The holistic journey: Seetha Anand Vaidyam

Seetha Anand Vaidyam is a remedial therapist, early childhood consultant and founder of Ananda Foundation, Hyderabad. Her foundation works for holistic and healthy learning and living.  

Over the last two decades, Seetha has gathered wide experiences in the area of holistic wellness from across the world and offers simple doable nutritional ideas which are easy and beneficial to adopt. Her wellness workshops are great fun while being transformational.

The freelance kindergarten teacher, trainer and writer has written a book ‘“Good” Food - A Guide to Right Cooking and Eating’, which has three editions to its credit. 

Excerpts: 

What is a remedial therapist?
I work with children with learning difficulties. Kids with this condition, do go to normal schools, however, they cannot read or write properly or sometimes they do not have good memory power. I do therapy for them that retrain the brain. In the remedial therapy, I put children on an exercise and diet plan. I also refer them to other therapies. 

Tell us about your book ‘“Good” Food…’? 
‘“Good” Food - A Guide to Right Cooking and Eating’, is a guide to healthy cooking and this is the third edition. It started when one of my sons’ teacher told that my recipes are very good for children and the school asked me to print those recipes. And I made a booklet of recipes and that got, a good response and slowly I transformed it into a book. 

What inspired you to create the recipes?
There is lot of confusing information in the market and I work with children with learning difficulties. I found that food is the most important aspect which many people do not concentrate on for therapy. Food is a medicine if you take it in the right way. So, I felt that there is no adequate information in the market and that was one of the reasons for my book. I made a small booklet to start with and that booklet sold within minutes. After that I made a book for which the foreword was written by Dr Vandana Shiva, author and activist. This is the third edition of the book.

How much time did it take to complete the book?
To write the book, the recipes were gathered over a period of years it is difficult to say the exact time. So, I can say that it is years of hard work. But compiling the book took a shorter time.

How is food important for a child’s growth?
Food is not just important for the physical body, but also for mental alertness and emotional stability. In this book, there is a chapter on gut-brain connection that mentions the benefits. This book has all the available vegetable recipes. It has broken the myth that healthy food can’t be tasty and is expensive. You do not have to spend too much money on healthy food. This book also shows what is the correct procedure to cook a recipe and talks about growing and choosing organic veggies.