Mahashivratri, a festival where Lord Shiva is worshipped all over the India. The festival begins on the morning of Shivaratri day and ends only on the next day morning. In the morning, devotees perform Abhishek with milk and water and offer different items including Bilva leaves, Bilva fruit and Dhatura. To show their faith toward Lord shiva, the devotees does fasting the entire day which will in return give them the blessings of Shiva.
Well, there is a different tradition behind the entire fasting culture and this tradition is called, Siddha Yoga Path. During the entire fasting day, the devotees are allowed to eat satvik food which is pure and healthy and it is also very easy to digest. This helps our body to become calm and quiet and our mind peaceful. You can’t even eat after sunset, as it is considered good for our body and makes it easy to digest the food. Thus, we make sure that we are taking care of our body just like we take care of the temples.
People mainly eat light foods such as fruits, milk, yogurt, dry fruits, peanuts, ginger, sabudana, honey etc. Many also use heavy food such as potatoes, when they have to eat one meal a day. If you want to avoid eating anything, you can keep on sipping water, fresh juices or jaggery water within gaps so it makes you feel better and light and thus helps your body to cleanse. During fasting, you get carried away with eating fried foods like puris, sabudana vadas and similar things which are traditionally prepared at our homes, but it is always good to avoid them as we want to focus on cleansing our body.
If you opt to not eat the entire day, make sure that you eat light food the next day too. This will help your body to digest properly, as heavy food on the next day can create a problem in digestion. We here at Archana’s Kitchen lined up some light recipes for you, which you can make during the fasting day. Happy Shivratri:)
Note:
- There might be onion and garlic used in the recipes. Please avoid them if you are making these recipes for your fasting day.
- You can use black salt in place of salt.
