This blog is based on a personal realization that world is one tribe. But it also acknowledges the paradox of life. This means that nobody including the writer gets full marks for being right. Writer is satisfied with being 50% right. 50% universe is right. Thanks in advance for you patience to visit and read my silly articles. This is not a scientific blog rather purely my perception of life, so readers subjective discretion is requested.
Disclaimer: This blog does not provide any sort of professional medical advice. Viewer discretion is advised. For professional health advice please consult a qualified medical professional.
I am dedicating this post to the memory of Late CRR Varmaji who taught the world the principles of Natural Living without selling his knowledge for money. His teachings are pearls of Natural wisdom.
CRR Varmaji taught the importance of fasting and dieting using living foods for decades before people became aware of the benefits of fasting. Fasting is a fad to today. There are lot of fasting techniques practiced around the world today like prolonged fasting, Intermittent fasting, protein fasting, Carb fasting sugar fasting etc.
Like any passing fad people get disenchanted slowly when they see negative consequences. The endless flurry of information available for and against each type to fasting and dieting methods adds to the confusion and fear for benefiting from this miraculous health activity.
Varmaji taught us that the basic principle of dieting and fasting is "Non Violence to our own body". This means you should not harass your body to fast beyond your physical limits. You don't have to fast completely(water fast) to benefit from it. You may have goals in life. but body should be harmed for fast results.
Varmaji's philosophy of Natural living -
1) Know your limits
This is something no amount of reading on internet or advice from anyone can teach you. This is also called personal experience. Even when Varmaji taught his Natural Living principles by advocating Living Food diet he cautioned against over enthusiasm. He also taught us to learn from past mistakes and encouraged moderation in applying the principles he taught.
2) Living Foods
This means to replace your diet from foods cooked in fire/heat with foods cooked by Mother Nature(Living foods) gradually and based on self feedback/awareness of your own limits. I have discussed in detail what is living foods and what kinds of foods to be avoided in the blog post below
3) Use Living foods dieting as a buffer for fasting
Another great benefit of dieting using Living foods can be that it can be used as a buffer zone between fasting sessions. Say 2 days before and after fasting.
4) Use of Natural Electrolytes
Varmaji insisted that if you are fasting full day then you need to have lots of Natural electrolytes like tender coconut water. This is not an excuse to drink artificial electrolytes available in supermarket. If you are fasting using artificial electrolytes do yourself a favor don't fast. Anyway you will not get any benefit, rather you will harm yourself.
5) Lime water from fresh lime
Prefer to use fresh lime juice without sugar as a great health booster during fasting.
6) Use fruits/juices which are less sugary
This is to avoid sugar spike or sugar crash which can subsequently cause intolerable hunger. Examples are gooseberry, banana instead of grapes(which causes high sugar spike). apples or oranges. Citric fruits are far more ideal for fasting.
7) Replacing animal protein sources with plant proteins:
Varmaji taught us that tusk of an elephant, deer antler, horn of wild buffalo are all fully made of proteins. They obtained this protein purely from plant sources. So in human society we have a common misunderstanding that we must rely on animal protein sources.
This is a tip from my personal experience
It is easier to fast and will be less torturous to your body if you fast nearer to full moon(happens every 28 days).
This is the time when your body needs less food. You need not believe me. You can record your daily food cravings in a diary and then see that on days near to full moon our body demands less food that other days.
New moon day fasting is typically done for spiritual purposes like meditation. In my experience it is much harder to do a full fast on new moon day that full moon day. New moon day fast can be limited to natural electrolytes like tender coconut water and living foods rather that just natural electrolytes based fasting on full moon day.
Please share your experience with fasting. Try this diet and fasting techniques and share you valuable experience so that others can benefits from your experience.
You can check out more articles in the archives below -
CRR Varmaji the grand master of Naturopathy and pride of beautiful Indian State of Kerala has contributed to human welfare by teaching people the power of self healing by mother Nature. A true Gandhian and his life's guiding principle was-
There is enough for everybody's need in this world but not enough for everyone's greed.
- M.K Gandhi
Kindly share your valuable comments in the comments section it will help google know that this site was useful to you and help reach more people.
A great humanitarian and Naturalist by choice and by his own life example taught us valuable knowledge of Self Healing power of Mother Nature. An engineer by profession who has traveled to many western countries and seen the effect of bad lifestyle choices and the consequent host of diseases human beings have to suffer.
He turned his attention to understanding the Nature inside each of us. Generally when we speak of nature we usually refer to plants and animals. But we forget that Nature is inside us as well as outside us. This inner nature of ours is extremely powerful. Varmaji spent his youth understanding the Nature of diseases. Below is a link to his Nature Cure Trust - Sanjeevani-
He understood earlier that not all things classified as diseases by modern medicine are in reality not diseases but nature's self healing mechanism in action. He taught that fever, cold, vomiting, Diarrhea etc are really not diseases but rather a natural reaction that happens when the body is trying to correct some imbalance or trying its best to push out some toxic substance from the body.
He taught us that what modern medicine tries to do is suppress the self healing action of body by giving drugs which interfere with the beneficial activity done by this self healing mechanism. This leads to the body's self healing ability getting suppressed and thereby blocking the beneficial activity that the body was doing to neutralize some harmful substance which has entered the body due to poor lifestyle choices.
Varmaji("Ji" is added as a mark of respect in India) first taught us not to overreact to diseases. This was one of his most beautiful teachings. Like people running with missile to kill a small rat the moment they see a rat. In essence what Varmaji taught humanity was not to fear diseases and rather look at them as Nature way of self healing. He was vehemently against fear mongering. Simple diseases like fever, cold, vomiting, diarrhea etc was actually mother Nature's way of expelling dangerous and waste products from human body.
When we use medicines for such diseases we are essentially suppressing the ability of body to expel the poisons that caused these diseases in the first place. Temporarily these symptoms are suppressed but such suppression in the long term when done frequently using drugs causes even greater diseases called chronic diseases and other fatal diseases like Heart attack, cancer etc.
Another major teaching of Varmaji was that pain was body's way to telling the person to slow down with any activity that he/she is doing. He also taught us to be humble when we get diseases and understand that mother Nature is punishing us temporarily for our past wrong doing. Once our body clears out the toxins in the body or heals the internal or external injury it is in the experience of people who followed Varmaji's teachings that the symptoms disappear like magic and has no side effects like drugs.
This does not mean that after a lifetime of bad eating and other harmful living habits like alcohol, drugs and smoking etc when you are severely sick you can just turn to Natural Living and expect results. What Varmaji taught us is life long discipline in terms of dieting(includes fasting) and management of disease symptoms. Explaining Natural treatment methods taught by Varmaji is not in the scope of this blog post. Maybe later I will put a more detailed post on the methods taught by Varmaji. But I will highlight a few teachings -
1) Giving the body time and opportunity to heal:
Varmaji taught us that body has a self healing mechanism which tells us that it is trying to expel some toxins from the body using simple diseases explained earlier. So he taught us to give time and opportunity for this to happen. Best way he taught was to fast using just fruit juices(not too sugary fruits) and natural electrolytes like coconut water.
The process of digestion, assimilation and excretion are extremely energy intensive activities of our body, so simple foods that can be easily digested like fruits, nuts and natural electrolytes(not artificial) consume less energy for digestion, assimilation and later excretion. So there is more life energy to heal the body and clean the toxins accumulated in the body. This teaches us how to use the body's energy optimally and achieve healing also in the process.
2) Living foods:
This is also Varmaji's most important of teachings. This should be developed as a lifelong eating habit. He taught us that no creature in nature cooks its food nor adds taste enhancers like salt, pepper, chilly and spices. We cannot see a tiger cooking its meat in barbecue and adding tons of spices to marinate it. It eats raw and eats even the bone marrow by crushing the bone which is the complete way to eat meat. So he recommended living foods like fruits, nuts and raw vegetables along with natural electrolytes as a lifelong diet. This was found to be extremely effective in preventing the diseases from turning into chronic diseases.
Varmaji defined Living foods as foods that are cooked by Nature not by Human's using fire. Maintaining a diet of living foods expels all accumulated poisons from your body and gives opportunity to the body to self heal using pure substances that can be readily absorbed by body. It also makes the digestive and assimilation system healthy.
Diet is the central principle of Naturopathy expounded by Varmaji. Without diet Naturopathy is ineffective in treating even simple diseases.
Simple examples of Living Foods that can be used as diet for Naturopathy -
a) Juices of Fruits(not too sugary fruits) and raw vegetables like cucumber, carrots, tomato, cauliflower, cabbage etc. Fruits like Indian gooseberry has immense health benefits. Varmaji also taught us that fruits which are not sweet tasting decreases acidity in the body. These foods are extremely useful.
b) All raw leafy vegetables and leafs that are medicinal like holy basil, Aloe Vera, mint leaves, ginseng etc.
c) flax seeds, chia seeds, pumpkin seeds etc.
d) Turmeric use along with other living foods.
e) scrapped coconut, juice of banana stem, raw vegetables.
f) Natural electrolyte like coconut water.
g) ginger, drumstick and drumstick leaves.
h) replacing sugar with Jaggery(natural brown sugar) if needed only. Avoiding sugar and salt treats in important part of Naturaopathy diet.
i) Getting half an hour sunlight with eye closed in the morning and evening. Do not look directly at the sun. Nonviolence to body is guiding principle here.
j) For spice add raw mangoes or tomato for sour taste, green chilli for hot spicy taste.
k) Natural Honey from trusted sources,
l) Green chilly or pepper instead of red chilli.
There may be many more but I am sure you got the general idea behind living foods. This is also supported by latest research in genetics and ageing by Dr. David Sinclair
3) Vegetarianism:
Varmaji argued that since we don't have the necessary teeth to eat meat raw and break into the bones and eat the marrow also, so it is highly probable that human beings evolved to be vegan. Our teeth and digestive enzymes are designed for vegan diet as per Varmaji. Varmaji taught us that by-product of animal protein digestion in the body creates harmful chemicals like uric acid which the body tries to expel using excess force which tires the body as well as if the person is having trouble expelling this it accumulates in the tissues and lymph nodes to create chronic diseases like Arthritis etc.
This is also supported by latest research in genetics and ageing by Dr. David Sinclair
4) Exposure to sunlight:
Varmaji expounded beautifully on the need for exposure to sunlight and the fantastic benefits it can have on eyesight and other diseases. I must warn you about direct sun gazing as it can be dangerous for eyes. What Varmaji taught was to look at sun light with closed eyes for varying period from 10 mins and more. He always insists on moderation and awareness of individual capacity on all the practices that he taught.
5) Cold spinal bath:
Dipping yourself in cold water tub with just enough water to just submerge the spine alone is called cold spinal bath process. It is effective for a lot of diseases.
6) Heat and cold treatment:
Repeatedly exposing a body part with pain to heat and cold can be effective natural treatment for pain and also can engage your longevity genetic pathways as part latest scientific research by Genetics and Ageing researcher like Dr.David Sinclair.
Foods to be avoided while practicing Naturopathy:
a) All animal proteins like meat, eggs etc.
b) Diary products(Curd, Milk, Cheese), Tea, Coffee.
c) Tobacco products like cigarette, Gutka(Chewable Tobacco) etc
d) Alcohol, drugs(even weed) and other addictive substances.
e) Refined flour products, pulses(can be sprouted and taken to just below 15% of daily diet), No beans and by-products like tofu, etc, all junk and sugary treats and liquids.
f) Reducing cooked foods to 15-25% of daily diet for one meal only per day. Other meals should contain only living foods explained above.
g) Reducing salt drastically. Use replacements like Epsom salt but use sparingly like some costly condiment.
h) Reduce cooked food to 30% of your one meal. Rest should be raw vegetables or fruit juices(no added sugar). If possible eat only 2 meals per day.
i) Reduce processed sugar products completely for few days. Don't worry living foods mentioned above can give you the necessary sugars without the side effects of processed sugar products that you buy from market. Below is a link to miracles of sugar fasting -
Warning: While following Naturopathy diet the body may try to eject out poison in multiple ways like by creating fever, cold, vomiting, diarrhea etc, ejection of poison accumulated over years through skin, body joint pains for poisons accumulated in body joints etc so this has to be undertaken carefully under the guidance of a expert practitioner who will be able to guide you and give you confidence to go keep to your diet throughout the entire healing process. Naturaopathy has ways to handle the symptoms generated during the healing process which has to be handled carefully and in a non violent method to body.
I can safely assure you that I have not even done 1% justice to the wealth of knowledge left behind by Varmaji. Varmaji passed away from this world in the year 1999 leaving a great vacuum in this field. We lost a man with immense knowledge of nature and the power of body to heal itself. Unfortunately his books are predominantly in my native language Malayalam and his insistence on not making this into a commercial venture with branding and marketing led to many of his valuable teachings not reaching the wider global audience. As a beneficiary and fan of this gem of a human being I will put in my best effort to bring out the teachings of Varmaji to a global Audience to the best of my ability through future posts.
I am posting a recent e-mail conversation with one of my visitors(with his/her permission) to this site. Information is one thing and being informed is another thing. This visitor whose identity I am keeping private has asked really relevant questions before using the information in this site. This conversation may answer many questions about naturopathy that you may have in mind but you did not rise that query in this forum and can work as a full disclosure to the extend to which I myself practice it.
The visitor also shares useful information regarding similar alternative treatment techniques that he shares with us for the benefit of all the visitors. As is the motto of this blog, we can learn from each other by sharing useful information. This is the reason I encourage visitors to comment and share their objections or ideas and knowledge with wider public. I sincerely thank the visitor for letting me publish this conversation in the blog.
Thanks
for taking time to write about a giant in nature cure.
Other
than this post did you write more about him. If so I would like to know
about it.
Thanks
and regards
Private
Aravind R
Sun, Oct 23, 2022 at 6:09 PM
To: Private
Hi
Reader,
Happy to hear that you loved the blog post on CRR Varmaji. The
most unfortunate thing is that all his books are in Malayalam(my native
language). I have only tried to give a glimpse of his philosophy. His books
are a treasure trove of natural knowledge. Since i cannot replicate the
book without publishers permission i have given a summary only. CRR Varma
was so focussed on not taking his knowledge commercially that he did not
market it at all. It was word of mouth fame by those who benefitted from
his natural healing methods.
I have attached a screenshot of the sanjeevani centre
address in Thrissur(Kerala). The link to their website is not working
in my blog also for some reason. Kindly contact this number (naturopathy
centre) given in the screenshot. Alternatively you can go
through my second post which is also based on knowledge from varmajis
books.
I can
assure you if you ever get a chance to read and understand Varmajis books
you will be blown away by his sheer knowledge of Mother Nature.
Thanks
and Regards
Aravind
R
From : Private
Sun, Oct 23, 2022 at 9:24 PM
To: Aravind R
Hi
Aravind,
Thanks
for the detailed reply.
I read
somewhere when browsing about Varmaji that he was a student of S.
Swaminathan and I have his books in English and Hindi. They cover the
material in details including the concepts discussed in your post. They all
originate from K Lakshmana Sarma- father of nature cure. He was the one who
talked about vital economy first.
My
question - is the Sanjeevani center still under operation and are the
people who are running it are as competent as Varmaji. I want to
visit a good nature cure center following the same principles followed by
CRR Varmaji, sheshdri swaminathan and k laksmana sarma. Can you get that
information for me?
Just
for you information.
There
are some other followers of S. Swaminathan are active too - Mohan Gupta of
natural life style (on YouTube) and shashi verma (speaking nature on
YouTube)
Regards
Private
Aravind R
Mon, Oct 24, 2022 at 12:23 PM
To: Private
person
Hi
Reader,
Thanks for sharing the info on followers of same philosophy. He is indeed
the student of S.Swaminthan and Acharya Lakshmana Sharma. Varmaji was
working in Delhi before he dedicated his life to Natural Living. This is
where i believe he met S.Swaminathanji and Achayra Lakshmana Sharmaji.
Varmaji never forgot to mention his guru's in his books due to which I am
familiar with their names.
Indeed Sanjeevani Centre is fully operational.
It is a co-operative society setup directly by CRR Varmaji himself
inaugurated by Honourable Former President of India Dr. KR Narayanan. It is managed by his students
and ardent followers of this philosophy. Due to their lack of commercial
mentality there is less hash bush and is a very quiet Gandhian type
institute. There are Naturopathy Centres in kerala and also in my hometown
Trivandrum also but I am not sure if this is run by his students. But
Sanjeevani was established by CRR Varmaji himself and run by his students
who themselves are following his principles. If you indeed want to visit
the center you can get in touch with the president of this society
Mr. Bharath Sir - Private Number.
He can clarify all your doubts better than me. As I personally am not a
ardent follower of this diet. Although whenever possible i try to do some
fasting, include raw vegetables and fruits in my diet. The only reason I
created this blog was this knowledge should reach a wider audience as most
of Varmaji's books are only in Malayalam.
But personally I wish to clarify few things as
part of full disclosure before you visit the center. I promise I will
update the same info in my blog. There are some practical difficulties in
following his philosophy while living a modern day life. Varmaji basically
teaches us to eat foods that have been directly produced by mother nature
without cooking or adding any taste enhancers. This includes raw
vegetables, leafy vegetables, herbal leaves, fruits, nuts, honey, natural electrolytes
(like coconut water) etc. Most diet principles like this try to imitate the
hunter gatherer lifestyle that humans used to live 20000 years back. This
is same if you take the case of Atkins, paleo, and keto diet. The
fundamental principle is to bring uncertainty to food availability (compared
to the certain availability of 3 meals a day that we have today) and thus
trigger our survival instinct to be robust and able to handle radical
change in food availability which is a fundamental need of life. This
robustness of life energy is what cures diseases and have been proven to
enhance life. You can read about this in Genetic ageing researcher David
Sinclair's book "Lifespan". What Late Varmaji(unfortunately he
passed away in 1999) taught the world for 50 years is being taught by ageing scientists
today. I meantto say that they have arrived at similar conclusions.
As Varmaji says in his book people go to Naturopathy after every other
medical field has failed to cure them, most patients who used to go to
Varmaji was mostly cancer patients or heart patients who have been deemed as
incurable by other treatment methods usually as a last ditch effort. Varmaji's philosophy eventhough it is not fully possible to follow in our modern day life circumstances can be used as a excellent healthy dietary supplement in addition to proper professional medical care.
Very few people succeed in getting cured at this stage. Because Varmji tells in
his books to us that it is
not him that is curing these people but it is Mother Nature that is curing
them, we are just providing the situation for nature to start selfheal.
Most of these people (including all of us, lets not forget our lifestyle😂)
have led such a bad lifestyle their entire life that they have no more
vital life energy left in their body to get cured in the last stage of
their life even if they follow the diet principles taught by Varmaji.
Students of Varmaji follow a lifelong dedication to this diet and encourage
others to do this. They are dedicated and ready to help us, but can we say
that about ourselves? Another important thing to note is that these
vegetables and fruits has to be pesticide free, locally sourced (that means
you should eat only that which grows in your climatic zone, so no
Australian Kiwi, or mediterranian olives😂). So this means you
should eat (raw) only what grows naturally without pesticide in your native
(so that it is in sync with your DNA). In his book Varmaji has mentioned
that people who get cured basically have a tendency to go back to the same
old lifestyle once they are cured. Many people got back the same disease
once they go back to their old lifestyle. So be ready for such surprises.
My own personal experience is that a person living in city like me with no
access to pesticide free vegetables (and fruits) and eating three meals a
day since birth, I am not sure if we can get the same benefits with veg and
fruits which are not pesticide free. Once in a while fasting and living
foods diet is fine but my gut is not used to such a diet. If you are used
to eating three meals(cooked food) a day and then if you suddenly change to
raw diet suddenly I find that I have sleep issues(which negates any
benefits of good dieting practices), some people may experience vomiting,
intense food cravings almost like drug de-addiction. Varmaji teaches us to
remove all sugar and salt from your diet. This itself will cause intense
headache and de addiction reactions. Because sugar itself is one of the
most potent addictive drug humans beings are using unregulated. CRR Varmaji once told
that Gandhiji coined refined sugar(not natural sugars from fruits) as
"White poison".
Why I gave this detailed information is that unless you are practicing this
diet with expert guidance you may experience intense bodily reactions that
you will panic and may stop following this diet immediately. You have to
read CRR Varmaji;s books to see the intense reactions body will give when
the diet is changed. Some old suppressed diseases may
resurface. Even your family members and acquaintances will panic and
discourage you to continue. If you are really trying to cure some critical
illness of yours with this diet then you need the expert guidance of
someone like Varmaji or his ardent followers who have absolute confidence
in Nature and his methods. You also need extreme courage and determination
to follow this path. Extreme trust in mother nature is important. Even
Varmaji do not guarantee any cures. He only says based on his 50 years’
experience with this philosophy only people with good life energy are able
to survive this ordeal. So unless you are living in a village growing your own
(or able to source locally) veg and fruits this philosophy is extremely
difficult to follow. My personal experience is that fasting twice in a month
(with fruits, in my case I try to eat bananas and gooseberry which are
locally sourced, with some nuts, no milk) with a gap of at least 15 days is
also beneficial. I have severely limited refined sugar, non-veg food to
twice a week, and reduced eating hotel food from every week to rarely. I
ask myself before buying hotel food is it worth spoiling my health?
But if you are adventurous then you get in
touch with Sanejeevani trust President Mr. Bharath and learn from Varmaji's
students directly. I request you to share you experience with Sanjeevani in
my comments section in my blog. This will encourage me as well as others to
adopt a healthier lifestyle if not exactly Varmai's Naturopathy diet. If i
have your permission I wish to reproduce this mail in my blog as a
conversational flow will be easier for people to understand and relate to.
Other peoples queries can clear peoples questions that they have in mind
but they forget to ask. I will make sure that your name and email is kept
private from blog readers. Kindly confirm. Else I will post only relevant
parts of my full disclosure without any mention of our conversation.
Good
Luck
Thanks and Regards
Aravind R
From:
Private
Mon, Oct 24, 2022 at 5:32 PM
To:
Aravind R
Hi
Aravind,
I agree with you that following this
diet and lifestyle is not easy. I am basically trying to understand and
adapt to this lifestyle. I am in the USA and retired from teaching career.
I am a pure vegetarian - no eggs, meat or fish. I rarely eat outside
food. I have one health issue - tinnitus. It has started affecting my
hearing. I am trying to address that problem. I am 70 years old
and otherwise in good health.
I
would like I give this lifestyle a try under guidance of experts in
case healing crisis happens. I will contact Mr. Bhararth Ji and see how it
goes.
Yes
you can use all or part of these conversations in blog. Just hide the
contact information.
Best
regards
Private
PS:
There is an alternative to nature cure philosophy on a website : www.iass.info
They
have a paperback and ebook for sale “divine cure”. You will enjoy that
too. Written by a medical doctor. They try to address how much food we need
after 25 years of age when human body has matured. They call the philosophy
tap -
seva - Simuran.
Light
eating combined with fasting, meditation and service to humanity.
Aravind R
Mon, Oct 24, 2022 at 6:13 PM
To:
Private
Dear Private,
When I
was speaking to you I was thinking you were someone around my age. Thanks
for the info on IASS. I will certainly go through and try to utilize the
same. Sorry to hear that you are suffering from tinnitus. If you have
decided to give Varmaji's philosophy (which is similar to IASS teachings) a
shot then Bharath Sir will surely guide you even over phone or whatsapp.
Healing crisis was the correct word i forgot to use. I will make sure that
when this mail conversation is reproduced in the blog then your privacy is
ensured. Wish you good health.
Thanks and Regards
Aravind R
Disclaimer: Naturopathy is not a replacement for professional medical care rather a lifestyle improvement which can decrease the risks of diseases by acting as a preventive lifestyle. So the information in this site needs to be used with extreme caution and under guidance of professional medical expert.
You can check out more articles in the archives below -
