How to Create an Ayurveda Dosha-Balancing Breakfast for a Healthy Start to Your Day.
Updated: Apr 26
In Ayurveda, food is medicine. With Ayurveda's knowledge, you can balance your doshas with food. Avoid the pitfalls of one-size-fits-all approaches and focus on what's supportive food for you!
Let's start with the fundamentals.
It's important for our physical and mental wellbeing to slow down and be present. Ever feel overwhelmed, stressed, like you're going all the time? Nature provides a natural, nourishing respite. Three times a day, at meal times, exists the opportunity to shift from high gear, into neutral, to relax, reground, and enjoy some breaks in the day--and dosha balancing food.
"I share with my clients, what we bring into our lives is as important as how we bring it in, and that includes our food. How we eat is as important as what we eat."
-Veena, Saumya Ayurveda
Ayurvedic Eating Principles: The How To Eat
1. When you eat, just eat. Put the screens away. Sit down. Quiet yourself by observing your breath for a few inhalations and exhalations, or by doing our two-minute meditation.
Feel your feet on the ground. Feel the flow of your breath in and out of your nostrils.
Cultivate an attitude of gratitude for your food and how it will support your health physically, mentally, and spiritually.
If you're in the company of others, keep your chatting to minimum, and allow your focus to remain inward, while being present and pleasant outward.
If you can eat your meals outside, or in a quiet place, that's ideal.
2. Connect with yourself in the inner quietness of your own being.
3. Smell the food. See the colors in the meal.
4. Chew your food well and eat with awareness, versus gulping it down and being distracted.
5. Focus on the meal. The taste, texture, the action of chewing, of lifting the fork to your mouth is an eating meditation.
When you've shifted into your relaxed state of mind, it's time to eat. A calm mind is the first step to healthy digestion.
Now that the how you eat to balance the doshas is clear, (when you eat, just eat), it's time to explore dosha specific Ayurveda food guidelines to support healthy digestion, assimilation, and yup...elimination. Our frame of mind influences the digestive process.
Enjoy our video on Healing with Ayurveda.
How to Create an Ayurveda Dosha-Balancing Breakfast for a Healthy Start to Your Day.
For all dosha types, foods are best when cooked, eaten warm, spiced, and freshly made. Beyond this, we benefit from morning meals attuned to our specific dosha picture. Here are a few dosha balancing breakfast ideas to get you rolling.
Vata Breakfast – Dense and Moist
If you're feeling nervous, anxious, overwhelmed, depleted, ungrounded, constipated, poor sleep, dry, and cold, balance Vata dosha with grounding, soothing, nourishing, warming foods that are cooked and well spiced.
Stir fried root vegetables (ex: sweet potato; carrots; beet) with ghee-fried egg
Oatmeal in plant-based milk; with a pinch of cinnamon and/or cumin, and a touch of maple syrup and/or nut butter
Stewed fruits (ex: pears or apples) with cinnamon and nutmeg
Fresh in the Saumya Recipe Box: Delicious and Nourishing: Savory Ayurveda Vata Sweet Potato Breakfast,.
Pitta Breakfast – Cooling and Dry
Basmati rice or oatmeal with plant-based milk; topped with sunflower or pumpkin seeds.
Whole-grain toast with avocado or fresh fruit preserves
Chia pudding with plant-based milk and a dash of maple syrup (or other natural sweetener)
Kapha Breakfast – Light and Dry
Bitter greens (ex: kale; arugula; chard) lightly sauteed in ghee
Warm cereals with a drizzle of honey or maple syrup
Fresh seasonal fruit – stewed, juiced, or blended into a smoothie
For more ideas, check out the Saumya Recipe Blog, selected top Ayurveda recipes blogs. Think of your breakfast as being savory meal and not only sweet. Consider, for example, savory oatmeal, or quinoa breakfast bowls. A whole world opens up.
Explore More: What is Ayurveda? A Beginner's Guide and Beyond
How Do I Know If I Have a Dosha Imbalance?
Peruse these comprehensive and convenient lists of signs and symptoms of dosha imbalances.
As we are all comprised of Vata, Pitta, and Kapha, there can be an imbalance in any of the doshas, or a combination of dosha imbalances. Read all three lists and see if anything looks familiar.
“It is with great pleasure that I write this review! Working with Veena has remarkably changed my life – even in the places I was unaware that it demanded to be changed!
Throughout the course of four months, Veena’s gentle and succinct approach allowed me to easily refine my routines into a more structured foundation that left me feeling more in graceful governance with myself – emotionally and physically.
Not only had she brought forth awareness in how I prepare/ relate to the food I eat, but she also prescribed me wonderful herbs to help calm my anxiety, detox my liver, and heal the ugly night sweats I’ve been experiencing due to hormonal imbalances. Lastly, her guided meditations are a great grounding force, and I have since continued to explore the euphoric benefits of Yoga Nidra.
Veena is a well of divine knowledge, and her humor and light will be eternally appreciated!”
--Rachel Monson, Wisconsin
“Veena was able to help me regain my energy in just a few months and I’m feeling like my “young” self again!
I love the food plan she designed for me, and all the supporting practices (am/pm routines, breathing techniques, herbs, and spice mixes) are so enjoyable to incorporate into my day. I highly recommend Saumya Ayurveda if you want to feel better and have more vitality.” -Molly Rossini, Minnesota
“Veena has helped me several times at various stages of my life to rebalance my doshas, and to bring me back to greater vitality. Veena’s herbal protocols and food recommendations are easy to follow and effective.
Combined with her beautifully guided relaxation and meditation practices, Veena offers a truly holistic to achieving and maintaining harmony in body, mind, and spirit—and living more peacefully and joyfully in an increasingly more erratic world.”
-Gabrielle Allen, California
“Veena is absolutely incredible and so thorough. She made me feel so comfortable and confident, not just in myself, but in my ability to treat food as medicine and make changes in my life!! Thank you Veena!!!” --Audriana, Albuquerque, New Mexico
How to Create an Ayurveda Dosha-Balancing Breakfast for a Healthy Start to Your Day is about nourishing your body and mind, with what and how you eat.
Discover the Saumya Ayurveda Way
When we gain clarity about what to eat, we can cook and eat with confidence knowing we are turning our food into medicine and with Saumya Ayurveda, you'll know what to do. As Julia Childs put it, "This is my invariable advice to people: Learn how to cook—try new recipes, learn from your mistakes, be fearless and above all have fun."
We all want to be heard, understood, and cared for as whole beings, not a set of isolated symptoms. True health is more than the absence of disease, which is why Western medicine so often leaves us feeling hopeless and unseen.
Deep down, you already know what you’re searching for: a new framework for living – one that brings your entire being back into balance. With Saumya Ayurveda, you’ll receive individualized guidance to create the physically, mentally, and spiritually vibrant life you crave.
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Veena is a Certified Ayurvedic Practitioner and meditation teacher, and monk.
She is President Emeritus and teaching faculty of the Meditation Center.
Veena fell in love with the traditional medicine used in her family’s home, learning herbal remedies at her grandmother's knee.
These childhood experiences were the seeds of a lifelong passion. For over 30 years, Veena has dedicated her life to the world’s oldest healing system: Ayurveda.
She draws on this ancient wisdom to help others find their compass to a healthy life – and support those left wanting by Western medicine.
An experienced Certified Ayurvedic Practitioner, Veena’s deep, intuitive knowledge of Ayurveda empowers her clients to reclaim their fullest, most vibrant lives –mentally, physically, and spiritually. Veena individualizes treatment plans to each person, rather than offering a one-size-fits-all approach, so it fits your life and becomes woven in your lifestyle, naturally.