Asparagus are high in nutrients like vitamin K (the blood clotting vitamin), folate (good for pregnant women), thiamine (vitamin B1), vitamin C, and many more. It is a natural diuretic and for that reason is a tonic for the urinary tract - very beneficial for people who suffer from UTI's - and an ideal food for spring when we might suffer from winter puffiness. It is considered an aphrodisiac. Vata types need to be moderate with this vegetable. Kaphas can eat lots of it. 

I have been eating this recipe a lot lately, now that asparagus are back in season... 
Ingredients:
1 lb asparagus, rinsed and the hard ends broken off (of course you can 
       cut them off as well, but I like to break them, because then you 
       automatically snap off the part that is too hard to eat).
4 oz sliced crimini mushrooms
half of a large onion, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons of ghee
salt to taste
juice of a half Meyer lemon
fresh black pepper

Preparation:
In a large skillet, melt the ghee on a medium flame. Add the sliced onion, sauté for a minute, then add the sliced crimini. Sauté together for another two minutes. I cut the asparagus in half to make it easier to move them around the pan, but you can leave them whole. Add them at this point. Mix them with the onion/crimini mixture, add a little salt, then cover and lower the flame. Let them cook for about five minutes. Then add the lemon juice and test an asparagus to see if it is cooked. Based on that you can cook them a little longer with the lid back on, or serve.
​

on particular symptoms of imbalance. ​This will be determined when you visit your practitioner. In order to be guided through these actions and prepare your body for letting go of what isn't needed, you will receive hours of massage and other treatments with oils and herbs to move the toxins from your deeper tissues.

It is important to allow space in your schedule when going through panchakarma. Rest and empty space in your day are an important part of panchakarma. When there is space and emptiness in your life, it will be experienced in your mind and body, and healing starts to happen. Toxicity, stagnation and trauma will surface and panchakarma supports their elimination. To let go of mental and emotional toxins it is highly recommended to meditate and cultivate the 'witness' state, so that old and not serving emotions and patterns can consciously be let go of. The result often is a spiritual rejuvenation - deeper levels of trust and more ease in surrendering to what life brings. To support letting go of physical toxins, melted ghee is ingested, which causes mobilization of toxins, that are mostly lipid-(fat)-soluble, from your body's tissues.
​
These are benefits you can experience from panchakarma treatment:

• increased feelings of well-being, calmness and ease in body and mind
• increased energy, focus and motivation
• mental clarity
• stronger digestion and elimination
• soft and pliable skin
• more flexibility in the joints
• strong immunity
• weight loss, sometimes a lot, but typically some of it will come back
• everything will taste better and look better

​

The next food trend will come from the yogic tradition: Prana. This Sanskrit term means life energy or life force. ‘An’ means movement and ‘pra’ is a prefix meaning constant. So prana means constant motion. This constant motion commences as soon as we are conceived in our mother’s womb. Prana is an energy that is responsible for our body’s life, heat and maintenance. When we are full of prana, we feel good, we look good, and we feel vibrant and alive - are productive with healthy sustained energy. Since this is a pretty desirable way of being here are a few ways in which to increase prana: from the yogic breathing techniques of pranayama (it is said that prana rides on the breath); from breathing pure, clean air; from exercising without over-exerting ourselves; from walking on the earth with bare feet; from having some exposure to the sun; from having healthy, nourishing relationships; from elevating ourselves through spiritual practice; and from eating prana-rich food.
 
What is prana-rich food?
It’s food that is organic and super fresh, right off the ground, the vine, the bush, the tree, and even harvested from the ocean. Or right from the udder, freshly laid, or freshly killed. The kind of food you get from the farmer’s market, your own back yard, or the health food store - locally grown and seasonal, full of the energy of the sun, stored in its cells as biophotons. It tastes better, looks better and is full of nutrients. As soon as an apple is picked from the tree it starts to loose prana - the closer the food is to something that was once alive, the more prana it has. This does not necessarily mean to eat all your foods raw. Fruits are best straight from the tree or bush, ripe and seasonal. But for most other foods, cooking them will make them easier to digest, so that you can benefit from their prana. Eating them raw might cause digestive distress, which means the prana, and the nutrients, are not being easily absorbed. Prana–rich food is freshly prepared, not leftover food, not processed food that you find on the shelves and in the refrigerators and freezers in the supermarket. It is not homogenized or pasteurized. And it is not microwaved. Microwaves are notorious for lowering the nutrients and prana content of foods. Leftovers might still be plenty nutritious according to modern testing, but they have very little prana. When food has been through the dark of the night, or the dark and cold of the refrigerator, it looses its aliveness.
 
Where to source high prana foods?
In case you don’t grow your own vegetables and fruits, keep livestock, are not a hunter or don’t happen to live right on the ocean, here are some pointers to make the best, prana-rich, choices:
Choose the foods that look bright, colorful and vibrant.
Go to the farmer’s market. The food there is typically freshly picked. When you buy your foods in the store, go to your local health food store and choose the locally grown stuff.
Don’t buy foods with a long shelf life, they probably are processed, meaning that they are not whole anymore.  The exception are the grains and pulses (beans and lentils). When you sprout them, they grow new life. Even after a hundred years they wlll still sprout. Nuts and seeds, dried fruits and dried seaweeds are fine choices, but sprout them, or cook them to bring out their aliveness. And definitely don’t keep them around for too long. They will loose their nutritional value and their prana.
Cook your food, you can move some of the stagnant energy that comes from exposure to dark and cold by cooking your food. Same with the leftovers… if you must eat them – we’re all busy people after all – then heat them up before eating them. This will enliven - bring some prana back into - them. The cooking or heating of food increases the speed of the movement of the molecules, and prana means ‘constant motion’ remember? Try to eat freshly prepared food as much as possible. Dedicate some time of your day to cooking. Be prepared, have the right bulk foods and spices in the house, and plan ahead. Prana rich food can be simple. Preparing them doesn’t need to take a long time.
Even boil your water. Unless you live right by a source of pure fresh spring water, your water usually stagnates by sitting in the plumbing pipes or in bottles. Even when you buy superior quality spring water, it will still sit and stagnate. So whatever the source of your water is, it is always improved by boiling it before you drink it.
Treat your meals like spiritual practice – sadhana. Eat with attention for your food. Don’t stare at computer or television screens. Don’t get involved in intense conversation when eating. Instead eat with gratitude and awareness. Don’t eat for meaning and consolation. A lovely practice is to offer a small portion of your food to someone. This can be feeding someone else, an animal, or putting the remainder in the compost to feed the worms and other critters that turn the food back into soil. Of course you can also formalize this practice by making an actual offering to a statue or picture of the divine.
 
Prana is an energy that we share with the earth, the cosmos, and everything in it. It flows through everything alive. A lack of prana causes disease, and death is a state of no prana at all…  good reasons to increase the prana in your body, your life, your being. And in your food it tastes better too!

​Ayurveda, the medical science from ancient India, prescribes a beautiful lifestyle – one that allows the body/mind to continually renew itself. First of all it prescribes we flow with the ebbs and tides of the universe. Ayurveda says that our little bodies function in the same way as greater nature does. The processes of birth, life and death are experienced by us, as well as by everything else in nature. All plants and animals experience this life cycle, and even the stars in the sky get born, live for some time and then die. On a daily basis we wake, have a time of being productive, and then go to rest. There are cycles of feeding, digesting, absorbing, and eliminating what isn’t needed.
 
Joining in the momentum of these movements creates a lot of ease in our bodies, as well as in our minds. There is a natural flow in the way our organ systems work. Similar to “other” diurnal animals. So if we eat, are active, and rest according to this natural flow, our bodies are in a greater natural rhythm; they don’t need to do the work on their own, it’s already being done. On a mental emotional level it creates the feeling of belonging, of being in the flow. Give it a try… put yourself to sleep early… think of it, the sun is down by 5:30 right now. Then rise just a little bit before the sun rises, so that you can be present for the full glory of this daily event. It brings a lot of fresh and productive energy, and witnessing its beauty will stimulate the right neurotransmitters to help you feel good. And try to eat your food during the day; especially around mid-day when the sun is highest in the sky. That strong fiery energy corresponds with a strong fiery energy in your digestive system. Eating your main meal then makes for good digestion and ensuing feelings of well-being. When we live in rhythm with nature we don’t need to put out so much energy and effort, so we grow old a bit slower.
 
Another way in which Ayurveda can support a life of rejuvenation is its qualitative approach to life. It tells us to pay attention to the quality of everything in us and life around us, and to balance by applying its opposite quality. It’s really quite simple… when you’re hot, apply cold, when you’re dry, apply moist, when you’re heavy, apply light. When you’re a lot of different things at the same time, go see a practitioner to get help sifting through the different layers and balancing them. But it is something you can start doing yourself. Think of the quality of your body, and then of your food and see if they balance one another. And of your life, is it a balanced life? Remember that a heavy diet will make a heavy body. It needs to be balanced with lighter food and lightening activity, like exercise. A very active life will make for an overactive mind and tired body. It needs the balance of rest and relaxation. So remember here… Opposites balance.
 
One of Ayurveda’s eight branches of practice is “rasayana”, the science of rejuvenation, described in one of Ayurveda’s ancient textbooks – the Sushrut Samhita – as “a science which restores youth, alleviates suffering (disease) and bestows longevity” by augmenting the vital and nutritious fluid that comes from digesting the food we eat. So at the core of rejuvenation is hydration. And even though we must drink water too, we hydrate much better when there is real nutrition in the fluids we take in, so drinking herbal teas, fruit juices, and consuming soups, stews and broths go a much longer way in hydrating ourselves. Here also is a recipe for a rehydration water: Boil 1 quart of water and melt 1 tablespoon of unrefined salt and ½ teaspoon of raw sugar into it. Finish off with a squeeze of hydrating lemon or lime juice.
 
Rejuvenation brings healthful longevity, mental ability, resistance against disease and delay of aging. Ayurveda offers lifestyle routines as per above, dietary regimen, specific health promoting practices and rasayana herbal medicine. A few recommended practices from this branch of medicine are as follows:

• The rising and setting of the sun are healing times of the day. Spending a few minutes in this light stimulates your own fire, which is needed for digestion of all things entering you through your five senses.
• Eat a rejuvenating diet of fresh whole foods. Like Michael Pollan says: Eat food, not too much, mostly plants. Prepare them in a way that your body can digest them with ease.       

• Prana-rich, seasonal, right off the land.
• Soft, light and smooth, through cooking, chewing, fermentation and sprouting.
• Different foods and food habits in different seasons

• Use oils to rejuvenate and protect your skin and mucus membranes. Warm oil applied on the skin, in the nostrils, in the ears, in the mouth, dissolves and removes fat soluble toxins, nourishes the tissues, builds immunity, and brings feelings of well-being.
• Take medicinal plants such as amalaki, haritaki (both in the formula triphala), ashwaganda and tulsi are in the category of rasayana herbs. Research shows that these plants – adaptogens - offer protection against physical and chemical stressors and produce immune-stimulation.
• Yogic practices such as meditation and pranayama – conscious breathing exercises – promote concentration, improve vitality and counteract stress and anxiety.

 
And last but not least we are rejuvenated when we feel loved, when we feel support, when we feel seen, when we trust. Healthy relationship is good for the immune system. Being touched and making love help our juices to flow and our bodies to stay young. 

Are you looking forward to summer? Being a little less scheduled? Maybe you’ve planned a camping trip, or a vacation abroad. And you’ll probably want to enjoy a fourth of July picnic, and some visits to the beach or the pool. Ayurveda has some great suggestions for keeping you well in summer.
 
Ayurveda, the healing Science of Life from ancient India, teaches us to follow the rhythms of nature. Its understanding about life is that nature around us, and nature within us, all function in the same way.  So when we synchronize our routines with nature’s rhythms we tend to feel better.  Our bodies function better, we have more energy, we feel “in flow”. 
A little background
Ayurveda recognizes three subtle energies that fluctuate throughout nature’s rhythms. They each have their own properties, bringing certain qualities to the time of day, the season, or to someone’s physiology and psychology.
These energies are Vata - which is cold, light, mobile, dry - Pitta – which is hot, sharp, penetrating, mobile – and Kapha – which is cool, heavy, damp, and stable. As one of these energies dominates, we want to balance their qualities by applying opposing qualities. One of Ayurveda’s basic tenets is that “like increases like”, and “opposites balance”. Think of a fiery, temperamental and intense person you know, and how much a spicy meal with red wine will make this person even more irritable and overheated? Wouldn’t you want to tell them to go cool down? To go outside in the cool air and take a breath, or to go for a cooling swim in the ocean? That would be a good example of “opposites balance”.
 
Summer is Pitta Season
The focus of this article is on Pitta, since the summer is Pitta season, when the energy of fire is strong. And when the energy of fire is strong around us, it also is strong in us. Pitta’s qualities are that it is hot, sharp, penetrating, and dispersive and can easily cause overheating, faintness, headaches, skin rashes, diarrhea, irritation, and reactivity. You might recognize some of these from summers past. Following are some tips for keeping cool, so that you can enjoy the pleasures of summer.

• Of course… keep yourself well hydrated. Drink 4 to 6 cups of water daily, and supplement with sweet cooling fruit juices like watermelon juice, grape juice, mango juice and coconut juice. Or herbal teas of hibiscus, mint, fennel seed and coriander seed. You can make your own electrolyte drink by adding a teaspoon of raw sugar, a pinch of pink salt, and a teaspoon of limejuice to a pint of hot water and letting it cool down.
• Exercise in the early morning, before it gets hot. And exercise in or by the water, like swimming or water sports, or a walk around a lake. Avoid breaking out in a big sweat, and exhausting yourself. Since the outside atmosphere is so agreeable, we are not at our strongest in summer… better to take it easy.
• Avoid heavy, hot, salty and overly seasoned food. Our digestive fire also is not that strong in summer, especially during the hottest part of the day. Eat most of your food before the sun is at its highest, and a light dinner. Nature provides what we need, there is an abundance of light, cooling and hydrating fruits and veggies to choose from, like melons, sweet berries and stone fruits, summer squashes, asparagus, green beans, cucumbers, cilantro and a variety of juicy lettuces. Be very moderate with the nightshades that also ripen in summer, tomatoes, peppers and eggplants. They have a more heating effect. Choose light, white meats and fish, have fresh dairy products, like whole milk, cottage cheese and mozzarella, and small amounts of yogurt. A great summer yogurt drink blends two parts water with one part yogurt, a handful of cilantro leaves, a few cucumber slices, a dash of cumin powder and a dash of pink salt. Or two parts rose water - or water with fresh rose petals - one part yogurt, with a little bit of raw sugar.
• Avoid red wine and hard liquor. If you want to enjoy an alcoholic drink in summer, better to choose a beer or a light white wine.
• Go for an early morning walk. We need the sun. It activates vitamin D production, which makes for better calcium absorption and stronger bones.
• Wear colors that reflect the sunlight, like white, light blue, grey and green. Wearing silver jewelry with pearls, moonstones, crystals, aquamarine and coral will add to the effect.
• A moonlit walk has a deeply calming and cooling effect. Place your bare feet in the cool green grass or the beach sand, and absorb the moonlight. Or place a container with water under the rays of the moon overnight. The water will absorb their cooling energy.
• Stop and smell the roses. Literally… slow down, take time to take in summer’s beauty. The added benefit is the aromatherapy from the flowers. Roses and many other flowers that bloom in summer have a very cooling effect, especially for the mood. You can apply the essential oils of rose, jasmine, geranium, sandalwood and lotus, just a drop, on your wrists, your temples, or your throat. Their sweet fragrance will fill your being with cool sweetness.
• Take good care of your skin. Keep yourself covered when outdoors. And do a daily oil massage with cooling coconut oil, in the shower: First wash yourself. Then turn the water off and cover yourself with coconut oil. Turn the water back on, extra hot, so that the heat will open your pores and the oil will penetrate deeper. Let the water take off the excess oil, but don’t wash it off. Then carefully towel dry. The oil has many nutrients that will make your skin stronger and healthier and better able to deal with the sun. Of course when you know you will be in the bright sun for an extended period of time, use an all-natural sunscreen.

By Simone de Winter
Owner of Marin Ayurveda