Daikon Radish: Detoxify and Promote Digestion
Daikon Radish is a great soup or salad vegetable. It is spicy, and acts as a digestive by stimulating digestive fire, just as the small radishes that Mexicanos eat with corn and meat do, but it is more aromatic, especially when boiled, than the small radishes and not as hot. Daikon is used in Chinese Medicine Nutritional therapy to balance heavier foods that are high in harder to digest animal protein and fat, like beef or pork. Beef and pork, which are are also neutral and cool in natural temperature, easily produce toxic dampness when eaten in excess, because the combination of heavy...
Read MoreAyurveda and Fruits: Match Food to Your Dosha and the Season
What foods match your dosha? Fruits are naturally sweet sour and refreshing. Some fruits, like apples, also have an astringent or drying property, depending on variety, macs more than fiji, for example. Your mouth feels a bit dry after a bite of apple, or quite dry after a bite of unripe banana–this is the astringent flavor. Pomegranates are another great example of this, as are persimmon, especially if not perfectly ripe. Some fruit are more sweet than sour, like ripe figs, dates, bananas, some fruits are especially cooling, like watermelon, ripe bananas or oranges. Some fruits...
Read MoreInstant Relaxation Stress Busters
Stress busters you can reach for any time. Dial down stress before an important meeting,calm yourself while driving, keep cool when faced with situations or people you find irritating or scary. These proven breathing, body-scanning exercises work. One Minute Relaxer Place your hand on your belly beneath your navel so you can feel it rise and fall as you breathe. Take a long slow deep in-breath through you nose. Notice the sound of the air in your throat. Hold you breath for a count of three. Exhale forcefully through your mouth with pursed lips. Repeat 5 times. Two Minute Relaxer Starting...
Read MoreHealthy Living for Vata in Autumn: Tips/Template
Health Tips for Vatta The core of health in Ayurveda and Chinese Medicine are Lifestyle and Diet. You cannot cure with a drug or herb what you have created with a lifestyle. You must correct what is wrong and use the herbs. Here is a template for a health lifestyle for Vatta. In real life, we are all bi-doshic, (some few are tridoshic) so this must be adjusted by your Ayurvedic consultant to accomodate your primary and secondary doshas…. *establish a regular routine of food, exercise, rest, and sleep *do an Ayurvedic self-massage with warm sesame oil or herbalized sesame...
Read MoreVata Dosha, Fear, Anxiety, and ADDH
Vata Dosha, Anxiety, and ADDH What is Dosha? Ayurveda conceptualizes all aspects of our being, physical, emotional, mental, as fitting into a concept of types. And each of these types represents the manifestation of an element of the natural world—wind, fire, water, earth, and space, in our bodies. The ancients observed, over a long period of time, that human beings are predictable—there is actually a limited range of behaviors and body types, for example in the case of bone structure and musculature people tend to either large boned, medium, or delicately boned....
Read MoreSummer Raw Beet, Sardine, and Pasta Salad
Summer is a time when even cold dry (Vata) types or cold damp (Kapha) types can have little more raw foods. One of the ways to make raw foods more compatible for cold types with weaker digestive energy (Agni/Spleen Qi) is to have it in small amounts with other foods that stimulate digestion. Necessity is the mother of invention. Today I was hungry, lazy, and the cupboard was bare. I had some leftover pasta, a tin of sardines, a can of chickpeas, a bunch of scallions and one lone beetroot in my frig. So I made a pasta salad with those ingredinets, with olive oil and vinegar as...
Read MoreSafe Neti Pot Use
Below is an article from NPR about a recent death in Louisiana suspected to be from Neti Pot use with tap water. Before anyone gets too freaked out, let’s look at the facts. 1. There is no proof; it is a suspected case of one.2. The people live in Louisiana, a state with a particularly dismal health record, perhaps in a rural area. City water has nasty things like chlorine you don’t want up your nose either, but less likely to have amoeba 3. What was the health of the deceased; how was their immune system.Of course this is something to take seriously, but efore you stop using...
Read MoreKale with Pomegranate Molasses and Cumin
Kale with Pomegranate Molasses and Cumin One of my favorite ways to cook Kale is inspired by the classic Linguine with Broccoli that you find at Southern Italian restaurants. Their method is really simple–olive oil, garlic, lemon, parmesan. I take the olive oil and garlic and add to it cumin and pomegranate molasses. Pomegranate Molasses in Cooking and in Ayurveda I used to use a little bit of balsamic vinegar or lemon when cooking kale this way, but then I discovered pomegranate molasses and have never turned back. Cooking your green leafies with something sour is said to make the...
Read MoreNatural Cranberry Sauce with Dates and Saffron, Low Sugar
It seems silly to buy canned cranberry sauce with a ton of sugar and the bonus of toxic Phtalates, when it is so easy to make it homemade. Takes literally minutes. Boil water, add cranberries and sweetener. Simmer 15 minutes. Voila! Ingredients 1 bag cranberries. Water, enough to cover the berries1/2 cup raw sugar, I like coconut palm sugar–avail at Whole Foods4 Medjool dates, pitted and chopped a bit, but any dates will do.5-6 strands saffron…again, Whole Foods has a pretty cheap good brand3-4 cardamom pods, crushed. You could use orange juice in place of the water if you...
Read MoreLate Autumn/Early Winter Whole Grain n’ Flax Blueberry Pancakes
Rainy Winter Morning Whole Grain Wild Blueberry Pancakes. Rainy winter mornings after long hikes in the San Diego desert make me want pancakes. Good, solid, whole grain ones. The kind that make you feel like you ate food, not syrupy junk. At Trader Joe’s the other day they had Wild Blueberries from Canada, frozen. I don’t generally recommend frozen stuff, but I think berries hold up pretty well to the freezing process for winter use. Having said that I would not really eat them in winter unless they are cooked somehow, like in pancakes or as a sauce. Ayurveda and Chinese...
Read MoreDoes Cauliflower Aggravate Vatta? Creamy Coconut Cauliflower Curry for Summer
Does cauliflower aggravate Vatta? The problem with going for an Ayurvedic consultation and being handed a long list of foods that aggravate one or the other of the doshas is, that first, this is a text book list of foods that tend to aggravate, in most people, but not all; second is that it is really really relevent how you prepare the dish, what season it is, and how balanced your corresponding dosha is at that point in time. Cauliflower is said to aggravate Vatta, and indeed, it has that potential, and I emphasize the word potential. Its potential to aggravate Vatta is increased...
Read MoreNearly Tridoshic Cucumber Avocado Summer Soup
Cucumber Avocado Summer Soup 2 cups chopped cucumber, peeled if non-organic1 cup avocado1.5 cups plain yogurt or kefir1-2 tbsp fresh bell pepper 3-4 tbs fresh cilantroSalt and Pepper to taste Ayurveda This is a lovely creamy cooling summer soup that in Ayurvedic terms is especially suitable for both Pitta and Vatta, and quite tolerated by Kapha, as discussed below. What I want to show you below is how a dish is adjusted to suit a dosha, and how to eat seasonally. Pitta: This soup cools Pitta’s fire, which is naturally increased in Summer months. Both cucumber and cilantro are very...
Read MoreHow to Make Salad or Raw Veggies for a Vatta Dominant Person
In general, people who are Vata dominant should avoid salad or raw vegetables, especially if in an unbalanced, aggravated state. Vatta, unlike Pitta and Kapha, is rough, not smooth. Raw vegetables are also considered rough; they are made “smooth” by cooking. And since like increases like, rough food will, therefore, increase Vata, and in the end aggravate, or vitiate it. Many raw vegetables are also considered cold in energy. And, as Vatta is cold and rough, irregular, and dry, it needs food that is warm, smooth, regular, and moistening. In addition, Vatta is pacified by sweet,...
Read MoreMy Grandmother’s Spice Cake, Banana Cake, and Potato Latkes
Chinese Medicine observes that not only do different foods have difference “natures” (cold, cool, neutral, warm, hot), for example the heat of cinnamon or lamb vs. the coolness of coconut water or cucumber, but so do each of the cooking methods. The least “heating” method of cooking is simple steaming or boiling. Stir frying adds even more heat, due to, in my opinion both the actual high heat as well as the oil/fat used. Broiling and baking are considered even more warming, and deep frying the most warming. I think anyone who has ever eaten a french fried potato or...
Read MoreBalancing Vata Dosha in Autumn: Avert the Danger that Has Not Yet Come
If I wanted to sum up the wisdom of Ayurvedic natural medicine while standing on one foot, I would choose the Sanskrit aphorism from Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, namely, Heyam Dukham Anagatam, or Avert the Danger That Has Not Yet Come. The concept is simple. What you do now affects what will happen tomorrow. As in other aspects of our lives, so too in health. One of the ways we prevent disease, or “avert danger,” is by living in tune with the seasons. Another is through knowledge of our particular body-mind tendencies, called doshas in Ayurveda. In Ayurveda we use nature as...
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