Lifestyle Articles
Ayurveda’s Key Tips for Vibrant Health
People often ask me where to start with Ayurveda. There is so much to read, so many doshas, so many recipes — it can feel impossible to know what matters most. So here it is, distilled. These are the small, daily things that create the conditions for vibrant health....
Cumin
Cumin (jeera) is the workhorse of the Ayurvedic kitchen. Almost every dal, curry and rice dish in classical Ayurvedic cooking begins with cumin seeds toasting in ghee — not because of taste alone, but because cumin does deep, steady work in the body. Cumin and the...
Ginger
Ayurveda calls ginger vishwabhesaj — "the universal medicine" — because there are very few ailments it cannot help in some way. From cleaning the colon to opening the channels (srotas), purifying the blood, sharpening the appetite and supporting protein synthesis,...
Turmeric
Turmeric — haridra in Sanskrit — is perhaps the most revered spice in the Ayurvedic kitchen. For thousands of years it has been used to detoxify the blood, brighten the skin, calm inflammation and support the liver. Modern science has caught up: turmeric and its...
Hair Care Tip Number 1 – Internal Nourishment
The single most important thing I tell women asking how to grow strong, lustrous hair is this: it begins inside the body, long before any oil or shampoo touches the head. In Ayurveda, hair is considered a by-product of asthi dhatu — bone tissue. The state of your...
Oil Pulling
Next up in our routine is oil pulling, a traditional Ayurvedic practice in use for thousands of years, and is a safe and effective healthy oral hygiene routine, complimentary to brushing our teeth, flossing, and scraping the tongue. Oil pulling may seem strange at...
Tongue Scraping
The next recommendation is to scrape the tongue. Tongue scraping, a sister to oil pulling is a very ancient Ayurvedic daily practice where the tongue is cleaned with a simple tongue scraper. It is still followed by practically everyone in India today. We recommend...
Fennel
Fennel seed (saunf) is often the first Ayurvedic herb someone meets — those small green seeds you're given after a meal in an Indian restaurant are not just a breath freshener. They are a quiet, cooling, gently digestive medicine that has earned its place in the...
Rise Before Sunrise
The first recommendation in any Ayurvedic daily routine is the simplest and the hardest: rise before the sun. For a healthy adult, this means waking before 6am, ideally during the period the Vedas call brahma-muhurta — the most auspicious 48 minutes of the day,...
Dinacharya
In the purport to Srimad Bhagavatam 1.10.10, Srila Prabhupada explains how irregular habits, overeating, excessive sense gratification and an artificial standard of living sap our vitality and shorten the duration of our life. A healthy body and mind, he writes, are...
Importance of Ayurveda & Yoga in a Woman’s Life
I came to this work because of my own body. As a young woman, like so many of us, I knew there had to be a way to live that didn't require me to push through pain, fatigue and emotional turbulence as if they were normal. The combination of Ayurveda and yoga, taught...