Innovative Ayurvedic Recipes & Cooking
Ayurvedic Recipes on Joyful Belly
Ayurvedic Diet on Joyful Belly
Threads of Cooking on Joyful Belly
Food Poetry on Sacred Cravings

Joyful Belly Ayurvedic Journal
Ayurveda for New York City
Ayurveda for Asheville, North Carolina
Yoga and Ayurvedic Psychology
All Entries

Where to buy herbs
Banyan Botanicals
Ayurvedic Institute

Documentation from the Ayurvedic Institute
General Information
Ayurveda: A Brief Introduction and Guide (PDF Document)
The Daily Routine
Discover Your Constitution (PDF Document)
Discover Your Present State (PDF Document)
Doshas: Their Elements and Attributes
Empty Bowl Meditation
Tongue and Corresponding Organ Locations
The Ancient Ayurvedic Writings
Reference and Reading List
Index of Ayurveda Today articles, (PDF Document)

Food and Nutrition
Agni Tea Recipe
Food Guidelines (PDF Document)
Ghee Recipe
Incompatible Food Combining (PDF Document)
Kitchari Recipe

Ayurvedic Cleansing Procedures
Abhyanga - Self oil massage
An Introduction to Panchakarma (PDF Document)
Basti: Cleansing the Colon (PDF Document)
Nasya: Cleansing the Nasal Passages and Emotions (PDF)
Virechana: Cleansing the Small Intestine (PDF Document)

Western Herbalism
www.herbsheal.com
The earth’s bounty is always reaching out to us, offering its aid to restore us to vitality. Learning in nature and through nature at NCSHH, on our thirty-acre campus, connects the student to the roots and essence of Herbalism. Through the study of medicinal plants and holistic living skills, we return the ancient art of healing to the individual and to the family, rebuilding conscientious communities and embracing our divine potential.

www.plantsandhealers.com
Over the last fifteen years Frank Cook’s passion for being a repository of plant knowledge has grown steadily. He has studied with Herbalists, Shamen, Vaidyas, Sangomas, Doctors, Professors, Medicine Men. . . ..around the world. They have initiated him into many ways of walking with plants. More and more there are opportunities to share what he has learned at workshops, schools, conferences, and gatherings of all types.

Nestled in the gentle hills of Appalachia, Asheville is a moist, temperate rainforest with the best qualities of Kapha: sweetness, love, stillness and fertile soil. With the related qualities of heavy, slow, liquid and soft, clients suffered from molds, allergies, and pitta heat pushing Kapha dampness in the form of skin infections, mouth sores, sore throats and and other inflammatory conditions.

Avalambaka Kapha, Ranjaka Pitta and Udana vayu were generally out of balance in the southeast. We recommended ginger, fennel, lemongrass tea with a teaspoon of honey for morning congestion and to lift related depression and heaviness.

Pitta types with soft stools, sinus infections, or bright red conjunctiva were asked to avoid sour, fermented foods like tomatoes, vinegar, pickles, kambucha, and alcohols...

For consultations, more information about how to be healthy in Asheville, or to send your suggestions contact Joseph or call 617-869-8326. This is a work in progress, we appreciate any feedback!

Friendly and extroverted New Yorkers greet us in every neighborhood of the city. Our New York clients are fun, knowledgeable, and generally successful. New York is exciting with pitta and vata generally out of balance. Sharp, mobile and rough qualities are balanced with soft, stillness, and slow.

Self nurturing builds water and sweetness. Water element is generally deficient. Soft slippers and big pillows, home cooked meals, warm baths, and self body massage with oils all increase water element. Make apartments cozy and comfortable. Open up the heart chakra with rose petal tea in the mornings and by hanging a Georgia O'Keefe picture in the living room. The seed of learning how to be vulnerable will flower into freedom and beauty.

New Yorkers that were unable to relax had irregular eating and sleeping schedules. Heal busy lifestyles and racing thoughts with routine, meditation, being instead of doing, and purposeless joy. A mantra for New York is "cozy". Happiness is stimulating but contentment brings peace. Peace has no purpose or goal.

Coffee is the most abused drug of New York creating anxiety and pushing the body beyond limits. Replace coffee with ginger and pranayama. The mind is unstoppable but the body isn't. A warm glass of water and a kidney massage at 3pm will restore vitality and energy levels during vata time of day.

Pollution sticks to sweat, eyes, and mucous membranes of the respiratory tract...

For consultations, more information about how to be healthy in New York City or to send your suggestions, contact Joseph or call 617-869-8326.

Copyright 2007, Joyful Belly

Every day I'm learning. I still feel like a new student of vedic psychology. Here are some hints that are helping me on me way, given to us by our beautiful, saintly teacher Dr. Vasant Lad.

Watch the watcher. The watcher is the mind and the body but spirit is beyond both. Watch thoughts as if they are a movie. You will see what is inside you.

Organs create emotions and the brain searches for a thought. So mind is in the organ. We make a decision then create the rationale. Mind is body and brain. Mind is also the universe around us that we created. Yoga psychology cleans the mind by cleaning organs. Yoga squeezes the blood out of organs and then opens them up again. It clears the channels.

When the body wants change it creates a thought. A thought indicates discomfort or toxins in the body. When the body is content there is no thought. Bliss is the state without thought. If we are quiet we can sense thoughts coming before they happen. It feels like a vibration. We bless the thought and bring attention back to the breath.

We can't know the truth but we can be with the truth. We merge with the unfolding dynamic. Joy of the sunset happens before we realize it. The moment we become conscious joy is a memory and becomes desire. Desire is the memory of past pleasure.

I see the tree and the tree is me. The internal is the macrocosm. The universe my creation. God is the creator but I am the hand. This chair, I brought my body to this place and the chair became manifest. This bird that chirps in the wilderness, my echo chirping in the wilderness. Where is the tree? My eyes catch light and the tree appears, from photo cells I recreate the tree in my mind. The tree that I see is the one in my mind. Do you see the same tree?

All of creation is a manifestation of God. Evil thinks that it exists but in yoga there is no separation from the divine. When you become the tree and the tree becomes you there will be no violence. If I give my attention to the darkness, it creates the darkness. If I give my attention to the light it creates the light.

Experience nourishes the ego. Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge and were cast from the garden. Knowledge is knowledge of difference, comparison, measuring, separation. The mind wants to have experiences because it wants to know. God is beyond knowledge. God is being without a thought; God is the act of listening.

All effort denies the existence of God. Creation happens. Love accepts all things. Love is listening. When we try to change creation, that is effort. Thoughts are effort and effort comes from ego.

The mind creates the abyss and the heart crosses it. The mind is comparison which is separation and measurement. Comparison is judgment and judgment is violence. Comparison is desire. The mind is the cause. With meditation all thoughts can be digested into pure love. It is the heart.

An emotion comes to us. We healed it through the body with yoga. We healed it in the mind through the breath. We healed it in the spirit through prayer and meditation. Body, mind, then spirit. Speech is surgery. We release our frustrations upon the world but the world is us. We cut open the external with a word. Speech comes last, last resort. Emotion the root cause of disease. World change is not the objective of yoga; it is the by product of self-awakening.

Traditionally, yoga is preparation for prayer and meditation. Meditation has no purpose or goal. It cultivates 'is-ness'.

This journal entry is a work in progress. Please send your ideas to joseph@greenbookcafe.com.

Happiness, beauty and abundance are the fruits of alignment. We feel the impulse to make decisions to improve our lives. But, behind the impulse to decide is resistance to what is being offered to us, dissatisfaction and ego. We struggle with making decisions instead of acceptance. We can let it happen instead of making it happen. We can let go of the impulse to decide and start noticing and being with the truth.

Jetlag is considered a problem of agni in Ayurveda (digestive fire). If we get hungry on time, sleep on time, and have a bowel movement on time, then agni is probably okay. But traveling disrupts our schedule. Time changes disrupt our biological clock and internal rhythms. Air conditioned planes and altitude increase dryness. Thus, traveling increases vata and constipation.

Eating on the Plane
1) Citrus fruits especially limes. Sour taste keeps the colon hydrated and flowing.
2) Ask for orange juice when the flight attendant brings juices but not during meals.
3) Ask for wine with your meals on international flights. 3 tablespoons of wine increases agni.
4) Simple light foods. No fatty, heavy difficult to digest foods. Vata pacifying diet.
5) Salty foods should be avoided; they increase swelling and fluid retention.
6) Plenty of fluids to avoid dehydration during long flights with air conditioning.
7) Peanuts are heavy, drying, hard to digest, salty and increase vata. Avoid them!

Exercises on the Plane
1) Basic stretching and massage every 3 hours while flying.
2) Focus on kidneys, solar plexus, ankle swelling.
3) To stay grounded, use root lock and direct attention to sacrum and back body.

For herbal regimen and more information about how to stay grounded and healthy while traveling, contact Joseph!

said by Ram Dass in "Be Here Now"

I am drumming but without hands.
I am in asana but without a body.
I am singing but without a voice.
I am just dancing with my being,

-Joseph

Eureka comes when mind chatter stops, we begin to listen and wisdom comes. When we are thinking, we aren't listening, we are unconscious. In the shower, let the stream of water touch the forehead, that is daily shirodhara and the mind is free.

- Claudia Welch, Acupuncturist and Ayurvedic Physician

If your buttons can be pushed, what is the button? A button is a raw place the psyche is defending.