Ayurvedic Living with Claire Ragozzino
Episode 73: Gutsy Health Podcast
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Show Summary: "How we're moving through the course of a day, eventually becomes how we move through the course of a week and a month, which shapes our health."
Ayurveda is a five-thousand-year-old holistic health model with branches in general medicine, pediatrics, geriatrics, diseases of the head & neck, toxicology, and surgery, but it mainly focuses on preventative medicine. It teaches us how to understand our relationship with nature, including seasonal foods and practices.
Like Chinese medicine, it is also an elemental model; Air, Space, Fire, Water, and Earth. DOSHA categorizes the elements that help you better understand how to get the right balance during the change of seasons. Paying attention to every subtle shift enables you to get the best experience and prevents diseases.
Listen as Claire Ragozzino, a holistic nutritionist and the author of the new book the Living Ayurveda, breaks down everything you should know about its benefits and how it works. Learn how to use gunas properly to start creating the balance you need for a healthy life.
Important Links
Exceptional Highlight:
- We are just an extension of nature. The further we step away from nature, the sicker we get.
- In your winter diet, you naturally have an increase in appetite. It's not just because of the holidays, and everyone's aware, but you need to eat more to build more bulk for your body to stay in balance..
- Ayurvedic food is not strictly vegetarian.
Show Highlights:
What path did she take to end up a yoga teacher, a holistic nutritionist, and an Ayurvedic practitioner?
Claire 2:00
- Let's go back to age seven because I give a shout out to my mom. She was in a pretty bad fatal car accident and I found yoga back when yoga was still pretty fringe.
What is Ashtanga Yoga?
Claire 7:25
- Hot yoga and Vinyasa yoga, and all these styles came from Ashtanga Yoga, a more vinyasa style, practice and Ashta means eight.
Did she study Ayurveda in India?
Claire 24:55
- Well, I started doing some studies in India. And then when I had come back, I was still really having the raw foods trip. "If I can just eat all raw, I'm gonna find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow." and somewhere around that turning point, I realized, “Okay, this isn't quite the path I want to take.”
That's when I really started diving into my Ayurveda studies.
What is Ayurveda?
Jennifer 37:46
- The literal translation of the word Sanskrit is the Science of Life. One even more poetic is the Art of Living.
Transcript
This is a Gutsy health podcast with Jaunique and Tristin Roney.
Jaunique
Hey guys, welcome back to the Gutsy Health Podcast.
Tristin
Hi, everybody.
Jaunique
Tristin is lost. I'm sorry, baby. I'm not laughing. He's lost his voice.
Tristin
It's been rough, let's be honest. But it's been two weeks now.
Jaunique
Yes, it was way worse last week, actually, which is why we had no episode.
Tristin
Yes.
Jaunique
And so we're just like we're just winging life right now. At least I can hear him.But he can't shout at the kids, which is a good thing.
Tristin
And sad and also really great.
Jaunique
It's really great at the practice and patience. Right you guys, we have such a great guest today. We are going to be talking about ayurvedic medicine. I know nothing about it. And so we have Claire Ragozzino on the podcast today. She is an ayurvedic practitioner. She is a holistic nutritionist.Is that correct?
Claire Ragozzino
Absolutely.
Jaunique
And a yoga teacher, like all of my life goals, even though I know nothing about ayurvedic, it's just so cool. And I know that there is like voodoo to it that I wish I understood. And we're going to get like ayurvedic one on one today. And so she is the author of the new book Living ayurvedic Nourishing Body and Mind through seasonal recipes, rituals and Yoga. And I'm going to have her take it away. And Claire, can you introduce yourself what is your story? How did you get into this? Like what was the path that you had to take to end up a yoga teacher, a holistic nutritionist, a ayurvedic practitioner?
Claire Ragozzino
Yeah, well, thanks for having me, first of all. Yeah, I'm excited to be here. And we both have a scratchy throat.
Jaunique
So tis the season is season.
Claire Ragozzino
I guess we can go way back. Let's go all the way back to eighty seven because I really give a shout out to my mom. She was in a pretty bad near fatal car accident when I found yoga back on yoga was still pretty fringe. There was like one person in the whole Phoenix Metro Valley area and Arizona where I was growing up, who taught yoga and it was a traditional hatha yoga. I used to go sit in the back of the classroom and laugh every time they opened. And it's like, what am I doing here? But kind of an impression of me. And so in my teens, I had moved to Alaska, a small little town on an island called Ketchikan, and I had started to get back into yoga, that there was a younger teacher who had just come back from India also into hatha yoga. And she taught me all those strange cleansing practices. And together we did yoga side by side. And that really helped solidify that yoga was a path I wanted to walk in this life.
Jaunique
I love that.
Claire Ragozzino
So from there, I started having a lot of health issues in my early teens and struggled with a digestive disorder, chronic constipation, acid reflux, you know, things that doctors were like, oh, I don't know
Jaunique
You and 90 percent of America right like this. In our gut, dysfunction is an epidemic. And doctors know Jack about it. They know nothing. They put people on pills and they're like, go into the world and it makes things worse. And so. So anyway, sorry. Keep going. Keep going. So you got GI issues,
Claire Ragozzino
so I feel just as passionate about that. I have a lot to say. I've got health and so does is why I kind of ended up in the ayurvedic path .
Jaunique
Awesome.
Claire Ragozzino
I am after years of struggling with chronic digestive disorders that doctors really had no answers to. I just started experimenting. I started getting curious. I tried cleansing. I did juice fast. I did the master cleanse. Anyone's done that one. But man, I did all kinds of things and then found myself on a raw food path thinking that raw foods were the answer. And that kind of led me to later work as a raw food chef.
Tristin
Wow!
Jaunique
That's really cool.
Claire Ragozzino
Yeah. And I have to say, it probably helped a lot initially, but at a certain point I was still running into these digestive issues like what's going on? I'm eating all the probiotics, everything, the fibers, I'm eating the super foods. My smoothies are gigantic. I'm not cooking my food. And I really thought, OK, I'm doing all the right things, but I'm still not feeling better.
Jaunique
Mm.
Claire Ragozzino
And so somewhere in college I did a yoga teacher training and I picked up some of my first Ayurveda books that I started actually taking seriously. I think I came across a few when I was in high school. And so I'm going way back in this discussion.
Jaunique
I love it.
Claire Ragozzino
But I read a lot and I'd always been hungry to know more. And I had all kinds of books like Paul Pickford's Healing with Whole Foods, and he references ayurvedic as well as macrobiotics in there. And, you know, I'm like, well, this is fascinating, but I was still really attached to the raw foods thing. And so there I was somewhere in my early twenties, working as a raw food chefsa raw food chef leading guy to juice cleanses in December.
Jaunique
Yeah, Supergirl.
Claire Ragozzino
I don't think I told anyone this, I was sitting on a heating pad eating my superfood for me.
Jaunique
Oh, my gosh. And you're like, something's not right
Claire Ragozzino
with us, but it's so good for me. Yeah. And I had a friend, someone who was interested in dating me all the time. And he's like, let me make you some soup.
Tristin
It's not raw.
Jaunique
It's cooked. How dare you? The enzymes.
Claire Ragozzino
So we ended up making the soup and I'm like, fine, I'll have a bowl. Because my my rule of thumb is always been to be culturally respectful and in traveling. And when someone is taking something with love and certainly making point, I eat this ball and I remember having it's like, oh my God, I feel so good moment in another bottle. Like I feel so good in my stomach felt better. And for days I felt great. I must be something to this list was there.And I always references bowl of soup as a turning point for me because it was a moment that I stopped living from my head what I should and shouldn't do and moving into my body a little bit more. And then I'm like, Oh, OK. Well, ayurveda I will read about this a whole lot and I think that, like, increases like. So when I'm eating cold foods, it's December, I'm getting more cold.OKay, yes. It's so obvious. You said I read a voodoo food and I'm like, you know, it seems like voodoo until you take that moment to have that embodied experience. And it's like, OK, this is actually really this is really obvious from there. I had already gone pretty deep into Ashtanga yoga and traveled to Mysore. I was this is kind of the birthplace of Ashtanga yoga. I was at the main and my ego was all pumped up out of the second series. And if you've done it, you might laugh at this a little bit.
Jaunique
OK, what is Ashtanga yoga? I have no idea. I know yoga and hatha yoga.
Claire Ragozzino
Yeah, well, hatha yoga and vinyasa yoga and all these styles kind of came from Ashtanga yoga, which is a more vinyasa style practice and Ashtar means eight. So that means lems these eight limbs of yoga ideally move not just the physical, but all aspects of these practices. I came from Mysore India through a teacher named Krishna Macharia, who then taught it to Pattabhi Joyce, who kind of became the forefather of that. And then some of his students came to California in the seventies and power yoga and all of those things have now developed into that. So it's a beautiful practice that is can be very physical and when misunderstood, it can be very competitive. And so for me, I got very competitive and I ended up coming back from India with a bulging disc in my back.
Jaunique
Oh, no!
Jaunique
I know. I know whether it was probably wasn't just my practice, but the way I was approaching it and riding on scooters and dirt roads and, you know, pushing things too hard. So it was a it was a real turning point for me around that time because I was really trying to control how I wanted to feel, but not really listening. You know, I was trying to follow all the right rules, but the rules weren't applicable to my stage of life. And at that moment, the super moment back to the moment, I had also kind of switched. While I can't practice my Ashtanga yoga practice the way I once was, because I have this bulging disc in my back and maybe I need to look at some other ways of practicing and it's still equally just as potent. And so I kind of took a path towards yoga therapy and looking at therapeutic practices. So that term yoga takitza is the actually original purpose of the ashtanga yoga before it got really competitive. So looking at how asanas postures can be used therapeutically, how breath practices Pontianak can be used therapeutically, which really fits right in your Aveda. So as I started getting more serious about Ayurveda and doing more trainings and studies and applying it to my own life, I started to see how your yoga practice actually can evolve through your different stages of life, can evolve through the different seasons and times of year. Right now we're in a time it's called Moftah Hotta is the elements of air and space, and it dominates this time of year where things are light, dry, cold, mobile. You know, it's very windy out here today and a yoga practice that helps to balance that. Isn't it going to be one with base blasting, pumping music rolling fast and loud and kind of agitating? Right.It just something that might calm the nervous system a little bit more. And in the end, you leave class feeling what you want to feel, just that good, juicy, grounded. Part of your body and your mind?
Jaunique
Yeah, I love that. OK, so where maybe I missed that. I'm so sorry. When did you study the ayurvedic part of everything? Did I miss that? Was that in India as well?
Claire Ragozzino
Well, I started doing some studies in India and then when I had come back, I was still really on the raw-food trip. I got to do this right. I got to do this right if I can just. All right. I'm going to find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Yeah. And somewhere around that turning point, I realized, OK, this isn't quite the path I want to take. And that's when I really started diving into my area to study.
Jaunique
It's very cool. So what is a really great explanation of ayurvedic practices and foods? And like for someone like me that knows absolutely nothing other than Tristin's mom went through in our Vedic phase for a few years and that's all I know about it. And it includes key and spices, and lots of turmeric like what is and raw milk. What is ayurveda?
Claire Ragozzino
Yeah. So the literal translation of the Sanskrit word is the science of life.
Jaunique
Oh, that's beautiful.
Claire Ragozzino
Yeah. The science of life and longevity or one even more poetic is the art of living.
Jaunique
Mm hmm. art of living.
Claire Ragozzino
I think lot of interpretations make it seem like it's just it's just turmeric, it's just this and that. But really it's a some say five thousand, some seven, some say three the actual and are up for debate. But essentially we'll say the common knowledge. Five thousand years old, holistic health model that has branches in general medicine, pediatrics, geriatrics, diseases of the head, neck, toxicology surgery like it's a whole medical system, just the way I think Chinese medicine might be a little bit more known in the West. Ayurveda is that as well. But well, Ayurveda focuses on is largely preventative. You know there is curative aspects but there's preventative aspects and that's where it comes into our daily lives because it teaches us how to understand our relationship to nature. Right. And we've lost that a little bit.
Jaunique
So much
Claire Ragozzino
world where we're looking at my thermostat. It's always seventy three in here.
Jaunique
Right.
Claire Ragozzino
Despite the seasons changing and with our phones and our blue lights and all these things and what it's like to sleep, go to sleep and wake with the sun, you know, to understand the lunar cycles. And so we look at these cycles of nature as a way to recalibrate how we're living. Right? Yeah. And so how we're moving through the course of a day eventually becomes how we move through the course of a week and a month. It shapes our health. So it teaches us what these different elements are. So like Chinese medicine, it's an elemental model. There's five elements air, space, fire, water and earth. And of those you might have heard of, the word Doescher, Doescher is sometimes this categorization of the elements and there is three of them. Valta Doescher is really light and mobile. It's the air and space element. It's what governs are nervous system, our higher intellect, this connection to the divine, but space where we feel very clear in our thinking. And the second is Peita Dushan, which is fire with a little bit of water, and so it's governances are metabolic processes, our ability to transform information. So our more thinking mind and our ability to get things done and as well as many other things, I'm just giving you the highlight reel of how that doesn't play out in our bodies. And then color is what creates stability in the earth and water elements. It also governs the waterways of our body. It's what gives us immunity, this good, juicy vitality, the subtle aspect of that's called OJARS. And so through diet and lifestyle, we seek to balance these elements in our bodies and to understand how, as the seasons change, these elemental influences change spring. It's rainy . It's a time where there's more Kofa more water time, we get more colds and Mukasey. So we want to eat foods, maybe not as much tea springtime. We want to eat foods and do lifestyle practices like yoga or different movement practices or breath practices that help to balance those dormant elements.
Jaunique
Yeah, yeah. That makes sense . So much sense. So can we talk a little bit about that more because I think people are really curious, like what should we be doing because we have completely forgotten in our modern society that we are just an extension of nature.And so the further we step away from nature, the sicker we get. Right. And then we are in these artificial homes.We have these artificial phones, like you said, we have these artificial lights. We actually had friends over last night and it was like six o'clock. It was getting dark. And so we just put on like our red lamps here and there. And the house is dark. And here we are feeling super awkward and apologizing like, hey, we're going to talk to each other in the dark right now with, like, fire light in the house. And they're like, OK, you know, and that's just like how we are. Like, we're trying to make it as natural as possible, you know, like how men used to be around fires at night time. Like that's the lighting that our neural pathways have, like, been firing with for the past two hundred thousand years, you know, since the existence of like Homo sapiens. So I think people or I'm really curious, like, can you take us through the seasons of, like you said, springtime, you know, exercise, not GI. We're supposed to be doing yoga because we all know we should eat seasonally. Right. And so what are those seasonal foods? What are those seasonal practices? What are these exercise routines that we should be doing?
Claire Ragozzino
Yeah, that's a great question. And, you know, this is the whole reason I wrote this book, Living ayurveda and the way I've structured it is through daily practices, and seasonal practices. So each seasonal section has different information and recipes and yoga sequences and such that kind of guide you through how to experience what balance might feel like through the course of the year.
Jaunique
Oh, I love them.
Claire Ragozzino
And I just want to preface this by saying this is dependent on your environment.Right. In India, they actually have six seasons and one of them is like a rainy season and one of the dry season in addition to what we would consider spring, summer, fall, winter.And so I spent several years living in Hawaii and there's about one and a half season.
Jaunique
Yeah, right. Seriously.
Claire Ragozzino
But yeah, when you really pay attention, there is a subtle shift, even though it seems like, oh, it's just sunny or rainy all the time, there is a subtle shift and what feels drier, what feels lighter or what feels dense and heavy. So, you know, one of the best ways to start to experience the elements is to get familiar with these description words, these adjectives that describe these dush, as they're called Gounod's. There's ten pairings of opposites.And with that you start to understand what is needed to create balance. And so this time pairing of opposites include things like light, not heavy, cold, hot, dry, oily. You start to experience that and you think about these elements. You think about how it applies to your seasonal or seasonal rituals for balance.
Jaunique
So like weather is cold. So we eat hot food like that. Is that OK? So I'm getting this.
Claire Ragozzino
this is so simple. You're telling me that I guarantee most of us don't think about the snow. So in terms of the and it gets more complex and the more you ignore this, the deeper an imbalance becomes, which leads to disease. Right. And then you need to take larger measures to correct that imbalance. But let's say you develop a practice, you cultivate an awareness about how you're feeling each day. So my favorite practice in this book is the self enquiry practice, where I like to wake up in the morning and ask myself, what's up? What's up today? What am I feeling? And then what do I need? And if you listen, a lot of times some of those answers are right there, right in front of you. Yeah, but I have a great chart in here that kind of outlines how the doshas has moved through the course of the year.So let's go through that. How about we start?
Jaunique
And is this in your book, too?Like, so people buy your book and like, OK, cool, OK, let's go through it.
Claire Ragozzino
It it's in there. Let's talk about the Four Seasons as we know it, let's say here in North America right now. Yes. So right now we're in fall. Technically, Fall starts around September twenty first with the equinox and goes until the winter solstice. And fall is a time where it's light, it's dry, it's cold. The leaves are falling, the wind is blowing. You might tend to feel more anxious or more spacey or more dry or you're having difficulty falling asleep. All of those are signs and symptoms that Martha dosha has increased. It's high. It might be moving towards an imbalance. So involved in season, you would want to eat foods that are well cooked like soups and students and add vegetables with spices and good oils. So butter is a great time for your GI, for your turmeric, for your cumin and coriander, cardamom, cinnamon. You know, these more warming foods are going to help nurture balance because it'll be easier to digest and it will help balance that light, dry, cold quality than we eat that kind of lasts into early winter. And I don't know if you guys get snow where you are.
Jaunique
Oh, yes,lots.
Claire Ragozzino
right. I mean, anyone we've seen early winter snow, it's dry snow. And as you start to move towards late winter, you start to get towards more coffee season. So we're involved the season from fall to early winter. This is a great time for all your warming foods, your winter diet. You actually naturally have an increase of appetite. It's not just because of the holidays and everything, but you actually need to eat more to build more bulk for your body to stay in balance.
Jaunique
Yeah,
Claire Ragozzino
to balance that, you want more active exercise. Right. And especially as we start to move into Cofan season, so far that earth and water element can get a little sluggish. It can get a little dull.
Jaunique
Yes. Can I ask about that? Because wintertime, I just want to hibernate and read a book and sit by a fire and like, get that. That's all I want to do. And so the thought of, like, exercising more, I'm like, no, like get the Hense don't bring that thought to me. So how do we overcome that? Yeah, I know you're not a therapist, but like what do we do to you know, because we're eating more, we're indoors more, we're more apathetic. Like how do we balance that imbalance? Through exercise?
Claire Ragozzino
Exercise is helpful in in the book I outline a couple more warming breeding practices and things like Capalaba do. Sometimes you see this and kundalini yoga. They do this breath of fire. It's like a kind of stomach pumping that gets the breath.You know, it sounds like it has a more fire building. So you're getting that fire in your in your belly and even just doing a little bit of breathing practices that help to move some of that stuff. Energy, getting outside, bundling up and getting outside, seeing the expanse of sky. Ironically, people are like, well, just looking at the sky, that's going to make me more motivated. I will love the gentle therapies for Kofa is being able to get out of that of like I just want to sit here and watch Game of Thrones. I just want to eat the ice cream and the pumpkin pie.
Jaunique
Right.
Claire Ragozzino
So what's important, I think, is to one yourself where you're at and ask yourself, why are you so tired? Have you totally burnt yourself out and not given enough rest? And the season because we do need to sleep sometimes a season winter is called the season of the Sleepy Bear. I think it's absolutely OK to rest.
Jaunique
I channel that every winter, like every like this sleepy bear is my jam.
Claire Ragozzino
So I'll tell you, living on Hawaii, not having winter, I actually got majorly imbalanced because I was just like, got to go. Got to keep doing that. Yeah, I got it. I never really got a chance to rest. And equally, when you live in hot climates, cold weather is helpful for cooling down the blood. So that summer season as we start to move from late winter to spring, spring is where things get, it starts melting.The snow is that kind of heavy, damp, yucky, muddy snow at all. The spring rain and the storm and that's when you really start to feel that heavy dullness from winter. And this is the time we're naturally doing a cleanse is actually supported and a 12 day master cleanse or anything like that. It can very simply be eating a. mono-Diet, meaning something like Cotchery, which is has kind of become the poster child of ayurvedic eating. I'm here to tell you there is more food to ayurveda than just cotchery. .
Tristin
Can you describe Cotchery?
Jaunique
Yeah. What is that?
Claire Ragozzino
What is cotchery? cotchery is it's a one pot meal, meaning you put it all in one pot and it's got spices, good digestive promoting spices like ginger, your favorite turmeric, kuman, coriander and Greek, sometimes mustard seed, sometimes curry leaf. People add to it, but nice spice blend that helps to kind of stoke the digestive fire. And then some put down a combination of mutt's split yellow, mung and then basmati rice is what it's cooked on. It's actually quite delicious. My favorite is adding a little bit of fennel and carrots to the mix and you cook it for about 40 minutes or so until it's a soft stew and you can add chutneys or cilantro or lime juice, all kinds of things to dress it up and make it fun. Perfect, delicious.
Jaunique
And that's all in your book, right? It is. There it is.
Tristin
Kind of sounds that sounds so good.
Claire Ragozzino
It's really delicious and it's so easy. I actually read an ayurvedic cooking immersion. It's called The ayurvedic Kitchen, and we work through different aspects of innovative cooking. And that's the next one will be in February. But one of the things that we do is we do throw in a kitchen in there because it's so easy to make. And when you're busy, you have a lot going on. One of my favorite quotes from a teacher of mine, Dr. Claudia Welch, she says The first principle is when your life gets complicated, your diet should be more simple. And so Cotchery, I think, has become the poster child of Ayurvedic food because it's easy to digest. It's delicious. You can dress it up or dress it down. And it's usually used in a very, very simple form as a cleansing dish, especially in the spring and the fall. And so in spring, you start to do this little cleanse and you can do a deep cleanse called a punch of karma, or you can do a simple home based cleanse where you're just doing a mono diet to give your digestion a break from all the heavy winter eating and doing some other practices that help to move the stagnation out. So when you come into summer, you feel light you feel fresh, your body is balanced in this way that you now can enjoy the heat and not feel heavy and bogged down. You know, I'll say enjoy the heat lately because I've come into a stage of my life.
Jaunique
I want to add something super fast because like all of these spices and fennel, how many people have those spices and those vegetables that you mentioned in their house right now? Probably not. Or and I mean, like all of them. Like everyone probably has turmeric. Everyone probably is ginger. What about all the other ones that you mentioned?
Jaunique
Well, hopefully our people do.
Jaunique
Hopefully our people do. Right. But this is like a foreign art form of food that Americans especially and I know there's listeners around the world, but especially in our culture, we just do not touch. Right. We go to an Indian restaurant like three times a year, and that is our diversity and spices. And that's an Indian restaurant in America. They load everything with, like inflammatory oils and sugar. Right. And then they call it Indian food
Claire Ragozzino
and lots of onions and garlic.
Jaunique
Yes. Yes.But none of this other stuff, you know, these foreign spices and that you mentioned.
Claire Ragozzino
I just want to say, you know, it's interesting and I think about this a lot is we're very familiar, especially being here in the southwest or in California with Mexican cuisine. Yeah. All the same spices. Right. It just has different combinations to create different flavor profiles. But you're absolutely eating cumin. You're absolutely adding coriander, which is just the seed of cilantro. Yeah. It's amazing how much maybe we've been exposed to it, but not thinking about combining it in this way. And so, you know, one of the best ways to approach something new, whether it be trying out ayurveda or a new recipe or learning about, I don't know, neuroscience, whatever it could be, the best way to approach anything is to be curious.
Tristin
Absolutely.
Claire Ragozzino
And to not be afraid to mess it up. So I've definitely, in my early days of experimenting with new foods and flavors, made some really gnarly dishes.
Jaunique
Yeah, I have to.
Claire Ragozzino
for example, I think one size that most Westerners don't use is also the Teda, which is actually a resin from the final plant, and it's used as a replacement for onions, the garlic, because it's less heating, less stimulating. But I learned through trial and error that just a little bit goes a long way.Just want to mention this is so good. I put a tablespoon down, was numb to the next time around.I wouldn't put that much cotchery.
Jaunique
That's great.
Claire Ragozzino
Yeah, so as you move through the year, your diet can shift with these spices and that's what's cool about ayurvedic cooking and ayurvedic nutrition, is that we're actually looking at the properties of foods. And a lot of it's very intuitive like Mint Mint is calling for. When we're hot, we put a mint in our water. Yeah, that's so refreshing. Some mint tea
Jaunique
mix it with watermelon, you know, cut up mint and watermelon summertime. Yeah. And even looking at our foods and our fruits, we get so much fruit during the summer and it's full of water and minerals. Right when we're hot in the summer, we're sweating out minerals in the fruit just feeds it back to us like it's it's so incredible.It's like this beautiful dance of yin and yang of our bodies and nature and nature, like nurturing us.But then we live in this world where we you know, we live in the northern hemisphere and we're importing foods from the southern hemisphere. And so we have
Claire Ragozzino
watermelons, year-round.
Jaunique
Yes. Yes. Even though it doesn't taste that good, like you can still buy it right now, you know, so it's pretty.
Claire Ragozzino
And that that is the challenge. Living in our modern world is the abundance of choice and decision fatigue. Yeah, I don't know how many dietary theories I read to get to the point of feeling like, OK, I understand food now. Like, I even had someone convince me I needed to be Kitto and and gave me all the science to why. And then I remember eating like a pat of butter on top of dark chocolate
Jaunique
and you're like, no, being like, oh, this doesn't make sense.
Claire Ragozzino
Or, you know, I have to Ayurveda. Yeah. Because it's a time tested. It's not some dietary theory with a big bar package behind it that you have to buy with it or powders and which then comes out 20 years later. It causes heart disease. You know, I think that what's really cool about it is it teaches you the language of nature. So, you know, watermelon is sweet. It's cooling. It's going to calm me down when I'm overheated, when I'm having rashes or my eyes are red or I'm angry at that fire element or I know that Ginger is going to be warming and I'm going to incorporate that in the winter months because it's going to help improve my digestion because the good warming digestive spices help with digestion. And I think as you start to understand those a little bit more and it takes some time, I'm not saying you're going to understand it all on the first day of reading about Ayurveda, but within a couple of weeks, you start to really understand how these foods can have a cooling or healing effect, how they can have a grounding or a cleansing effect to lighten up a little bit. And just as you said through the seasons, nature provides us a lot of what does help nurture this balance.
Jaunique
Yeah, I love that. Even in like I have this Gutsy health membership where I make I prepare these meal plans for members so that they don't have to do their own grocery shopping list. And like summertime, it's always like more salads and fresh and less cooked. And then wintertime it's we're making bone broth and root vegetables and it's a lot more warm. Occasionally I'll add in like tumeric, lattes and all that jazz, you know, just because it is very seasonal and that's what our bodies love. I have a quick question. A lot of these spices came from India. What did our ancestors do back in the day when they didn't have access to those spices? Like like do you have the answer to that?
Claire Ragozzino
I probably don't have the full answer, but I would say that, like, my heritage is Italian, Portuguese. I very much have that Mediterranean diet in my background and there's not a lot of ginger and green cardamom and such and traditional Italian cooking. But there is garlic, there is basil, there are foods that have similar effects and that would achieve similar things. So, you know, one great example is someone who's eating a pretty traditional American diet would find digestion promoting spices and mustard, you know, add a little mustard on top of your dog. I just did a little bit more. There are familiar equivalents that we can work with when we didn't have access to those foods. Traditionally, when you think of those traditional foods, I think that there are equivalents in other cultural cuisines of it.
Jaunique
OK, very cool. They're like cousin spices and foods that can have the same effect.I love that. So go ahead. Go ahead.
Claire Ragozzino
You know that just something popped into my mind about that. Thinking about ancestral foods. I imagine what was different about ancestral eating was more around the lifestyle and the culture of food than exactly what the ingredients were. And I think that there is a tradition of coming together, eating joyfully, sharing social meals or eating alone in silence, and a lot of these practices are practices for making our nutrition more accessible to our bodies and we're eating, driving or eating stressed and angry. It doesn't matter what spices are, what Superfriends you're eating, your body is not assimilating what you're teaching it.
Jaunique
Yeah, I see that one hundred percent. And the way that we eat in this country is just so ghastly. It's really, really atrocious because we eat dead food now. Everything's dead, everything's highly processed, everything is Frankensteins. I have some other questions here. You talk about the doshas as a balancing system for the seasons, but I've often come across the doshas as a kind of personality system where people tend to move towards Vata or Piter. Is is the ayurvedic system helpful in balancing out personalities in that way?
Claire Ragozzino
Absolutely. So I thinkayurvedic has been presented for a long time as body types because it means like, OK, cool, I can just do what I need to do for my body type and that's helpful. And I'll talk about what those two different constitutions are and what that is. So when you hear someone say, I'm Vata, I'm Peita or I am Peita-Vata , this is your Prakriti. Prakriti means your birth constitution. So there's all kinds of factors that go into shaping who you are or foundationally at your birth, and that is your parents constitutions, particularly your mother's. And what she was eating, what her experiences were while you were in utero, what your early childhood experiences and imprints were. What was your diet like? Were you born in a water birth where you born, for example? My mom was a pilot. She flew until she was seven months pregnant and then had a hospital birth that was kind of quite painful and a little traumatic. And then we moved within a month. So I basically just stayed in the air, which is very different than my friend who just had a baby on the island in Hawaii. She had a water birth and never traveled her entire pregnancy and for the first year of the child's birth. So we're very malleable when we're young and these imprints affect what our constitutional makeup is. And so I like to look at it like a bar graph. So you have all three Vata Pizza Koppa And then depending on your parent's genetics and property, as well as Vicarage, which we'll talk about in a minute, that shapes what your constitution is. So you might be very high and bota with Peita behind it and maybe very little Kofa. So when you're moving through the seasons, you're likely going to be more affected by Vata season because you already have so much Vata , right? So someone with a lot of Kofa who's like really strong, stable, grounded, never gets sick, is likely not going to be as affected by the seasons with more vata because they have that kind of balance, that stability within. And this is your unique imprint that you are. It's kind of your indicator for balance. So someone who has a lot of vata may be needing to do more warm oil massages, more yoga, more yoga. Nyjer, which is a guided relaxation meditation that helps to nourish Vata, where someone with a lot of Kofa might need to be doing practices like eating a little less gey not having as many sweets and oils in their diet, exercising more vigorously, really paying attention to when they're starting to feel sluggish. They might tend to have more colds and runny noses, these kinds of things, whereas someone who has more Pita might be really athletic, really driven, charismatic leader, but can also really burn themselves out quickly by pushing too hard and has to pay attention to deadlines and eating too much syrup on their own. And that way, you know, never wear a jacket to school as a kid because they're always hot. And then it's like red and flash and sweating. It pours hot sauce on everything. That's your Pita friends.
Jaunique
So it's great.
Claire Ragozzino
So absolutely personality types that are governed by these different doshes . And you can see them really clearly if you look at your friends and family.
Jaunique
Yeah, well, and certain people gravitate toward certain seasons. Right. Like, I'm absolutely a spring, summer and winter is just like insulting to me. And I grew up in a country where it's subtropical all year round, you know, so there was the hot season in the hot and a little bit of rainy season, you know, and that was normal. And then I came to the States and I'm like, what is happening? The world is dying. I'm so depressed. Like, why do people endure this? Right. So that totally makes sense. Just you had a question.
Tristin
Yeah, I'll see if I can say it. OK, I don't know .I've tried. I was so close.
Jaunique
You were So close. Is ayurvedic food vegetarian or can it work for people who prefer to eat meat?
Jaunique
Great question. Yeah, ayurvedic food is not strictly vegetarian. In fact, when you read any of the classical texts, let's say you want to get really into ayurveda the chatter customizer and the Ashtanga they are, two wonderful texts that go deep into the seasonal aspects and diet and in winter and certain times of year or certain seasons of life like pregnancy, meat is actually recommended it is medicinal. And so I think that here's my interpretation. This might not be the full story, but my interpretation is that yoga culture has kind of hijacked aspects of ayurveda and kind of merged them into this idea that everything has to be pure, everything has to be scientific, and that meat is impure and therefore you should only be vegetarian. I will say a lot of ayurvedic cuisine does focus heavily on plants and uses meat more than they do in our modern culture here. So meat and it even goes into all the different kinds of meat. Was it an animal by a marshy land? Was it an animal in a dry, arid climate? Here's the effects it will have on you. And so what I love about Ayurvedic eating is that it doesn't say don't eat this, don't eat that. This is bad. You are impure it says here's the experience you will have in your body and in your mind.
Jaunique
Yeah, I love. Oh, my gosh. Can we turn that into the American meat system right now and the adventure that we're choosing every day when we pull up to like a McDonald's and they experience those animals had their entire lives. It is horrific and it's disgusting. And the fact that we human beings actually allow it to happen and exist we are torturing our animals before we eat them.
Claire Ragozzino
And that absolutely forms our tissues. Yes. What I mean it does teach us is that what you eat becomes your tissue, becomes you about first bite of food and how you receive it, then forms your seven tissue layers of your body. And when you're eating something that's filled with hormones, essentially, that becomes your tissues. And they're eating that while you're angry and driving through a fast food Lindberg's eat a whole other story. And so what they do talk about is this concept of the how good I, I show Rajah's, tamas and satva the words that help us understand three different primordial energies, which is is the energy of kind of activity. It's passion. It's fiery. Too much of that can create agitation, anger. Right. And then on the other end of that spectrum is Tamas, which is inertia. It's darkness. It is. It's that I just want to stay on the couch and not see anyone for a month.
Jaunique
Yeah. Me and January.
Claire Ragozzino
Rajas on one side and Tamas on the other.And in that center, that harmonious balance is Satva . It's that feeling of peacefulness and your self, clarity of who you are, understanding of the bigger picture. It's this feeling of calmness and sometimes they call it purity is one translation of it.And ideally, we want to eat foods and partake in activities that help create that state in our body and our mind because it's nice. Right. But I think what's gotten confusing in yoga culture is that everything is satva , but everything has to be pure. But when you're just eating cotchery and cleansing all the time, you become pure. You're actually creating another balance. So that's the beauty of you need all three, right? If you're hyper stimulated, you need some tamas, if you're really lethargic, you need some Rajas and then somewhere you find this beautiful balance in between.
Jaunique
Yeah, I love that. I love that so much. One last question. Let's talk about rice. It's often vulcanized. I do not like rice. I do not promote rice. But let's talk about its benefits and how that fits in ayurveda.
Claire Ragozzino
Wow, there's so much to say on Rice. In fact, I was looking at some of the classical texts and in there there's like fourteen pages on the different kinds of rice, you know, is it rice grown in a water paddy is at rice in a dry arid place. These are things that we don't even think about being so obsessed with the macronutrients going to make me fat, isn't going to make me fat. Like that's, that's the only thing that you get to hear about rice and or white rice is better. Brown rice is better. I know this about rice. White rice is going to cook quickly and it's going to be softer and easier to digest. That's why we use basmati rice, often white basmati in cleansing protocols. Brown rice has the husk on it. It has the skin. It's going to be more rough. It's going to have a more scraping effect, so it's great, it's better for Kofa, right, to help kind of move that stickiness of Kofa. Different people will be able to digest different things. That's the beauty of ayurveda , is that no one diet fits everyone at all times.
Jaunique
That's so true.
Claire Ragozzino
And so about a quarter cup of uncooked rice is one serving one portion size for one person. And I think it's great to start with one serving size and see how do you digest it? How does that make you feel?
Jaunique
Yeah.
Claire Ragozzino
and adding spices will also increase the digestibility of rice because rice is naturally sweet when you taste it. More grains are sweet. And for someone with a Kofa balance, you might want to add some warming spices to it to help balance out those more heavy components of rice. So it's wonderful for building the tissues. It's great for a fall winter diet. You might want to eat less of it in spring, have a Kofa and balance. That's the lens that I look at. Rice good versus bad.
Jaunique
I love that. But I also want to point out that ayurveda is very heavily and correct me if I'm wrong, is very heavy in the usage of vegetables. Right. Like Whole Foods, all of that. So it's not about the rice, like rice is the side. And then like the main course is the vegetables, like going heavy on the vegetables and making sure that that is up front and center stage in our lives constantly.
Claire Ragozzino
Yeah, absolutely. And my my book, it's a cookbook as well as a lifestyle book, and it has eighty five recipes in it. And I did make it a vegetarian book because everyone seems to have enough access to how to cook meat.
Jaunique
Yeah. Yes.
Claire Ragozzino
I wanted to display vegetables and legumes and whole grains and spices and a fun way that you can add meat to the side of one of these dishes if you wanted to. And so I do give modifications for each recipe as well as dosha recommendations and recipes. So if you're feeling overheated, don't with the garlic, if you'd like a little bit more protein, salmon would go well with this dish. I think there's ways that you can work with that without feeling like you just have to eat beans and rice the whole time.
Jaunique
Where do legumes and being set in the seasonal eating, is it all seasons? Is a winter full? Like where does that go?
Claire Ragozzino
It can be all seasons. One thing that you'll know is grains are going to be more building and legumes are going to be more lightning. They can be more drying. So you tend to lighten up on the legumes during Vata season because they can cause bloating, if not properly cooked. We're usually soaking our beans and rice. All of these nuts, seeds and grains require a couple hours of soaking to help replace what's called (...) And just makes it softer, easier to digest and especially for beans, quicker to cook. And so beans, I could say you could eat them all year round, but if you ate just a pot of dollar, let's say lentil soup and nothing else, you might feel a little bloated by the end of it. So you would want to balance that meal out with these other tastes. So ayurvedic cooking looks at how you can bring a grain in and it can be quinoa, it can be millet, it can be Amrit, it can be something else. It doesn't have to just be rice. There's lots of other fun grains to work with as well as your sweet vegetables and your more bitter vegetables like leafy greens and things that you cook and add and to create more balanced approach to eating.
Jaunique
Amazing, it makes total sense. And then where does the yoga fit into all of this? Because your book includes yoga as well. So it's literally the whole lifestyle of ayurveda it's food and exercise.Does it include breathing too, with the yoga aspect?
Claire Ragozzino
It does well. And and there's ways that you can make the breathing very intense and there's ways that you can make it really approachable in your daily practice. And that's what I tried to do here. So there are breath practices that are going to be more calming and groundind ,there are breath practices that are going to be more energizing. So the spring you'll find a more energizing yoga sequence that focuses on building strength, breaking a sweat, helping to release that excess water from the body and building a little bit more fire to balance the water in our element in spring and summer. I'm not prescribing high yoga.
Jaunique
Yeah, right, right.
Claire Ragozzino
This summer, you'll find practices that still satisfy the need for movement because you can't tell a very athletic person just to sit still. It's like putting the brakes on from one hundred to zero. You also have to bring movement in, but do it in a way that's playful. Do it in a way that's lightning. That doesn't aggravate the intensity. If you're already feeling very intense and some our focus is on that, as well as a cooling breath called Sitali where you breathe through your tongue like a straw .
Jaunique
That's really cool.
Claire Ragozzino
It's very effective when you're overheated and it's quick practice that you can do, let's say you are out too long the day in the sun doesn't have to be you just sit down on the mat and do it like this, but you can do it as a morning practice or evening practice or you can do it therapeutically when you're feeling like you need to cool down a little bit or you need to warm up.
Jaunique
Very cool. So your book is basically a whole lifestyle like this is how you live your life in balance with the seasons and the changes. And I freaking love that I'm getting your book because I want to learn this. Like this is the most in-depth I've ever gone about Ayurveda and I'm madly in love with it because it makes complete sense.
Tristin
It is intuitive.
Jaunique
It is. I'm actually going to get one for my assistant because she helps me with the meal plans. And we're going to start planning meal plans around all of this for the members, because this just it's so it's really beautiful. And we see these imbalances in ourselves and in our society and our loved ones and friends where we push, push, push, push, push. It doesn't matter at the time, the season, whatever. And then years later, we crash and we ask ourselves what went wrong. And it's like, well, you did the same thing every day, right? Every season, like Monday through Sunday, you know, and and we burn out and our bodies, they're telling us like, this is unnatural to me. I wasn't designed for this. We don't listen to our bodies. We override them. And when our bodies start talking, we take ibuprofen, you know, and when our bodies start telling us, I'm anxious, we take sleeping pills. And when our bodies start saying I'm in pain, we take more ibuprofen. And it's so simple. It's just breathe into the elements, breathe into the seasons, breathe into the seasonal foods, and your body will work for you and not against you. And like this..
Claire Ragozzino
honestly, most of the healing I found was when I stopped fighting against myself, I stopped trying to override my natural intuition with my mind, with all the surrounding information about my body.
Jaunique
Right.
Claire Ragozzino
It was telling me I should be feeling
Jaunique
right, like I have to be raw food is I have to be competitive. I have to I have to be the best. Right. It's like, no, you can work with this, you know, like I love that. I love your story. It's so perfect for where you have ended up, where you're like, this is balance.
Claire Ragozzino
It just make life much more enjoyable, to be honest. It's just made me enjoy living more. And when I notice I'm getting really competitive or burnt out or I'm not being able to fall asleep at night, it's like, oh, wait, this is high, OK? This is what I can do to nourish better. My partner is having the same imbalances. I cannot take it so personally. I'm going, oh babe, your vata is really high risks. You've been a little too late every night working on your computer. Let's get you, you know, a good night's sleep. And it just allows you to instead of being like I'm this instead of having the identity of having to be something or especially when things aren't going well, I'm a mad person or he's an asshole. Sorry. It just allows you to be like, oh, you're about this has been traveling in a bus and you're tired, OK? And it is allows a little bit more grace for you everyone
Jaunique
Much grace.
Claire Ragozzino
And I think if you can learn to see the world and that lens a little bit more, it becomes less than that shame and blame game that we find ourselves in a lot.
Jaunique
Yeah, this has been incredible. How do people find you? How do they find your book? Like, we'll put some links in the notes. But do you take on clients? Do you do seminars? Do you do workshops like how do people get more of you in their lives?
Claire Ragozzino
Yeah, my website is vidyaliving.com. And then I have my book, Living Ayurveda, which you can find on my site as well. It's also available in all major retailers. And because, like you said, this is a lot it's a lot in one book I am leading a book club starting in January this season, by season living, I read a book club which is going to essentially teach you more what couldn't be said within three hundred and twenty pages. So feel free to join me. I'm just getting ready to open registration for that. And I'm excited to just have a really great community to practice with and to share experiences and insights and go through the course of a year of living Ayurveda.
Jaunique
Oh, that sounds fantastic. So you're basically like handholding people through this, like they can read the book
Claire Ragozzino
and creating path community because I've worked with clients one on one and I still do take private clients. But what I've noticed, you know, whether you're living in rural Oklahoma and your family is just eating meat and potatoes, but you're here, you are trying to cook with all these foreign spices, you know, it's hard to make change when you don't have common dialogue and a supportive community to do that. And that's really what I want to do now that we're all stuck at home and we all have time to cook again. It's just create an uplifting space where we can learn more and have like minded dialogue around these things, and it really reinforces positive change.
Jaunique
I love that so much. Oh, my gosh, thank you so much for coming on today. I've learned so much and this was so enlightening.
Tristin
This is awesome.Man. It was like learning a brand new story on, like, the world and nature and our bodies and ourselves. And it's just it was really fantastic. Thank you for educating us about the way of ayurveda and ayurvedic lifestyle, as well as yoga and other means.
Claire Ragozzino
It's been great.
Tristin
We've already ordered our book, so we will be here any day now. But everyone else go on to . Learn more. You're going to love it.
Jaunique
Your sweet voice, babe.
Claire Ragozzino
I really enjoyed it.
Jaunique
Thank you again for coming on today. We really enjoyed our time with you. And until next time you guys please share this with your friends, leave a reading or something.
Tristin
Just tell everbody , all your friends . we don't care about your ratings.
Jaunique
Yeah.We really don't just share this with your friends and your enemies and maybe you'll become friends with them because ... Until next time you guys, we love you.
Tristin
See you later.
Jaunique
Bye.
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