Floracopeia, Inc The Complete Course of Ayurveda Jai Dev Singh Module 5

Transcription

1 Floracopeia, Inc The Complete Course of Ayurveda Jai Dev Singh Module 5 This is a presentation from Floracopeia Aromatic Treasures and MedicineCrow.com, the grassroots healthcare network. We are officially now past the halfway point and this is the part of the course where we really move from or at least begin to move from the philosophical to the application of philosophy. For the first four modules we really spent most of the time building our foundation, building the understanding, building the context of the philosophy and to me that s really essential and perhaps most important because it is that expansive context that brought into the philosophical understanding that gives the energy to actually to do the things that are important to do and when that s understood well it has real meaning then that actually can feed into giving an energy and will power in order to do the things that are going to make the real difference in the life. For me personally if I don t have a good enough and a deep enough rational, something is not connecting to me in my soul then I m probably not going to do whatever that is long term, I may do it for a little while because it s supposedly good for me and I might hear that this food does this and this and I might take it for a little while and then for some reason or another I stop doing it along the way. But when something has actually impacted me at a deep level and I experience it as the soul, those are the things that I found I do long term and they never go away. That s what I hope that we have begun to do with the first half of this course and that we ll continue to do here. At the same time now we re going to actually take the substance of what we ve built so far and look at how to use it in order to actually make a positive impact on our lives. For instance, the last module we discussed the dhatus, the tissue layers of the body, and that is really the way we built the substratum for the mind and for the psyche. How to create a physical body that is well supportive for a healthy mind so that the sense of self, the unconscious and the subconscious sense of self, the Ahamkar has a well supported healthy positioning in order to move from. If there is not a sense of self that has an identity that is conducive for higher awareness, that s conducive for having a confidence, for having the energy, for having the stature, for having a real sense of real fulfillment in life, then there is little chance that we re going to experience a real long lasting happiness. That s really the deeper beauty of Ayurveda is that when we talk about food, and we talk about eating, we re really talking about transforming what s not you into what is you and when we digest anything, whether it be physical or whether it be psychological, we re actually taking what is in our external environment and turning it into ourselves and the key principle is that it will continue to be the key principle for the rest of this course and that is digestion. It s not just digestion in the typical sense of your physical body, of your digestive system, but it s you being able to digest, ingest whatever it is your ingesting, extract out what is good in that and eliminate out what is not good in that because in every situation, with every substance, with every food, with every herb, with every person, with every relationship, and on and on, there are things that are nutritive, that are positive, that are useful and then there are things are negative, that are toxic, that are not useful and that s across the board. Certain foods have far more nutrients than they have that need to be eliminated whereas other foods have far more toxicity and far less nutrients. If you take white sugar for instance, you re refined, standardized middle American white sugars, I believe it s the only actual food that has calories with actually no nutrients. 1

2 And so sugar has a bad rap but sugar itself is not a bad thing as we ll see today, sugar can be very medicinal which I m sure many of you are happy to hear. However, we need to put that in context and that s what today s class is about. When you look back at the seven dhatus and the Agni and ojas in that chart we used last week, that s something you can meditate on and it s something that between that chart and The Journey of Consciousness into Form, the first handout, just on those two handouts you have incredible amount of information and it s not just intellectual information as if you re reading a book, these are deep concepts that sometimes take a long time to digest, no pun intended. But you can go into these charts and you can meditate on them and you can re-listen to these classes over and over and the way you will understand them a year from now is going to be profoundly different than how you re understanding them now. That s the nature of these teachings that s why it s of Veda, meaning it s of infinite truth, that s what the Veda is, its infinite truth, it has no time and space to it. That s why Ayurveda is as relevant today as it was 5,000 years ago. It s not a trend; it s not a fad because it s the laws of nature, and its how the creator thinks. Einstein said that I want to know how God thinks everything else is just the details. So the Veda, the teachings of Ayurveda and the teachings of Yoga, to me it s how God thinks. That may be a bold statement to make for some of you but for me it s not a bold statement at all. It just makes complete sense. In its purest form, there are many people who take the teachings of Ayurveda and Yoga and dilute them and we couldn t make that statement, but in their purest form, that what these teachings are, the same teachings of the Kabala, it s the same teachings of the mystical sects of Christianity, it s the same teaching of mystical Islam, the same teachings of all the indigenous cultures around the world, it s the same stuff and in this case Ayurveda has been preserved and influenced by the culture of India so it comes out of that particular context and it s a very profound and wonderful and glorious context, one that I resonate with very much. I think maybe the gift of India to the entire world is Yoga and Ayurveda because although these sciences in one form or another have been in really every culture, in every spirituality around the planet, they were very well preserved in India. Even through all of India s fazes as the British took over and before that as the tyrannical Muslim Empires took over India, these sciences were still preserved in the mountains from the Gurus to their disciples and from the Guru Teachers to student and teacher to student and teacher to student. Really what you re learning here is a tradition and it s a lineage that is really unbroken for thousands of years. That s an important thing and a powerful thing to acknowledge and that s one reason why I particularity like this form of teaching. As wonderful as it would be to be in everyone s presence, at least being able to speak through an audio medium is a powerful way to transmit the teachings because it goes beyond just the written word and that s why all of the sacred traditions of the world have traditionally been oral traditions. Not because they couldn t write things down, but because there is an energy that passes through the sound current that can t pass through the written word. Written word is important as well and very useful and we like the combination of everything, but being able to do it through voice, the teacher can then project something that then can digest in ways that s just simply not possible otherwise, and that s the power of sound, and that s one of the secrets that the Yogis know with mantra and one of the reasons why we chant mantra is because we re developing our own inner sound currents so we have the capacity to use our sound current through the medium of our words in ways that communicate bigger ideas and so that people can digest them and people can understand them. 2

3 As Yogis, once we re engaged in these sciences of Ayurveda and Yoga and using mantras and using pranayama and using the asanas. What we re really doing is building this body vehicle as kind of a pranic matrix, that s why you re referred to as the pranee, the human being is referred to as the pranee, the carrier of the prana and the pranayama is the manipulation of the prana so the pranayama is not just the breathing exercises, the pranayama is chanting, this could be pranayama right now as I m talking to you, I m manipulating my prana. So pranayama is the movement or the conscious manipulation of the prana, the Life Force intelligence. As we re going into these practices, and as we re engaging them and growing with them and learning them we re really developing the body vehicle as this container for the prana and creating a matrix of energy so that you can actually be more effective in your life. It may sound esoteric when I talk with words like matrix of prana and so forth but what it really means is that you can communicate with your wife or your husband better. Or you can raise your child more effectively, you can transmit ideas to them, concepts to them because you have the power over your sound current, you have the power of your prana. I could raise my voice to teach my son something and if I m doing that out of anger he s not going to learn anything except how to be angry when he gets older. But I could raise my voice and say the same words, and if I m doing it consciously and not being driven by my emotions, but I m doing it with a purpose, with an intention then it makes sense then there is a totally different effect. Back to really teaching numero uno that I emphasized in the Life Force Formula is that the context of what you do is always more important than the content of what you re doing. There s a lot of Ayurvedic stuff out there that I really have little interest in because I m not interested in the context of what they re teaching, of the context that their teaching from or even the context of who they are as people. I want to make sure that whatever it is I m learning, whether it s Ayurveda or whether it s business that I m learning from a person or people who have the energy that are going to be able to teach from context and context is always the most powerful when that person is living whatever it is that they re teaching and so there s no way to transmit bigger ideas such as that is necessary when you re teaching something like Ayurveda and Yoga unless you have some level of experience of those ideas and experience is the catalyst that turns your intellectual knowledge into real wisdom. Wisdom is based on experience; knowledge is based on the intellect, solely the intellect. I could read a book about Ayurveda and know something and that s a good start but then if I put it into practice and begin to experience it then I can tell somebody about that and that energy will come through, same thing with Yoga or anything else. But even my experiences and many other people who have taken this course experiences, even through the listening to the sound and listening to these audio classes and meditating on it and just learning and engaging it with your consciousness then you already begin to get experiential knowledge of the teachings just through your work so to speak of actually taking the course, of listening to it and of opening your mind and going into it and allowing it to affect you, it gets into your consciousness and its even going to digest more over time and so that is the opening spiel before we move into our new topics which flows very beautifully right from the last topic because when we talk about dhatus again, the tissue layers of the body, rasa, rakta, mamsa, medas, asthi, majja, and shukra or the plasma and the lymph and the blood, muscle, fat, bones, nerves and then the reproductive fluids and then all culminating into the alchemical product of the ojas, the vitality, the container for your prana. So ojas can be thought of as kind of your context for your prana because you can generate a whole lot of prana in the body, it s not very hard to do so, but if you don t have a strong nervous system and if you don t have a good amount of ojas to contain that prana it s going to do very little for you in the long run because it s like running a bunch of Water through a hole, through a bucket with a whole bunch of holes in the bottom, it s just going to come out the other side which again is why Yogi Bhajan said, If you have nine holes, you re holy. People always called him a holy man, your holiness. 3

4 He said, I believe if you have nine holes, you re holy. You have two eyes, you have two nostrils, you have a mouth, your have two ear holes, you have the rectum, sex organs and so forth and so you have nine holes. But what really makes you holy is when you have consciousness and control over what s going in and out of those nine holes. That s what the science of Ayurveda is all about and I reiterate I like to think of Ayurveda as the system of pranic management. The prana is the energy of your life, that is what you have, that is really you re only asset, and that is your prana. You came into the world, you came out of your Mother s womb and you took a breath in and then when it s time for you to go you re going to exhale. The question is, What are you going to do in between? In your movement from womb to tomb as they say and so in between that first inhale and that last exhale you have so many breaths. The question is, what do you do with it and that s your prana and that s what I mean by saying that s truly your only asset. You gain money via your prana, you gain relationships via your prana, you gain health via your prana and so that is really all you have and so it makes a lot of sense to me to put attention on how do I cultivate that prana, how do I use it wisely, how do I strengthen it and how do I have as much control over it as possible. The difference between a healthy individual and a sick individual is the healthy individual has a control over their Life Force, has more control over their Life Force. A truly healthy individual, if you were to take it as the healthiest individual from the primordial cause of disease is the one who s remembered their true nature. We re talking about a Buddha or Christ or Krishna or a Nanak, that s the real state of real health when the unconscious part of the individual has now become conscious. And that is why Yogis, extremely advanced Yogis can do things like stop their heart because they ve cleared out their subconscious to the degree that they have complete control now even over their autonomic unconscious processes. That s not a typical thing that you see and that s not exactly what we re striving for here but it s an important thing to know because really what this process is about is making as much of the unconscious conscious and that happens through emptying the subconscious and emptying the subconscious happens through meditation and yoga and chanting and even using herbs, using the diet and using the herbs in the diet with consciousness, which is what today is about. What this class is about is about what we refer to in Ayurveda as dravya guna. Dravya guna is often translated as Ayurvedic Pharmacology. What it really means is the word dravya could be translated as a substance but if we were to break it down literally it means that which holds together. That which holds together and what it s referring to is any substance that is holding together the Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Space elements. So dravya is anything that holds together the five tattvas, the five great elements, the Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Ether and as we know everything in nature is a combination of these five elements. Every food, every herb is a combination of the five elements in different proportions just like every human being is a combination of these five tattvas in different proportions. So dravya is the substance that holds together. It s a beautiful translation and then guna means the tributes or the qualities of something. So dravya guna is the quality of the substance, so pharmacology but an important thing to bring out of the gunas is the qualities of the substance is that as I ve stated before, Ayurveda is not a bio-chemical science, it s a bio-qualitative science and that means it s much easier to understand, you don t have a PhD or even an High School Diploma in order to understand it nor do you have to go to school at all because anyone can understand Earth, Water, Fire, Air, and Space, my son can understand it. He s five and for example, I recently had a cold and I was going to make some food for him and for us one evening and I had caught a cold and he wanted something with a bunch of cheese like macaroni and cheese or something and I said well I can t make that for me because I ve already got a bunch of mucus and I don t think that would be a good idea. So actually the next day he said, Papa you should take something for your mucies. He calls it mucies. I said yes, you re probably right, I probably should and he said what can you take? He said spicy things? I said yes, you re right. Spicy things, but you can also take bitter things. 4

5 I said there are two types of things you can take when you have mucies, you can take spicy things or you can take bitter things and both of those do a good job getting rid of mucies. He said which one s better? I just said it depends and that s the answer to every question in Ayurveda is it depends, it depends on the person, it depends on the Prakriti, it depends on the vikriti, it depends on the time of the year, it depends on all of these different things, that s the art of it. He said, which one s better, I said it depends, he said which one s better for you? I said well in this case there is some green and yellow in my mucus and so really bitter things are better because I explained to him when there is greenish or yellowish mucus that means there is some infection or in Ayurvedic language it s Pitta. There is heat involved so if you re using spicy things you are going to be successful in getting rid of some of the mucus but you re also going to be increasing the heat in the body, which is going to exacerbate some of the problems. Bitter things should be more accentuated when there is a lot of mucus with Pitta involved. That s a very simple thing to understand. I could totally see that he s totally got it. Not difficult to understand. That s why I m so passionate about this stuff because this should have been taught to me in school. I should have learned this in school instead I learned Algebra, I wouldn t use Algebra. To Algebra s defense, I m sure that Algebra is in some part of my brain, however, I didn t learn how to manage money in school and I didn t learn Ayurveda in school and I think those are two things among probably several others that should be in just every child s curriculum. Perhaps somebody listening will be able to help make that happen. So that is a little story that illustrates a point about this and that in this case a Pitta person like myself with a cold, with excessive mucus, which is Kapha, which is yellow and green meaning there is heat involved and so there is Pitta involved, I should instead of having a bunch of cayenne pepper to try to get rid of my cold I m going to use more things like golden seal or echinacea and then in combination with that I can also use pungent spices such as the ginger or the clove, however, I want to make sure I m using enough things that are cooling so that I decrease the Pitta enough while I m getting rid of the mucus and you re going to learn all about this here momentarily but that s a nice little way to start. With dravya guna, the full name actually for Ayurvedic Pharmacology, the traditional name would be dravya guna rasa karma, dravya guna rasa karma. That s not something you need to remember unless you want to. That s rasa like the rasa dhatu but the word rasa means many things. The word rasa means taste, the word rasa means melody, the word rasa means emotion, and the word rasa means comprehension, the word rasa means juice and I think as I ve mentioned in the previous modules that in Sanskrit the more meanings the word has, the more important that word is. Just like with the herbs, the more Sanskrit names an herb has, the more important that herb is or the more uses that it has because every Sanskrit name is illustrating or articulating one of it s different ways it can be used or it has different properties. That s one way when working with Ayurvedic herbs to understand how important is this herb is how many Sanskrit names does it have if you can find that information. The word rasa has many meanings, in this case it is meaning the taste but it s also meaning melody in the sense that every taste has an action on the body, every taste has an action on the mind, like a melody and then it means comprehension, every taste has an action on the intellect. In other words, every food, every herb, every medicine has an action on the body, has an action on the mind and has an action on the intellect. Every substance goes deep into the nervous system, releases certain neuropeptides, maintains your psycho neurological response and has some action on your body, your mind, and the intellect. It has some action on your endocrine system and then the word karma means action literally and so that s dravya guna, dravya is the substance that s holding these five elements. 5

6 You can think of every food, every plant, every mineral substance, every person is really a vessel that is containing the tattvas and the tattvas are what? It s the expression of prana on the physical plane. The word karma means action and it s referring to the action of each individual substance because depending on the quality or the proportions of that substance, the proportions of the elements within that substance is going to dictate what type of action has and we ll start with the rasa here. When we look at food and when we look at medicine and herbs, there are four different opportunities that a food or an herb has to make impact on your body, on your mind, on your consciousness. The first opportunity is the taste. The second opportunity is called the virya or the energy, does it heat up the body and does it cool down the body, does it dilate the channels, does it constrict the channels. The third opportunity is the vipaka meaning what is the long term effect of that system. It has an initial effect that s the rasa, the taste. Then it has the long term effect after it is digested initially and is now entered into the dhatu system. What is the impact of that substance as it moves through and is digested in through the seven layers of the dhatus? Does it have an anabolic strengthening effect or does it have a catabolic detoxifying effect? We re going to talk about this a lot here in just a little while. The last opportunity that any substance has to affect your organism is what s known as the prabhava and that s the special action of that particular substance. That is the pranic intelligence of that substance. So the tattvas, that proportion of the tattvas, tells us what is the virya, what is it s energy, what is the vipaka, is it building or is it decreasing? What it doesn t tell us is what the prabhava is and that s the special action. Does this particular herb have an affinity for the liver or for the pancreas or for the elimination system? Does this particular herb work on the channels of the mind or the subconscious? Does this particular food strengthen the sexual organs and so forth. So the prabhava is actually what most western herbalists and nutritionist focus on solely, without using that word, is this your digestive herb or is this your nervous system herb, or is this your sleep herb? It s all based on what is the special activity but in Ayurveda that s just one aspect and we also need to know what is the taste, what is the rasa, what is the virya, what is it s energy and what is it s vipaka, what is it s long term affect? Without understanding all aspects of that you have an incomplete system. That s the beauty of this and that s why when you know this and you understand this system, it doesn t matter if it s an Indian Ayurvedic herb or the dandelion grown in your back yard, you can access whatever that plant is, whatever that food is and be able to understand how it s going to affect your organism, just by tasting it. Don t go out and taste stuff you don t know but just by tasting it and that leads us into the six tastes and the six tastes you want to pull out your handout on the six tastes, the six tastes chart, and you can keep this handy for the duration of this class. It does a nice job of kind of breaking down the different parts of what we re going to be talking about. Each taste is an expression of the prana through the form of the specific elements. For instance, the sweet taste is a combination of Earth and Water. The sour taste is Earth and Fire, Salty is Fire and Water, Pungent is Fire and Air, Bitter is Air and Ether and Astringent is Earth and Air. We ll go through each one of these in detail but to begin with immediately with the knowledge that you already have from the first half of this course you can look at each taste and you can understand that the Sweet taste is Earth and Water. What else do you know that is Earth and Water? We call it Kapha, Kapha dosha. 6

7 We also know that the idea of maintaining good pranic health, good digestive health, good pranic flow in the body and the mind is to antidote whatever elements are excessive or decrease what s excessive and I know if I m a Pitta type person, I naturally already have a lot of Fire energy so I m most likely to be excessive in Fire because I already have a lot of it, therefore that is where the rational comes from in Ayurveda, that if you re a Pitta person you should eat a Pitta decreasing diet. Now I agree with that only to a certain extent but you ll have to wait until module six to get my take on that completely but the point I m making, you can look already at this chart from the six tastes and understand where we re going with this and where the real art of using food and herbs from the eyes of Ayurveda comes in and that is it s simple in concept but yet it takes time and skill and artistry. It s even more artistry than it is intelligence because the artistry comes in when preparing food or it comes in when you are combining herbs together that are going to be uniquely appropriate for you and your situation. The six tastes are going to be the foundation for the rest of this class and all of our food class as well. And as important to the extent that in a Tantric Tradition, it s said that there are three coverings. The three coverings are said to keep the human being from understanding or realizing their true nature, who they are? Those three coverings are the five elements, Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Ether from the context of the physical body, the three gunas from the context of the mind and then the six tastes from the context of the chemistry between the body and the mind. So again the three coverings that keep the human being from the awareness of the ultimate reality are the five elements from the context of the body, three gunas Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas, and really what we re talking about is Rajas and Tamas because they are the disease causing factors of the mind. Rajas is the energy of activity, Tamas is the energy of inertia or from as neutral context, Rajas is what initiates change, Tamas is what stabilizes previous activity. So they re not disease causing factors in and of themselves, but when either one of them like the doshas becomes excessive then they are the disease causing factors. The elements are not disease causing factors; the doshas are not disease causing factors unless they ve become excessive or deficient. So if you have excessive Rajas in the mind, excessive activity in the mind you re prone to more anxiety or anger and that s going to, whatever emotions become predominant, will be dictated by your Prakriti or vikriti. So the five elements, context of the body, three gunas, context of the mind, then, from the context of the chemistry between the body and the mind is the six tastes. That s how important these six tastes are. When a person consumes the proper amount of each taste for their particular constitution and or imbalance, the body responds with the production of healthy tissue and normal physiology. If there is too much or too little of any specific taste the body s going to respond with imbalances or disease. Every taste has both a positive and a negative function in both the body and the mind starting with the body. Let s start with the sweet taste and it is Earth and Water. Examples of the sweet taste of course are honey, licorice, maple syrup, but also rice, bread, most grains and most of your proteins are sweet in their tastes so we re not talking about just sugar, but many of the foods have a predominance of the sweet taste. Many of the herbs which we ll go into in the module seven, such as marshmallow, and slippery elm, shatavari, and comfrey have a sweet taste. Sweet is the most nourishing of all the tastes however it s the most difficult to digest. The sweet taste as I ve mentioned is a combination of Earth and Water and it is cooling in its virya, its energy and its Vipaka is sweet. I ll talk about the vipaka in a little while. 7

8 The thing to know about the sweet taste, positively speaking, is it tonifies the tissues. It s anabolic in nature, it promotes growth. It s important for people suffering from any kind of weakness or debility, any atrophy of any tissues, it nourishes the body and the mind, it relieves hunger and thirst, it provides hydration, stability and it builds ojas and however as I ve mentioned it is the most difficult of the tastes to digest because it s heavy, it s cold and it s unctuous so it s moist. Those are the opposite qualities of the Agni. Just like Kapha, it s heavy, cold and wet. Whenever you get confused, just come back to qualities, qualities, qualities. Heavy, cold and wet and therefore increases the Kapha dosha, it decreases the Pitta dosha and decreases the Vata dosha. The negative qualities of the sweet taste is obvious, it will cause obesity, it could cause high blood sugar, diabetes, parasites, Parasites feed off sweetness, sugar, lethargy. All of the excessive Kapha type things are the negative aspect of the sweet taste. You need to know the positive and you need to know the negative so you can have a rational and neutral understanding. If you have a rational, intelligent and neutral understanding of sweetness maybe you ll be less addictive to it. The other way you ll be less addictive to it is start using all the rest of the tastes. We re going to go throw this part fairly quickly because you can always reference your chart here and then I ll try to articulate further on how to make this stuff practical for you. Next is the sour taste and it is Earth and Fire. The sour taste is warm, heavy and also moist. The positive functions of the sour taste are it enkindles digestion. Just as you take a lemon or lime, even by saying the word lime you re digestive juices will start flowing. The sour taste also encourages the elimination of waste such as with amalaki and it invigorates the mind. The sour taste is less common in nature than the sweet taste but lemons, limes, most citrus fruits, hawthorn berries, rosehips, and fermented foods. Anything that s fermented has the sour taste to it, sauerkraut, pickles. Most of your digestive enzymes in the body are sour. The sour tastes are very important. The negative qualities of the sour taste are the excessive use of the sour tastes will cause burning indigestion. It will cause premature aging, it could cause hyperacidity. Next is the salty taste and it is Fire and Water. It is another addictive taste. You have a bag of salty potato chips next to you in the care and your hand will just keep going there, you can t control it. Salty is the heating. Sour is heating, salty is heating and sweet is cooling. These are the types of things you need engraved in your brain. Sweet is cooling, salty is heating, and sour is heating. Salty is heating just like you put the salt on the roads to melt the ice. It s mostly found of course in salts and mineral substances, not herbs or so much food except seaweed. So sea vegetables and salts and there is all kinds of salts. There is black salt and sea salt and there is actually in Ayurveda they define many different types of salts, all are important. Another name for salt is sarva rasa which means all tastes because one of the qualities of salt is it enhances all of the tastes. That s why if you make kitcheree, your mung beans and rice and forget to add the salt it doesn t taste very good does it? You add a little pinch of salt and everything comes to life and that s the psychological qualities of salt too is that it gives zest for life. It enhances the flavor of all of the tastes and it increases one s appetite, that s the beauty of salt. The thing about salt is only very little is needed. In small amounts it provides hydration, moisture, and gives life. The negative qualities of salt is that in large amounts it s the enemy of longevity, it decreases your tissues, it dries you up, creates high blood pressure, Water retention and as we know with our middle American high salt diet it creates all kinds of problems. 8

9 It dries, it weakens, it degenerates and as we know in real strong amounts, its emedic, it makes you vomit. In small amounts though it increases your digestion, it moisturizes and it brings out all of the other tastes. Without salt you ll go crazy and too much it will destroy you. So find the in between. How much do you need? It depends on who you are, Vata people need more, Kapha people need much less, Pitta people only need a little. Salt decreases Vata because it s moist and it s warm and it s heavy and Vata is cold and light and dry. Very simple, this could be a second grade subject in our schools. Then we have the Pitta dosha, it s hot already and it s oily already and salt increases the Pitta dosha and it increases Kapha, heavy, moist and cold. Does it mean that Kapha shouldn t use salt? No, it doesn t mean that at all. We re just talking about tattvas, we re just talking about elements or understanding the science of how to manipulate them. Everybody needs all of these yet in different proportions and they are going to need different things at different times of the year. Next is the pungent taste and it is Fire and Air. It is heating. It s actually the most heating of all the tastes. Examples of pungent is hot peppers, black pepper, chili pepper, jalapeno peppers, cayenne pepper, ginger, cloves, cinnamon has a pungency. That s the pungent tastes. When we talk about the Spicy things we are talking about the pungent tastes and that s one of the qualities, one of the beneficial uses of the pungent tastes is it s an expectorant, it removes phlegm from the body, it increases digestion, and it increases the appetite. Its diaphoretic meaning it causes sweating. Its vermicidal meaning that it kills parasites. Pungent taste obviously decreases the Kapha dosha because it s Fire and Air. The best taste for the Kapha dosha because it is hot, light, and dry and Kapha is cold, heavy, and moist, so pungent taste is the best for Kapha. For Vata it s okay but only in moderation because even though Vata benefits from it s heat because Vata is cold, pungent is very drying so if Vata uses too much pungency they will dry themselves up so they are helping themselves on one hand but they are exacerbating their dryness which is a negative so this is just the way to think about it. So does this mean not to take pungent, no it doesn t mean anything like this at all. Don t think in extremes. That s the key here, just don t think in extremes. You combine your hot pepper in your coconut sweet potato soup, the unctuousness of your coconut and sweet potato, heaviness, but then you ve got a little cayenne in there and black pepper and cinnamon and yum. The negative qualities of the pungent taste are the overuse of it will dry you up. It is the most drying of all of the tastes. It can cause ulcerations, inflammation, and hyperacidity, all of these things kept within context. That s the problem with our health food world and our herbs and it is this. If you look at the back of the product and it will tell you it will remove phlegm or increase your digestion, if it s a good herbal formula it s be safe to use. With that being said, if we re just looking at things based on their benefits we need to also know what the negative sides are because everything has a positive and a negative. The art of using fruits and herbs is to actually combine them together so you re increasing the positive aspects and you re decreasing any negative or potential negatives of it. Overuse of it will cause all of those things, the burning indigestion or drying of sexual secretions and decreasing ojas. A major point to take out of these six tastes is that you re either trying to build, strengthen, give yourself nutrition or you re trying to increase digestion. That s the only two things and some of the tastes such as the sweet taste is to build, the other tastes are to increase digestive capacity so you can build and that s the new stuff, the benefit of the pungent taste, the salty taste and the bitter taste and the astringent taste is that we cannot live on sweetness alone otherwise we would. That s why nature created all of the tastes because the human being needs all of them in order to have a healthy organism, even if we re talking about removing phlegm from the body or if your killing parasites, we re still talking about increasing the body s digestive capacity. 9

10 As we know, the real taskmaster of digestion is Ahamkar. That s why this is Ahamkar Medicine because Ahamkar is your ego, your ego sense of This is me and then your not me. Then when I m digesting something I m turning something that is not me into me. The Ahamkar is also the master also of your immune system because the immune systems job is to seek out and destroy anything that s not you but has infiltrated your system. That s why you want to have a healthy sense of self. On one hand you want to decrease the egotism, on the other hand you need to have a strong personality. This is one of the conundrums of human life. You can t destroy your ego because you re simultaneously destroying your sense of self and therefore your immunity and therefore your digestion, so we re not going to do that. But we re decreasing certain egotism when the Ahamkar is now running the show verses your pranic energy animating who you are verses the intelligence of the Mahat and Prakriti. The healthy individual is being animated by that intelligence so then the soul Purusha is then the expression of who you are, that s what s coming out through the eyes. When the ego is running the show then you get this kind of glaze over the eyes and just these is just an unconsciousness and this could be an individual who is speaking spiritual talk and doing spiritual things but the difference is that the prana isn t there. When we re talking about using the taste, using the food, and using medicine we could define food as that which gives nutrition and prana to the body. We could talk about medicine as that which increases the body s ability to digest. That s what this whole science is about, is you re trying to create an environment within your organism that is very good at digesting things. That means being able to assimilate nutrients and eliminate waste because you are what you eat. Whether it s psychically or physically, but more so, you are what you assimilate and you also are what you don t eliminate which is aama. Next is the bitter taste and it is Air and Ether. Dr. Watt s says bitter is better because bitter is the antagonist of the sweet taste. Sweet is Earth and Water and bitter is Air and Ether. So bitter is the coldest of the tastes. It is Vata so it increases the Vata, it s best for Pitta, it decreases Pitta and it s also good for the Kapha. It s very cooling. So bitter would be like your dark leafy greens and salad greens are bitter and then your herbs that are very bitter are ginseng, chaparral, goldenseal, echinacea, and chutneys which is a bitter Ayurvedic herb. The main thing about bitter herbs or bitter foods or bitter anything is they are detoxifying. They detoxify, they clean the blood and they tone the organism by restoring all of the tastes and that s the beauty of the bitter tastes. That s the one taste that is very much lacking in the American diet is bitter tastes. There is practically no bitter tastes except like the garnish on the side of your plate sometimes. Unless you live in the deep South where I grew up and you have some dark leafy greens and unfortunately they are cooked in fat back with bacon so that can ruin that for us. Bitters are better and it s a must that there should be some bitter in the diet. Almost everyone, no matter the person, there has always got to be some bitter depending on who you are will dictate how much and what kind. That s one thing I always like to say, I drink a cup of Brahmi tea every day, that s one way I get my bitters and that s a very nice way of getting bitters without increasing Vata too much. It decreases Pitta, it decreases Kapha and it s pretty neutral to Vata and its energy but it actually decreases Vata in it s affect on the nervous system because it strengthens the nervous system and calms down the mind. That s one way to do but this time of year, currently its spring, and bitters are extremely important so a little bit of dandelion tea every afternoon cleanse out the liver, clean out the blood, stimulate the lymphatic system. It s very important to at least having bitter greens with your meals. 10

11 The negative qualities of bitters are the overuse of bitters would be to increase in all types of Vata disorders, emaciation, headaches, tremors or stiffness or decreased sexual energy would be the overuse of bitters but I m going to talk a lot more about bitter especially once we get into the psychology of the six tastes. Last we have the astringent taste. Astringent is Air and Earth. Astringent has that taste that makes your mouth pucker. There are not a lot of foods that have a lot of predominance of astringency but some are pomegranate and if you took an unripe persimmon in your mouth that s the astringent taste, cilantro is an astringent taste, cranberries have an astringent taste. Herbs that have an astringent taste are hatitaki is the first one that comes to mind and triphala. If you ve ever had a little bit of hatitaki on your tongue you ll never forget it, its astringent and it s not very pleasant but it s extremely powerful medicine to the extent that it s the hatitaki that the medicine Buddha is holding in the hand in the depictions of the Medicine Buddha. Hatitaki means the destroyer of disease. Hatitaki, we ll talk more about it in module seven. Uva Ursa, mullein, witch hazel and turmeric are astringent. Astringency is best known for tonifying tissues, tonification of tissue. That puckering of your mouth, think about that sensation happening through all seven tissue layers. That kind of like squeezing of the tissue and it creates a tonification affect. Only small doses are needed but the most famous use of astringent is actually externally because astringent tastes is wound healing. It dries secretions, it can stop diarrhea, that s why if you take a little touch of hatitaki when you have diarrhea it will stop, but if you take a lot of hatitaki it will give you diarrhea. So it s homeostatic, meaning it stops bleeding, and heals wounds. That is the astringent taste, its Air and Earth, so Air and Earth; it s cooling, light, and dry. It has Earth but it s still on the light side because of the Air element. It increases the Vata dosha and decreases Pitta and Kapha doshas. The negative qualities of the astringent taste are the overuse of astringency would create dryness, it would create constipation, and emaciation is increased out of sight. Again a lot of the Vata type things. Astringent is going to be the least used of all tastes, but a little bit is important. Now we already talked about the best tastes for each dosha but what I want to mention briefly is that the sequence in which you take your food is very important and it should happen in the sequence that you see these tastes written. This sequence is not random, sweet, sour, salty, pungent, bitter and astringent. This is the order in which the body digests its food. That s why in Ayurveda we take the sweet foods first. That does not translate to taking your dessert first, that s a famous thing that we like to say in the Ayurvedic world is that Ayurveda says you should have your dessert first. It s not really true, it means you take your sweet foods first, that would be like your rice, you dahl, maybe your bread and I guess if you want to take your dessert first it s better than having it last. There is really not a concept of dessert; however we have desserts, so sometimes we take them first. When we get into foods in the next module I ll discuss that in more detail. What you want to take out of this is eat your harder to digest foods first when your digestive secretion is strongest when you re hungry, that would be your higher protein, your fat foods and your grains and things like that and eat your salad and your greens last because they are going to help move the other substances through the digestive system. If you look at traditional Indian cookery it originates in Ayurveda. If you go to an Indian restaurant its not really necessarily Ayurvedic but if you look at the traditional sequence of food as served in the Indian cuisine its based on this, you start with your rice and dahl which are your sweet tastes and then you ll have like your pickles, that is your sour taste, and then you ll have your subji which is your salty taste, the vegetables with the spices and salt, and then you ll have your bitter foods that are your greens, salad at the end and then that s why traditionally they would finish their meals with the cilantro. Lassi because your finishing with the astringent taste because that s how the body will digest the food and I ll talk more about that in module six, when we talk about the different stages of digestion because that s what s happening in the body is the food while its being digested it first becomes sweet and then as it moves into the small intestines it becomes sour and so forth. 11

12 It s the natural intelligence of nature. We can look at this from the western scientific perspective and see the same thing. The Yogi knew this stuff for hundreds and hundreds of years and we didn t need our modern day technology to understand it. They knew it from direct perception. Just a recap of these six tastes from the context of the three doshas: For the Vata dosha, the best taste is the salty because it s warm, moist, and heavy, which are the opposite qualities of Vata, then next is sour and then also sweet. Anti Vata food would be the salty, sour, and sweet tastes as predominate. For the Pitta dosha, the best tastes are bitter, sweet and then astringent because their qualities antidote the hot and oily qualities of Pitta. For the Kapha dosha, the best taste is the pungent because it s the opposite qualities of Kapha. Warm, light and dry and then next is bitter and then astringent. Anti Kapha food would be pungent, bitter, and astringent. That s the rasa, the six tastes and as I mentioned, the taste does not disappear from your food or your herbs once they are ingested. Everything you ingest has a few opportunities to affect your organism. First is the taste as it touches your tongue and the six tastes, this rasa is communicating to your body the moment it touches the tongue what type of digestive enzymes to secrete, what type of juices to secrete that are going to be most appropriate to digesting your food, the specific food that you take. That s why you also want to smell the fragrance of the food before you take it in and you want to breathe and you want to prepare your body, but the rasa is very important. That s why also when taking herbs, there is a limitation on taking capsules because you re not actually getting that rasa on the tongue therefore you re decreasing the effects your going to get, you re still going to get some effects, you re just decreasing to a degree. The next taste you have is the Virya and that is the energetic of the tastes or the food or the substance. Does it heat the body up or does it cool it down? For our purposes that s how we re defining the virya. Does it heat or does it cool? Hot tastes increase digestion, cool tastes decrease digestion. Hot tastes when they increase digestion they are freeing energy up for other metabolic tasks in the body. Cool tastes decrease digestion so it has to pull energy from other parts of the body. So when you eat sweet heavy foods predominately and in excessive amounts it will decrease your energy because your digestion has to work so hard it has to pull energy from the rest of the body. That s why you want to eat it in appropriate amounts with the other tastes so that you re not taxing the rest of your energy system in order to just digest your food. Important to understand is that anything that heats the body is dilating the channels of the body. Remember we could talk about the physical body as simply Earth, Water, Fire, and Air moving through channels of Space. So the body is really just an intricately woven system of channels. The primary channel is your digestive system it starts at the mouth and ends at the rectum. That s why it s called the mahavaha sroto, the great channel. 12