Down Dogs and Buffalo Wings

Down Dogs and Buffalo Wings

By Ed Staskus

   Very few, if any, men or women finish doing down dog pose at their neighborhood yoga studio, roll up their mats, and that night eat the family dog for dinner. Some might have Buffalo wings, which have nothing to do with buffalos, and someone might even have a buffalo burger, which are actual buffalos made into sandwiches.

   Although cats and dogs are out of bounds, many people eat an animal of some kind for dinner, usually a bird, a pig, or a cow. When they do, it always looks like something it wasn’t when it was alive. Sometimes it’s invisible, hidden by sauces and batter and squeezed inside a bun.

   Whether they practice yoga, or not, almost everyone eats animals. In the United Staes 96% of everybody eats them, according to Vegetarian Times. In the birthplace of yoga, however, which is India, close to 40% of the population is vegetarian. The remainder, other than the affluent, eat meat only occasionally, mainly for economic reasons.

   Many people who engage in yoga the modern world understand the historical and conservative underpinnings of the practice that forswears eating animals. Most of them, however, sit on the farm fence about it when it comes to taking sides.. They don’t want to pick a bone with their friends and family.

   Old-school yoga masters like K. Pattabhi Jois, the man who made vinyasa what it is today, and B. K. S. Iyengar, the man who made alignment what it is today, eschewed eating animals. “A vegetarian diet is the most important practice for yoga,” Pattabhi Jois said.. “Meat eating makes you stiff.”

   “If animals died to fill my plate, my head and heart would become heavy,” B. K. S. Iyengar said. “Becoming a vegetarian is the way to live in harmony.” He had a sense of what bolt guns sound like and what they do.

   Some modern yoga masters like Sharon Gannon, the founder of Jivamukti Yoga, believe a strict adherence to not only a vegetarian, but a vegan diet, is a vital part of the practice. She calls it the diet of enlightenment. She regards today’s protein food choices as not only harming animals, since they end up being killed, but harming the physical health and spiritual well-being of people, too. On top of that, she says it endangers and degrades the environment.. She might be right on all counts.

   Eating animals raises the risk of type 2 diabetes, hardens blood vessels, is directly linked to heart disease, significantly increases the possibility of stroke, and triples the chances of colon cancer. In short, eating animals shortens life spans, theirs and yours.

   There’s also the cruelty factor, which can be, literally, sickening. Factory farming is “by far the biggest cause of animal suffering in the world” according to Paul Shapiro of the Humane Society. The factory farming of pigs as it is practiced in the 21st century is as wholesome as toad’s juice. No disrespect to toads is intended.

   The meat business is responsible for 85% of all soil erosion in the United States and according to the EPA raising animals for food is the number one source of water pollution. It takes 2400 gallons of water to make one pound of beef. Every vegetarian saves the planet hundreds of thousands of gallons of water a year.

   The consequences for the climate are also freighted with a black brass tack, which is that more than half of all greenhouse gas emissions are caused by animal husbandry, according to the Worldwatch Institute. But, everyone’s got to eat, because everyone’s continued existence depends on food. What’s for chow might be an ethical choice for some people, but eat you must.

   Killing animals and eating meat have been elements of human evolution since there was human evolution. Meat was part of the diet of our forefathers from about 2.5 million years ago. Nobody for many millions of years could be a vegan because it isn’t possible to get Vitamin B12 from anything other than meat, milk, eggs, or a modern day supplement.

   B12 is essential to life. It protects the nervous system. Mania is one of the nastier end results of a lack of it. Humans became human by eating meat. In other words, it was meat that fueled human brain development. The “meat-eating gene” known as apoE is what boosted our brains to become what they are today. But, that doesn’t mean that anybody necessarily has to eat meat, then or now. There have always been vegetarians, just as there are today. Their brains and bodies have done just fine.

   Many athletes are all in on plant-based foods. Hannah Teter, a two-time Olympic snowboard medalist, Bill Pearl, a five-time Mr. Universe body building champion, and dozens-of-times winning tennis star Serena Williams are all vegetarians. Walter “Killer” Kowalski, a former Canadian pro wrestler, was a vegetarian.

   Some vegans, like UFC fighter Mac Danzig and Iranian strongman Patrik Baboumian, dominate their sports. In 2013, after hauling a yoke weighing 1210 pounds a distance of more than thirty feet, the Iranian Ironman roared to the crowd, “Vegan power!” It gives the lie to the myth of the need for animal protein.

  Yoga is a growth industry everywhere. It’s been estimated more than thirty million Americans practice it, even more throughout Europe, and as hundreds of millions of waistlines expand in China, it has been mushrooming there. At the same time that yoga is spreading worldwide, global meat production has more than quadrupled in the past 65 years. More people are eating more animals than ever before. Even though the rest of the world is trying to catch up to the United States, in the United States meat is eaten at more than three times the global average.

   Most Americans who practice yoga eat animals. They cherry pick what they are willing to do. There is a fast food meat-centered eatery on every corner in America. Look in the back seat of any car in the parking lot and you will spot a yoga mat in the back seat soon enough..

   The practice of yoga is made up of eight parts, often called the Eight Limbs, which range from the discipline’s golden rules to breath control and exercise postures to meditation. Non-violence, or ahimsa, is one of the central tenets of the practice. It means non-harming living things. Living things include all animals, like chickens, pigs, and cows.

   At some stage many people who practice yoga think about going vegetarian. They usually have one-or-more reasons for changing their diet. Among them are health, non-violence, and karma. Since most people benefit by eating less meat, and since much of today’s yoga is about fighting stress and keeping your body toned, the healthy halo of going vegetarian dovetails with the practice.

   The do-no-harm principle behind going vegetarian is stoked by the inescapable harm done to the animals we eat. We raise them in pens and cages, kill them, and chop them up into pieces for our pots and pans. Since violence is a choice, and since eating animals isn’t necessary to stave off starvation, ahimsa strongly implies vegetarianism.

   Satchidananda, the man behind Integral Yoga, believed being vegetarian was imperative to achieving self-realization. “Because when you eat animal food, you incur the curse of the animals,” he said.

   It’s like ending up in a cheesy B movie, “Dawn of the Dead,” for example. Everybody knows what they are up to. “The zombies kill for one reason. They kill for food.” However, they can’t just pull up at a McDonald’s because they never have any money. If they do show up at the golden arches, and you are working the drive-through, run for your life,

   At the crossroads of yoga and yummy, what Satchidananda was basically saying was eating meat is bad karma. It means taking in the fear, pain, and suffering of the animals you are eating. It obviates the benefits of poses, breathwork, and meditation.

   “The law of karma guarantees that what we do to others will come back to us,” Sharon Gannon said about eating animals. In other words, beware becoming a pot of stew yourself someday.

   But, the goal of yoga is to change yourself, not specifically anybody’s eating habits. Whether it’s turkey or tofu on somebody’s dinner plate is not going to buff up their yoginess. Not eating animals doesn’t make anybody a good person in the same way that walking slow doesn’t necessarily make anybody a patient person.

   Besides, according to the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, you don’t have to become a vegetarian to practice yoga fully. “Nowhere in the Vedas or in the ancient teachings is it said that you must be a strict vegetarian,” said T. K. V. Desikachar. He is, nevertheless, himself a vegetarian, and his father, Krishnamacharya, modern yoga’s founder, was also a vegetarian.

   Eating animals is in our blood, or more precisely, in our DNA. Most primates like us feed on meat sporadically and it represents less than 1% of their diet in all 89 species of them. People have been going big on carnivorous for a long time. We are always eating our way through Noah’s Ark. In hindsight, however, it is  unlikely any of God’s creatures who survived the Great Flood survived with the expectation of ultimately ending up on somebody’s plate of hash. That kind of dinner table would mean being the life of the funeral.

   It wouldn’t hurt anybody to give the birds and animals of the world a break by eating either fewer or none of them. In 1940 the average American ate about 80 pounds of meat a year. Today the average American eats about 220 pounds of meat a year. Our flocks and herds would surely appreciate another sunny day of home on the range, rather than the fluorescent lighting of the supermarket cooler.

   It might benefit the average American, as well. No one, after all, ever said a hot dog a day keeps the doctor away.

Ed Staskus posts monthly on 147 Stanley Street http://www.147stanleystreet.com, Made in Cleveland http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com, Down East http://www.redroadpei.com, and Lithuanian Journal http://www.lithuanianjournal.com. 

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