all their money on mail-order supplements (check out the yogahealer line!).

Why is wild food smarter?

• Consciousness
• Prana
• Nutrients

Your body knows locally grown, locally harvested foods taste better. All 5 of your sense organs know this. The difference between the food in my garden and the food in the woods — this is the interesting part. You start absorbing the consciousness from the ecosystem. If you’re fortunate enough to live somewhere that hasn’t been totally destroyed or over-developed, you can find wild plants to eat.

How did I start eating wild foods?

I started with dandelions. Everyone has to start somewhere. Then, I added nettles. I’d already been harvesting herbs for teas (wild rose, yarrow, mullein, goldenrod for allergies, Oregon grape root.) Isn’t that nuts? I was harvesting the medicinals instead of the edibles. In Ayurveda school, I learned about the medicinals… not the edibles. This reflects the backwards education of how Ayurveda is taught in schools today. *#@^%^!.

This year I added the following to my diet as food.

• sweet cicely (native species – pictured right)
• Canadian thistle (invasive species
• Oregon grape root berries
• service berries
• chokecherries
• currants

My plan is to add 5 species a year. The more wild food I eat, the more wild food I want to eat. Also, the more the produce in the natural food store looks less like food. Are you having the same experience? As I teach Ayurveda workshops around the country, I find the yogis don’t know their edible ecosystem. I feel like a fairy with a magic edible-ecosystem wand. I simply tap the awareness in the kula and ecosystem wisdom starts to ooze out. By the end of a weekend workshop outside of Dallas, the students “remembered” harvesting a handful of wild foods: persimmons, salsify, and wild plums. It was a start.

Become your edible ecosystem

I challenge our yoga communities to synergize the knowledge of our botanists and ecologists. The yogis want the prana. The plants have the prana. Become the leader in your community on the edible prana in your ecosystem. Send me your blog posts, with photos, of what you’re eating and how you’re replenishing the ecosystem. Together, we’ll re-integrate our consciousness through our bodies and ecosystems. And our planet will thrive.

If this is appealing… you’ll love the yogidetox.
If you’d rather hang in person, save your seat in the the summer solstice fest!