What a Breatharian Eats

In kindergarten, it would take me an entire hour to eat half of my lunchbox. I was not distracted or difficult. I was simply somewhere else. Food did not call to me the way it called to other children. Years later, cafeteria workers still remembered me and made jokes. I smiled, but even then I understood something they did not: my relationship with food was never going to look like everyone else’s.

It still doesn’t.

A breatharian is someone who draws life from prana. Some eat very little. Some eat differently from those around them. There are rare ones who consume nothing at all. The Indian monk Prahlad Jani was among them. He took no food and no water and lived to ninety.

I am a breatharian of a different kind. I eat what my body tells me. Sometimes that means dry fasting. Sometimes liquids only, or vegetables, or meat. The body speaks and I listen. That is the practice.

When I was living in San Francisco, I went without food or water for twenty-two days. I came to understand that my skin was drawing moisture from the air itself. When that period ended, I chose to return to the table, to eat with others, as a celebration of life shared. It is just like eating a small slice of cake at a wedding even though you are allergic to gluten. You eat it anyway, because some moments are larger than what the body needs.

My diet has changed many times over the years. There was a season of only tea. Vegan periods when finding the right restaurant felt like a small ordeal. Then the first quiet bites of fish. These days I eat almost entirely meat. Three chicken nuggets and I am full. If I share a meal with a friend and there’s a sandwich, I remove the lettuce, tomato, and cheese, and sometimes even the bread. What remains is enough.

I do not think about food. I spend less than a minute deciding what I will eat. What I spend enormous time on is meditation. I meditate in silence and in nature. I sit on the cushion and walk on the trail. I meditate watching the sunrise and listening to rain fall outside my window. Every morning begins with lying meditation, then the gratitude journal, then a full sitting practice before the workday opens.

Eating is that same practice. What I eat matters less than how I eat. In presence. In gratitude. Receiving what has been offered.

My work is not simple. I am a principal architect at a design firm in Austin, where I work a hybrid schedule, two days in the office and the rest from home. At any given time there are ten projects, a density of emails and calls, and several meetings stacked into each day. On those two office days, I eat something warm and solid. The environment demands it. There is stress, responsibility, the weight of deadlines. Physical food anchors me when I must be fully present in that kind of density.

For a long time I bought vegetables thinking I should want them. For months I watched them go soft and threw them away. Eventually I saw the futility. I stopped buying them altogether and felt no need to explain it.

What I know intuitively is this: my awareness is naturally high and wide, and without the density of meat, I have a hard time focusing in modern busy life. I need the weight, and even the sacrifice, to do the work I am here to do. Animals offer their lives and I receive that offering with gratitude. The body needs something to hold it to the earth when the spirit is reaching toward the sky.

What I eat shapes how I live in ways that go beyond nutrition. When I only had liquids, I became a clear channel for higher light but could barely function in ordinary life. A phone felt like too much. An email felt like noise. I was submerged in inner knowing, unable to surface. Now, a little meat is enough to keep me here. And here is where I am needed.

Tomorrow may call for something different. Juicing. Fasting. The body will know.

I do not claim to understand the body absolutely. I am in the mystery myself. The mind generates questions and I let them pass. The intuitive knowing is enough.

My friend Jieun gave me two mandarin oranges last week. I ate one for dinner and kept the other in the refrigerator. Two days later I ate the second. My refrigerator holds only almond milk now, which I love for being light and gentle.

My one rule is this: no beef. The cow is sacred. I eat chicken and pork, and in doing so I hold space for the cow, who gives so much during her life.

May I be given consciousness of what my journey requires. May all be provided.

For those walking the path of awakening: the journey does not always look like what you expect. I have eaten differently in every chapter of my life and I do not judge any of it. Food, like everything else, reflects where you are. Honor that. Follow what is true for you now.

With love and light,

Vanessa