“When diet is wrong, medicine is of no use. When diet is correct, medicine is of no need.” -Ayurvedic proverb
According to Ayurveda, all disease originates in the digestive system. Choosing the right foods for your particular body, as well as the time of day or even the particular season of year, is essential for coming into the feel-good flow. When we eat the wrong foods for our body, eat too much late at night, emotionally eat, or eat winter foods (think butternut squash and stews) in the summer, our belly suffers. In fact, bad digestion could be at the root of much of our social malaise. Millions of people consume fast food and packaged food on a daily basis. Lunch is eaten in cars, in front of computers, or skipped altogether. I know busy moms, corporate go-getters, and even yoga teachers who can’t remember if they ate lunch.
Food is the essence of all life. What you put into your body gives you the power to make your life’s purpose a reality. In order to be an earth shaking, present, wise woman, we’ve got to fuel our machine with premium gas. And Ayurveda does not parse food into calories, vitamins, and minerals. It embraces the holistic energy of different foods and analyzes their qualities (such as hot/cold, light/heavy, dry/wet). Individuals can be analyzed for their qualities as well: Do you tend to run hot or cool?
Do you typically feel heavy or light? Is your skin consistently dry or oily? By identifying your own qualities, you can make food choices that are appropriate for our own unique being based on the core Ayurvedic principle of “like increases like.” So, for example, if you run hot by nature, avoiding hot, spicy foods might be a good idea. It is also important to know how to prepare and combine foods so that they can be most easily digested. Continually going against what we should eat (both seasonally and constitutionally) leads to imbalance and disease.
Read more in Healthy, Happy,Sexy!
Katie Silcox 