Ayurvedic Insight
Issue #23, September 2003
In This Issue
Transitioning Through the Seasons
By Shannon Mooney
Nature is the ultimate healer. Aligning ourselves to the rhythms
of nature’s cycles through diet and lifestyle can provide the
perfect foundation for balance and health. According to the ancient
ayurvedic text, Charaka Samhita, “All diseases begin at the
junctions of the seasons.” For this reason, it is critical to
pay close attention to your body during these periods. Whether or
not you have excessively indulged in spicy salsas, barbeques, and
sunshine this summer, now is the time to cleanse our bodies of the
accumulated heat of pitta dosha so that we may transition gently into
autumn with a sense of calm.
Seasonal foods, herbs, and simple yoga postures can help to eliminate
excess pitta from the system. Choosing the right fresh seasonal foods
at this time can help to improve the flow of the body’s natural
cleansing cycle. Fresh apples, pears and prunes that are pre-soaked
in water are especially balancing. Cleansing grains to include are
barley, basmati rice, quinoa, and millet. Steamed greens and root
vegetables are nourishing and help to ease the body into early fall,
when the cool, dry vata wind begins to blow.
The liver and gallbladder are the organs associated with pitta dosha.
Toxins can accumulate and be stored here, impairing proper function
of these organs. Here is a gentle liver flush that can help to restore
and rejuvenate liver and gallbladder functions:
Liver Flush
- 1-2 t. extra virgin olive oil
- 2 T. freshly squeezed lemon juice
- Pinch of natural mineral salt
Drink this remedy first thing in the morning. Do not eat breakfast
for at least two hours afterwards. A pinch of cayenne can be added
for excess kapha conditions and to burn ama. The astringent quality
of the lemon clears toxins from the deep tissues and organs, while
the oil lubricates to loosen and eliminate. This can be taken for
1-3 consecutive days. Ideally, it should be followed by tea of coriander,
cumin, fennel and licorice taken throughout the day.
Herbs to cleanse the liver are generally bitter. Aloe gel can be
taken once or twice daily, before or after meals, to help cleanse
excess pitta from the liver. Turmeric clears liver of obstructions
encouraging healthy energy flow. Brahmi calms both the liver and the
mind. Banyan Botanicals Liver Formula is a unique combination of guduchi,
bhumyamalaki, kutki and many other herbs to help support proper function
of the liver while promoting healthy digestion and the elimination
of toxins. It is a gentle way to give your liver an extra cleansing
boost during this transitional time. Moving into vata season, it is
wise to include Triphala in your herbal regime. The large intestine,
main site of vata, will be thankful for the attention to elimination
and tonification.
Modify your yoga routine this season to include one seated twist,
such as Marichyasana, to give the liver and spleen a little squeeze
and encourage release of toxins. Trikonasana or Triangle is the ultimate
pose for tonifying the torso and is balancing for all doshas. A perfect
restorative pose is to lay on your left side over a bolster positioned
mid-body under your lower ribs. Extend both arms overhead so the left
arm is on the floor, and the right rests on top of the left. Cultivate
deep abdominal breathing and focus on moving the breath downward and
opening the right side of the body. Relax and enjoy. Then, switch
sides. Spleen and liver love this restful posture.
Our bodies live in dynamic relation to our natural environment. Regular
cleansing with the seasonal change honors this relationship and keeps
things running smoothly. Just as the earth destroys, cleanses and
rebuilds throughout the year with the shifting seasons, our bodies
establish balance through tuning in to the rise and fall of nature’s
cycles.
Note: Please check your local organic fresh foods market for aloe
gel.
Ayurveda: An Alternative or Complementary Medicine?
By Robert E. Svoboda
The topic of my presentation this morning is Ayurveda: An Alternative
or Complementary Medicine? I am not sure, however, that this is the
right question to ask. I think we must first ask several other questions
before we can answer this one.
Question One: Does modern medicine need alternatives and complements?
The answer, I believe, is yes. Modern medicine responds admirably
to crises which require quick, intensive, invasive intervention, and
deals far less effectively with slowly progressing degenerative diseases
The Journal of the American Medical Association recently reported
that nearly half the people in the United States suffer from at least
one chronic illness, and that together these illnesses account for
three-fourths of all medical expenses in our country.[1] In this climate
of change in the West which is now calling into question many of the
assumptions which we once accepted unthinkingly an awareness is growing
that our paradigm is shifting. A system's paradigm is its pattern,
the archetype which structures each of its products.
Crisis medicine promotes a crisis-based lifestyle. An imbalance that
begins in one location can surface elsewhere, since all facets of
the organism communicate with each other; physical imbalances can
thus be generated from disturbances of the mind or the life-force,
mental disorders can be due to physical derangements, and so on. Imbalanced
individuals tend to perturb their surroundings, and a polluted habitat
will pollute its inhabitants. Ayurvedists who survey today's world
find the human creature destroying its environment and itself everywhere
they look, and are not surprised to discover the gargantuan imbalances
thus created emerging as rampant disease.
The inability of crisis-based medicine to deal with these crises
has led to the present situation in the West in which many alternative
paradigms compete for the acceptance of scientists and public alike.
Last week I spoke at a conference on organ transplantation organized
by Howard University. While I was there I attended a lecture by Dr.
James Gordon, Professor at the Georgetown University School of Medicine
and first Chair of the Advisory council of the OAM at the NIH. During
the course of his talk Dr. Gordon mentioned that 2 out of every 3
people who consult with M.D.s in this country are also doing something
extra: herbs, supplements, chiropractic, whatever. 2 out of 3 is a
decisive majority. Is it possible that our health care system is changing
faster than our ability and willingness to perceive and describe it?
Do all the people who are being served by the system still accept
the fundamental premises that make up the system? It would appear
that the majority wants change.
Question Two: Is Ayurveda a worthy alternative? This answer is also,
in my opinion, yes. This "superstition" has already contributed
much to modern medicine, including the drug reserpine, which is extracted
from a plant (Rauwolfia serpentina) that is still used today in India
to safely control hypertension. More recently it has provided the
cholesterol-controlling gugulipid (from Commiphora mukul), which apparently
binds cholesterol in GI tract and has been reported to be as good
as Lopid at lowering blood cholesterol levels.
Ayurveda has also given us plastic surgery. During the nineteenth
century the Germans translated from the 2000-year-old treatise of
the Ayurvedic author Sushruta the details of an operation for repair
of damaged noses and ears. This operation, which appears in modern
textbooks of surgery as the pedicle graft, led to the development
of plastic surgery as an independent specialty. Today Sushruta is
regarded by plastic surgeons around the world as the father of their
craft.
Ideally, all Ayurvedic treatment is carefully tailored to the individual.
Though it concentrates first on making simple changes of diet and
behavior, for simple alterations are sometimes sufficient to produce
big results, Ayurveda does not hesitate to use surgery, shock therapy,
and other intensive treatments when mild interventions fail to produce
results.
Ayurveda's materia medica and therapeutic techniques have much more
yet to contribute. I maintain, however, that Ayurveda's most valuable
contributions will be made to the new theory that medicine is trying
to grow. These contributions will be derived from Ayurveda's way of
seeing the world, its darshana, a vision which will facilitate medicine's
ability to teach people not just how to avoid disease but how to proactively
develop and maintain a healthy "state." Modern medicine
defines health as the absence of disease, Ayurveda focuses on health
as a positive condition that is independent of disease, an active
state of being that can be promoted by appropriate behavior. When
you can upgrade your health you may find diseases disappearing without
ever having been directly addressed. The same Ayurvedic principles
that are used to correct yourself when you are out of balance can
be used to preserve your balance once it is corrected.
Question Three: Can modern mechanical medicine adequately perceive,
describe, understand and implement Ayurveda? I rather doubt this.
Many similarities already do exist between the standpoints from which
Ayurveda and modern medicine survey the world. Both believe in technological
progress; on its part Ayurveda has absorbed therapeutic innovations
from many sources within and without India over its history. Empiricism
too is fundamental to both; the Ayurvedic author Sushruta declares,
"A learned physician must never try to examine on grounds of
pure logic the efficacy of a medicine, which is known by direct observation
as having by nature a specific medical action." Both agree that
an allopathic approach to disease is ordinarily efficient, and both
thus usually treat conditions with their opposites: fever is countered
with temperature-lowering measures, obesity with reduction in caloric
intake, and so on.
In spite of this Ayurveda does not yet have a sterling reputation
among physicians of Western medicine; in fact, one recently called
it in print "a superstition of ancient times." But then
this is because the majority of modern physicians do not know what
to look for when they look at Ayurveda. Western materialist science
presupposes that the way to eschew ambiguity in science is to distance
ourselves from the things that we measure. This posture achieves precision
by denying a place in Western experimental philosophy to any phenomena
that are not externally measurable, and discourages Western medicine
from accepting, or even grasping, that which cannot be explained phenomenologically.
The Ayurvedic system maintains that all phenomena however ambiguous
are worthy of investigation if they influence embodied life. It encourages
the free application of both rationality and intuition to scrutinize
all states of being, internal and external. Over thousands of years
the sages who moulded Ayurveda studied how embodied life is affected
by what we do and how we do it in all of life's arenas, including
diet, exercise, vocation, avocation, and personal relationships. Though
most of their experiments were performed internally these were no
less rigorous and systematic than those that scientists perform in
external laboratories. Nor were they less logical; Ayurveda is a different
"language" from modern medicine, and its logic is a fuzzier
sort of logic (in the non-pejorative, cybernetic sense of "fuzzy
logic").
Their inner explorations led these savants to conclude that consciousness
is omnipresent in the universe, and in fact pre-existed the cosmos.
This premise is fundamental to Ayurveda: that consciousness is omnipresent
in the universe, and pre-existed the cosmos. Everything in the universe
that is not pure unconditional consciousness is a form of matter,
and the material universe and all that is within it evolved from and
continues to evolve because of that consciousness. Consciousness expresses
itself in and through everything that exists, its expression varying
with the density of the matter that contains it. Everything with which
an organism comes in contact interacts with its matter and its consciousness,
however minimally; consequently, all living organisms are innately
interdependent.
This is the gulf that truly parts Ayurveda from materialist science,
which teaches that consciousness evolved from matter. No conclusions
drawn by reasoning from one of these two competing and mutually exclusive
postulates can be expected to prove or disprove the "validity"
of the other postulate. The "consciousness" model, however,
continues to gain ground as scientific evidence of consciousness's
ability to influence matter, at least in the form of observers affecting
their observations, continues to accumulate.
Ayurveda's approach is more alchemical. The alchemical paradigm holds
that that reality is paradoxical. This means that a thing is closely
related to its opposite, as we see today in love-hate relationships
and the like. The approach of Chinese medicine is similar. India and
China have always appreciated life's innate ambiguities. Carl Jung
wrote, "The Chinese have never failed to recognize the paradoxes
and the polarity inherent in what is alive. The opposites always balanced
one another-a sign of high culture. One-sidedness, though it lends
momentum, is a mark of barbarism."[2] While Ayurveda and traditional
Chinese medicine try to mirror this ambiguity in their processes,
materialist science abhors ambiguity.
Ambiguity has not always been anathema to science. John Maynard Keynes
discovered in 1936 that Isaac Newton had been obsessed with alchemy
and had mentioned it in early editions of his books. He eventually
decided that he would have to repress this side of himself if he wanted
to get ahead in the world of that time, and so purged all references
to alchemy from later editions of his works.
Newton's early form of "political correctness" reflects
the sad truth that even modern medical science, research and practice
alike, is structured in large measure through political means. Modern
medicine itself succeeded in gaining a paramount position in our country
with substantial help from political sources; consider for example
the generally successful attempts at the end of the nineteenth century
to outlaw homeopathy at a time when in many parts of the country homeopathy
was more popular than allopathy. This is merely the most recent incarnation
of a generalized ancient trend to support orthodoxy at the expense
of innovation. Galileo's fate and the witch-burnings were two other
European examples, but no culture (including India's) is spared this
sort of thing entirely.
How we structure a thing determines to great extent its reality.
"As Gregory Bateson has rightly remarked, Newton did not discover
gravity; he invented it." How we structure our reality determines
what might be "alternative or complementary" to it, and
the key to structuring what we believe to be real usually boils down
to the amount of repetition and intensity that is brought to it. If
you call something a duck long enough and loudly enough many people
will eventually become convinced that it is a duck, whether or not
it actually quacks. The more that the medical establishment calls
chiropractic or homeopathy or Ayurveda "alternative or complementary"
the more that is what they will become: secondary to, adjunct to,
assistant to modern medicine.
All medical systems are models, approximations of reality. The modern
fixed and unchangeable view of medical reality has meant that until
very recently few scientists were prepared to accept that the mind
and the body can and do influence one another in measurable ways.
Many of the problems that we have today stem from the fact that our
reality system officially denies that the mind participates in the
creation, preservation and destruction of our physical reality. Denying
the mind its influence does not prevent that influence; it only prevents
us from perceiving it. Modern medicine assumes that the reality we
can perceive with our senses is the only reality there is, and that
we can observe portions of this reality as non-participating observers.
But this act of mechanically constructing a separate, rationally ordered
reality for ourselves is itself an active participation in that reality
from which we are trying to separate ourselves.
This totalitarian rationality, which by denying participation with
our reality implicitly denies everything that is irrational about
us, has created and is creating enormous difficulties for us humans
and for our world. The most important of our irrational influences
exist in the vast terrain of the unconscious mind, but modern science,
by promoting the idea that rational knowledge is the whole of knowing,
has cut itself off from the 90% of the iceberg of consciousness that
is outside the control of the conscious mind. Now the mass of this
iceberg is reacting against that neglect, counterattacking with epidemics
of psychological and psychosomatic disease.
To be worthy of possessing alternatives or complements a system should
accurately reflect and describe the reality that is embodied life
to a substantial degree in a systematic and logical way. Modern medical
science, which is currently in the throes of a revolution that will
dramatically affect both its vision of the nature of medicine and
the way that medicine is practiced, may not qualify as such a system.
Question Four: How can we understand Ayurveda? The Ayurvedic model
takes the approach advocated by Michael Polyani, who in his classic
book Personal Knowledge showed that (even though most scientists like
to claim otherwise) science is a craft. Whether it involves the growing
of crystals or the reading of X-rays, a scientist becomes proficient
at his science not by strictly following the dictates of some unambiguous
rule book but by immersing himself in the slow trial-and-error process
of discerning patterns and learning to follow those patterns. We have
to do the same thing with our health; we must learn to improve it
like we learn any other craft.
This process happens to be very natural to us humans. It is in fact
innate to us, for this is how the brain learns as well. The brain
is too parsimonious to assign one memory to one neuron. Instead, it
organizes its neurons into neural networks. Any sensory stimulus that
enters one of these networks activates each of the neurons to a different
degree. The more highly activated neurons signal strongly and the
weakly activated ones less strongly, the members of the network continuing
to share information until a pattern develops. Many types of patterns
arise and are held in the same net.
One of Ayurveda's basic theses is that similar patterns appear at
all levels of a living organism's existence, both in its internal
interplay and in the interplay between it and its environment. Each
pattern affects us whether we are aware of it or not. Taste is one
example of the many patterns in our daily lives than cannot be easily
quantified. You can express your blood pressure in mm of Hg, but how
do you measure taste? Most of us find it natural to believe that that
well-cooked food tastes better than poorly-cooked food, even though
there is no way to externally verify this internal perception. Ayurveda
suggests that the self-evident good or bad taste of food has more
than a trivial effect on the organism that consumes it. Ayurveda asserts
that the internal reality of something as outwardly ephemeral as a
taste pattern is in fact very real to the tasting organism. Evidence
that supports this conjecture has also begun to accumulate in Western
science (e.g. in studies on the ways in which the taste of fat or
sugar in the mouth can influence physiology even before they are metabolized).
Taste is only one of the many patterns that characterize our bodies
and minds. Another is prana, the force of life, which the Chinese
call chi and the Japanese ki. We can describe prana as the energy
that inspires life to persist within a particular living being. Students
of yoga, Tai Chi and the martial arts who learn to identify and circulate
this force within themselves discover that prana is as easily measured
with their own internal instruments as it is difficult to measure
with external gadgets. The pattern that these practitioners call prana
is as real to them as the patterns that neural networks of taste produce
when they sample a mango. Whatever their external reality, patterns
are very real to the organism in which they occur.
Athletes around the world are now studying the life force as they
learn that cultivating a healthy pranic pattern facilitates the type
of body-mind cohesion that allows one to shine out on the playing
field. Athletic training is basically a matter of breaking down old
physical and mental patterns and building up new ones. Each living
body hosts a wide variety of strongly-held metabolic patterns which
influence its ability to build up new patterns. Ayurveda classifies
each these many metabolic patterns into one of three classes. Each
of these classes forms a metapattern, a pattern which actively reproduces
itself whenever it is given the opportunity to do so. These three
metapatterns are the Three Doshas, the body's so-called "humors."
They are called doshas ("mistakes," in Sanskrit) because
when they are deranged they induce the organism to go off balance,
in predictable ways. Students of Ayurveda work with the reality of
life from the dosha perspective because of its practical utility in
everyday practice. The dosha approach allows associations to be detected
between seemingly unconnected causative pathways and manifested symptoms.
Ayurveda defines health as balance and ill health as imbalance, in
all aspects of existence but particularly in the context of the Three
Doshas. When they are balanced the Three Doshas ensure that the organism
functions well. Disease-causing imbalance patterns may result whenever
an organism fails to adapt properly to a change in its internal or
external environment. The need to adapt is universal, but the ways
in which people adapt differ from person to person. Though many of
these adaptation patterns are learned behavior others are innate properties
of the organism itself. Everyone has physical, psychological, pranic,
and emotional strengths and weaknesses; taken together these form
a set of "reaction prints" which are as characteristic of
their owners as are fingerprints or footprints. The aggregate of these
innate properties forms the individual's "nature" or "personal
constitution" (in Sanskrit, prakriti), a temperament which profoundly
influences predisposition to health, general and specific sensitivity
to illness, and responsiveness to various forms of therapy.
The Ayurvedic approach to healing concentrates first on making simple
changes of diet and behavior, for simple alterations are sometimes
sufficient to produce big results. Ayurveda escalates into surgery
and other intensively invasive therapies only when mild interventions
fail to produce results. Modern researchers continue to rediscover
truths that Ayurvedic researchers learned many centuries ago.
For example, since 1935 modern science has known that when mice and
rats are fed a very low calorie diet (30 - 50% of their normal intake)
in the laboratory they live about 30% longer than do well-fed rodents,
so long as they receive sufficient nutrition. Though the mechanism
of this effect remains in doubt (it may be due to decreased production
of free radicals) the effect itself is clear.
Americans not only eat too much food, too much of that food is fat.
Dr. Dean Ornish has shown how a judicious program of exercise and
dietary change can not only control but in some cases reverse the
course of obstructive coronary artery disease.
Recall that the two most common diagnoses requiring transplantation
in African-Americans are hypertension and diabetes. High blood pressure
afflicts one-third of all Americans in their 50's, half of those in
their 60's, and more than two-thirds of those over 70. But hypertension
is not inevitable; it is a disease of civilization. Preindustrial
people rarely get increases in blood pressure as they age, whether
they live in China, Africa, Alaska, or the Amazon, mainly because
they do not eat processed foods.
Dr. Paul Whelton of Tulane University's School of Public Health has
spent the past decade tracking 15,000 indigenous Yi people in southwest
China. As long as they eat a traditional diet-rice, a little meat,
and lots of fresh fruits and vegetables-almost none of them suffer
from hypertension. But when they migrate to nearby towns their blood
pressure starts to rise with age.[3]
Our ancestors subsisted mainly on fresh plant foods for about seven
million years, and anyone who lives on such a diet ingests about ten
times more potassium than sodium. "Civilized" people consume
far more sodium; for instance, while a four-ounce tomato contains
9 mg. sodium four ounces of bottled tomato sauce has nearly 700 mg.
Modern humans are the only mammals that consume more sodium than potassium,
and we are the only ones that suffer from hypertension. Dietary changes
can reduce blood pressure as markedly as drug treatment, and in as
little as two months. In a study known as DASH (Dietary Approaches
to Stop Hypertension) researchers at several institutions put volunteers
on one of three diets. Normotensives who ate a low-fat menu including
ten daily servings of fresh fruits and vegetables plus two servings
of calcium-rich dairy products reduced their systolic and diastolic
readings by 5.5 mm and 3.0 mm respectively. Hypertensives had reductions
of twice that magnitude. Potassium supplements can bring a similar
but less dramatic effect, but consuming fresh, unrefined plants provides
you the bonus of phytochemicals which combat cancers and boost immunity.[4]
Dietary change is potentiated by exercise, which in judicious amounts
can help everyone, even the frail. Dr. Maria Fiatarone of Tufts University
recently got ten chronically-ill nursing home residents to lift weights
three times a week for two months. At the end of this period their
average walking speed had nearly tripled, and their balance improved
by half. Two went so far as to throw away their canes.[5]
A positive attitude is also a big plus in regaining and preserving
health. Most people who live to be a hundred maintain through their
lives a social network of support, keep their minds active, manage
stress well, and never give up. It has been said that "patients
suffer illnesses and physicians diagnose and treat diseases."
The two may have little in common. For example, in a seven-year study
of 3,500 older people who were asked to evaluate their own health,
those who rated their health as poor were three times as likely to
die as were those who believed their health to be good. However, those
who were clinically in poor health but who rated themselves as being
healthy were less likely to die than those who believed themselves
to be unwell.[6]
We are what we eat, what we do, and what we think. Observers can
affect their observations; Larry Dossey, M.D. comments: "It appears
that double-blind studies can sometimes be steered in directions that
correspond to the thoughts and attitudes of the experimenters. This
might shed light on why skeptical experimenters appear unable to replicate
the findings of believers, and why "true believers" seem
more able to produce positive results. The validity of decades of
experimental findings in medical research would need to be reevaluated
if it is proved that the mind can "shove the data around."[7]
Ayurveda seeks to find positive ways for each of us to "shove
our data around."
By examining metapatterns in an organism it can help that organism's
owner decide what kind of food, exercise, meditation, and other healthful
habits will be health-promotive to the greatest degree. When it is
too late for prevention early detection becomes the key. In all cases,
removal of the causative factors is the first step: the patient's
diet, lifestyle, and way of thinking all must change. Thereafter,
one must carefully consider all the factors affecting the case, including
the patient's constitution and age, the season of the year, and most
importantly the strength of the patient versus the strength of the
disease. When therapeutic intervention is called for we generally
focus on plant materials, at least initially. In choosing herbs for
a patient we focus primarily on the pattern that the disease has generated
rather than the specific symptom alone.
Question Five: "How necessary, desirable or useful is it that
Ayurveda be described in and bound by terms provided by another model?"
Our answer to this question might be, "Scientifically, not much.
Politically, quite a bit." Two essential steps on the path to
good health are to establish a healthy relationship between yourself
and your environment and to enhance and maintain that relationship
with your every choice and action. Promoting Ayurveda's health in
North America in the current environment requires that it develop
some sort of relationship with its environment, of which a major portion
is modern medicine. The danger is that this will not be a mutually
healthy relationship but will instead be one in which Ayurveda will
be "commodified" and "mainstreamed" into the current
disease-care system.
Conclusion: Ayurveda could be an alternative to modern medicine now
except for the facts that the medical establishment in this country
is not yet ready for it. Ayurveda is not yet ready either, for there
is a dramatic scarcity of qualified Ayurvedic physicians. Now, therefore,
it will have to act as a complementary medicine before it can become
alternative.
It would be better it would be to first reestablish other modes of
thinking and doing science, and create a new model of reality that
is a culture of the alternative and complementary. This new model
could do much worse than to model itself on the ancient model which
continues to serve us so well: Ayurveda.
Dr. Robert E. Svoboda, B.A.M.S., is the first Westerner to have completed
a full education in an Indian Ayurvedic medical college. His love
of travel and the exotic first took him to India, away from a planned
future of becoming a Western physician, where he then lived for more
than a decade. Dr. Svoboda has also mastered the esoteric and complicated
elements of astrology (Jyotish), as have many Ayurvedic physicians,
and he is conversant in Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi and Sanskrit. Author
of 11 books on Ayurveda, he is also known in India as one of the world's
foremost experts in Ayurveda. For a complete list of his works and
upcoming speaking engagements visit http://www.drsvoboda.com.
Recipe: Ama-Reducing Dal
Combine:
- 2-3 cups sprouted mung beans
- 3-4 cups water
Cook and set aside.
In soup pan, warm 1 1/2 Tbs. ghee or olive oil.
Add:
- 1-2 inches fresh ginger root (1-2 Tbs.), peeled and chopped finely
- 1-3 cloves of garlic, minced (omit if Pitta is high)
- 1/2 - 1 tsp. cumin seeds
- 1 tsp. coriander seeds
- 1/2 - 1 tsp. turmeric
- 1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
- 2-3 bay leaves
- 1/8 tsp. each of fennel seeds, hing, cinnamon and cardamom
Toss until coated and their aromas emerge. Add to the spices and
oil:
- 2-3 cups chopped vegetables
Toss until coated. Stir for two minutes, then add:
- 4-6 cups additional water
Mix well. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer covered until
veggies are cooked. Add pureed mung beans to soup pot. Stir. Bring
to a boil again. Reduce heat and let soup simmer for 5 minutes. Add
more water if a thinner consistency is desired. Add 1/2 tsp. salt,
or to taste
This recipe is specifically designed to reduce ama and rest the digestive
tract during illness, convalescence or rejuvenation therapy. The mung
beans are cooling by nature, yet are warmed by the addition of the
ginger and the other warming spices. Amounts of the spices and the
type of vegetables used can be adjusted to suit the individual. This
is an excellent one-dish meal which can be served a few times each
week to rest the system, if you like.
Recipe reprinted with permission from Ayurvedic Cooking for Westerners
by Amadea Morningstar, Lotus Press, P.O. Box 325, Twin Lakes, WI 53181.(c)1990
All Rights Reserved.
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