Yoga is like fermentation. Through a time-honored process, both require soaking and ripening for chemical change to occur. Like yoga, the aim of fermentation is to preserve and prolong the life force. To ferment kimchi, you take napa cabbage, radish, burdock root and carrot and store them under tight seal. Like a yoga bandha, you close off the intake of oxygen for a time, in order for the microorganisms to flourish. In this way fermentation is like a kind of magic. In fact, some of the first recorded fermenters, the Sumerians and Egyptians in 5,000 BCE, believed that the generation of beer, bread and wine came about as a miracle from the gods. Similarly, the Upanishads liken the process of milk curdled into yoghurt and ghee as the alchemical transformation of matter into “mind” (spirit).
Today your kimchi and sauerkraut, miso, koji, and kefir, are known to enhance gut health. It is likely that the microbiome in our guts evolved over thousands of the years by consuming fermented foods. The metabolic process of fermentation is transformative. And like meditation, you don’t have to do anything. It is naturally occurring. And consuming kimchi or kraut not only builds gut health, but boosts your immunity, increases digestive fire, reduces inflammation and helps keep your mind clear and true. So the next time you go to your cushion for seated practice, do a kind of “fermeditation,” thereby prolonging the shelf life of your gut, heart and mind.
