As we dive deeper into the cold, dry, windy winter, we use ayurveda to adapt to each season by cultivating opposite qualities. Taking into consideration that not everyone lives in the mountains like I do (yes Florida, I’m talking to you), you will have to assess which qualities of this vata season affect you the most during the winter and adjust your diet and lifestyle a tad to alleviate any little imbalances you may experience.

Stay Warm

First, let’s tackle the obvious…staying warm! We are quite outdoorsy in the mountains, so having good clothing, hats, scarves, sweaters and layers of clothes is important to battle cold quality. Try to go outside when the sun is high, pitta time, from 10am-2pm. Other tips for staying warm include:

• Eating warm, cooked, soft foods like soups and stews
• Spice foods with cinnamon, cardamom, fennel, cumin, saffron, ginger, coriander, mint and if your digestion can go spicier, use cloves, nutmeg, black pepper, ajwain, hing, chili pepper, more ginger, and of course just about any other spice is good. Just be cautious if you have too much heat in your digestive system that you stick with the first 8 spices.
• Protect the ears from cold and wind with a good hat
• Treat yourself to a little extra heat in the house if you enjoy it
• Have a fire in the fireplace or let the dogs in the bed…get cozy
• Generate heat from exercise or yoga…sun salutations are great. I love the Hugger Mugger Tapas Original 74 in. Long Mat for these because it’s sticky to prevent sliding, and I really enjoy a long mat for any type of vinyasa flow yoga.
• Internally heat up from a pranayama like kapalabhati or bhastrika, or breathe only through the right nostril

Stay Oiled

The mountains seem to be dry all year round, but it may cause more problems with the cold. Be sure to get enough oils in foods, such as using ghee or adding olive oil to cooked meals. Enjoy more unctuous foods like avocados, squashes, nuts and seeds, dairy, whole grains and oils. If you’re a carnivore, go for oilier meats instead of too much turkey or chicken.

Begin a self-massage practice a couple of times a week. Heat up a glass jar of oil and massage it into your skin for about 10 minutes before your shower. You can even heat up the bathroom with some hot shower steam before you begin. Try sesame oil if you feel cold often, or coconut oil if you run hot. Or just use sunflower oil if you’re not really sure. But get some oil on you. This is one of the best practices you can do!

Oil the crown of your head and the feet before you go to sleep. You may need to wear socks to bed until the oil soaks up. Eventually you may just come to appreciate sheets with a little oil on them. Almond oil is a really nice one to try as I don’t find it as sticky and it’s warming.

Use oils for skincare instead of commercial products. Use ghee for delicate areas like eyes, nose or even the hands or heels if they are flaking. Use a little coconut or almond oil after your shower, but only after you are completely dry. You can look for boutique ayurveda companies that sell these types of products too, if you want to try things with fragrances, special blends or something fun and new!

Invest in a nice humidifier. As we turn up the heat to stay warm (unless you’re super lucky to have radiant heat in your home home) the air dries out. Add a little calming fragrance such as basil, orange, geranium, clove or rose to the water if you like. Your animals will be happier, and your plants will be perkier. And your vata energy will feel much better.

Find Stability

Finally let’s touch on the mobile quality of the season. This is the wind, movement, going places, doing things. In order to reduce mobile, we need to find calming stability. This may include things like:

• Reduce travel
• Get enough sleep
• Slow down, relax, take a breather
• Do things intentionally instead of just going where the wind blows
• Do yoga, weight-lifting or gentle walking instead of a lot of running or cardio
• Breathing – lie on your back using a Hugger Mugger Pranayama Bolster. Place a hand on your heart and a heart on your lower belly. Inhale, expanding the belly so that hand rises up slowly. Then exhale, and the hand lowers back down, for the same count of breath as the inhale.
• Take 30-60 minutes to relax and get off the electronics before bed

One of the best ways to create stability in your life is with a steady routine. Try and plan a daily schedule that you can maintain on both workdays and weekends. This is the best defense against an erratic vata season.

Ayurveda is a wonderful way to align our own cycles with nature. Adapting to our environment, the current season and our own natural preferences can create balance, health and peace. If you would like to learn more about ayurveda, please contact Maria Radloff at www.mariyurveda.com.

Ayurveda looks at health and balance as a dynamic, ever-changing set of qualities that can either increase or decrease with our environment, foods and behaviors. These qualities can include hot and cold, dry and unctuous, stable and mobile, etc…for a total of twenty qualities, or ten pairs of opposites. As these qualities move around in quantity, they may increase and be too much, or they could decrease and be depleted. This can affect the overall balance of health.

While we can control the foods we eat and our behaviors (well, we do our best!) to balance these qualities, we do not have any say about the seasons, and the qualities they bring. So, we must always have awareness of our surroundings and how we react to them, so that we may continue to adjust our lifestyles to integrate the changes.

In the U.S.A. we recognize three seasons:

• Kapha: late winter into spring and brings cold, wet and heavy
• Pitta: summer and brings hot and sharp
• Vata: autumn and brings cold, dry, windy, rough

As we go deeper into September and autumn vata season, you may notice the effects of the cold, drying wind qualities on your body. I would like to give you some tips for balancing during this season to keep you feeling warm, replenished and cozy!

Tip #1: Stay Warm

If you look at the foods that come into season in the fall, they are heavy, warming and unctuous. Go to the farmers’ market while you still can and load up on squashes, yams, pumpkins, beets, apples, dates, figs, cranberries, avocados, red potatoes, spinach, swiss chard, okra and carrots. Get onions and garlic for flavors. Update your spice cabinet – try some fun spices like cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, anise, turmeric, saffron, paprika, rosemary, cumin, dill, ginger, oregano, basil, bay leaf and rosemary. Sounds like Thanksgiving dinner, yes?!

Avoid drinking beverages that are cold or contain ice. Sip hot water or herbal tea all day. Invest in a nice thermos to carry with you.

Now is the time to let go of the ice cream. Soups and stews are amazing autumn meals. Eat heavy whole grains like rice, wheat, amaranth, oats and quinoa. And enhance everything with a spoonful of ghee!

Dress warmly. Wear hats, scarves, sweaters. Protect yourself from the wind and stay inside if it is a little crazy outdoors. Invite your dogs to snuggle in the bed with you for extra warmth.

Tip #2: Routines

This is the time to establish a firm sleep and meals routine. Try to wake and sleep at the same time every day, even on weekends. Decide where your three meals can fit into your schedule and enjoy them daily at the same time so your body can create a cycle and you will have nice strong hunger for them! As you develop your schedule, notice if your sleep and digestion improve. Avoid snacking and late-night eating as much as possible. You may also want to consider including exercise and meditation into this daily routine.

Tip #3: Oils

Warm oil is the greatest thing you can use to battle the cold winds of fall. My favorite ayurvedic treatment is known as abhyanga and is the practice of heating up oil and massaging it into your body before a warm shower. If you feel cold, choose sesame oil. If you tend to run warm, try coconut oil. But honestly, there are no bad oils during this time, so use whatever you like! Sunflower oil is also a great one to try.

Put the oil in a jar, heat it up in a pot (or electric hotpot) of water. Then massage into your skin. After 10-15 minutes, hop into the shower and avoid using much soap. We don’t want to scrub it all away. I like to sip some hot lemon water while I wait for the oil to absorb in. And maybe listen to some NPR on my phone, too.

Nasya oil for the nose will help keep everything above the shoulders lubricated. Warm sesame oil in the ears is also great for calming vata. And finally, oiling the head and feet before bed is very calming, nurturing and great for both sleep and reducing vata.

Adjusting your lifestyle to balance the seasons is an important Ayurvedic practice. Always be aware of the foods that are naturally in season, the qualities of the weather, and most importantly, how you are feeling during these changes, so that you can adjust your foods and behaviors to maintain your own individual balance.

If you are interested in learning more about ayurveda, please visit www.mariyurveda.com.

There is no better time of year for me than spring! Flowers, fresh air, more sunlight, baby animals, starting the garden, rushing water in the mountains, and warmer temps…what’s not to love? Spring is a time of growth and building and is therefore considered kapha time in ayurveda. It’s a great time for creation and starting the beginning of a new cycle.

Kapha Time

Let’s define what kapha means in ayurveda. Kapha is water, it is building, cohesive, stagnant and heavy. It is like the cold mud in spring, a mix of water and earth elements. It is also sweet taste and love, and is increased by fabulous desserts, dairy, and oils. Kapha is literally ice cream!

People who naturally have a lot of kapha are very lucious – big beautiful round features, nurturing and they want everybody to be happy. Everybody needs a kapha friend because the hugs are amazing! They are strong like an elephant and have amazing endurance and strong immunity.

Let’s Balance

In the spring when kapha runs high due to the cold and melting snow, some imbalances may start to show, especially for those who already have higher kapha energy. That is why spring cleanses are so popular – it’s a time when we are stronger, but can feel stagnant and need to clean out the accumulation of things that may have kapha-like stickiness. 

Diet

First let’s look at a spring diet. If you consider what is naturally in season during springtime, you’ll see a lot of bitter greens. Beet greens, mustard greens, collard greens, spinach, kale, dandelion greens…all great for kapha season.

We want to favor flavors like bitter, pungent (spicy) and astringent (drying). So additional foods would include things like:

Grains: amaranth, barley, buckwheat, crackers, oats, polenta/corn, quinoa, basmati rice, granola and rye

Vegetables: the greens listed above, asparagus, cabbage, celery, chilies, eggplant, green beans, leeks, peas, white potatoes, radishes and turnips

Legumes: most beans, soy milk/beans/tofu, tempeh

Spices: onions, garlic, and almost everything except for salt (which creates more water retention) – use many many spices!

Oils: corn, flax, ghee, sunflower

Meats: chicken & turkey (white), freshwater fish, some eggs, venison

Avoid: dairy, sweets, and too much oil

Stoking Digestive Fire

Kapha can slow down the digestive fire so we want to invigorate it with some light fasting and spices.

Traditionally in ayurveda we eat three meals a day without snacking in between, but because kapha can have slower digestion, skipping a meal from time to time is helpful. Another option is to have kitchery-only days. Kitchery is a spiced basmati rice and mung bean dish that is super easy to digest and by eating that for your three meals allows for your system to chill a bit from all the crazy stuff we normally eat.

Spice foods with trikatu. Trikatu is a blend of dry ginger, black pepper and long pepper. It’s tasty and can be sprinkled on delicious home cooked meals.

Don’t drink too much water, just sip hot water or spicy teas all day. Avoid fruit juices and sodas.

Avoid snacking and emotional eating. Due to heaviness and stagnation, it’s really important not to get sucked in by donuts or Easter candies, as eating between meals will cause slower digestion and more sticky, clogging mess in our channels.

Do not nap or sleep during the day unless it is part of your routine due to work. Kaphas are so strong that less sleep is needed to rejuvenate their systems. A kapha person may only need 4-6 hours of sleep a night.

Burning Kapha Away

Kapha cannot be dieted away very easily. It is heavy and stable, which means it has no ambition to move. While this is great for grounding us in this fast-paced, crazy world, it also means feeling stagnant and lazy.

Pungent spices (like the trikatu) will do their best to clean out some kapha, but ultimately it will take some regular exercise and breaking a sweat each day.

Start each morning with pranayama and sun salutations. Grab your favorite yoga mat, roll it out, and get on it. That is the hardest part.

Begin with some cleansing breath work. Bhastrika (Bellows Breath) is amazing for spring and kapha. It cleanses the lungs which is where kapha hangs out. Kapalabhati (Breath of Fire) is great for heating up the system and cleansing as well.

Next work your way through some surya namaskara sequences. Create heat in the body with movement and ujjayi breath. Then either take Shavasana or continue on with your normal home yoga practice. After shavasana it is important to roll on your back a bit to move out the intertia and sleepy energy. After coming up to a seated position, continue with a little more breathwork, perhaps some ujjayi breath, holding the breath a bit after the inhale, or some alternate nostril breathing. This brings us into a peaceful state of mind.

And finally, find time each day to break a sweat with some exercise. The weather will be getting sunnier, the air will be feeling brisk and fresh. Get outside and enjoy a hike. Stroll the neighborhoods and gardens to see the new flowers. Take the dogs for a run and enjoy the fresh air. Tune up the bike and cruise around to see all the budding trees.

In summary, kapha is a time of creation, building, cohesiveness, water and sweetness. Nature is sprouting baby animals, flowers, budding trees, and new life. It’s the beginning of a new cycle in life, but if we’re not careful, we can take on too much or find it difficult to let go of that which is no longer serving us. Kapha loves to build and hold on to things.

Our best tools for working with spring kapha energy are spices, dryness, heat/burning, cleaning and vigor. Happy spring!

Autumn is an exciting time of year as the days cool down, the wind picks up, and plants and animals start to prepare to hibernate for the winter. In ayurveda, this season aligns with vata dosha, a functional energy that consists of cold, dry, rough, airy, moving qualities. Vata represents the last part of the circle of life, which begins in the spring with growth, wetness, and cold, and then progresses into summer which is dry and hot, and then finally ends up at the end of the cycle, when things break down, disappear, or rest until it’s time for them to come back in the the spring. Autumn perfectly reflects these qualites…cold, dry, windy and dying, as nature gets ready for the dark winter.

Vata is the master dosha and is the easiest one of the three to go out of balance. We are all trying to do too much, move too fast and go too far. We travel, we work, we play. All of these things increase vata, especially if we don’t maintain a routine or find time to ground and stabilize our energy. And during vata season, autumn, it increases more.

What to do? Ayurveda looks at 20 qualities to maintain or correct balance, such as hot and cold, or oily and dry. This upcoming season we want to reduce the qualities of: cold, movement, dry, and rough. Let’s look at a few practices that can get us through this awesome season, reducing these qualities with their opposites.

DIET

The key to good digestion is eating soft, warm, cooked foods. This is a good time to let go of the smoothies, raw foods, raw salads, and ice creams. You may resume them again after winter. Vata is very subtle and moving, so we want to ground it with heavier, creamier foods.

Breakfast – Have whole grain pancakes, warm whole grain cereals (like oatmeal, buckwheat or rice), eggs, or a cooked apple dish. Be sure to add ghee, nuts, soaked dried fruits (raisins, figs, etc), and spices to your dishes.

Lunch – This is the best time for digestion, so have your biggest meal here. Perhaps pasta, rice, quinoa, amaranth or couscous and maybe even a homemade pizza. Serve with vegetables, a nice sauce, a little oil and spices.

Dinner – Soups and stews make great dinner entrees as they are easy to digest before bedtime. Have something a little lighter at this meal.

Great autumn foods include squashes, sweet potatoes, asparagus, beets, seeds, rice, oats, wheat, couscous, pancakes, whole grain pasta, eggs, ghee, tofu, fish, dark meat, unprocessed sugars, oils, avocados, sweet fruits – fresh or cooked, cottage cheese, whole milk, paneer and lentils. Most spices are great for vata as well and are an important part of good digestion.

ROUTINE

One of the best ways to wrangle vata dosha is by keeping a solid routine when eating and sleeping. Try to eat and sleep at the same times each day, keeping in mind that this includes week days and weekends together. This will promote better digestion, deeper sleep and balanced vata dosha. In ayurveda we use increments of 45 minutes, so you don’t have to be too exact with your scheduling, just keep it in the ballpark.

Sleeping – Depending on your dosha, you will need about 4-8 hours of sleep per night. Try to create a schedule that will give you the full amount of sleep needed. Don’t rely on your current habits to determine how much is needed because you may be in a routine already, good or bad. Create a new ideal sleep schedule and try it out for a week, then see how you feel. You may need to add or reduce the hours based on this.

It’s best to be in bed before 10pm, as that is when we leave sleepy kapha time for the active pitta time. Then choose your wake time based on the sleep that is needed. This could be 4am, 5am or 6am! Try to be out of bed before 6am, as that is when we go from very active and intuitive vata time into sleepy kapha time again. You’ll notice that when you sleep in that you feel a little more lethargic on those days.

It’s best to avoid sleeping during the day, but for vatas, a quick nap may be helpful here and there, although try not to completely fall asleep. If you like to rest after a meal, lie down for ten minutes on your left side.

Eating – Allow at least an hour after waking before eating breakfast. Use this hour to do yoga, exercise, meditate and shower. Have your first meal around 7:30 – 8:00am. Try to sit down to eat at home rather than in the car or at your desk.

Avoid having any mid-morning snacks, and definitely avoid having too much coffee. If you survive on coffee, perhaps have some an hour after breakfast. Try to get down to just one cup a day. If you’re struggling with vata imbalance, cream, natural sugar or cardamom will help that coffee a lot! You can use pranayama first thing in the morning to jumpstart your nervous system instead of the coffee on an empty stomach.

Lunch can be taken around noon, when the pitta sun is high in the sky and ready to transform your food. If you’re going to cheat on meals, now is the time. Have your heaviest meal at this time. Try to eat with awareness, though, so you know when you are getting full and can stop before you overdo it. Eating too much food makes it really hard to digest and you will face a sleepy afternoon. Invest in a crockpot to take homemade meals to work!

It can be a long time from lunch to dinner, so if you need an emergency snack, have something super easy to digest like fresh fruit, broth soup, rice cakes, avocado with a little salt/pepper/oil, fruit bread or a little spiced basmati rice with milk. The most important thing is to have at least two hours around the snack of no eating, which means no grazing. Bummer, I know.

At least three hours before bedtime have a light dinner, not a big meat and potatoes meal. I was raised in the midwest where we had a sandwich for lunch and a big piece of meat with potatoes for dinner. This is not so good for digestion, as that will sit in your stomach over night, not really getting processed. It will take more energy to get it out of your body than you could get from digesting it. Have the meat for lunch and consider more soups, stews or rice and vegetables here. And definitely avoid dessert and snacking after dinner time.

Can’t go that long without eating? This tends to be more of a pitta problem as their digestion runs hot and cooks quickly. If there is hunger before bed or during the night, have some easy to digest snacks available. Try having a cup of warm milk spiced with cinnamon and cane sugar. Or have some fresh fruit. You can also have baked spiced apples. These are all easily digested and shouldn’t cause any problems.

PRACTICES

Oil – Oil is one of your best defenses against vata imbalance. Put a drop nasya oil in each nostril (purchase online). Put warm sesame oil in your ears (regular sesame oil, not toasted or you’ll smell like stir-fry). Rinse your mouth with sesame oil after brushing in the morning. And abhyanga.

Abhyanga is using heated oil to massage the body before a shower in the morning. If you don’t know your dosha, use sunflower oil. If you run hot, use coconut oil. If you feel cold, use sesame oil. If you feel heavy, use mustard, safflower or corn oil. Heat the jar of oil up (I put the jar of oil in a hotpot half filled with water and heat it up quickly), then massage some into your skin. You can put it on your scalp, but it may cause stickiness in your hair. A good shampoo will remove it, but if you don’t have time, you can just do your face and ears. Try to leave the oil on for 15 minutes, but if you are in a morning rush, just jump in the shower right after applying the oil.

Be careful stepping into the shower and gently rinse the oil off. Don’t use much soap or water that is so hot. This is very nourishing and very balancing for vata dosha. This can be done daily, but at least try to fit it in once a week.

Meditation – Meditation will purify and ground the mind. One of the best practices you can embark on is being able to sit on a meditation cushion or bench for about 20 minutes, letting everything go. The object is to do nothing…not to fight thoughts, not to experience a great spiritual awakening, but to be present and just be.

It may be hard to let go if the mind is really active, so a few techniques that I use are:

1. focus the attention on the breath entering and exiting the nostrils
2. focus the attention on sound, allowing all of the sounds to come in
3. focus the attention on a word or prayer, repeating it in your head slowly

Try to meditate first thing in the morning and then again after work or at sunset. You may need to start with ten minutes, slowly building up to 20 or 30 minutes per session.

IN SUMMARY

The above suggestions above are an impactful way to stay healthy this fall season. If you’re not used to practicing ayurveda, perhaps just work on the routine and the abhyanga. Ayurveda is not meant to be rigid with rules, but instead offers us a guide on how to live healthy lives. As long as we are aware of how we feel, our habits and our environment, we can make choices to balance these things.

Ayurveda comes from the same philosophy as yoga and together they can work miracles. If you’re curious about how to use more ayurveda in your life, I offer many workshops and classes around town. I am currently a second-year student at Kerala Academy in Milpitas, California. Check out www.mariyurveda.com for events and details.

Sleep—sometimes it’s easy to find and sometimes it eludes us.

Most of us are challenged by an occasional sleepless night. But some of us are plagued by not being able to get to sleep, or by waking each night and not being able to fall back to sleep.

Before electricity, we didn’t have much choice but to flow with the circadian rhythm. The sun goes down, we go to sleep. The sun comes up and so do we.

These days, chemicals, electronics, binge-watching TV, and our emotions can cause us to stay up beyond our physical needs.

Ayurveda gives us a few simple guidelines to fall asleep more easily and to sleep more soundly. Here are some ideas.

Ayurvedic Tips for Better Sleep

• Use your bedroom for sleeping. Make your bed and space inviting. Get rid of clutter, electronics, work, etc.
• If you use caffeine or other stimulants, do so before noon. If possible, let go of them completely.
• Have a light, healthy dinner earlier in the evening. Make lunch your biggest meal.
• Remove lights that stay on all night from the bedroom, such as electronics, plugs, clocks. Turn off notifications on your phone. Consider leaving your phone in another room so you don’t have the urge to check it.
• Stop using electronics at least an hour before your sleeping time. Set a regular sleep time as early as you can and stick to it.
• Create a simple nighttime routine consisting of a regular bedtime, a warm bath or gentle oil massage, warm milk or soothing nighttime tea such as chamomile.
• You might also consider a restorative yoga pose such as Supta Baddha Konasana (Supine Bound Angle Pose) lengthening your exhalation, such as breathing in to a count of 4 and breathing out to a count of 8. Or try an evening guided meditation.
• Exercise in the morning or early afternoon, not in the evening, so that your energy is not spiked before trying to sleep.

This may seem like a long list. Remember that you don’t have to do them all. Choose the easiest item to add into your routine and try it for a few days. Then add in another. Keep track of your changes in a journal. See what works for you.

Be patient. It may take some time to change your habits. The benefits of getting enough sleep are many. People who sleep well have an easier time maintaining their weight, handling moods, learning, healing, remembering, productivity and overall wellness.

You don’t have to suffer from lack of sleep. Try one or two of these Ayurvedic tips to start, and see what works for you. If you have more ideas, I’d love to hear them.