Transform Your Health with Kapha Season Foods: A Guide to Food as Medicine
Updated: 4 days ago
Feeling sluggish and tired? Emotional eating? Weight gain? Cholesterol numbers creeping up? Pre-diabetic? You might have an Kapha imbalance. Learn how to balance Kapha using food as medicine. When we eat correctly, specifically to our individual needs, our food is medicine. Learn about Kapha season and how to turn your food into medicine to balance Kapha dosha.
Explore more on the Saumya Blog, selected top Ayurveda blogs and websites to watch.
Kapha: That Which Protects and Lubricates
Kapha dosha is governed by water and earth. Nourishing and reliable, Kapha provides structure and stability in our inner and outer worlds. Like the elements it represents, Kapha physical properties are moist, heavy, slow (or dullish), cool, stable, oily, and smooth.
Balanced Kapha supports groundedness, endurance, strength, and dependability. It protects critical systems from our immune system and personal boundaries down to our stomach lining and the fluid in our joints. Out of balance, Kapha manifests as physical and mental “dullness.” We may put on a few extra pounds, or feel weighed down, lethargic, foggy, or depressed.
What is Kapha Season?
Depending on your location and the climate around you, Kapha season may vary. Generally speaking, it begins in the late-winter and ends in early spring.
Kapha's qualities are: heavy, cool, moist, slow, steady, and smooth, oily As such, late winter and early spring is Kapha season. As Kapha in the environment increases, Kapha in us is likely to increase as well.
During this time, we often become heavier, we may feel lethargic (long, cold, dark days add to this), fatigue, excessive sleep, depressed mood, demotivated, thick white coating on the tongue, slow, sticky bowel movements, possessive or overly attached, sentimental, stubborn, with a tendency for emotional eating. This is why balancing the Kapha is so important for overall well-being.
Explore More: What Your Tongue Is Saying About Your Health Ayurveda Stool Analysis: What Your Poop Says About Your Health
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.
Some common Kapha imbalances:
Slow, sticky bowel movements
Feeling foggy, sluggish, dull, lethargic, or heavy
Thick, white coating on the tongue
Excess bodily fluids and mucus
Difficulty rising in the morning
Seasonal allergies, hay fever
Pre-diabetes, diabetes
Sinus congestion
High cholesterol
Tendency for “emotional overeating”
In the following guide, we’ll highlight a few basic principles to balance the patterns that arise during Kapha season.
Food as Medicine for Kapha Season
Eat to Balance Kapha Qualities
By nature, Kapha is heavy, cool, and oily. To maintain balance during the spring Kapha season, favor foods that counterbalance these qualities. This means transitioning from dense, filling winter meals to light, dry, astringent fare. Our Kapha Reducing Kitchari is a client favorite. Cleansing yet nourishing and an easy one pot meal.
Eat the Bounty of the Season
What pokes its head above ground at the onset of spring? Life! As soon as they’re available, turn to cleansing early spring greens like arugula, spinach, and chard. Consume cooked and spiced for easy digestion, warmth, and invigoration.
Eat Consciously and Moderately
Routine and mindfulness are central to a balanced Kapha diet. Avoid overindulgence by sticking to two to three meals a day. Tune-in to how you feel before and after eating – how is your appetite, do you feel heavy or revitalized?
Best Tastes for Kapha:
These three tastes are the most supportive for Kapha:
1. Pungent: chilis, ginger, onion, garlic
2. Bitter: dark leafy greens, turmeric
3. Astringent: legumes, cranberries, aloe
Reduce sweet, salty, and sour tastes.
For ideas, inspiration, and recipes, visit our online recipe box. Selected top Ayurveda recipe blogs. Here's a few client favorites to get you going.
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Explore More: Ayurveda Breathwork Pranayama
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Transform Your Health with Kapha Season Foods: A Guide to Food as Medicine
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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.
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.
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