It's Not All About Turmeric & Ashwagandha - Nutrition & Ayurveda
SEASON 1 EPISODE 12
with Hannah Levin
In this episode of Neighbourhood Nutritionist, I talk to Hannah Levin, creator of the Vitality Circle and ayurveda health counsellor among many other identities, about ayurveda.
In my conversation with Hannah we talked about:
Hannah’s journey into discovering Ayurveda
Ayurveda 101 - find out what dominant constitution you are!
Eating and living according to your constitution
Ayurvedic nutrition and lifestyle habits
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If you want to connect with Hannah, you can find her on:
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/daybydaywithhannah
Website: www.heartfeltwellbeing.com
Youtube:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTH75yIz3jRKZ4_c9Dj1UyA?view_as=subscriber
You can also take the Dosha quiz here: https://www.heartfeltwellbeing.com/quiz
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Discovering Ayurveda
yeah. Well, I think like a lot of people who end up in the healing fields, we had to heal ourselves at some point first, so I grew up in a family that was very focused on health and wellness. And so I had the concept of like food as medicine and herbal healing early on, but I struggled starting when I was a teenager, I struggled with chronic allergies and sinus infections and digestive issues and anxiety and depression, and chronic constipation. And those things all just got worse as I grew older. And so as I was journeying through my life, I would constantly be trying different things and researching it was kind of my enjoyment was that I enjoyed learning about all all sorts of health things. And I I was diagnosed that kind of culminated in 2013 I was diagnosed with a precancerous condition and at that time, I was just like, Okay, here's the big it felt like the big wake up call like am I going to go Western medicine route and have surgery and go go this route of having like part of my body cut out? Or am I going to really dive in to alternative what we call alternative medicine which is more just like ancient wisdom and and see see what can happen for me there. So that really started my, my journey of diving deeper, and then it's just been over the years healing all of those things that I just mentioned, like I no longer have allergies, I weigh 20 Less pounds than I used to weigh, which is very strange. Like I just lost weight, without dieting, and unable to really know how to support my health and well being all all the time now, which is really the wisdom of Ayurveda. So yeah, and we can get into that a little bit more. But that's really how I came to, to learn more about Ayurveda and then also being a yoga teacher for a really long time people would approach me and say, like, I have this sleep issue or my stomach always hurts at this time of day or asking me all sorts of things. I'm like, I need to learn some more information and Ayurveda is the sister science to yoga, so it just made sense to branch out into that field of study.
Kind of right before I found Ayurveda, and I was really constipated. really inflamed, heavy, like just felt bloated all the time. I wasn't sleeping well. It was having chronic insomnia waking up at like 233 30 every morning. And I was in bad shape. And I just kept thinking, oh, I need to just get healthier. Well, what equals health? Eating salad, right? Like eat salad. Oh, so I was basically eating salad. And then I decided to, you know, do a raw diet I tried out being paleo, right, so I was trying all these things, and then come to find out when I finally found myself sitting in the office of the man who was my Aveda teacher, that I can't handle salad all the time. My constitution is not set up to eat a lot of raw food. And I didn't know that I just thought, Oh, well, everybody says if you want to be healthy, you need to eat salad and actually eating so much salad was constipating me. Whereas a lot of people would say that would be helpful, right. But for my constitution, it was not helpful. And so I needed to really recognise that that one size does not fit all that there's a really there's there's a lot more depth, understanding each of our, our journeys as an individual thing, that's not I'm not going to subscribe to a particular diet, or a particular exercise routine for everybody.
What is Ayurveda?
Yeah, let's do a little Ayurveda 101. So, Ayurveda as I mentioned is the sister science to yoga. So yoga, and Ayurveda originated together in India over 5000 years ago. So we say 5000 years because that's when we know there were written texts, but Ayurveda and yoga originated long before that. Yoga is more the spiritual path, even though in this country, we've kind of reduced it to a physical practice. It has eight limbs and it is a spiritual path. and Ayurveda is more the householder path of just like how do we how do we eat? What are the things that we do each day? How are we living in rhythm with nature with the natural world, and so it's really based on on aligning with nature, it's a five element system similar to Chinese medicine and Tibetan Medicine. And the elements in Ayurveda are air space, or ether, fire, water and earth. And everything comes back to an elemental nature, including our individual constitutions. And so what I like to describe iron beta as is, is, it's like having your own owner's manual. It's like when you buy a car, you get an owner's manual that says if this check engine light goes on, this is what it means or if this sound happens, this is what it means. Setting I Aveda really gives you the owner's manual for your particular body, mind and spirit combination, and allows you to work with those elements in your unique way. So with Ayurveda with these five elements, we work with constitutions or what's called OSHA or energies. And those energies are vada, which is made up of air and ether or Air and Space pitta, which is made up of fire and water and kapha, which is made up of earth and water. And all of us have all three of these energies in us, but just in different combinations. So it's kind of like we could think of it as like we're all different different things at a bakery, right like there's all everything has like flour and some sugar and water and in it but we different amounts makes a different outcome. So so each of us has a predominant, usually one predominant dosha Vata, Pitta or Kapha. And, but it's it's unique in terms of how much of each dosha we we have to create our individual constitution. And so there's a lot that we can understand in terms of living in alignment seasonally that is helpful for everybody regardless of their constant and then there's a lot that can help us like me learning that I can't eat salad year around all the time that is individual for a constitution.
What are the Constitutions / Qualities?
Yeah, so there's qualities or what are called Gunas in Sanskrit. And, and before I go into that, I just speaking of Sanskrit want to say that the word Ayurveda tells you what it is. And that Ayur means life and Veda means knowledge. So Ayurveda is the knowledge of life. Again, that owner's manual, which is just really cool to be like, here's a system that can help us understand. So Vata, Pitta and Kapha Vata is, as I mentioned, made up of air and space
Vatas
The quality of a Vata, which those Gunas that I was talking about are dry, light, mobile, subtle, cold and rough. Okay, so we could look at those qualities in terms of foods or weather patterns or issues in the body. When we look at it in terms of a constitution, there's the physical, the body, and then there's also the mind. So some ways in which vata could show up in a physical constitution. Vata predominant people tend to be thin and bony have popping joints, dry skin frizzier hair, more chiselled features, more delicate structure, and have trouble gaining weight. People that are more Vata predominant in their minds have more tendency towards fear and anxiety, overwhelm, and uncertainty when they're out of balance. When they're in balance, they can be more focused on creativity, spontaneity outside of the box thinkers. If you think about those elements of air and ether, it's like the expansive qualities of like being up in the air floating around having different perspectives, right. So Vatas can be really helpful to have around when you're doing creative problem solving. They're great at starting projects, they have lots and lots of ideas, but sometimes can have a hard time seeing things through.
Before I go on to Pitta, I do want to say that we right now in our modern world experience, a lot of vata imbalance in terms of the anxiety overwhelm, things like that. Just because you might experience those things doesn't mean that that's your, your property, which is your basement institution, it simply means that that's an area where you're out of balance. And we live in such a Vata dominant world right now, which is all about multitasking, and doing more and more and more and more having lots of sensory input. It's overwhelming to the nervous system. So all of us could do well to do some vata calming probably regardless of our, of our base constitution. So shall I go ahead with Pitta and Kapha?
Pitta
So let me yeah, let me just touch on Pitta. So Pitta body types tends to be more of a medium builds, tend to show muscle can gain and lose weight pretty easily. tend to be more warm in nature, so they don't love lots of hot weather.
Like hot weather just makes people grumpy. So, and then in terms of the mental constitution with people that are more Pitta they tend to be out of balance competitive jealous more towards angry frustrated, more like heated if you say somebody has a hot temper, right, that's generally a Pitta reflection, but in the healthy range of the mental state for Pitta predominance, there's organisation and follow through structure drive focus, right so those pieces are can be really really helpful in terms of accomplishing things and also in terms of of consistency, you know, showing up follow through so so that is is really helpful for for pittas and we also live in a Pitta imbalanced world right now where we we make productivity king over everything else. And so we yeah, we jeopardise our health and wellness for for productivity.
Kapha
And then Kapha is made up of earth and water. And the Kapha body type tends to be a thicker build. So it doesn't mean necessarily that they're overweight, it simply just means that there's more mass there. And you might even notice, like if you go I used to do bodywork. So if I worked on like Kapha, predominant people I'd like go to lift their leg or their arm, and it would feel like it was made out of concrete, just like dense right? So that's like the, the body of a coffee person is just dense. kafirs tend to gain weight easily have more like moisture in their bodies, like naturally lubricated skin, they don't deal a whole lot with dry skin say they can tend towards less activity, like they naturally are not drawn towards being as active. Although they're really great at being active, they have really good energy sustainability. And in the mind, kapha shows up when it's out of balance as lethargy and stagnation, brain fog, but when it's in balance, it shows up as really grounded energy and the ability to be a spokesperson for like a peacemaker. And coming together of, of minds of ideas, and really loyal, thoughtful, loving energy is Kapha. And we need all the Kafo we can convert right now, in in our world. Unfortunately, the kafa body type is not what is idealised in our culture. And so a lot of Kaphas struggle with a lot of shame around not being able to look like Pittas or avodas. And so they're not out in the world like Tada, you need me, but we do need.
Aligning with the Four Seasons
Yeah, so with Ayurveda, each season has a predominant Inotia. And when you're in the season of your predominant Dota, you're going to need to be the most careful of, of eating well, and taking good care of yourself. So right now we're in the autumn season, and it is governed by vata, so the Air and Space elements, so it tends to be drier, more light, and windy. Overall, you know, doesn't mean there's not rainy days, but this time of year tends to be that way. So vata predominant, so I'm vada predominant. So during this time of year, I need to be way more on top of balancing with the wisdom of opposites. And this is how this gets at your previous question about what do we do? Right? When we realise we're, we're a little out of balance and the simple answer there is to balance with the wisdom of opposites. So I just gave you the example of this time of year has those qualities of vada cold dry, light, mobile, subtle and rough, right. So when we're thinking about food, we want to balance with the wisdom of opposites. So if there's if it's cold outside, we want to eat warm food. If it's dry, we want to bring in more moisture right so we add more beneficial fats to our diet or we have more soups and stews things like that. We want less rough food so dry you know dry and rough usually go together. So things like chips, crackers, toasts, things like that, we want to minimise that and eat more like cooked cooked foods. So whether that's soups and stews as I mentioned before or you know steaming vegetables instead of eating them raw things like that. So then Summertime is governed by pitta, which is the fire and water and Pitta predominant people are going to be more irritated in pizza season so they need to focus on cooling down so if we just think about you know, the qualities and pitches season are hot sharp, spreading light in in pity season, we want to cool things down it's the lightest time of the year we can do some nice like meditation or you know, use eye pillows to rest so we have a little more darkness right. So those those things go swimming in cold water, eat cooling foods, you don't want to be a Pitta eating spicy foods in summertime. Now all of us need to live in seasonal alignment, meaning that we need to eat in alignment with what is available in season in our environment. But we need to particularly Be careful if it's our predominant Inotia in that in that season. So then Kapha earth and water is spring, winter is divided in half and Ayurveda. So the first part of winter flows from fall into winter vada season and then the second part of winter is Kapha flowing into spring. So there it's like the cloudy, cool, wet, sticky qualities of spring you can think about mud. And so how do we balance that out we want to do more drying foods there so more stringent foods and also bring in the warmth. So springtime is when you can have the most spice in your diet you want to help rekindle your digestive fire in the springtime too after coming through the winter. bringing in more lightness more activity into your days is the spring comes on and that late winter springtime.
And what's interesting is the Ayurveda has known for 1000s of years, that the microbiome in the gut that your gut health is what really determines your overall health, the strength of your immune system, your hormonal balance, how you age, I mean, there's so many things, but iron beta has known that for 1000s of years that everything starts in the gut. And your Vita focuses a lot on digestion. So we look at if the digestion is not healthy, nothing else is going to be healthy. And if it's not corrected, you're on the path to dis ease, to get off the path of ease into experiencing us. And, and we need to rely on eating seasonally to have the gut biome that is supportive for our health, actually eating strawberries in November, doesn't support us in the way that eating fresh strawberries in June or July does, right. And so especially eating in the context of your local macro biome, one of the things that I talk about in my course, is eating local weeds, right, like what we call weeds. But there are plants that grow wild that are way more nutritive than anything you could buy in the grocery store. And they're from your local environment, which means they also have the, the bugs, but little macro organisms that support health in alignment with the environment that you're living in. And most people don't want to think about that. They want to get food from the grocery store and wash it off really well, you know, but there's a lot to be said for eating dandelions in the spring, and nettles through the summer, and personally saline. And you know, there's plants that grow wild that are actually here to heal us to be food as medicine, if we are willing to interact with them.
Do We Need to Make Adjustments when Travelling?
So the trick there is to to be where you are, right? If you put yourself if you're, you know, in the middle of winter in the UK, and then you fly to Costa Rica for a couple of weeks in January or something, you need a few days to adjust. So you're going to kind of like ease into you're not going to get off the plane and be like tropical fruit galore, right. Because that's not what you're eating. But as you're there, you know, take a couple days, eat some more grounding food that you've been used to eating in the winter, hopefully, you've been eating, you know, more grounding food in the winter is good to eat root vegetables, winter squashes a little more grain in the winter animal protein if you eat that. And then if you were to go somewhere tropical, you know, give yourself a couple days eat more like rice and beans or whatever, and then go to, you know, the lighter fish in the tropical fruit and the fresh vegetables. But being where you are is the trick, you know.
When to Eat according to Ayurveda
We look at the doshic clock. So just like there's doses that govern seasons, there's doses that govern different times of the day. And so how how you eat It really depends too on your, your constitution. When you look at the doshic clock pits a time falls. So remember, Pitta is governed by fire and water pits a time falls between 10am and 2pm. Western medicine shows us okay modern medical research shows us that that is the time when our bio production is the strongest. It's also when the solar energy is the strongest right when the sun is highest in the sky. And that time of day, is when you can make the best use of your food. So tip number one for today is to make your biggest meal lunch and to have your most nourishing meal be lunch. Now, depending on your constitution, if you are more vata predominant, you definitely need to eat three if not, sometimes four meals a day. But that middle of the day meal between 10 and two needs to be the biggest. It's really important, especially for vata, because if you don't eat a nourishing lunch, you get all whacked out later in the day, super overwhelmed and ungrounded. Pitta predominance generally does well with three meals a day, on a regular schedule is helpful for everybody. And still lunch being the biggest meal Kapha predominant people generally do well with two meals a day, although initially they won't want to hear you say that. But two meals a day, the first meal of the day being the largest meal between that 10am and 2pm time. So coffees would wait a little bit longer, and eat their largest meal first and then have a smaller, lighter meal later in the day, like for four or 5pm. What's interesting is that this aligns really well with intermittent fasting or what we call rhythmic eating. Yes, so this is popular now too. And people say I'm an intermittent faster, what they don't realise is they might choose a feeding and fasting window, say I fast for 16 hours and feed for eight hours. But they don't recognise the importance of when those eight hours fall. So some people say like, I've worked, I've had some clients that say, you know, they come to work with me. And they're like, I don't know why I'm not losing weight. I'm intermittent fasting. And I say when is your eating window, and they say between noon and 8pm. So if they're eating later, most popular, all right? I think so. And it's actually very detrimental. Because if you're eating later in the day, and a lot of people tend to focus on their evening meal as their largest meal of the day, the body can't make good use of that intake. So you're going to bed later, because you ate later, you're also going to bed with undigested food in your stomach. And then that sets you up for all sorts of imbalances to start with poor sleep, poor energy the next day brain fog, but over time, it manifests as auto immune disease, because your body builds up what we call AAMA or undigested food stuff toxins in the digestive tract. And remember, the digestive tract is the seat of your health. So over time, you're just wearing down your ability to be healthy from eating late in the day.
Ayurveda Super Foods
I wouldn't say that the West has been co opting aspects of Ayurveda as superfoods. And that the more accurate answer is, it really depends on who, who you're working with. It's, you know, one person's medicine is another person's poison. So it's really important to understand your constitution and what your particular needs are, in terms of if you're healing from any sort of imbalance or disease, illness diagnosis, you're going to need different things. If you are, if you're tuning into your life stage, right? We need different things as children or as adults or specifically for women post menopause, we need different things. Some things that have been co opted as superfoods are Ashwagandha is a very popular herb. That is an adaptogen that can be really helpful for a lot of people, but it's not for everybody.
The turmeric part of turmeric lattes could be [good] well, not even for everybody, but for most people, but the latte part is not necessarily good for everybody. Actually, one interesting fact in terms of coffee is that coffee constitutions are really the best constitution To be drinking coffee, Pitta and vadas really should not be imbibing caffeine very frequently, which probably lots of people are going to be very upset to hear, but it's it's too much for the nervous system. But there are really there's, there's a medicinal jam called Chauvin Prakash that is very helpful, especially this time of year is we're going into the colder time we make Chauvin fresh tea for our kids, where we just heat up boiling water, stir and some of the jam and it dissolves. And then we add a little bit of nut milk or oat milk to that for for the kids and they love it. And it's really supportive for the immune system. So that's got a lot of different herbs in it. In general, eating in season and eating locally will be your superfoods.
Key Takeaways
Here are Hannah’s three actionable steps for you:
Eat seasonally.
Find out what is growing, where you live right now and eat thatEat your largest meal in the middle of the day.
Eat your last meal of the day before 6pm.
Have an earlier lighter dinner and then close your kitchen. And then use that evening time for self care or connecting with other people. tidying your home, really setting yourself up for an awesome day tomorrow and see what happens.
The One Food that Takes You To Your Happy Place
It's strawberries. And it's because I was born in the springtime and strawberries were what I had for my birthday every year. I'd get strawberries it would be like the first batch of local strawberries would be ready for my birthday. So that's what I immediately think of.
