Lifestyle

How to Calm Out-Of-Balance Pitta

Pitta is the second dosha, or “that which digests things.” Pitta has the qualities of sharpness, oiliness, lightness and instability. In the physical body, pitta is behind our digestion and metabolism. It's the force of heat in the body that keeps us at a sultry 98.6°F. ⁠
⁠
When Pitta is in balance, we feel focused, courageous and driven. When there's too much of it, we can feel inflamed, impatient, perfectionistic or simply too hot, physically and emotionally.⁠
⁠
But here’s the good news. Ayurveda teaches us that the opposite is the medicine. ⁠
⁠
During the heat of summer, think cool, sweet, soft and slow. Choose foods, rituals and experiences that help your body exhale, regulate your nervous system and invite more ease into your day. ⁠

See below for our favorite ways to soothe and cool Pitta in the summer heat:

🌀 Take a swim in a river. Get out in fresh air. Speak and hear spontaneous "sweet nothings."

🌀 Eat cooling foods such as mint, fennel, cucumber, coconut oil and coconut water.

🌀 Spice foods with cooling additions such as cumin, coriander, mint and cardamom.

🌀 Buy roses. Put a few drops of rose essential oil on your pulse points.

🌀 Put a teaspoon of fennel seeds in cool water and sip.

Spring to Summer Transition: Navigating Seasonal Shifts with Ayurveda

Mama nature usually gives us clear indications of her changes if we open our eyes to her subtlety. The more we can align with these rhythms, the easier it is to maintain body/mind health. Just as seasonal shifts transform the weather where we live, they also shake up the internal landscape within our bodies. ⁠
⁠
In the Northern Hemisphere, it’s time to start gently incorporating pitta-balancing elements into our food and lifestyle. ⁠
⁠
Depending on where you live, it’s generally a good time to lean into pitta-balancing practices when you start to notice:⁠

☀️ Warmer temperatures⁠
⁠
☀️ Longer daylight hours⁠
⁠
☀️ A shift from the lush, wet heaviness of spring to a drier, sharper heat⁠
⁠
☀️ Increased internal heat (like irritability, skin flare-ups or digestive intensity)⁠

Most simply put, once you start feeling more heat and dryness in your body than you do watery heaviness, it’s a green light to start introducing some pitta-balancing practices into your routine. ⁠

Check out these tips below for navigating the spring > summer transition with watery ease:

🌱 Lighten Up, Without Burning Out: Spring is about moving stagnation (Kapha), while summer brings intensity (Pitta). Gradually lighten your diet while avoiding too much heat or fasting.

🥗 Increase Cooling Foods: Introduce cooling, watery foods like cucumber, zucchini and mint, and reduce ferments, chili, and excess sour or salty foods.

☀️ Watch Your Fire: Start winding down intense workouts, avoid overcommitting, and make room for more rest.

🧘‍♀️ Slow, Sweet, and Steady Daily Routine: Early mornings, light breakfast, cooling pranayama like sitali, and gentle, cooling yoga (think moon salutations, forward folds, twists).

Eat To Support PMS: An Ayurvedic Guide

Ayurveda views premenstrual symptoms as the manifestation of a doshic imbalance. Menstrual symptoms can reflect imbalance in any of the doshas, but typically, the premenstrual period is linked to vata and pitta dosha—things can get too dry, too heated or too emotional.⁠
⁠
It’s especially important to tend to vata dosha during the luteal phase, the couple of weeks that precede your bleed. Tending to vata during this time means grounding, stabilizing and soothing the nervous system. ⁠
⁠
Here are some Ayurvedic recommendations for your luteal phase:⁠

🍠 Eating For Your Luteal Phase

⁠Root vegetables - Carrots, parsnips, beets and sweet potatoes are deeply nourishing and grounding, helping to counter vata anxiety ⁠
Ghee and healthy fats - Supports healthy hormones and nutrient absorption⁠
Steamed greens - Leafy greens offer vital nutrients and their bitterness and astringent qualities counter pitta’s heat⁠
Warm, cooked grains - Steady nourishment for smooth digestion and steady agni⁠
Soups and stews - Supports digestion and the nervous system at the same time—also beneficial for kapha types and kapha imbalances⁠

🌿 Supportive Herbs & Spices⁠

Turmeric - Helps support the body’s detoxification pathways, aiding hormone regulation⁠
Ginger - Kindles agni and steadies digestion⁠
Ashwagandha - Provides essential nervous system steadiness through emotional waves⁠
Shatavari - Supports women’s hormonal balance; is cooling and moistening⁠
Brahmi - An Ayurvedic herb known for supporting mental ease and balance⁠
Cumin - Digestive aid soothing vata (aka goodbye gassiness!)⁠
Fennel - Cooling digestive support that helps reduce both vata and pitta ⁠
Coriander - Pitta-reducing to help mitigate irritability and excess heat⁠
Sesame Seeds - Contain essential minerals and fatty acids that promote hormonal balance⁠
Fenugreek - Anti-inflammatory qualities may help ease menstrual discomfort⁠
Mint - Helps to cool and aid digestion, balancing both pitta and vata⁠

🥀 Save this guide for your next grocery trip during your luteal phase!

The Tongue According to Ayurveda

Your tongue is a living mirror of your body’s ecosystem. 👅🌀⁠
⁠
Ayurveda teaches that the tongue reflects digestion, detoxification, tissue health and even how well you’re processing life itself. ⁠
⁠
When your digestive fire - aka your agni - is strong, the tongue tends to look clear, pink and vibrant. ⁠
⁠
When things are sluggish or overloaded? The tongue often tells on us before our body does.⁠

👇🏼 Here are three daily rituals you can implement to take care of your AGNI and AMA and therefore your tongue (and really, all the systems of your body!)⁠

✨ Scrape your tongue! Tongue scraping gently removes overnight ama (toxins) and bacteria, supports fresher breath and gives your digestive fire a clean slate for the day.⁠
⁠
💧 Drink warm water with lemon in the morning. Warm water in the morning hydrates tissues, gently stimulates elimination and helps flush what the tongue scraping brings to the surface.⁠
⁠
🫖 Include spices in your diet. Support agni with warming spices like ginger, cinnamon or clove tea to kindle digestion so less residue accumulates in the first place.⁠
⁠
These small rituals have a radiant ripple effect. ⁠

The Ultimate Kapha-Balancing Checklist for Late-Winter

It’s happening. We are FINALLY (slowly) beginning the transition out of winter and into late-winter/spring!

(All my Australia girls, y’all gotta do the opposite of what I’m about say in this email, you’re gonna wanna check out this podcast episode instead!)

Here’s the thing. People tend to think that winter and spring are really different seasons. But in reality, late-fall and early-winter are more alike than winter and late-winter!

Basically, late winter is sorta like a whole other season than winter!

In late winter we start to get a much more watery experience than vata-dominant winter.

All of that firm holding, coldness and dryness of winter starts to release. Which means that Kapha season can bring with it feelings of heaviness and sluggishness, we can see more congestion and mucous-y conditions, and colds and the flu are on the rise.

When out of balance, too much Kapha can make us feel a bit lazy and cause us to give in to our less-aligned desires, like over-eating and spending too much time Netflix-and-chilling.

We want to honor and celebrate the life-affirming aspects of the season (like fluidity) but mitigate the dosha, the imbalances that arrive during this season.

How do we do that? Don’t worry I gotchu 😉 Here’s my master list of Kapha-balancing lifestyle tips.

Outdoor walks. Being outside is a great idea. Walking, especially if you have a lot of Kapha in your system or are the kapha body/mind type helps to get things moving.
Spring cleaning. Start with one room in your house! Think about clearing out or redecorating! This is a great time to start a renovation, too.
Making plan for the spring. This is a great time to plan a wedding, plan your business year ahead. The spring is really way more the “new year” than January, so get your plan on.
Watch the tendency to pull out your spring lighter clothing! It’s important to still bundle up especially, in the beginning of spring. End of winter/early spring is when the damp quality builds up so we’re a little ripe for cold/mucous stuff.
Get moving! The late winter/early spring (and continuing into spring) is such a good time to really party and let your energy move with a little more rigorous exercise! Jump rope, go on walks, mellow jogs, have fun with it! Winter is when we tend to put on a little bit more substance and that’s totally fine! Animals do this! And then in the wild, the greens start to shoot forth and they start to lose some of those hibernating fats.

If you've been feeling like you're waking up from winter hibernation... this is your Ayurvedic roadmap back to clarity, lightness and vitality. 🌿

⁠

Ayurvedic Tips For Allergy Season

Two more of my fave supports for allergy season are quercetin (studies have shown that quercetin can prevent immune cells from releasing histamines which means runny nose, hives and swelling = bye bye 👋🏼) and Green Tea (‘cause it’s high in quercetin 😉). ⁠
⁠
Ayurveda understands that allergies are the result of an outer allergen aggravating a specific dosha. ⁣⁠Seasonal allergies related to spring (and sometimes fall) are usually more kapha-related.⁣⁠
⁣⁠
In order to aid our kapha allergies, we have to heat things up, boost circulation, clear out the channels of the body and support our system’s natural cleansing pathways (think lymph flow, circulation, digestion and elimination!).⁣⁠

Here are some more of my favorite tips for allergy season:

Get a Neti Pot and use it daily! Add ¼ tsp salt to warm water and pour through both nostrils.
Follow your Neti Pot with Nasya Oil to lubricate your nostrils with herbal oil.
Scrape your tongue. Scraping your tongue helps to remove the ama that your body is cleansing through the night.
Dry Brush. Dry brushing boosts the lymphatic system–this helps the channels of the body circulate and eliminate toxins.
Drink your nettles. Nettles promote healthy circulation and activate the liver and kidneys.

And if you really want to get ahead of things, start doing some of these practices before allergy season hits to improve your overall immunity. 🌸⁠

P.S. Here’s how I make my nettles infusion: Brew a tea by combining 4 large tablespoons of dried nettles in a mason jar with boiling water - let steep for 1 hour and then strain! Enjoy! 🌿

How to Dry Brush the Ayurvedic Way

Why Dry Brush?

Dry Brushing (traditionally called garshana) helps move stagnation, stimulates Rasa Dhatu’s flow, boosts our natural detoxification system and gives the skin that GLOW we all want! 🌟⁠
⁠
In Ayurveda, our lymph is part of the Rasa Dhatu, one of the 7 tissues of the body.⁠
⁠
The lymph and blood plasma serve as the first line of immune defense when we encounter allergens and bacteria. Not only does the lymphatic system serve as immune defense, it also serves as psycho-emotional defense (AKA how easily we can let things roll off us, rather than deeply penetrate and wound us, on an emotional level). 🫀⁠
⁠
Unlike your blood, which is pumped throughout your body by your heart, your lymph relies on your body’s valve system to move, functioning more like a manual pumping system. This is where practices like dry brushing and Abhyanga come in - they help literally “pump” the lymph! 💪🏽⁠
⁠

Brush Towards the Heart

It's best to use a dry brush on dry skin before you take a bath or shower. Start at your feet and work your way upwards. Brush in a circular motion always in the direction of your heart. This will help increase blood flow throughout the body.

Follow Up with Moisture

Try to brush for at least 3 minutes working your way up to 5 minutes. After showering, make sure to lather yourself in some kind of amazing moisturizer or use your dry brush right before you Abhyanga, allowing the oil to be deeply absorbed into your revived skin.

Spring is an amazing time for dry brushing, boosting your body’s natural detoxification system and even giving you a freshened-up, more vigorous outlook on life. 😉

Holistic Sun Protection and Summer Skincare Tips

This is a picture of a woman in a light white blouse holding her hand up to sheild her face from the sun. It links to a blog post about sun protection and summer skin care tips.

We are entering the late-summer season here in Virginia, and this can be a complicated time for skincare! On one hand, your skin requires more moisture from being dried out due to heat factors, which might also be making you sweat more, which oils up your skin. Throw sun exposure in there and you have a recipe for confusion and potential skin damage.

Don’t let the humidity fool you, even if you live in the tropics, air humidity cannot completely protect your skin from the drying effects of the sun (and the AC). Whatever your skin type, these sun protection and summer skincare protocols will help keep your skin in tip-top shape for the long haul.

Sun Protection From the Inside

Don’t Forget to Drink Water. Skin health starts with deep hydration.

Aim to drink about 2 cups of water an hour. I recommend adding Trace Minerals, electrolytes, or one of these hydrating herbs to your water. These products changed the hydration game for me.
Add a little Aloe Vera juice in the morning to your smoothie or drinking water for more cooling and hydration.
Avoiding diuretics like coffee will also help keep you hydrated. If it’s hot outside and the days are long, you might not even need coffee for that morning boost. Experiment with skipping it when the weather is warm. Instead, try drinking an energizing juice with vitamin C to give you a refreshing alkalizing boost in the morning.

Eat for the Sun. Make sure you’re getting Zinc and D3 in your diet. I recommend a liquid D3 supplement under the tongue for maximum absorption. Now you might be thinking: won’t I get vitamin D from the sun? Nope. What we get from the sun are the building blocks so that our body can produce vitamin D. And those special rays that help your body make vitamin D are only out when the sun is at a 30+ degree angle from where you are on Earth. You can use the app DMinder to find out when that vitamin D window is where you are in the world.

What’s also important to keep in mind is that vitamin D3 offers skin protection and most people are low in Vitamin D3. It’s one of the only vitamins I recommend supplementing with regularly.

Some foods that also provide sun protection from oxidative damage are: polypodium leucotomos (a fern native to South America that you can find in some oral sun supplements), blueberries, carrots, watermelon, aloe, coconut oil, grapes, olive oil, avocados, sweet red peppers, sweet potatoes, sunflower seeds, guava, pomegranate.

Practice. Ayurveda teaches us that when the element of Fire is elevated, like during summer, we not only get physically hot and burnt out, but we’re also prone to heat-based emotions that are intense and sharp, like anger. Sitali breathing is a cooling breath exercise that's perfect for taking it down a notch. Sitala reduces Pitta dosha. I like doing this after a workout while I’m stretching, or when I’m lying down enjoying a face mask.

How to do Sitali Breathing

Close your eyes, breathe with awareness in your diaphragm for several minutes, then open the mouth and pucker your lips into an O shape.
Curl your tongue lengthwise and project it out of the mouth about 3/4 of an inch.
Inhale deeply across the tongue and into the mouth as if drinking through a straw. Notice how your breath feels cooler? Focus on that cool sensation on the tongue.
Withdraw the tongue and close the mouth, exhaling completely through the nostrils.

Blog Featured Image (1200 × 628 px) (1) copy

On your Skin

Exfoliate. Powdered coconut milk is a great exfoliant. If your skin is oiler, you can also try chickpea flour, almond flour or powdered honey.

Less is more. Avoid foundation and heavy blush and bronzer if you can, especially if you live in an area that’s already heavy (humid), in addition to being hot. Instead, reach for beautifying serums that have hyaluronic acid, vitamin C and polyphenols. Let your serum dry and then add a lightweight cream or oil. This summer I’ve been using Hanacure’s Nano Emulsion Cream. It’s lightweight enough that it doesn’t clog my pores or cause oiliness, but nourishing enough that it doesn’t leave my skin feeling exposed either. I like layering this under a nice face oil at night.

Cleanse. My skin dries out too easily for me to do mud masks year-round, but when I’m hot, humid and sweaty, my skin actually likes that drying effect that a mud mask provides. Here’s how to do one: Once a week, mix bentonite clay and a little activated charcoal with apple cider vinegar until you get a nice muddy consistency and slather on your face. You can even bring it down your neck and décolleté to your breasts and underarms for a detoxing lymphatic mask. Let it completely dry and then rinse it off in the shower. Follow with a hydrating serum, lightweight cream or nourishing oil.

You can also try our Amalaki summer face mask recipe.

Nourish. My favorite summer oils are Rosehip seed oil and Carrot seed oil because they are light. Carrot seed oil also has the benefit of providing a little sun protection.

Protect. 1) Wear a hat & 2) Find a natural mineral sunscreen with zinc oxide and titanium dioxide. Be mindful not to over use sunscreen because it does reduce your body’s ability to make vitamin D3, which ironically you need for skin sun protection. I only wear sunscreen on places that have the most potential for damage: face, décollete, shoulders, upper arms, back of hands, around armpit and behind knees and elbows. I like using Life Extension Shade Factor Mineral Sunscreen in SPF 30.

Mist. This, hands down, is my favorite thing. Misting your face three to six times a day helps keep your skin moisturized (and is the most overlooked but important skincare routine!) and cools you off. Any natural face mister will work, it just requires purified water. Some have floral essence, aloe vera, essential oils and vitamin E; but unless my skin is burnt, I prefer the plain ones best, like the Evian Facial Spray (the fine mist this one emits is perfect). It’ll make you feel like a bougie old French woman (bonjour!), but a little goes a long way and your skin will show the difference. One bottle of Evian spray lasts me 6 months and I’m never found without one.

We hope you love these skincare and sun protection tips! For more practices, techniques and simple recipes for feeling both beautiful inside and out, check out our virtual Ayurvedic spa day workshop here.

Stay in the Shakti: Join the list for recipes, bodycare and more!