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Apple Mint Chutney (recipe from Vaidya Mishra's cook book) Grate 1-2 apples into a caste iron frying pan with 1 tsp or ghee 1/8 tsp Soma Salt and 1/2 tsp Mum's Masala ( available from Chandika.com) Cook for a few minutes until grated apples blend with spices and salt and ghee. In the mean time put about 1 cup loosely packed mint leaves in blender with juice of about 1/2 lime (depends on how juicy lime is and how sweet or sour your apples are - you have to try various blends) and 1 tablespoonful of olive oil. Once the apples are cooked and cooled down - blend everything together. Caution - mint with turn black if apples are not cooled. This is a delicious side dish making every meal magical.

Turmeric,  King of Spices Since it is powerful you have to know how to use it.   It is best to balance the heating and drying qualities of Turmeric by cooking it with unctuous and cooling foods - ghee and veggies or lentils, then you get the full benefit of the spice without the negative qualities that would cause imbalances in the Doshas. The drying qualities would aggravate Vata and the heating would aggravate Pitta. How best to use Turmeric: Because of it drying and heating qualities turmeric is best taken cooked with foods like veggies, lentils or chicken.   It give the yellow colour to curries.   Then ghee and oil and water can me added to counteract the drying affects and cooling herbs like coriander and fennel can be added to counteract the heating affects.   Another good way to take turmeric is to add it to milk.   This recipe is often seen online these days. The only precaution I would give is if you have not been usin...

The liver, a large organ on the right side of our body under the rib cage has a big task to perform.  Everything that we take in through our mouth passes through the portal vein to the liver where major transformation takes place.  All the "dumb food" we eat has to be transformed into intelligent blood.  What do I mean by "Dumb Food"?  It is food that has lost its life force. Food that has been poisoned by being grown with herbicides and pesticides.  Food that has been cooked, then frozen and then reheated in a microwave.  Food that has been cooked and then kept in the fridge for days and then reheated.  The best most vital food to nourish our body is the food that is freshly prepared and eaten within 4 hours.  Impossible you say!  Not really. It takes planning and determination. Look ahead for 1 week.  Breakfast can be simple and light and easy to digest.  Highly recommended is stewed apples of pears with 3-4 cloves.  These ...

Harsh detox protocols can be very dangerous and many modern day toxins are "hot" or can burn the delicate fine channels of elimination in the kidney and other tissues.  Shaka Vansiya Ayurved teaches that there are 4 categories of toxins. Ama or undigested food that is sticky and cold and we need hot spices to eliminate this type of toxin. So ginger and pepper and fenugreek and other heating spices would work well. However once that toxin has been sitting around for a long time it becomes hot.  We might call it a "free radical" in modern scientific terms. Shaka Vansiya Ayurved (now referred to as SVA) calls this Amavisha.  This type of toxin needs a different approach to detox. Before moving the toxins out of the body we need to bind them with mucilaginous food like barley, okra, tapioca, arrowroot, taro root and others.  I find zucchini and other summers squashes are most readily available, even though they are not extremely mucilaginous.  Then you can start mov...

Start with good quality water. Water that has not been chlorinated is best. Spring water. However if that is not available then take a large glass container or water and leave it out in the sun and the moon for a few days so that it picks up the vibrations of Nature and the chlorine evaporates. I usually do a gallon at a time. Take 1 litre of Spring Water add 4 pinches of Indian Sarsaparilla ( this is a perfect dosage measure - larger fingers bigger pinches) then add 1/2 teaspoonful of Coriander seed and 1/2 teaspoonful of Fennel seed. I keep a jar of coriander/fennel equal quantities and then just 1 teaspoonful of the mix. Boil this for 2-3 minutes and pour into a thermos with a mint teabag or a few leaves of fresh mint if you have some in the garden. Sip this through out the day. I usually drink a cup at breakfast and then another mid morning and mid afternoon and sip whenever I remember. Then what I don't finish by suppertime I pour out and make a fresh batch the next day...

https://www.boloji.com/articles/1256/exercise-the-ayurvedic-way Here is a link to an article by Vaidya Mishra on how much to exercise for different body types. Vata types would do better to walk rather than run. Pittas would benefit from swimming and Kapha types need the most exercise of all the body types. Of course we can see that children needs the most as they are predominantly Kapha. They have so much energy and are always on the move. As we get older and we have more Vata in our physiology we need to have a gentler routine.  Vata already is air and ether so we don't want to add to that and cause an imbalance in that dosha.  Also the seasons would effect the amount of exercise. Spring is the best time to exercise. But everyone needs a bit of exercise every day to keep things moving an lubricated.

There is no question that autoimmune diseases are on the rise.   Diseases where our own immune system gets confused and starts attacking our own tissues rather than foreign invaders.   Our immune system is built to recognize, attack and dispose of bacteria, viruses, fungi and anything “not its own”   It is even able to remember what has been an invading organism in the past and create antibodies for future attacks. So how would we explain that our own immune system starts attacking our body?   What has created the confusion?   I was inspired to explore this topic after reading Dr. Marianne Teitelbaum’s piece on Multiple Sclerosis.   According to Dr. Teitelbaum in this particular autoimmune disease of MS, she has unearthed several common causes for why the immune system starts destroying the myelin sheath on the nerves in the brain and spine.   Her work is primarily based on the ancient healing system of Shaka Vansya Ayurved.   This lineage of...