This episode is about seven of the most informative and inspiring books to get you started on your path of Ayurveda.

I share which book will help you figure out your prakriti (the way you've always been), which cookbook is the easiest for mamas needing a last minute meal, the book that helped me release negative feelings and beliefs around having a rare health condition and the book that inspired 2018 to be the year of rhythm.

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Healing Your Life: The Lessons on the Path of Ayurveda by Marc Halpern

Freedom in Your Relationship with Food: An Everyday Guide by Myra Lewin

The Everyday Ayurveda Cookbook: A Seasonal Guide to Eating and Living Well by Kate O'Donnell

Everyday Ayurveda Cooking for a Calm, Clear Mind: 100 Simple Sattvic Recipes by Kate O'Donnell

Eat Feel Fresh: A Contemporary, Plant-Based Ayurvedic Cookbook by Sahara Rose Ketabi

What to Eat for How You Feel: The New Ayurvedic Kitchen - 100 Seasonal Recipes by Divya Alter

Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom: A Complete Prescription to Optimize Your Health, Prevent Disease, and Live with Vitality and Joy by Acharya Shunya

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Welcome to the Simple Ayurveda podcast. I’m Angela Perger, and this is a place where we discuss how ancient wisdom can be applied to your everyday life, so that you can be your happiest, healthiest self. 

Thank you for tuning in to Episode 5, Books to get you Started on the Path of Ayurveda. This is the second most frequent question that I get asked after, “What is Ayurveda?” and that one I answered in episode 1 of the podcast. And so today I have all of my favorite books out in front of me and I’m going to give you a little bit of information about each one and why I love it so much. And then links to all of the books will be in the show notes for episode 5 of the podcast at simpleayurveda.com. 

So the first book that I’m talking about today is “Healing Your Life: Lessons on the Path of Ayurveda” by Dr. Mark Halpern. And this is a smaller book, it fits in my purse wonderfully, and I’m just in love with this book because after I learned about Ayurveda during my first Yoga teacher training and then I had seen an Ayurveda Health Counselor two or three times and I was still confused about my dosha. I had taken dosha quizzes online, and I didn’t understand that I was a pitta because everything I read about pittas was that they are competitive and athletic and have muscular builds, and I didn’t quite have that muscular build that I could see, and this book really laid out what the doshas are, why people have certain-and when I talk about dosha in this case I’m talking about prakriti, like the way we were born, so I couldn’t figure out my prakriti, my constitution, what I was born with. Because pitta didn’t quite make sense to me. I didn’t think of myself as competitive or athletic, and when I read this book “Healing your Life” he gives a scenario about a vata, a pitta and a kapha going to the movies together and what that conversation would look like about the movie choice, and why each person’s constitution, or prakriti, would influence their decision on whether they would want to see that movie or not. And so when I got to the bottom layer of the competitiveness, and aggressiveness that is often described as pitta, I understood that it shows up for me in a different way. So rather than being competitive in sports, or comparing myself to other people, it’s more this internal comparison. Like I don’t think I’m good enough so I have to keep on trying my best or changing myself so that I can be better. And that’s how pitta shows up for me when it’s out of balance. So this book really helped me figure it out and that’s one of the reasons I love it so much. It has a very extensive guide to figuring out your prakriti, and then once you have a grasp on that, it gives so many specific recommendations for vata, pitta and kapha that I’ve never seen written down anywhere else. So he talks about specific times to eat your meals, the type of massage that you should have, colors to decorate your home, essential oils, the type of music that could be soothing or aggravating, so it’s very comprehensive but yet totally easy to understand and relate to. It has that initial beginner, like you can comprehend it easily if you’re a beginner, and yet I keep going back and rereading because there is so much valuable information and I couldn’t take it all in the first few readings. So that is “Healing your Life” by Dr. Mark Halpern. 

The next book I’m talking about is “Freedom in Your Relationship with Food” by Myra Lewin and this book is transforming the way that I think about food right now. She talks about eating as a sacred act, how food is the foundation of life, and it connects us to nature. And in the book she gives some different self inquiry about examining obstacles that get in the way of this type of thinking. So, for example, some old beliefs that might get in the way of this type of thinking are victim mentality, another one is thinking that I’m different or separate from other people, and I talked about this a little bit in a Facebook live, in my Facebook group Simple Ayurveda Community, that one of the ways this showed up for me is at the age of 21 I was diagnosed with this rare liver condition, so that has always made me separate. Like I have this problem that nobody else has and I can’t really connect with anyone else because it’s just so rare, and there’s not a lot of information about it online, and that is a big reason that I went on this path of discovering Ayurveda for myself, is trying to find out more about this condition that no one seems to know anything about, including my doctors. But when I look at it, like this belief is keeping me separate from other people, that I have something that makes me separate. And when I examine it and look at it, well now that I understand, it’s a pitta imbalance, there’s literally too much heat in my body and it’s manifesting in the liver, and I have control to start to make decisions that calm down that heat. So I can choose food or activities that balance that out, then I’m not that different, and you probably have, if you are listening to this and you’re a beginner with Ayurveda then you might also have something, a condition or a belief about yourself that keeps you separate that you’re not able to eat this way or live this way. And when we use the tools, like Yoga and Ayurveda and meditation and whatever else you have that works for you, to let those obstacles, those ways of thinking go, then that’s when true freedom and health and wellness and happiness comes. So this book is just so powerful. She gives specific tools to cultivate a healthy relationship with food, so the first half is working through those old beliefs and figuring out where you have stagnant energy or “stuckness” and she also talks about the doshas and gives some food lists for examples, and there are tools to move past those beliefs and I’m not all the way there yet of course because life is a journey, but my whole view towards food and eating and feeling fearful that if I eat something then it’s going to cause a problem for me, is dissipating right now and this is one of the resources that’s been really helpful in that. So this is “Freedom in your Relationship with Food” by Myra Lewin. And again, I’ll put all of these titles in the show notes for episode 5 of the Simple Ayurveda podcast at simpleayurveda.com. 

So the next book is “The Everyday Ayurveda Cookbook: A Seasonal Guide to Eating and Living Well” with Kate O’Donnell. So this is a great beginners guide to Ayurveda and a cookbook that I go to over and over again because the recipes are simple and practical and some of them you can just throw together with ingredients just a few minutes before you want the meal ready. So for example she has an everyday cream of anything soup where she basically teaches you how to throw together veggies with something to make it creamy whether it’s beans or cashews or dairy. So it’s great for last minute when it’s going to be take-out or something super simple from the kitchen and she’s got  the super simple answer for you to avoid the takeout. She also gives spice blends that you can make yourself, and I love the digestive lassis in the book. And this book is the one that I grab most frequently when I’m making kitchari or dahl because I don’t exactly even follow the recipe I just open it up and see how many cups of water and what she recommends and I just sort of throw it all in the pot. And that’s what’s great about it, you don’t even have to follow the recipes exactly and they still turn out awesome. And I also recommend this for beginners, if you’re only going to buy one book this is it because she has a great beginners guide to Ayurveda in the first few chapters. So there’s that information that tells what Ayurveda is and how it’s useful and how you can apply and then there’s the recipes all in one book so that’s awesome. So that is “The Everyday Ayurveda Cookbook Seasonal Guide” by Kate O’Donnell. I also love her second cookbook “Everyday Ayurveda Cooking for a Calm Clear Mind” and this one switches away from seasonal to the mind. So understanding sattva, rajas and tamas. And those terms come from the Bhagavad Gita, well they’re in there, I don’t know if they’re in the other texts as well. Sattva is the calm, peaceful state of mind where we have clarity and ease. Rajas is outward projection, like our ego wanting to achieve. And tamas is a downward spiral, like lethargic and apathetic. When we just don’t want to get out of bed or talk to anyone or do anything and we don’t care. So those are the three states of mind that are talked about in the ancient texts and she has the first few chapters of this one explain and give suggestions for when you’re feeling that way of how you can shift yourself and find balance. So this one is a little more like a yogi cookbook like it doesn’t have eggs. And there are some delicious recipes in here, like the ginger carrot muffins, the toasted coconut and cumin pea soup and the garnishes like she has a lot of chutneys and pickles that are delicious. So this is “Everyday Ayurveda Cooking for a Calm, Clear Mind”.  

The next book is “Eat Feel Fresh: A Contemporary Plant Based Ayurvedic Cookbook” By Sahara Rose. And I absolutely adore Sahara Rose, she has a podcast in case you haven’t heard of it yet, it’s the Highest Self podcast and one thing that I love about this book that makes it really different from any other book that I’ve seen so far, in the first chapter too, she talks about a modern approach to Ayurveda. So she answers questions that I’ve had and that a lot of you have had about what does Ayurveda say about fermented foods, dairy, grains, mushrooms and how does that compare to how some of us eat now. And she lays it all out and talks about alkaline and acidic so that’s bringing in some modern nutrition information and tying it in with Ayurveda. And the whole book is just beautiful with the photography, she took all of the pictures in India. She has chakra soups, interesting recipes like thai green curry you know, a twist on Ayurveda, warming lentil oatmeal for vata, so things that are outside of the box, she has sweet potato toast. So this one is “Eat Feel Fresh: A Contemporary Plant Based Cookbook” by Sahara Rose.

The last cookbook that I’m talking about today is by Divya Alter “What to Eat for How You Feel”. This is another gorgeous cookbook and in it, this is another one too that the first few chapters explain what Ayurveda is and help you to understand you’re digestion. And Divya’s been cooking Ayurvedic food for a long time, she has a restaurant in New York City that I got to visit and it was amazing, so if you’re in New York or you’re visiting. She has a cooking school that’s on my bucket list, and she describes airy, fiery and earthy digestion in detail and then every recipe in this book has notes for how you can tailor each recipe and she can help you understand what type of digestion you have and what types of foods will help cultivate balance for that digestion and what will create more problems. Some of my favorite recipes that I’ve tried are the creamy green protein soup, the warm sweet potato smoothie which I got the kids to enjoy that one for breakfast, we basically chopped up the sweet potatoes, simmered it in water and spices and then blended it with almond milk and used a little more almond milk to make it go through a straw which is what they wanted, or less and make more it like a porridge. She also has a recipe for fresh cheese, I haven’t tried it yet but I tasted it at the restaurant and it was absolutely delicious. So that is “What to Eat for How You Feel” by Divya Alter. 

And the final book that I’m talking about today is “Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom: A Complete Prescription to Optimize your Health, Prevent Disease and Live with Vitality and Joy” by Acharya Shunya. And she, her family is from India, she talks a lot about her grandfather and this book, it’s pretty in depth but it’s easy to understand. So she explains the rhythm of the day, so the lunar rhythm, the solar rhythm, ritual bathing, she really brings a spiritual element to connecting with nature. So this might be your second Ayurveda book unless you already have a background in this sort of information. But she describes the rhythm of the day so well like all the little things that I was not thinking about, like there’s a whole chapter around sex and pregnancy, and the women’s menstrual cycle and whether you should be having sex close to the time that you eat or not. Which no, we should give our body time to digest the food before we expect it to do something else. And there’s a guide to healthy elimination. She has recipes for self-care products in here, and I read this in January of last year, or maybe right before because I set the intention of rhythm for this year. Every year I pick a word and 2018 was the word rhythm for me and was really inspired by this book and creating a rhythm for the day and letting my actions match what’s already happening in nature anyway and allowing that to bring me into alignment. So I want to reread this again myself because it’s so deep full of information and that’s “Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom” by Acharya Shunya. 

So that’s all of the books that I’m recommending for today. I’ll put them in the show notes for episode 5 at simpleayurveda.com. Thank you.

You can find out more at simpleayurveda.com. All of the social media will be listed in the show notes. Thank you so much for being here. Namaste.