If you've come to see me, or any ayurvedic practitioner or doctor, you've probably been told to add mung dal to your food library. Why, what is so special about mung dal? First of all, a dal is a split lentil or bean. Often the outer hull is taken off, and then the inside is split in two halves. Since the outer hull is all fiber, a dal is easier to digest than a bean, and as you probably have understood, Ayurveda is all about favoring digestion when choosing which foods to eat. This doesn't mean that you shouldn't eat fiber. A healthy diet has a large amount of fresh vegetables and fruits and those are full of fiber. Sometimes, depending on your belly, it is better to not choose the whole grain or the whole lentil/bean, because they might push the amount of fiber to the point where your belly starts to protest and produces a lot of gas. If you know this about yourself, then give dal a try. You might also choose white rice over brown rice. It's true, white rice doesn't have as much nutrition as brown rice. But if you're not digesting your brown rice well, as in getting gas, then you probably are not absorbing all those nutrients anyway.

Don't apply this to your bread. Bread was something that was developed by early humans to make the grasses and grains that were growing all around, and that were great sources of nutrients, more digestible. They gathered the seeds and ground them into powder. Mixed the powder with water and shaped it into patties or other shapes and cooked these on a fire. This evolved into what we know as bread. When the whole grains are ground into flour they are easier to digest. A lot of the work our teeth, stomach and intestines would have to do is already done. So bread is a great way, if you choose the right kind, to get a lot of nutrition in a compact package. More about bread later....

Back to  mung dal. There are so many kinds of dal, why do we like mung dal so much? 
Mung beans have been very popular in South and South East Asia for many centuries. In India they're mostly eaten as dal, because it is light, easy to digest, rather bland, which makes them a great tridoshic food, and especially good for pitta, and it is a high quality protein. So when you are not well, cleansing, or for women going through menstruation or menopause, or when you have poor digestion, it is important to eat light foods to not overburden your body and create indigestion. During these times the body's systems are functioning at less than optimally, so the digestive fire is also low. Eating a light diet is important. The blandness of mung dal and the fact that it cooks so fast, make it a great recovery food. It can be made very tasty by cooking it with spices and herbs according to your dosha, but eating it simple and bland can be very restoring and calming for your body and mind. Cooked together with Basmati rice, and spices, vegetables and ghee it makes a tasty, simple one-pot meal that is a complete protein, called kitcheree. 

It is not a local food, but there just isn't anything like it, for restoring an overburdened body. And mung beans are grown in the US these days.

by Simone de Winter
Owner and practitioner at Marin Ayurveda in Marin County, California.
Practicing and teaching Ayurveda for 11 years.

In ayurveda's ancient texbooks there may be no mention of the word cancer, but there are many references to the growth of masses, tumors, malignancy, with Sanskrit names like, apachi, gulma, granthi and arbuda. Cancer is a disease in which certain of our bodies' cells develop defects, caused by a mutation in their DNA. These mutant cells, dependent on several factors, like the strength of the immune system, and pathogens, sometimes duplicate at enormous speed, causing growths, tumors, that are adversarial to the body's tissues. Not all cancers produce tumors. Some - leukemia - cause rapid cell growth in the bone marrow or blood.  In metastasis, cancer cells multiply and travel through blood and the lymph system to the rest of the body.


Conventional medicine treats cancer as a focal disease with local symptoms. Ayurveda sees the whole body-mind as a system, and recognizes that the malfunctioning of this system can lead to cancer. Ayurveda treats the whole individual. 
According to ayurveda cancer involves all three doshas - vata, pitta and kapha, it is tridoshic disease. But the root of the cancer may be either in vata, pitta, or kapha, and consequently it is disease of vata, disease of pitta, or disease of kapha, and the treatment will be accordingly. Also the tissue in which the cancer is found, will ask for different herbal treatment, so there really is no one way to treat cancer in the ayurvedic system. Specific herbal formulations and therapies will be directed towards the cancer, but it doesn't stop there. The therapeutic approach is prophylactic, palliative, curative and supportive. Ayurveda offers a lifestyle of prevention; it can soothe symptoms through lifestyle, dietary and herbal adjustments; it can cure, especially when the cancer is in earlier stages, offering powerful internal and external herbal applications in conjunction with dietary and lifestyle adjustments; and it can support conventional medical treatment, and counteract its side effects.

Ayurveda sees the fundamental cause of tumor, or uncontrolled cell, growth to be a build-up of pathogens, toxins, in the organism. This then leads to deficiency in the immune system. If we consider the immune system our protection against external pathogens, we can see the weakened immunity as a "giving up or a giving in", since, as Dr. Robert Svoboda says so poignantly, "the hallmark of cancer is the rebellion of cells against the organism's self-identity", our body is allowing cellular mutiny to take over. The causes are poor lifestyle choices, wrong diet, stress and anxiety, poor sleep, mental/emotional incoherency, overuse of stimulants, intoxicants, chemical drugs, and nowadays, exposure to environmental toxins. Ayurveda uses the word ama for this toxic build-up in the organism. It is partly self-generated, by poorly digesting all that we ingest, and choosing industrial foods that are already full of ama, like pesticides, herbicides, chemical fertilizers, preservatives, and packaged in xeno-estrogenic plastics. But even the most beautiful organically grown, free-range, grass-fed foods can turn into ama if the digestive system cannot properly digest, absorb the nutrients and eliminate the waste products. It is this ama, that confuses the immune system, makes it overwork. Then it will tire and give into the fast-growing ama that is cancer.

The mental-emotional component of the weakening immunity is addressed nowadays by physicians like Dr. Lawrence LeShan, Christiane Northrup, Wayne Dyer and many more. The experience they have working with cancer patients is that they see that same "giving in or giving up", and they will encourage and guide their patients to use the cancer as a "Turning Point, to take charge of their lives and bodies and gently coax the cancer into remission.

 Understanding the cancer as being either caused by excess vata, pitta or kapha, outlines a specific disease development, based on a person's inherent constitutional tendencies, and specific lifestyle and dietary choices. Vata, being composed of space and air, will bring a different etiology from kapha, being composed of water and earth, or pitta, made up of fire and water. They come with their own digestive disturbances, dietary preferences, behaviors and mental-emotional tendencies. All leading to the same manifestation of cancer, but with specific characteristics.

Strengthening of the immune system, healthy lifestyle, diet, appropriate exercise and as Deepak Chopra suggests, "access to the Divine consciousness within, through yogic and meditative disciplines, can correct the wrong information that triggers uncontrollable cell multiplication, and cure cancer from the quantum level of the body". Ayurveda, the medical system and "science of life", offers many internal and external herbal and metal-based medications to help remove cellular overgrowth.

by: Simone de Winter, MA, certified ayurvedic specialist

Through our classical western upbringings, we both have strong memories of the hydrogenated fat trend... grandmother's spreading “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter” on rye, and in Holland the cooking in Becel margarine. We both didn't like it, loved the taste of butter much better, but came out with the idea that fat is a no no. Until we got educated on the latest nutritional research and began our studies of Ayurveda, we did not have a full understanding of the important role of dietary fat. In India, ghee is recognized as an essential part of a nourished life. Not only is it celebrated for its delicious rich flavor, it is also loaded with nutritional and medicinal qualities, and many psycho-spiritual qualities are attributed to it.
So what is ghee? Ghee is the essence of butter. It is the result of boiling cultured butter, and boiling off milk solids and water, leaving pure butter fat. This makes it a fine food for those who have trouble digesting lactose. Its predominance in saturated fatty acids makes it shelf stable, meaning that it does not need to be refrigerated. If kept clean, it won't go bad, it won't oxidize, oxidation being what makes a fat a threat to the health. Ghee is one of the best high temperature cooking oils because of its 485 degree fahrenheit flash point.  Ghee also offers a long list of nutritional benefits. It is comprised of short, medium and long chain fatty acids, contains vitamins A, D, E and K and is the highest natural source of Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA). CLA has anti cancer fighting properties which have attributed to stopping tumor cell growth. Ghee also is a rich source of butyrate, which revives colon cells, supports healthy inflammatory response and has many more positive effects on our bodies. Ghee supports a strong and lean body, increases energy and sexual vitality, lowers cholesterol (even though we know now that it is not cholesterol that causes heart disease, but unhealthy inflammatory response), makes for a strong digestion, and brings calm to body and mind. Ofcourse the ghee is only as good as the milk that it comes from. Poorly nourished cows won't produce rich and nutrient-rich milk, let alone ghee. But it is also true that making ghee out of bad milk will concentrate whatever nutrients there are in this milk and cook off the bad components. 
Many people complain about the taste of ghee. This is because its taste changes when it gets older, making it stronger and more pungent. This is not a problem, Ayurveda considers 100 year old ghee to be very medicinal. But it is definitely a taste that not everyone likes. So buy only fresh ghee, from free-range, grass-fed cows, or make it yourself. There are many videos on YouTube that show how to do it.

In India ghee is considered a sacred substance.  The Rig Veda (a 3,500 year-old ancient Sanskrit scripture) says: 
This is the secret name of ghee:
"Tongue of the gods", "navel of immortality."
We will proclaim the name of ghee;
We will sustain it in this sacrifice by bowing low.
These waves of ghee flow like gazelles before the hunter...
Streams of ghee caress the burning wood.
Agni, the fire, loves them and is satisfied.
It indicates that ghee is superb at nourishing the fires (agni) of digestion, and promotes longevity . Ghee has been used in the Hindu religion and yogic rituals as an offering to feed the Gods. Ayurveda says that ghee increases the memory and intellect, that it counteracts the drying and aging process of the body, reviving the rasa, or mucus membranes in the body. It nourishes the skin, as in a 100 times washed ghee, where the ghee is massaged with water a hundred times, leaving a white fatty substance that is used as a cream. And it is used to bathe the eyes, nourishing the optic nerve. Ayurveda uses it as a carrier for medicine, activating the lipid-soluble properties of the plants, and providing fast penetration through the lipid membranes of the cells, again providing more nourishing and soothing qualities. 

Our local ghee company uses butter from Straus Organic Farm - Ancient Organics creates a sacred ritual around the process of making ghee. They play healing chants as the ghee is being made and settling into its jars, soaking up the vibrations of healing.

Finally we offer some beautiful, easy, and nourishing recipes: 

Delicious ghee gravy
Place 4-6 ounces of ghee into a pan on medium heat
add in 4 cloves of minced garlic
1 tablespoon of fresh grated turmeric
1 tablespoon of fresh grated ginger
1/4 cup of organic tamari sauce
(simmer this combination until the ghee becomes richly flavored)
Then add your favorite combination of seasonal vegetables
This season, I love adding yams, kale and green beans
Pour this over a warm bed of quinoa
garnish with dried chili pepper flakes and fresh cilantro
(drizzle additional tamari over the top if you desire more flavor)

Golden milk
Anti-inflammatory, nourishing for the mucus membranes and a great support for a pregnant woman.
Boil 1 cup of whole (preferably raw) milk with 1/2 tsp. of turmeric, 1/2 tsp. of cardamom, a few strands of saffron, for 1 minute. Take off the source of heat, and melt 1 tbs. of ghee, and 1 tsp. of raw unfiltered honey into it.
If you have trouble digesting milk, then use almond milk, or oat milk.

With love, by Megan Fleming and Simone de Winter

This dark time of year tends to make us more reflective, and I recently found myself reflecting on time passing and the energies of the different seasons.  I was remembering a radio interview I heard years ago, where a scientist of some kind was talking about his teacher and mentor who at 96 had still been fully productive. He had asked his mentor how it was possible that at his age he was still so full of life and engaged. The man had answered that throughout his life he had never related to chronological time, but only to cyclical time. That really resonated with me and I remembered that when I had two little children and was very engaged with them, I used to forget my age. When people asked me, I always had to count back to my birthday. Cyclical time for me also is much more meaningful than chronological time. The phases of the moon, the passing of the seasons and the ripening of seasonal fruits and vegetables, and the time of life. Now that I live close to the water, there is the reality of the tidal cycles  as well, and how that is connected to the lunar cycle.

I realized that this is the way Ayurveda relates to life as well, and that it continuously reminds us to live according to these cycles. Since it considers the macrocosm and the microcosm to be the same, only in a different manifestation, it is clear that nature's cycles also are found in how our bodies function. Ofcourse Ayurveda relates to this in the language of vata, pitta and kapha, and we see these energies cycling through the day, the seasons and life in general. 

For example the window of time between 10 and 2 is considered pitta time. Since pitta mostly represents the element of fire, this window of time during the day is a good time to eat. The fire in the belly is strong at this time. At night this is the time when people get their second wind when they stay up late. Suddenly there is a lot of focus, and energy to get things done, again a way that fire manifests itself - in the mind this time. The recommendation is to go to bed before this time, so that you don't get caught in a second wind. What really needs to happen during these nightly hours is for the liver to go through its cycle of detoxing the blood. Staying up late and putting in mental and physical energy, takes away from this important physiological task. So here we go again, nature's cycles... we should go to bed when nature goes to bed. A little later in the summer, a little earlier in winter. And it's okay to sleep a little more in winter, it's dark out! 

Winter, at least the beginning of this season, is vata season. Vata represents the element of air, or wind, which is always moving, is cold, and dries things out. This is the time of year when we feel cold and easily dehydrated. We deal with emotions like fear and anxiety. So the best thing to do is to take real good care of yourself through eating a very nourishing diet, by getting enough sleep, by oiling your skin, by slowing down in general. Each season has its own characteristics, and dosha, and because of that a different way in which to treat ourselves. 

The doshas also show up in the time of life. For example childhood, up until puberty, is kapha time of life. Kapha has the energies of earth and water. And when we bring these two together there is growth. Seeds sprouting into plants and blooming into beautiful flowers. This is children's job, growing up and flowering into beautiful mature people. They need lots of water and earth, in the form of nourishing food and loving care, to do this. 

To go back to where I started... Ayurveda reminds us to live in cyclical time, not chronological time. We move through vata, pitta and kapha cycles all the time. Reminding ourselves of this reality, makes us take care of ourselves differently. Honoring the cycles of life and death and life again, keeps us young and healthy and always rejuvenating our body and mind.

1. Good Nourishment

• As much as possible, make your food from scratch from locally grown, organically raised produce and livestock. Minimize your intake of heavily processed and junk foods and drinks (read ingredient lists, if there are  many ingredients that are foreign to you, then don’t eat it). Be moderate with sugar, caffeine and alcohol. Avoid artificial sweeteners like aspartame that you will find in diet products.
• Have regular mealtimes. Sit down and do not do anything else while you eat. Try to eat your main meal of the day at lunchtime. Avoid a large meal late at night. And leave a good amount of time between meals, no snacking.
• Drink plenty of fresh filtered water (room temperature or hot) and herbal teas.
• When you’re ill eat very simply – soups and broths are best - and stay hydrated.

2. Good Air or Oxygen.

• Expose yourself to clean, fresh air on a regular basis. Go out in nature.
• Don’t forget to breathe.  During the day, regularly stop your activity for a few minutes of deep diaphragmatic breathing. Inhale by filling from your belly up to your chest. Exhale by letting go from you chest down to your belly.
• Exercise daily in the early morning or evening, but don’t exert too much. You don’t want to feel tired because of your exercise routine.

 
3. Good Rest/Sleep

• Make sure you get good sleep at night.  Have a regular bedtime. Shut off your television or computer in time to avoid over stimulation.
• Take time off work to rest and regenerate.  It will make you be more productive.
• During the day take a short break here and there, to breathe, to catnap, to just be quiet.

4. Good community

• Spend quality time with family and friends, enjoying one another.
• Exercise good judgment in choosing your community.  Look for harmony.
• Communicate. Learn to listen and feel what it must be like to be in the other’s position.

 
5. Positive thoughts

• Have an “Attitude of Gratitude”.
• Realize that every moment offers you the opportunity to make a choice: to be (or act) positive or to be (or act) negative.