Have you ever asked yourself why you prefer stews in the winter and salads in the summer?

We experience four different seasons in our latitudes: spring, summer, autumn, and winter.

All seasons place other demands on our bodies, making us behave differently and feel differently. Ayurveda explains brilliantly why this is the case and how we can harness each season’s strength to stay healthy throughout the year.

A simple introduction to Ayurveda

Ayurveda doesn’t need to be complicated. Let’s look at its core principles.

The universe comprises five elements: space, air, fire, water, & earth. Each element has specific qualities:

Space is cold, vast, dry, light, and subtle.
Air is cold, dry, mobile, rough, light, and subtle.
Fire is hot, sharp, light, spreading, and slightly oily.
Water is cool, smooth, heavy, liquid, and soft.
Earth is cold, heavy, slow, slimy, oily, and steady.

2. These elements, with their qualities, form the base for the doshas, the biodynamic energies in the body.

Space and air elements form Vata dosha
Fire and water elements form Pitta dosha
Earth and water element form Kapha dosha

And, of course, with their respective qualities. These biodynamic energies are present inside our bodies and outside throughout nature.

3. They filter into the days and divide them into slots of 4 hours during which the different doshas with their qualities are present:

2.00 – 6.00 am and pm Vata dosha is present.
6.00 – 10.00 am and pm Kapha dosha is present.
10.00 – 2.00 am and pm Pitta dosha is present.

4. The same also applies to the seasons:

Vata dosha governs mid-autumn to mid-winter.

Kapha dosha governs late winter until mid-spring.

Pitta dosha governs late spring until early autumn.

(Again, with their respective qualities).

5. There is one other fundamental principle in Ayurveda that we need to observe:

We need to balance with the opposite quality.

How does this apply to our day-to-day life?

For example, if it is cold in the winter, we need to eat and drink warm food and drinks, plus wear warm clothes to balance the cold quality.

Should we eat cold food and drink cold drinks, we increase the cold quality in our bodies. In return, this leads to Vata-specific imbalances, which are feeling bloated, gassy, and constipated; we can experience stiffness in the joints, random aches and pains throughout the body, and lower back issues, just to name a few.

How Ayurveda helps us?

Ayurveda is a universal science; it is seasonal, local, and applicable wherever we live. And wherever we are, nature provides the food we need.

Here is the mind-blowing thing:

Nature provides precisely the food that we need to eat to stay balanced with her seasonal harvests!

Yes, let’s repeat it in case you think you’ve misheard: The seasonal harvests where you live right now provide the food you need throughout the different seasons to stay balanced.

Isn’t that absolutely ingenious?

Before I carry on, let me give you another piece of relevant information regarding the doshas and the seasons. Ayurveda distinguishes between 6 tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, pungent, and astringent.

And you probably guess what comes next; the elements create the base for the different tastes as well:

Sweet – earth & water.
Sour – fire & earth.
Salty – water & fire.
Bitter – air & ether.
Pungent – fire & air.
Astringent – air & earth.

We balance the qualities of the seasons by introducing opposite quality tastes.

How does this work in the Seasons?

Spring is governed by Kapha dosha, the earth and water elements. Now we look back to the principle of applying the opposite principle to stay balanced. For Kapha, the opposite/balancing tastes are bitter, pungent, and astringent, as its own/imbalancing tastes are sweet, sour and salty taste.

During the summer, which is governed by Pitta dosha, fire and water elements, the same/imbalancing tastes, so the ones to avoid, are sour, salty and pungent. The opposites are needed to balance sweet, bitter, and astringent.

Autumn and winter are Vata dosha, space and air elements. Its own, to avoid, tastes are bitter, pungent, and astringent. The opposites, to favour, are sweet, salty, and sour.

Returning to nature’s harvests, in the spring, the first edible plants are nettles, dandelions, and rockets. They are all bitter in taste, just what we need. The crop is sparse, which benefits us as we need to let go of the additional weight, we put on during the nourishing winter months.

The summer harvest offers an abundance of berries, juicy, soft fruits, cucumbers, leafy green veg, salads, asparagus, and zucchini, just to name a few, to keep us cool and hydrated.

Likewise, in the autumn, we have sweet apples, bears, grapes, the main grains, potatoes, and sweet and dense root vegetables to make tasty stews balancing the light and dry qualities of the autumn and winter.

Transitioning the Seasons

As seen above, with the seasons, the tastes change too, leaving our digestion the most vulnerable; we need to change from one set of tastes and food to something different. Temperatures fall or rise, and it gets more windy, dry, or damp.

Ayurveda has identified these transitional times as the ones when we need to eat light or cleanse the body to free up energy for the change, free up energy for the cleanse and digest and eliminate Ama, toxins, half-digested food which we have accumulated in the body.

In particular, the winter/spring change is the most important for us. We must nourish our bodies during the autumn/winter season to create resilience against the cold. Sometimes might nourish more than needed, and we might move less through the cold and dark months, resulting in a few pounds more than planned. So spring is the time to shed the excess weight and cleanse our body of Ama.

During these transitional times, we stay light and eat food that our body can digest easily, such as rice, dal, and leafy green vegetables. We sip hot water throughout the day, drink ginger-lemon tea (ginger helps to digest Ama, and the lemon helps to flush it out), and stay clear of alcohol, caffeine, meat, cake, chocolate, you know, the culprits.

As mentioned above, these days of eating easy-to-digest and nourishing food, vegetables that help to clear the system, spices to stimulate the digestive fire and help to digest the toxins.

Ayurveda is clear in its recommendations and why. Understanding and acting on these basic principles help us stay healthy and bounce back faster.

Conclusion

This is the ayurvedic way to stay healthy with local seasonal food. Balance with the opposite tastes.

Stay healthy and enjoy your life to the fullest.

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