News — ayurveda

The cucumbers in this recipe are good for counteracting the heavy properties of yogurt, breads, and even pastas. In Ayurveda, the summer season is a time for fresh, cooling, sweet fruits and fresh flowers! Cucumbers are a good summer food and they are also thirst-relieving. Ayurveda finds cucumber to be sweet, astringent, and cool. It balances Pitta and Vata but increases Kapha. For Kapha folks, you can eat this with extra hing and mustard seeds. It is a diuretic and good for urinary tract infections.  This yogurt dip, called cucumber raita, is considered tri-doshic, versatile and can be used as a...

Yoga has truly taken America by storm. With the amount of yoga studios and teacher trainings, the demand keeps growing. Numbers indicate that north Americans who practice some form of yoga has doubled in the last five years . . . and is now estimated at fifteen million people.   Did you know that three-fourths of fitness clubs offer yoga classes, and yoga was named one of the two fastest-growing segments of the exercise industry by Trendwatch 2000 (an annual report on fitness trends)? While a lot of people (including those running the media) view yoga as a gentler way...

In conventional medicine, when a woman thinks she is pregnant, she goes to the doctor, is given a pregnancy test and her blood pressure, pulse rate, and weight are checked. Then she is advised to eat a generally healthy diet and to take some prenatal vitamins. In both my pregnancies, I remember thinking how this prenatal advice doesn't give any specific recommendations for maintaining a happy and healthy pregnancy.   In Ayurveda, it has been recognized for thousands of years that the mother must be very happy and feel harmony with nature during pregnancy. For this, various steps and key...

During the summer season, the elements of Fire and Water (and the Pitta dosha) run high. This is the time when we experience the hot, light, liquid, sharp, oily, and mobile qualities of the season and as the heat waves roll through and our air conditioning isn't quite getting the job done we are more likely to feel irritable, frustrated, angry, impatient, jealous, and short-tempered. Learning how to cope with seasonal changes is essential. We may develop heartburn, acne, fever, skin rash, foul smelling sweat, headaches, and acidity during the summer season. But . . . summer is a time for...

According to Ayurveda, dry skin can be cured by limiting exposure to vata's qualities and increase exposure to those substances and experiences that are the opposite of vata. For example, in late fall and early winter, we should nurture ourselves and our skin with foods and sensations that are warm, stable, heavy, smooth, and grounding.  Ayurveda recognizes three basic energies of life: The first is known as vata; the second, pitta; and the third, kapha. Vata also means wind in Sanskrit, and vata's sensory qualities dryness, coolness, mobility, lightness, unsteadiness, and roughness are much like those of the wind. When vata...