• 19Nov

    Anyone else have trouble with morning practice?

    Mmmmmmm

    Mmmmmmm...

    (posted from the Yoga Journal community forum, 11/19/08)

    I am not a morning person. I admit it and my best friends can attest to it (one of them will only wake me up if she has a cup of coffee in her hand). Although I’m MUCH better than I used to be in the morning, I still have trouble finding the energy to do anything other than force myself out of bed and do my morning routine in a zombi-like state. I know a morning practice can influence your entire day for the positive and would love to have that, but it’s just so hard to get up and do it!

    Does anyone else struggle in the mornings? Any suggestions?

    - posted by altilden, today

    Many - but that would be a consultation. The best way to get over the Kapha hump (6 - 10am, it makes us feel slow, lethargic and attached to our beds and comforts), is to synchronize our body clocks with the Sun’s movements. This is one of the most important ritucharya (rituals in harmony with the Divine) in Ayurvedic wisdom. Getting to sleep before 10 ensures your Pitta time of night is used for its best purpose - processing the thoughts, emotions and sensory inputs from your day (we are only consciously aware of 20% of what we take in). This, and minimizing Vata (so you don’t wake up in the middle of the night and have trouble going back to sleep), gives you the clearest, most Peace-full mind for yoga and meditation in the early morning (the best prana time for practice). Other tools would be foods and habits that minimize Kapha and/or maximize the quality of sleep you get.

    NAMASTE

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  • 07Nov

    Raw for 30 Days trailer

    “Raw for 30 Days” is a documentary about an experimental project involving group of people with diabetes that decided to follow a raw/living foods diet for 30 days, to see if they could reverse their condition.  Five of them did, but not in a sustainable way, because the source cause of their dis-ease was never addressed.  There’s also an important reason that people in the program left before completing it (I applaud them) - because changes in their diet and lifestyle were not introduced gradually, gently or in a way customized for their elemental constitution (prakruti) and accumulated imbalances (vikriti), in harmony with Nature (ie. the daily, seasonal and aging cycles of the doshas), and because the goal was a 100% raw vegan diet.

    The amazing gift of this film is that it showed the power food has to create or cure dis-ease.  Ayurveda, because it has the most subtle knowledge of the body, mind and soul of any medicine on Earth, is the most holistic framework for curing dis-ease, maintaining health and realizing our full potential.

    NAMASTE

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  • 01Nov

    Pouring Ghee

    Cleanses that actually detoxify the body are the ones that do not put more stress into the body than they remove from it… in other words, Ayurvedic cleanses. Ghee and Kichadi (kit-cha-ree) are the two most pure, sattvic and healing foods in Ayurveda and the tools you will find most useful on your first cleanse.

    Ghee is used both internally and externally as a vehicle for removing toxins (ama) and excess doshas from the body and as a solvent for the active ingredients of many herbs and spices.  It’s free of lactose and cholesterol and its pure nature attracts ama, which it carries through the digestive tract and out of the body.  Ideal as a cooking oil, it also maintains its properties at any temperature and can be kept for weeks at room temperature in the dark.  Cultured unsalted butter has the most agni (digestive fire) because of its abundance of short-chain fatty acids.  You can find a recipe for making it here: BAB Recipes

    Kichadi is a mixture of cleansing and healing spices, cooling mung beans and basmati rice, made with ghee.  It’s like a vacation for your digestive system and its pure nature makes it a vehicle for removing ama from the body.  You can use kichari as part of a seasonal cleanse (7 - 10 days at the change of a season) or for a weekly 1-day cleanse ritual.  Here’s a recipe for White Basmati Kichadi, which is most appropriate for Pitta-dominant constitutions and Pitta/Vata mixed constitutions: WhiteBasmatiKichadi.pdf

    NAMASTE

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