Tag Archives: balance

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Eat Well This Holiday Season

Eating well over the holidays can be tricky. This holiday season is going to be different for most of us in our current state of affairs, but we can still be mindful in the food choices we make to keep us healthy.

What is eating well anyway?

In Ayurveda, it depends. Each person is different, made up of a different balance of the five elements, different life experience, different family history, and so all foods can either be a poison or medicine depending on the individual. Some people may be able to tolerate chili peppers without any digestive upset, whereas others may break out in hives, or have acid indigestion, etc. Eating well in Ayurveda is all about maintaining good digestion to support our immune system and body functions.

Healthy eating is more than just giving up cookies. In fact, having cookies can be part of a healthy diet. The foods we choose to consume are just as much about our mental state as our physical state. Sometimes we may feel bored and decide we need a cookie. Or we may feel sad so we reach for some cake. Being aware of your emotions and mental wellbeing is critical for creating and maintaining healthy eating habits. Perhaps if you are bored, you may do well with a glass of water. If you feel sad, perhaps a hug from a loved one or watching your favorite movie will satiate your need.

Optimal health and eating well in Ayurveda are all about maintaining a healthy digestive system: urination is not foul smelling and is a light yellow color, and occurs regularly about every 3-4 hours; bowel movements occur at least once per day and first thing in the morning, ideally 1-3 times per day, are the consistency and size of a ripe banana, are a good brown color, and are not oily or dry. It’s not pretty taking about our body’s elimination, but we can learn a lot about how well or GI system is working be examining our excretions. If your urine is bright yellow and occurs 2-3 times per day, you may not be consuming enough liquids. If your bowel movements are hard, painful, or do not occur at least once per day, you may not be getting enough vitamins and minerals or other necessary nutrients.

How do we know if a food is poison or medicine?

It is all an experiment with foods and a deep awareness in how they affect your physiology. Does eating yogurt with fruit on it give you gas? When you eat eggs do you feel lethargic or energized? When you eat raw vegetables do you feel bloated or unbothered? Once it is determined if the body digests something well or not, it becomes a mental practice. Is it worth it to me to feel this particular to continue eating the thing(s) that make me feel like this? This is where discipline and practice come in with a dash of compassion and forgiveness.

It isn’t “healthy” to restrict things because we “think”we should. If know something is bad for us, and it is not just limited to food, and we continue to consume it or participate in that activity, this is more about the strength of our mind. If I know when I eat cream cheese I will wake up the next morning with nasal congestion and mucus in my throat, I have to decide if I want to eat the cream cheese and feel that way the next day. Or, do I want to skip the cream cheese and wake up the next day with clear sinuses and throat? Sometimes it is worth it, like if we are celebrating a loved one with a lovingly made cake with cream cheese frosting. Sometimes it’s not, like if I plan to go for a swim the next day and need to be able to breathe clearly.

Tips To Eat Well This Holiday Season

Here are some easy ways you can ensure you eat well over the upcoming holidays, and year round, to help keep your immunity and energy up, and your digestion moving smoothly.

Make lunch your largest meal.
Our digestion is the strongest in the middle of the day, so it can help with better sleep, better digestion, and overall mood if you eat your largest meal at lunch time. If you know you are going to a dinner party later in the evening, keep lunch light.
Skip a meal if you aren’t hungry or plan to eat a larger meal than normal.
It is important to be hungry when you eat a meal. If you are hungry your body releases gastric fluids to help you digest your food. If you aren’t hungry and you eat food, your body will have a difficult time breaking down what you eat because the appropriate fluids and enzymes are not available to break the food down. If you know you are going to have a larger than normal dinner, your digestion may benefit from skipping lunch before or breakfast the next day, or making those meals very light.
Eat and drink enough during your meal to feel satiated and not full.
It is a good idea not to eat so much you feel full. In general, see if you are able to consume food and drink during your meal to fill you 3/4 of the way full. Generally we want each meal to fill our stomach half full with food and one quarter full with liquid or drink.
Have dessert as part of your meal.
If you are planning to have dessert, which you are because the holidays offer some of the most delicious desserts, do your best to leave room for it as part of your meal and don’t eat so much that you feel full and have dessert a few hours later
Eat a plant-based diet.
Ayurveda promotes a plant-based diet of whole foods. With an Ayurvedic diet, meat is used only when needed to support bones or muscles, or if a person’s particular constitution requires it for optimal health and safety. Most people can get all the essential vitamins and minerals they need from fruits, vegetables, and legumes when consumed as part of a balanced diet.
Don’t eat a minimum of 2 hours before bed time.
It takes most foods 2-6 hours to fully digest. If we eat right before bed or in the middle of the night, our body is busy working to digest the food instead of resting and may cause restless sleep.
Avoid snacking.
Because it takes most foods 2-6 hours to digest, snacking can lead to indigestion, stomach upset, gas, bloating, or other GI discomfort. The reason for this is because when we eat hydrochloric acid is released in our stomach to break down the foods we eat to be absorbed through our small intestine as vitamins and minerals. Hydrochloric acid, along with other digestive enzymes, is considered our digestive fire, or agni in Ayurveda. This is like a real fire, if we put logs on it, it will burn evenly. If we then put four more logs on before the first logs have caught and are becoming embers, we may put out the fire. If we constantly put food in our stomach without allowing it to be fully digested, it may cause gas, bloating, and or GI distress. If you are hungry, you should eat, and some people benefit from frequent small meals. If you need to snack, consider foods that digest quickly and easily like fruit.
Reduce or eliminate cold drinks with meals.
Similar to snacking, if we put something cold in our stomach with the rest of our meal, it will dampen the ability of the stomach to fully digest what is consumed. Room temperature or warm drinks are best with meals. If you love iced beverages, keep them for in between meals as best you can.

It’s important to keep in mind everyone’s digestion is different. These are basic tips to help you keep on track with healthy eating this holiday season and year round. Remember, healthy eating means you easily digest the foods you consume. In Ayurveda we like to encourage the 80/20 rule. If 80% of the time you have good digestion and 20% of the time you eat your favorite snack and have a little gas, then you’re doing great! Being perfect is boring, and we want to enjoy the life we live. So get out there and enjoy your pumpkin pie! (But as part of your meal.)

Create Greater Wellbeing this Fall

Transitioning from summer to fall can be difficult on our system and our mindset. There are many things we can do to help make the transition a little smoother and easier to cope with.

Fall is one of the most magical times of year. When the leaves begin to change from shades of green into purples, golds, pinks, and reds, there is a sense of ease and warmth. Fall is considered the start to vata season, which takes full swing through the winter. Fall still has some traces of summer with some warm sunny days, late summer vegetables, and sleeping with the windows open. As the light begin the fade and days become shorter, that feeling of warmth the leaves gives us is a reminder that cold days are coming and we would do well to make some diet and lifestyle preparations to be ready for the oncoming winter months. Ayurveda has some helpful tips for making that transition easier.

The qualities of vata are cool, dry, rough, hard, mobile, and spacious. Ayurveda offers us simple tools to make the transition from warm to cold by cultivating a feeling of warmth, heaviness, and stability. The fall helps ease us from the heat of the summer to the cold of the winter. We will still see some summer vegetables in the fall, depending on the climate you live in, like broccoli, peas, peppers, and others. The flavors of summer, sweet, bitter, and astringent, will come through in some of these later vegetables and fruits. This is important because winter is all about incorporating foods that are sweet, sour, and salty and the sweet flavor is the bridge between the two. Remember, sweet taste is more than just eating chocolate and and candy. Although those fall in the sweet category, sweet taste shows up in foods like dairy, grains, meats, etc.

As fall begins to incorporate these new tases in the diet through the produce that is available naturally, we also want to consider the qualities of the foods we are eating. In the summer, our foods are light, crisp, and cool. We see these qualities in melons, berries, cucumbers, etc. As we transition to colder months, incorporating heavier, warmer, and dense foods will help us stay warm and help us feel cozy inside. Thinking of the foods we see available in the fall and winter, this makes sense. Typically, these foods are best in the fall:

Nuts (especially pecans and almonds)
Squashes
Pumpkins
Potatoes (especially sweet)
Fruits (apples, dates, figs, lemons, oranges)
Grains (wheat, oats, amaranth, quinoa)
Dairy (cow, goat, soft cheeses)
Oils (ghee, sunflower and almond oil)
Legumes (kidney, mung, urad)
Meat
Warming spices (cinnamon, chilies, pepper, anise, clover oregano, cardamom, ginger, saffron, rosemary)

In terms of diet, think all the warm, comforting, sticky, heavy foods like chili, mac and cheese, pastas, casseroles, etc. Although in the fall season

A daily routine incorporating abhyanga, the self oil massage, is perfect for creating warmth and nourishment for your skin. This is the perfect time to incorporate slower practices like yin or restorative yoga, meditation, journaling, and other forms of self-reflection and introspection. Take the time to think about what you have done over the last few days, weeks, or months and determine whether your choices are helping you move in the direction you want to be going or if they are derailing you. What can you learn from your experiences to help move you along your path with a little more ease.

In Ayurveda there is an adage that like increases like and opposites balance. Remember the qualities becoming fo fall, cool, dry, rough, hard, mobile, and spacious. See how much warmth, moisture, smoothness, softness, stillness, and stability you can incorporate into your life in all possible ways.

Self Care Sunday October 2020 Yoga with Angelina Fox, ERYT500, YACEP, Yoga Teacher and Ayurveda Health Counselor

You may enjoy this video from the October Self-Care Sunday discussing the transition from summer to fall.

What’s Your State of Mind?

Ayurveda and yoga follow Samkhya Philosophy which divides the world of existence into two polarities of being: Purusha and Prakriti. This article won’t go into Samkhya Philosophy, as that is a whole other ball of wax. But, it is helpful to know that both Ayurveda and yoga follow the basic philosophical structure.

Purusha is ultimate reality, all things that are unchanging in the world. What does that even mean? Doesn’t everything constantly change moment to moment? Well, again, that is an article for another time, but the basic idea is that the physical world we experience does in fact change moment to moment, but that which is beyond us, ultimate consciousness, God, soul, true Self, is constant and never changes. That is purusha.

Prakriti is the changing state, often referred to as the illusion of reality, or maya. Prakriti is the way we experience the world through our senses, perceptions, stories, experiences, and feelings. These are things that change and are effected by the colorings of our mind from life experience. Now, experience of life is not bad. That’s what we are meant to do here. It’s how we experience life and how our mind reacts, perceives, or feels about the experience.

Everything that exists within the tangible world we experience, prakriti, consists if the three maha gunas, or the great qualities; sattva (purity), rajas (activity), and tamas (inertia).

Three Maha Gunas (Great Qualities)

Sattva

Sattva is balance or harmony. It is neutral and moves with ease and calm. Sattva is a clear mind free of anger, fear, distressing thoughts, and full of love and compassion for all beings. This is quality of pure goodness, peace, forgiveness that allows us to deal effectively with the world. Physically is it clear skin, healthy weight, vibrant hair, clear eyes, etc. This isn’t to mean we should all look like super models, because let’s be real, that would be a huge imbalance in of itself for so many reason we aren’t going to go into here. What this means is we are our most healthy version of us with the genetic cards we were dealt. Sattvic foods are most vegetables, dates, almonds, legumes, but most of all what your body can easily digest.

Rajas

Rajas is pure energy, motion, and heat. It is the yang and masculine energy of the gunas. In balance, rajas is the zest for life, ability to set goals and work toward them, and a sharp, resolute mind. Out of balance, rajas appears as anger, hate, frustration, manipulation, rashes, heat flashes, moving excessively fast. Rajasic foods are heating and sharp like garlic, onions, chilies, cinnamon, alcohol, fermented foods and drinks, caffeine, and sour foods like citrus.

Tamas

Often viewed as ignorance, tamas is inertia, or stillness. It is the yin and feminine energy of the gunas. In balance, it is the ability to go with the flow, rest with ease, and be stable and dependable. Out of balance tamas appears as depression, sadness, a dull mind, lethargy, over eating, laziness, and lack of desire to be or do in the world. Tamasic foods are heavy and dull like leftovers, microwaved foods, fried foods, meat, cheese, milk, potatoes, carrots, and other root vegetables.

Often, One Guna is Predominant

The states of sattva, rajas, and tamas are inter-related and cannot exist without each other. In the same sense, one is not better than the other and it’s important to remember we need a healthy balance of all three so we have passion for life (rajas), the ability to stop and smell the roses (tamas), and can love in the place of the Self or the soul of our being (sattva). Additionally, the gunas are not just confined to people, and exist in some way in everything we come into contact with. Think of yogurt. It is dense, cold, wet, heavy, slippery, slow. All qualities of tamas, so we could infer eating yogurt will increase tamas. What about watching Game of Thrones? Well, lots of gratuitous killing, dark imagery, anger, hatred, and competition at the expense of others. These are all qualities of rajas, so we could infer watching Game of Thrones will increase rajas. Qualities of listening to a babbling brook are peaceful, calm, beautiful, serene, and relaxing. These are all qualities of sattva, so we could infer listening to a babbling brook with increase sattva.

Some of this is open to interpretation based on personal experience, likes and dislikes. Because we are limited to experiencing the world through our senses, all things are colored in our mind based on individual experience, inference, and preference. We are living in the world of prakriti, illusion, so we appear separate from others.

This also doesn’t mean you can’t watch things like Game of Thrones or eat yogurt. What is important is to balance those out with sattva boosting activities or foods to return to a balanced state.

Finding Balance

It’s important to remember we need a healthy balance of all three gunas so we have passion for life (rajas), the ability to stop and smell the roses (tamas), and can love in the place of the Self or the soul of our being (sattva). Noticing when one of the three gunas is predominant or out of balance can help us make decisions to create better balance in our diet, mind, and overall way of being. Typically, rajas or tamas are the culprits of imbalance since sattva itself its a state of balance.

In Ayurveda, opposites balance and like increases like. If there is a predominance of rajas, we may see things like excessive activity, anger, heat, mobility, energy, aggression, shame, physically or mentally moving too quickly. Imbalance can show up as digesting food to quickly which creates loose stools, indigestion, heart burn, sour burps, or perhaps as skin flushing, red eyes, getting hot when trying to sleep. Here are some things to consider to boost sattva and reduce rajas.

Incorporate slow, fluid movement or statice practices like restorative yoga or Thai Chi
Start a gratitude jar where you write thing you are grateful for and can read them in times of need
Focused meditation like yoga nidra or loving kindness
Take a cool bath or shower
Eat foods that are less heating and more grounding
Use cooling spices such as cilantro, mint, coriander

If there is a predominance of tamas; lethargy, slowness, heaviness, dullness, darkness, fear. Imbalance can show up as slow digestion with constipation or hard stools, depression, hoarding, couch potatoism (this is now a word), lack of desire to do day to day activities and things normally enjoyed. here are some things to consider to boost sattva and reduce tamas.

Incorporating movement such as vinyasa yoga, jogging, swimming
Meet a close friend of family member for coffee/tea or a peaceful walk
Consider you’re physical surroundings and use warmer colors for paint and clothing choices
Snuggle in your warmest blanket or sweater with a warm cup of chai
Eat foods that are less cooling and are lighter
Use warming spices such as cayenne, black pepper, cinnamon

Not Sure What’s Out of Balance?

If things aren’t quite right and you aren’t sure what’s up, the best thing is to boost sattva which is the qualities of purity, knowledge, hope, and harmony. This will ensure excess rajas or tamas won’t be increased and still work to bring harmony into life. Here are some simple ways to boost sattva.

Listen to a babbling brook 🙂
Take in a lovely sunrise or sunset
Read an inspiring book
Journal about goals, hopes, dreams
Hug someone you love
Eat sattvic foods like ghee, seasonal fruits and vegetables, broths
Eat something sweet and brings joy (Don’t eat an entire chocolate cake)
Walk barefoot in the grass
Use of essential oils or herbs that are pleasant and calming
You get the idea – all the warm and gushy stuff

When we can find balance of the maha gunas, we can begin to connect more deeply to the purusha, the soul and deep inner knowing of truth to live a life of joy.

Next Self Care Sunday is October 18, live on Facebook, and we’ll discuss the transition from summer to fall and ways to change routine to support better wellbeing. You can get even more information and sign up for my online classes, blog, or newsletter at www.yogawithangelina.com

You may also enjoy this video at www.facebook.com/SageAndFettle for a quick discussion on sattva, rajas, and tamas. Or follow S age and Fettle Ayurveda on Facebook for monthly Self-Care Sunday events.