• Cleansing

    How to get ready for your Ayurvedic cleanse

    The first time I tried an Ayurvedic cleanse (or any kind of cleanse, for that matter) I was 23 and had just come home from spending six months traveling in Europe. My digestion was a wreck from all the travel, and from subsisting mainly off various forms of bread products. When I came home I met with an Ayurvedic doctor for the first time, who suggested a Vata-balancing diet — this means lots of warm, moist, cooked foods!  I told her I wanted to do a cleanse, and she handed me a piece of paper with a recipe for kitchari (an Indian porridge made from rice and mung beans), and…

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  • Women's Health

    Less is more: five areas of your life to simplify for greater health and joy

    This week I’ve been reading Maya Tiwari’s book A Woman’s Power to Heal and was struck by this sentence: “Using Wise Earth Ayurveda to help thousands of women heal from the ravages of cancer into good health, I can say the single most significant factor in their healing had to do with simplifying their lives.” Now, this is quite a remarkable claim, but it doesn’t surprise me in the least. The more I study and work with Ayurvedic principles, the more I understand how stress and overwork are huge contributing factors in so many ailments. I’m certainly not making any claims about severe diseases such as cancer. (Although I trust…

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  • Women's Health

    What I learned from keeping a food journal for two weeks

    One of our recent assignments in my Ayurvedic Health Counseling program was to keep a journal for two weeks tracking the state of our agni (digestion) and ama (toxins in the body). If you ever work with an Ayurvedic coach or practitioner, you may be asked to do something similar to help the practitioner understand what is causing your imbalances. I found the process helpful and it allowed me to make some changes in my eating habits that quickly had me feeling better. I want to share some tips for how you could keep your own food journal, some things to watch for, and some ways it might help you.…