I thought this was an appropriate time to talk about immunity, especially since many of ya'll have asked me how to build strong immunity with Ayurveda in the past week or so... ;)

So let's do it! Below is an overview of 'Bringing Ayurveda to Life' podcast episode #36.

First, you have to understand what immunity is and how immunity is created, according to Ayurveda.

Below is an excerpt from my book In Your Elements. 

In Ayurveda, our immunity is called ojas (OH-jus). Ojas is the essential energy of our vitality, immunity, strength, luster and health. Ojas is the pure essence of all bodily tissues. Which means that after all the tissues in the body have gone through their transformative digestive processes, ojas is what is left. Ojas is our immunity and responsible for reproduction and creation. We only have a tiny bit, a few drops, and it lives in the heart. People with good ojas rarely get sick and often avoid even the most contagious office bugs.

When ojas is low, we feel physi...

Today, we are going to answer the question, "Why am I pooping sad little balls?"

Yes, because you ask me these things...Ya'll have mentioned pooping pellets, rabbit poop or pooping little deer poops or whatever you want to call it. In any case, the poop is coming out in hard little balls, and it's making you sad.

Well, let's make sure that you've got some tools to keep you pooping happy.

So, don't be sad, here's 5 things to help your sad poop balls:

1. More oils. These dry, little, pellet ball poops are happening because it points to dryness and lightness in the body. Right now, they're staying all up in there because they are too dry, too light.

If there is dryness and a lightness, Ayurveda uses the opposite qualities to balance, so then you need heaviness and unctuousness (oiliness) to help pull the poops down and out.

To help, begin adding oils to your diet whether drizzling olive oil over pasta, dipping bread in it, or sautéing veggies in it. However you like, bring in mor...

Agni, in Ayurveda is our digestive fire and when it functions properly, we have optimal digestion and optimal health. However, all digestion is not created equal! Depending on your dosha, you may have variable agni (vishama), overly hot agni (teekshna), or low agni (manda.

In the video, I give ayurvedic digestion tips for each one of the 4 agni types. Since each agni, has their own characteristics, I go over digestive problems and solutions for each one.

So whether you have variable digestion, fast digestion, or very slow digestion, don’t freak out. It may just be the way you are made! Therefore, it’s good to know to balance your digestion by way of Ayurveda.

Let me know what you think in the comments below!

Keep bringing Ayurveda to life!

If you like these, join me Live on Fridays at 11 am PST.

What does Ayurveda say about hunger?

Ever wonder if we are supposed to feel hungry? Like what if you feel hungry all the time? Or what if you never feel hungry at all? How hungry should we feel?

Sometimes we're taught that we're actually not ever supposed to feel hunger so we should eat five to six meals a day to avoid getting hungry.

Years back I saw a nutritionist and was told to eat five or six meals a day to never get hungry. And what happened? I gained some pounds within two weeks! My pants were tight and everything was tight. I felt heavy. I felt just really overall kind of awful. I knew it wasn't working for me.

It wasn't until I discovered Ayurveda that I figured out why eating all those small meals left me feeling so terrible.

So, what does Ayurveda say about hunger? It is good to feel hungry! Yay!

There are three guidelines about hunger.

1. It is a signal from our digestive fire that the previous food has been d...

How many of you get tummy troubles from time to time? It can be such a bummer! But I have help :) 

First of all, there are a lot of different kinds of tummy troubles including gassies, bloaties, crampies, loose poops and stuck poops. But what they all have in common is that agni, our digestive fire, is not working properly.

I have three remedies to share with you that may fix the problem in a pinch and work to increase agni's strength overall.

But before we get into it, please know that in Ayurveda, one size does not fit all. For this reason, I usually don't share remedies because if the wrong person with the wrong problem tries the wrong remedy, Ayurveda will not work and/or they could have wrong/worse effects.

Keeping that in mind, I'll be a little bit general, but overall, we want to make sure that agni digestive fire is working properly. When our digestive fire is working we, for the most part, are really dang healthy. So it's super important.

In addition to the three remedies, ...

photo credit: This is my daughter Alella when she was teeny. We stuck a mustachio on her and...photoshoot! We were sleep deprived and slap happy. She has a pitta tongue with a wee bit of milk on it :) 

Below is an excerpt from my book In Your Elements. Get your copy on Amazon! 

Our entire digestive system is reflected on the tongue.

If you didn't know what your tongue says about you, well, I'm gonna share! Our tongue tells us a nifty story, we just have to know what to look for. 

A simple practice: Every morning, first thing, check your tongue. It will most likely have a little coating on it, so if you have a tongue scraper, scrape it a few times. Look again. If it is pink, that's a great sign. If it is white you may have ama, which is toxins or undigested food stuffs. 

Come along and let's learn what other things Ayurveda says about our tongue!

Besides a white coating, there are other things we can look for on our tongue. If there is redness, it can indicate that there is too ...

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Some of the biggest challenges my clients and students have is figuring out their food.

I know that a lot of you get confused. "Should I be eating this? What's good for me?" We go looking for online articles for answers. We go looking for online videos. We try and make all the cool recipes that people are making and sometimes our digestion ends up funky. Sometimes our minds end up feeling funky about that too because we're like, "What the heck? I don't even really know what I should be eating for me." 

I'm going to give you three ways to not overthink your food so that you can feel a little bit more empowered in this area.

3 ways to simplify your food.

The first thing is so simple. You're going to be like, "Duh," but it really is. 

1) Eat what works for you.

Write down, grab a piece of paper and a pen if you have it handy or just think in your mind. What foods feel really good in...

 Alright, you guys. I'm going to tell you something, but only because I think you can handle it.  And I would rather you hear it from me, than hear it from one of your friends who doesn't have the correct information.

I will tell you on one condition and that is, you have to promise not to abuse it. If I give you an inch, don't take a mile. Don't get all willy nilly excited and tell thousands of your friends, "MonicaB said *hiccup* I could!"

Do you promise? Pinkie swear? Ok then, here we go. In today's Ayurvedic lesson, we need to talk about, alcohol.

Mind, body and...spirits! 

In Ayurveda, there is something called draksha. Draksha is medicated wine used for a variety of remedies including blood, liver, skin, and digestion problems to name a few. As we know, alcohol is absorbed very quickly into the blood stream. So, Ayurveda puts the herbs into the wine, which are then carried directly to the blood and dispersed where the herbs are most needed.

How smart is that! The wine serves...

Hey Monica B, I'm trying to breakfast easy, so I'm trying not to eat yogurt. Is non-dairy yogurt okay to eat?

In answering her question, I'd like to address two things. One, why Ayurveda does not recommend yogurt. Two, why "substitutey" foods are not a good idea.

According to Ayurveda, yogurt is not beneficial to anybody.

Yogurt is really not the best thing for our digestion and can cause problems. Why?

Because yogurt digests too sour and heating for pitta. It is too sour, goopy , heavy and cold for kapha. And it is too cold for vata, it's like putting their digestive fire under a snow pack. It's just too darn cold.

You might be thinking, "Sour? No, it's sweet." No, it's sour. It only tastes sweet because they have to add a ton of sugar to it because it's naturally really dang sour :) That amount of sour taste along with the cold and goopy qualities imbalances all 3 doshas. It completely dampens/extinguishes digestive fire and clogs channels. 

She knew all this, which is why...

You might look at the photo above and think "Mm! Yummy and healthy!"

I look at that photo and think "Ugk. Digestion nightmare." 

Food provides the basic building blocks for our entire physical and mental bodies. We feel better or worse depending on the quality of foods we've been eating. And because we are no dummies, we know that foods like fresh veggies and fruits are better nourishment for us than a pan of brownies. (I'm not here to take away your fun. In moderation, sweeties are to be enjoyed and savored. But if you eat the whole pan...yeah, that's not good.)

So! Whatever we put in our mouths is either proper nourishment or not. And we usually know the difference between the two.

But here's something you probably don't know.

In Ayurveda, there are certain food combinations that should be avoided. While an occasional brownie won't hurt you, the consistent practice of incompatible foods probably will imbalance your digestion (gas, bloating, heartburn, diarrhea, constipation, etc...