Transform Your Health with Kapha Season Foods: A Guide to Food as Medicine
Updated: Apr 26
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.
There is a saying, "The mind is more in the body, than the body is in the mind." The Saumya 3 step meditation process shifts us from fight-flight-freeze mode, to rest-restore-relax mode. Give it a try for forty days and observe the changes. The more grounded and relaxed we are, the smoother life flows.
"The breath is the connection between the mind and body, so by training the breath, we become calm, focused, and grounded, we slow down the aging process by decreasing stress. These practices are so simple and easy to have as part of our daily life. We actually feel and look younger."
- Veena, Saumya Ayurveda
1. Learn Diaphragmatic Breathing and Change Your Life. When we re-learn to breath diaphragmatically, we move from the flight-fight-freeze mode, to rest, restore, relaxation mode from where we want and need to live.
2. Free Daily Guided Practices: 11 minutes in the morning and in the evening, as anchors of your daily Ayurveda routine.
3. Ayurveda Daily Routines: Ayurvedic Morning Routine | 6 Rituals for a Calm and Centered Day
"Choose a couple of practices from the Ayurveda routines that provide you with the greatest support. Perform them while applying our two minute meditation technique and your mundane tasks, just transformed into a mellifluous meditation. This is meditation applied to daily life." - Veena, Saumya Ayurveda
"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
Explore More: Ayurveda Breathwork Pranayama
“I have seen Veena at Saumya Ayurveda for several years--in fact, my family sees her. She has helped me with blood pressure and cholesterol management as well as helping me reduce overall inflammation. I sleep better, my stress has reduced, and my energy has improved.
During a period of high stress, I was waking with a racing heart and the herbal and lifestyle recommendations reversed it. I recommend Veena--she will stick by your side and be there when you need her. She is responsive, comprehensive and effective."
-- Bryan Stenlund, Licensed Psychologist
“Working with Veena is incredible. She sees the possibilities that lay dormant in us and is so patient and kind in sharing her wisdom and tools to help birth those possibilities. As Ayurveda is a living science, it takes conviction and discipline to change habits, to live a different reality.
Veena makes navigating the changes smooth and meaningful, inspiring at every meeting, letting me know that, YES, changes are happening! Thank you, Veena. Many blessings!”
-Kyle Sangster
"I found Saumya Ayurveda when I was looking for a holistic approach to my health and lifestyle.
The Ayurveda Consultation with individual attention and focus has been wonderful. I have transitioned from pharmaceuticals to herbal and dietary approaches to manage my high cholesterol and calcium deficiencies.
Digestive issues that have plagued me my entire life have disappeared. I am a dedicated user of the oils to ease arthritis pain.
I was so pleased with my results that I recommended Saumya Ayurveda to my daughters and my mother. My mother enjoys the tea, and the oil is working so well for the arthritis in her hands and shoulders that she has been able to stop using harsh pain medications. Ayurveda is helping me to take care of myself and I can enjoy each day.”
--Rachelle Chase, retired Director Business Process, Target Corporation, Minnesota
“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
Transform Your Health with Kapha Season Foods: A Guide to Food as Medicine. Start today-check out our online recipes. Selected top Ayurveda recipe blogs.
Discover the Saumya Ayurveda Way
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.
Saumya Ayurveda provides concierge, top-notch, award-winning Ayurveda care. We strive to keep it simple, so you can focus on you! Opt for virtual consultations and we'll come to you.
Our practice model is client focused, we’re not in the retail herb business. We’ll guide you where to order herbs directly online. Our top-shelf Ayurveda oils and herbalized ghees are the best in the land and we’ll ship your care package right to your doorstep.
Our effective multi-appointment consultation packages provide you with experienced Ayurveda care, enthusiastic guidance, and inspiring support.
Explore our personalized services and book your FREE discovery call today. Psst! Our clients say it best – so read and watch our client's stories.
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.