Giri Bala: the Indian yogi who gave up eating & drinking

I'm loving the cross-fertilisation of yoga and the raw diet and the connections I am encountering on personal retreat in India. I suppose that to approach life holistically is to integrate all aspects of healing and well being. I recognise that until now I have tended to mentally separate my yoga and my faw food practices; whereas in fact they are facets of the whole, the soul's journey.
With that in mind, I though I'd write about Giri Bala, the woman yogi who lived in India last century and who renounced food and drink.
The raw food paradigm offers a broadening of our understanding of nutrition so as to include that which nourishes us on all levels. Gabriel Cousens writes authoratively on this in Spiritual Nutrition and the Rainbow Diet. As we become more selective, applying greater discrimination to our food choices we find we can consume less and keep the body fuctioning at an optimal level. Moreover, thr nourishment we are sseeking on a deeper level is spiritual nutrition, to come to know our higher self, God, source, spirit. Feeding the subtle body through a raw food diet, yoga, meditation and other healing arts, prayer and intention; all such practices are soul food.
I am currently reading a classic yoga text; Parahamsa Yogananda's account of his life's journey and travels, Autobiography of a Yogi . Yogananda visited Bala in 1936 in her remote village home in Bengal. He interviewed and photographed her, witnessing and verifying her story.
A gluttonous child, at the age of 12, Bala received the impulse to to pray for a guru who would teach her how to live without food. Such a teacher appeared one morning as Bala bathed in holy Ganges river one morning. He granted her desire, teaching her a yogic kriya, a mantra and breathing technique. From then on Bala was absteminous from food and liquids, recharging her body with cosmic energy, the air and the sun. Her motive was simple and pure, in her words, "To prove that man is spirit."
Bala did not advocate nor teach her method, following the wishes of her guru. Parahamsa's book is widely available and the Chapter on Giri Bala makes a light easy read.