Diet for Spring

The Drava guna (liquid) of Kapha increases in this period which results into loss of appetite and poor digestion (Agnimandya). This season is aggravation of Kapha dosha only, which should be controlled by Ritu charya (seasonal lifestyle).

The Diet:

Cereals: Barley, Millet, Old Wheat

Pulses: Masoora (red lentils), Chana (chickpeas), Mung, (mung beans), Dew beans

Oils: Mustard oil, Safflower oil, Sesame oil

Milk Products: Takra (Buttermilk)

Vegetables: Karela (bitter melon), Brinjal, Raddish, Pumpkin, Moringa (Drum Stick) and dry vegetables, Elephant Foot Yam etc.

Non-vegetarian: Roasted Goat and Chicken.

Fruits: Lemon, Betel nut, Pomegranate, Jambul

Drinks: Oil, wine and Hot drinks, Asava and Arista.

Miscellaneous: Plenty of honey (never heated, even in tea)- the Katu Tikta and Kashaya rasas (pungent, bitter, astringent) should be accepted freely.

Behavior:

Smoking: After meals smoking is advised. (dhuma, medicated smoke inhalation, an ayurvedic treatment which has nothing to do with or even like smoking cigarettes or marijuana)

Exercises: Gymnastics, Sun Salutations and hard work as per ones capacity

Massage: Before bath massage the body with dry powder of Chandan (sandalwood), Ushira (Vetiveria zinzanioides) etc.

Hot bath: Hot water bath followed by application of scented plaster (Lepa) to the skin. Hot water is never poured above the collarbones, but the feet are always washed with hot water. The rest of the body warm water is used.

In the afternoon one must/should spend the time with his relations in the gardens surrounded by flowers.

The day time sleep is strictly prohibited.

Miscellaneous: To control the Kapha dosha, Shodhana Karma like Vamana (vomiting) is advised only under the supervision of a properly educated specialist, especially for Kapha dominant Prakriti.

Nasya (nasal drops) and Dhuma (smoking) also help for melting the Kapha, Anjana Kawal (colyrium on eyes) etc. should be practised during this ritu kala (season).

25 thoughts on “Diet for Spring”

  1. This is awesome. Thank you so much.

    I’m surpised to see pumpkin in there as it is sweet and heavy… kinda opposite of what you’d want in spring, but I must be overlooking something. Perhaps in moderation….?

    Also nice to see safflower oil in here. My english copy of the Astanga Sangraha (and here in your articles) it says it is “the worst oil” which only shows how basic and little nuanced that information is in respect to reality which changes with the time of day, seasons, prakṛti etc. Plus, what does it mean? Worst oil for internal use? External use? Both?
    I saw it’s family of thistles. I might actually sow it. It’s gorgeous!

    I’ve got some dried betel nut. Will see if I can find out how to use it. It is very hard.

    Thanks again.

    Reply ↓

  2. I remember reading that if a man who is uncontrolled in his sense faculties is given shukra increasing therapy he becomes a great evil upon the world. Is this what it takes to end the demon age? The ultimate evil? But its for ultimate good….right?

    Reply ↓

    • I was born march 5th 1995 (pices if that means anything to you). My birth name is Jordan Tyler Benjamin. Born in Durham North Carolina. Since 2014 ive been a major adherent to Theravada buddhism. I have a tattoo down my left arm “om mani padme hum” a tibetan mantra which means hail to the jewel in the lotus. Im 6’2 around 155 pounds. I have a burn mark from a cigarette in the center of my forehead. This past winter i cut my once beautiful long curly hair due to it being matted and bug infested from living outside. I was a heavy baby around 10 to 11 pounds at birth born to a white american mother and black father. Massively rajas throughout most of my life. Always around the same weight. Ive lived off one meal a day for a while eating sometimes a pound of sausage for breakfast. Going through 8 lbs of sugar in a week. Eating and digesting ridiculous quantities of ghee, honey, butter, milk etc. I have no discernable illnesses nor have i had any major illnesses throughout my 24 years. I made the side of a mountain my home while homeless in san luis obispo California. No matter what i eat. No matter what i do or say my body is able to tolerate the consequences. Im essentially a self sustaining organism at this point imblances in due time leading to balances.

      Please if theres any more information, pictures, videos of my dancing etc for you to look into my birth chart etc and to know that i am the truth please…do not hesitate to ask

    • Because you know who i am. I know who i am. And i want to talk to you.

    • Please email me @ ihrjb1995@yahoo.com at your soonest convenience. If you are at all skeptical id be willing to clear any doubts in due time as to who the nataraja truly is

  3. Jordan. You might not see any bad result of what you are doing and maybe that is the problem; to unaware of whats really happening inside of you. And then showing off to others. Maybe you are sick but are totally ignorant about it. Or maybe you have some siddhi, right? how is that possible with such arrogance? (look at me, i can do… without.. etc.)
    I find it interesting to see if that is possible however it doesn’t matter, what will i do with that information? basically its just entertainment then. But hey i’m like a child i want to know.
    Show me how you dance 🙂

    Reply ↓

    • Erik, it is best to let people believe what they want. It pops their balloons and then they retaliate defensively. You have heard the term, “let sleeping dogs lie?”
      Now Jordan’s comments not only show the instability of his mind with the comments not having anything to do with the posts he has put them on as well as the inconsistency of thought expressed in them but you really should see what he emailed me. It gets pretty crazy in those. Talking about how self realized he is and that he has won the prize. Then how lonely he is and that he wants me as a friend.

      In my own view, this is not very far from most people in the Western/modern world though. Picking up a new age religion or pseudo spiritualism and putting it on wearing it like a shirt, superficial. The lack of depth of knowledge and context for them in their purity in the paradigm of the West leads to egotism and then thoughts of grandeur. Lack of proper teachings as well as the lack of an environment that supports them. Instead, we have fake Gurus where anything that could possibly show the fraud is covered up or explained away in denial in the support of their followers. Worse than this is someone reading a book and then putting on that shirt. Worse yet from this is doing a certification course and then teaching to others.
      How can you blame Jordan? Isn’t he just a victim to this whole machine of psuedo spiritualism much like the rest? What happens when spirituality is commercialized and becomes the newest pop culture diet?

  4. Honey seems to come in 3 kinds it seem, they are divided into two types.
    You have raw honey and heated honey, the latter is harmful the first is not.
    The raw honey can be made from honey that comes from bees which have been feeding on flowers OR which have been feeding for a (small ?) part sugar water as food instead of flowers.
    The visual differences can be noticed for example heated honey is very thin and darker while the raw honey is heavier and thicker.
    Now for the third kind of honey, the raw honey whereby the bees have not giving crystal sugar water in there diet is very very thick and it tastes entirely different.
    My question here is is this also with raw honey straight from wild bees?
    And can the effects of this kind of thick not diluted honey have different effects then the ‘watered down’ version?

    Here in the Netherlands all ‘normal’ stores sell heated honey, all organic stores sell raw honey and only a very small portion sells raw honey whereby the bees have only been feeding on flowers and no sugar water in winter time. (which is a large part of our year in the northern part)

    I have never come across this information and now that i know this i start to question the effects of the honey which i have been buying for years because i want the honey that Ayurveda describes as honey, for its effects with medicines and all.

    Reply ↓

    • There are 8 types of honey.
      You are talking about the types of processing or raw. Those are only types of processing (karana) to honey not the first step of recognition of the different types of honey itself.
      There are different types of bees which give different types of honey with different qualities.
      For the most part, the honey bee (generalized) is what is standard in the Western world for honey.

      You have raw honey and then filtered raw honey. Then the rest of the processes that are done are the poisonous kinds. You have honey that comes from bees that are feeding on flowers, and then you have the kind that you do not want to ingest. ‘That means ones that have been fed sugar.’
      Many forms of ‘raw’ honey being sold are actually heated to get the honey from the hive. Warning!
      There are also many different tests you can do to find out if the honey is actually real honey because in India, for example, most of what is being sold as honey is not honey at all. Even the ones label certified. India is a hugely corrupt country and everything is about paying off someone to get by without being legit. (humanity) Trust no organic or certified labels in India. As one Ayurvedic doctor friend of mine said to me there, “the only real honey here is when you get it yourself from the bees.” That’s the truth of India. Elsewhere around the world is only going to be different colours of the rainbow and all need to be seen for what it is. In the US, it is now easy to get real raw honey.

      There is also honey sugar, this is not honey but honey sugar. It is not to be confused with old honey that is talked about in the texts. It has its own qualities as well as uses. In early Western ayurveda study days, i was taught that the honey sugar is old honey. Lets be very clear, it is not.

      Old honey is honey that has aged “a year” – Bhavaprakasha Chapter 6 verse 25 and 26
      This is also for jaggary and sugar.

      We stay away from the adulterated processes that man has come up with, answering your question above. Bottom line. No feeding bees sugar kind.

      So raw honey. That’s it. As nature gives it. And as natural beekeeping harvests it. No heating.
      Clear?

    • I understand that. They honey i get is totally unfiltered and not heated (non at all or below 40 degrees celcius)
      So i ques honey dew honey isn’t good.
      That leaves me with flavors. I dunno about America but here we have a wide range of flavors and they are expressed flavors, you can really taste it, and the color and textures are different to.
      We get what is called (2 kinds): liquid honey and cremed honey which is a thicker, crystallized honey. regarding texture.
      For flavors they are allot ie. orange blossom honey (is almost orange in color and really tastes like oranges), then all kinds of oil seeds like sunflower, honey.
      I ques that this to would change the gunas?

      This leaves me with the question what ‘flavor’ is the best? actually i should ask what is the best flavor for ME?

      mild/fruity/summer flavors: lavendel, flowers, clover, sunflower, acacia, eucalyptus, orange, rapeseed, linden.

      herbs/strong/character flavors: woods, thyme, manuka-kanuka, kamahi, mountain, heather, chestnut, woods, forest, alpine flowers

      others: royal galee (added), intact honey comb, buckweat, polder (from the netherlands)

    • The gunas of the honey are not going to change to much with the flower that it is from. The general structure is still honey. Erik, you need to stop asking me this question, there is no “best” there is knowledge and then the usage of it.

    • Hi Erik,

      I’ve been on the same quest as you have been, here in the Netherlands. I myself lived at a beekeepers farm (in Ecuador) for over a year so I learned some about the process there. When returning to Holland I slowly started to realize that in the Netherlands it is rare to find a beekeeper who doesn’t feed their bees sugar in winter, because you simply cannot harvest much if you want your bees to live on their own honey during hybernation. And the few I’ve ecountered that don’t feed them have so little honey that they only sell a little of it (as they use most of it for themselves or relatives). However most small beekeepers do stop feeding them during the summer time so the honey in summer could possibly be fine.

      You’re sure all honey from organic stores here are actually raw? I know of only óne brand (Toca) that explicitly says (on the package label) that it is raw… and even then I’m sceptical as it is a commercial product.
      I’m quite sure that stuff like the Traay has been heated. Actually, I’m quite sure that De Traay factory is responsible for most all honey brands sold in any store in the Netherlands and that (most) all of them are heated, organic or not.

      Creme honey as I understood it has been processed aswell. Not nessecarily heated, but the process does involve stirring (multiple times) and it obviously changes the physical appearance and texture and it changes the way the honey crystalizes so it must have some impact on the gunas aswell, I reckon. I don’t know if difference is significant, but just to be sure I stay away from it.

      Just my personal musings about the types of honey out there is that I prefer the simple “flower honey” as it seems like the most natural type. It’s just several types of (wild) flowers that bees have chosen to pick. Some of these “special honeys” are obtained by moving the hives to monocultural lands in the time those specific types of flowers bloom which makes for a honey with very little variation. I doubt it is good for the bees as they live on a diet with a little variety of types of nectar aswell as their hives are moved multiple times on trucks which I doubt is conducive to their tranquility. It is my personal idea, not based on Ayurveda, that a honey which is less “human-driven” might actually be healthier than the others. I am not saying that all “special honeys” are obtained in the previous mentioned way, but some of them are. But then, perhaps if we were to learn Ayurveda in a deep manner all of this will be put upside down as we learn how the different herbs affect the gunas in the honey and than be applied according to that knowledge. But like Brad says, it doesn’t change a lot, so I personally don’t worry about it. Plus the special honeys are often more expensive… plus some of them are actually honey infused with some lavender flowers and stuff like that so, again, I like when humans are not too much involved in the process of creating honey.

      I thought I might share a conversation I had with Brad about honey. Do keep in mind though that when I was writing it I thought that sugar honey and old sugar were the same thing (untill I read the converation above) so that might explain some of the confusion you’ll encounter.

      Doshas and the Sub Doshas

    • Ah just to add. Fresh honey is more fluid. Older honey cristalizes and becomes more solid. And then there is the cremed honey which is neither of these previous two.

  5. Yes you are correct the Traay heats there honey to ‘a bit warmer then 40 degrees C’ and they said that they only use honey in winter time for the bees and no sugar water. However when i tasted all of there honey it tastes very strongly sweet like when you eat white sugar allot at one take it is overwhelming, when i do the same with sucanat and other honey that says we do not use sugar in winter they remain mildly sweet and not so intense so there definitely is a difference there.

    Reply ↓

    • It seems implausible to me that a company can sell such huge ammounts of honey, which they get from overseas, and yet be able to keep track of the production process of all the honey you receive? hmmm….

      I like to keep the distance between me and my supplyer as small as possible. Definitely with something as delicate as honey, so I actually might prefer to buy honey from a local beekeeper who feeds sugar during the winter time then buying from the organic supermarket. Perhaps Brad can share his thoughts on this with us. He allready dismissed the use of sugar water-honey, but I am not speaking of those complete cheats who give their bees suger water year round cause it makes the honey fast and cheap and you don’t have to have flowers around. I’m talking about small scale beekepers that want to be able to harvest a “fair amount” and still have the bees survive the dutch cold seasons. Obviously, it’s best for the bees to not feed them sugar, but perhaps they use up most of the sugar for hybernation/survival purposes rather than making cheap honey from it which we subsequently harvest and ingest ourselves. Just and idea.

      I once heard honey is actually sweeter than sugar, but that might be BS

    • Yes. I agree and really don’t see much difference between that and 99% of everything that is out there. The more you know, the worse off you are in so many ways.

      Your better with local.

      Why don’t ya look into trying to get a hive yourselves? 😉

    • Correction of my grammar and more: *”…,so I might prefer honey from a local beekeeper who feeds sugar during the winter time to buying foreign honey from the organic supermarket who claims to use raw honey and not feed sugar water.”

      Getting a hive myself would be great. Quite a project to get started, but great. The thought crosses my mind every now and then. it has for a few years now.

      “The more you know, the worse off you are in so many ways.” That almost sounds like “ignorance is bliss”, which is nonsense, yet I understand what you dó say. Going back to eating a raw lettuce salad accompanied with a hot ginger tea with honey allthewhile thinking I’m doing my body a favour, is not possible anymore. Worse off? Well, it’s not easier. No. But at least I know better what is actually good for me, rather than being drowned in complete western ignorance slowly leading a poisonous life without having a clue.

      Thank you for your comment(s)! And I might consider the hive thing 😉

    • Worse off in the way that things become much more clear and you know so much more about how the world really is out there. Just because you know better it doesn’t mean that the beekeepers know better they aren’t necessarily evil, they are just doing what they think is best. This goes for everyone else.
      The worst soft part also is that you’re surrounded by people that don’t know as well and most of them are not interested in knowing but rather they’re interested in being right about what they are doing and not being wrong.

    • I reckon the word “soft” was a mistake.

      Thanks for elaborating on that. Thanks for all your comments and articles. I feel blessed having encountered your blog and doing sessions. It is so obviously different from all the other stuff out there. Even though I’m having a hard time lately finding the discipline to actually follow all of this knowledge, and dive into the subjects that you bring up, I know that, at least I’m on the right track, Ayurveda never truly leaves my mind. Thank you very much. Bless you.

Leave a comment