show 5 qualities

Dr. Oscar Ibn Khan, an Ayurvedic practitioner, introduces the ancient system of medicine known as Ayurveda. Ayurveda uses diet, lifestyle modifications, and herbal remedies to maintain balance in the body and prevent illness. The qualities in Ayurveda, called Gunas, are important in achieving balance. There are 10 opposing pairs of qualities, such as heavy and light, cold and hot, and oily and dry. These qualities can be found in the food we eat and the experiences we have. Each dosha (biophysical energy form) has specific qualities associated with it. Balancing the doshas involves bringing in opposite qualities through food, lifestyle, and experiences. The six tastes in Ayurveda (sweet, sour, salty, pungent, bitter, and astringent) also have specific effects on the doshas. Understanding the qualities of food and tastes is important for maintaining balance in the body and mind. Hello and welcome to this new show called Ayurveda, the science of life on UK Health Radio. My name is Dr Oscar Ibn Khan, I am currently working as an Ayurvedic practitioner in Belfast. I have worked as a GP or family doctor over the past 30 years both in Ireland and in the UK and this is a new career for me using what I have learnt as a family doctor working in conventional medicine. On this show I will introduce the listener to the ancient system of medicine known as Ayurveda. It is still in use today and it is growing in popularity worldwide especially in the US and in Europe and in the UK. Ayurveda is a system of medicine that uses diet and lifestyle advice and modifications to help us maintain balance of body and mind to prevent illness and disease. It uses herbal based remedies in addition to herbal based medication to help achieve this balance using diet and lifestyle and nutritional techniques. It involves a highly tailored and highly personalised approach to each patient and the problems they present. One of the root causes of our illness today is caused by our digestion and lifestyle and this is becoming more commonly acknowledged even in conventional medicine. Ayurveda has taught for many thousands of years and continues to teach us that everything we do in our lives has an effect upon our wellbeing and health. On this show I hope to teach you and show you how learning about Ayurveda will benefit you and your health now and into the future. As Ayurveda has stood the test of time for 5000 years I hope learning about Ayurveda will help you and I do the same. On this show today I want to focus on the qualities and how they are viewed in Ayurveda. The qualities in Ayurveda are called the Gunas and in Ayurveda it is believed that everything has a specific quality and it can present in the food we eat, the experiences we have, the lifestyle and habits that we lead and even in our thoughts and emotions and also how we perceive the world around us. The importance of recognising these qualities is critical in how we approach achieving balance and becoming as close to our natural constitution as we can to maintain our health and prevent illness and disease. In Ayurveda there are 10 opposing pairs of qualities. So already you can see that we are bringing in the idea of opposing qualities and if you remember from the previous shows I spoke about the fundamental law of treatment in Ayurveda is that we remember that opposites balance and like promotes like. So if there is too much of something we need to bring the opposite quality or opposite taste or experience in to balance it. Now I will list these 10 opposing pairs of qualities. We have Heavy and Light, Slow and Sharp, Cold and Hot, Oily and Dry, Smooth and Rough, Dense and Liquid, Soft and Hard, Static and Mobile and Gross or Subtle and Cloudy and Clear. Now if we have a look at the doshas and how these qualities are attributed, we remember from a previous show that Ayurveda teaches us that the universe is made up of the five elements of space, air, fire, water and earth. And everything in nature and even beyond into the universe is essentially made up of different combinations of these elements. And that these combinations of the elements are expressed in each of us as what we call doshas or biophysical energy forms and these are vata, pitta and kapha. Now each of these doshas has a specific list of qualities that are associated with the elements that make them up. Let's start with vata. We know vata as the energy of movement and it is comprised of air and space or ether. The qualities that are associated with vata are dryness, light, cold, rough, subtle, mobile and clear. These are the qualities that are associated with vata and they represent or reflect the elements of air and ether. We move on to pitta which as we know is the dosha of digestion, metabolism, transformation within the body and is associated with the elements of fire and water. The qualities of pitta are oiliness, sharpness, heat, light, mobility and liquid. And these again reflect the elements that make up pitta which are fire and water. And lastly kapha, the dosha that is made up of earth and water elements. Kapha have a long list of qualities and they are heavy, slowness or dullness, coolness, oiliness, slimy or smooth quality, a soft quality, dense, stable and sticky or cloudy. So quite a range of qualities associated with kapha and they reflect once again the elements that make up the kapha dosha which are earth and water. So as I explained before we are all made up of these doshas, usually two are more prominent and there is less prominence of the third dosha within us and each of these doshas have these specific characteristics within them. So when we think of the doshas going out of balance which causes us to be ill or to be more at risk of disease, what we really mean is that the qualities associated with these doshas become too little or too much in our system. And when we think then how to restore balance, what we really need to think about is bringing in the opposite qualities, either through the food that we eat, the lifestyle that we live, our daily habits and practices including of course exercise, meditation, breath work, self-care, massage amongst others and then how we experience the world through our five senses of sight, smell, taste, touch and hearing. So this brings us back to the ten opposing pairs of qualities that I mentioned at the start of the show. So I'm going to look at each of these pairs of qualities in turn and see how they affect our natural balance and our health of all the doshas that make us up. So once again the ten pairs of qualities are heavy and light, dull and sharp, cold and hot, oily and dry, smooth and rough, dense and liquid, soft and hard, static and mobile, gross and subtle and cloudy and clear. These qualities as I said exist in everything we experience, in the food we eat, in our mind, in our actions, our thoughts, emotions and feelings even. However the three major pairs of these qualities that are associated with food are heavy and light, cold and hot and oily and dry and this is what I'll spend most of the show talking about today in relation to the qualities of food particularly. And to give an example of how these qualities affect food, for instance heavy foods which would be foods which would be dairy based predominantly, butter, ghee, the Indian clarified butter, sugar, heavy vegetables and this heavy quality will decrease the vata dosha and the pitta dosha but increase the kapha dosha, the earth and water element dosha. Light foods would include wheat, barley, corn, spinach, lettuce, pears and apples. The light quality decreases kapha but increases the vata and pitta dosha. And the oily foods also would include dairy products, fatty foods, cooking oils. The oily quality will decrease vata and increase pitta a little but certainly increase the kapha dosha within us. Dry foods would include all beans, potatoes, barley, corn and this dry quality decreases kapha but increases vata and pitta. And the hot quality of food would describe hot drinks and warm cooked spicy foods. This would decrease vata and kapha but increase the pitta dosha which is associated with heat quite clearly. The cold quality of food would describe cold drinks and raw foods particularly and certain herbs and spices that can be cooling. This would decrease the pitta but increase both the kapha and vata dosha which have a coolness quality within them. And to recap briefly before we go on a break, I'd like to just talk about the different types of tastes as we view them in Ayurveda. There are six tastes and I discussed them in the previous show but they are worth mentioning again before we move on to the qualities of food particularly. The six tastes are sweet, sour, salty, pungent, bitter and astringent and each of them have a specific effect on each of the doshas. The bitter taste can be found in spinach, salads, tomatoes, coffee, citrus fruits and it decreases kapha and pitta but increases vata. The pungent taste is found in chilli peppers, onions, garlic, ginger and other heating spices. It decreases kapha but increases pitta and vata. And the astringent taste, all legumes, beans, peas, lentils have astringent qualities. They will decrease kapha and pitta but they will increase the vata dosha. And the salty taste likewise will increase kapha and pitta but it will decrease vata. And the sour taste which is found in lemons, limes, vinegar, cheese, plums and fermented food, this will increase kapha and pitta but decrease vata, that dosha or imbalance. And the sweet taste finally is found in sugar, honey, rice, some dairies, cream, butter as well and it will increase kapha but it will decrease pitta and vata. This is a complicated list of effects that different food tastes have and often it helps to write it out on a table to remember and understand it better but as we discuss the qualities it will become apparent how food has different qualities and different effects depending on the taste and the qualities. So I'll leave you just for now and I'll join you back and discuss the different qualities of the opposing pairs of qualities that are generally involved in food in the next part of the show. So welcome back to the second part of the show where I'll be discussing the qualities that affect the body and mind and how we experience them through food and our lifestyle habits and practices that we do in our daily lives. This is a very important concept and in the first part of the show I explained how each of the doshas have a list of specific qualities that are associated with them and how that when we try to balance any imbalance or treat any imbalance that we're suffering from that we concentrate on the qualities as much as the doshas because they give us a handle or a way to understand how we can add in opposing qualities to balance anything that we're out of balance in or any dosha we're out of balance in. So we'll start with the opposing pair of heavy and light quality. Now we need the heavy quality in the body because it allows us to increase or build our tissues and it promotes growth in our body and creates stability and like it or not we do need this in our food and different types of food that are associated with giving this nourishing or heavy quality will be oats, bread, rice, pasta, dairy such as milk, butter, ghee, sugar and heavy vegetables as well as red meat. This heavy quality will decrease the vata which is the air and space element and also pitta which is a lightness but it will increase the kapha dosha. Now these heavy foods are balanced by obviously light and bitter foods. We need these heavy foods for our nourishment and for grounding and for stability and structure. However if we have too much of these heavy foods it can slow down our digestion and can lead to weight gain as we know if we've eaten too many heavy meals we can feel our digestion is sluggish or suffering so this is represented in the slowing of our digestion. Now how we treat this heaviness quality if it's too much or in excess within our system is by doing such things as fasting which is not commonly used nowadays except around a detox regime which would be done in a supervised clinic setting but fasting might involve this intermittent fasting where you have a period between your late evening meal and your first meal the following day. You can also go on a relatively type of bland diet which would involve eating lighter foods. Waking up early is a good way to combat this heaviness quality and avoiding oversleeping. Different types of exercise such as exercising early in the morning or doing an exercise such as hot yoga will invigorate the body and balance the heaviness quality. Using pungent spices such as fresh black pepper added to the end of your meal and cayenne pepper during your meal. Aromatic spices like cardamom and mint also have a lightening quality. Lighter type foods such as kale, arugula which is a lettuce, ginger, honey and lime the drink with added black pepper is a very good lightening type of drink that you can have to combat the heaviness quality and also dandelion tea has a bitter taste which can balance the heaviness quality. Different types of breath work or breathing practice involving forced expiration such as lion's breath which is part of a pramayama or breathing type exercise that I use often in yoga. Now if you have the opposite quality, too much of, too much light quality, we do need that as well because it has the opposite effect of increasing our energy and alertness and reducing our weight and the feeling of overweightness. Light airy foods will bring this light quality such as foods that have light in them like rice cakes, cruciferous vegetables like brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, lighter types of vegetables like celery, salads and lettuce as well are light types of food. It improves our alertness having this light quality in our system but if there is too much of this quality it can create too much air or spaciness within us and this makes us feel ungrounded and a common phrase you hear is feeling spaced out and you can be distracted or hyper alert in this particular state and find it difficult to sleep for instance. A way to combat it is to encourage ways to help sleep, add in some extra rest into your daily routine, have a regular routine rather than a changeable routine and reducing general stress levels are important ways to combat this spaciness effect, our ungroundedness and it allows us to become centred and feeling more grounded. Clearly taking in or ingesting the nourishing and building foods that I spoke about in terms of the heaviness quality such as dairy, red meat and bread will also help, adding some good quality fats into your diet and going for heavier foods like grains and healthier comfort foods with meat and root vegetables that you can add into stews or casseroles. Helpful thing to do is adding a teaspoon full of ghee or a little extra olive oil at the end of your meal, good quality olive oil to give it more heaviness and also having a spoon of honey after your meal which can nourish the body and bring that sweetness and heaviness that you need to balance the excess lightness. Different types of breath work can work such as alternate nostril breathing which calms the brain and the mind over activity. Also breath work or meditation that involves slow calming deep breaths are another way to help us to become grounded and avoid that lightness quality becoming too much. Journaling or writing a small diary to record your fears or worries or anything that's on your mind, practising it every few days and jotting down a few thoughts is also a very helpful thing to help us push the thoughts that are maybe buzzing around in our head, writing them on paper can reduce that lightness quality and that hyper activity that goes on in the brain. An early bedtime and an early wake time and trying to establish a good calming restful pre-bed routine, a part of that could be just using a yin yoga or a posture based practice of gentle stretching before you go to bed for 15-20 minutes just to help with grounding and relaxation and reduce the tension from your system and try and get yourself in a kind of a calm or relaxed state before you get yourself to sleep and improve the quality of sleep. So these are the heavy and light qualities, let's move on maybe to the next pair which would be a dull and sharp quality. Dullness has an effect as you might know of slowing effect and bringing calmness into your system but too much of it can cause sluggishness of your body and your mind and it can also cause a withdrawal or you can become removed from your social circle or the society of your friends and even lead to isolation and depression if the dullness quality becomes too much in your system or in your body and your mind. It can slow our digestion like heavy food, similar effect as heavy food has and the sharp quality, this aids our digestion, it has a cleansing effect on our system, it brings in comprehension and learning and understanding where you often hear people say he's quite sharp or she's quite sharp and they pick things up quickly. I mean food would be represented by the use of spicy foods and pungent spices such as peppers and chilies but too much of this sharpness quality can lead to too much heat in the body and it also can be represented in the mind as heat of emotion, as anger and in the body as inflammatory conditions and burning type of problems such as heartburn or acid indigestion. So we can then look at how to pacify or to balance both these qualities if they arrive in excess in our system. So if we have too much of the dull quality we need to bring in more sharpness so we can add in those pungent spices I mentioned such as ginger, black pepper, cayenne and cloves. So to combat too much dullness in our lives or in our bodies would involve say just using high intensity changeable type of workouts with different types of body movement rather than the steady monotonous repetitive type of work that quite often you can see people doing in the gym where they're stuck on a machine for 30 minutes but changing it up and making it more high intensity and sharper and quicker. You can use your senses as well to get that quality of sharpness to combat the dullness and this would be such things as aromatherapy using zesty aromas such as orange and lemon. Now to balance the sharp quality in the foods we're looking at the opposite of what we've just spoken about. We're using less sour, less heating spices, more of the bland kind of foods, more grounding foods as I spoke about before. The root vegetables are very helpful in this, cooking them and adding them into stews and soups and having heavier, bigger types of vegetables to give you that, to combat that dullness, I say that sorry that apology, the sharpness that you might have if there's too much sharp quality in your body. Changing the lifestyle practice that are a bit less intense in nature, mindfulness meditation, alternate nostril breathing in your breath work which would involve calming the mind and reducing the sharp quality in the system. I'll take a short break now and come back and conclude the show finishing on the opposing pairs of qualities that we've been discussing today. See you very shortly. So welcome back to the show Ayurvedic Science of Life. In this episode I've been discussing how Ayurveda views the qualities of food particularly but also of lifestyle and habits and practices that we do in our daily lives and the fact that there are ten opposing qualities in Ayurveda. The three major opposing qualities that apply to our food, and there are others, would be heavy and light, cold and hot, oily and dry and dull and sharp. And I've discussed heavy and light and dull and sharp in the last section of the show. There are other of these qualities as well that could also apply to food, for instance smooth and rough, dense and liquid, soft and hard, and cloudy and clear, but for the purposes of the show today and to keep it contained within the time constraints of the episode and not to get too confused about it, I have focused on these qualities of heavy and light, dull and sharp, cold and hot, and oily and dry, in relation to food particularly but also in relation to habits and lifestyles and routines. I also discussed the importance of the six tastes and how they balance different doses and make other doses worse, so to speak, or aggravate or increase that dosage quality within us. So moving on to the next pair of opposing qualities that we consider in Ayurveda, which would be of cold and hot. Now, coolness as a quality has an effect of creating coolness in our mind. It creates slowness, maybe more objectivity, but it can also have the physical effect of cooling down our digestive system and it can also have this effect of creating contraction or restriction within our body and mind. So kind of a slowness or a coolness effect, that's the effect that cold quality has. Now obviously foods that would have a cooling quality would be cold drinks, ice cream, certain types of fruit such as watermelon and coconut, cucumber as a vegetable that obviously is associated with cold, cool as a cucumber, mint and mint drinks, mint added to drinks during the summer time also has a cooling quality, mint added to yogurts has a cooling quality when taken with curries or Indian, hot Indian dishes, and coriander of course. So water is a cooling drink that is often recommended for heat related inflammatory problems that are a sign of an imbalanced pitta dosha. But too much of the cold quality can cause a numbing sensation, much as it does in cold weather and it can numb our body and mind causing an insensitivity, it causes some stagnation and it also leads to mucous formation within the body, it happens in the colder months of the year such as winter and spring, early spring, where we suffer more coughs and colds and chest infections. Now the heat quality, the hot quality, it stimulates digestion, it promotes circulation within the body, and it's regarded as expansive, the opposite of contraction, it opens up things, it can be cleansing. Examples in our food intake would be spicy foods, clearly hot drinks, in the environment would be hot weather, obviously taking hot saunas. In our practices such as yoga, it would be like a hot yoga or an invigorating type of breath work practice or breathing practice which is called bellows breathing where you make exaggerated movements of the abdomen to exaggerate the breathing action to create heat within your body. Now too much of this heat to hot quality can lead to excess heat in the body, this can cause problems with the mind, with anger and irritability and heated reactions but also in the body with inflammatory issues, heat related conditions such as skin rashes, sometimes eye problems and blood disorders as well. Now to balance the cold quality, clearly the advice would be to take more warm foods, warming type of foods using heating spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg, pepper and ginger which can be easily made into hot drinks with milk for instance or even just hot water, ginger, honey and lemon is a very popular drink taken with hot water to increase the heat and balance the cold quality especially during the winter months. Even warming yourself up through exercises, promoting a warm environment around you, wrapping it up warm, putting blankets, extra blankets in your bed, extra scarves, extra warm clothes when you are out in the bed to balance this cold quality and not have it get in excess in your body. Balancing excess heat would involve taking cooling types of foods such as coconuts, such as watermelon, even ice creams and cold drinks, mint is a cooling action as I explained before as well as using coriander and fennel which are cooling spices. Using our senses, our sense of smell by aromatherapy and using rose essential oils or rose fragrances and jasmine are also cooling aromas. Using a specific type of breath work or breathing practice which involves a breathing technique known as Shatali breathing where you purse your mouth and cool the air as you are breathing in through your mouth as if you are sucking in through a straw which can cool the air as it is coming into your system. And cooling types of exercise as well such as swimming or walking by water would reduce the heat element or the heat quality in our bodies and of course using less heating spices and favouring the cooling spices like I mentioned before. So that is just general advice about how to be aware of how different qualities can manifest in our bodies through our doses and feeling imbalanced and how we can bring in opposing qualities to balance ourselves and feel more like our natural self or feel less imbalanced than we would be otherwise. A common quality that we mention, opposing pair of qualities is the oiliness and the dryness qualities within our body. We often think about drinking more to rehydrate but it is as much as, not so much as drinking but using oily foods and having an oily quality within our system and we can do this by using oils within our food of course but also by self-massage which is a very common ritual practice in Ayurveda as a form of self-care which is called Abhyanga where it involves the daily self-massage after a shower or before a shower sometimes when your body is warm to apply some essential oils and just different types of oils onto your body to increase the lubrication of your tissue layers. Now we do need oil for lubrication and for moisture and it creates this smoothness within our body not just on the outside but internally as well when we use oils in our food. It helps relaxation and enhances the effect of using a massage. The elements of oil are associated with water and earth but if they are in excess they can be balanced by the dry quality and the bitter and pungent taste. Oils are present in food, ghee which is clarified butter used in Indian cooking, olive oil, sunflower oil, sesame, coconut, castor oil and they all have different qualities mainly in the heating and cooling aspect. Vata is more balanced, it suits better the olive oil, the sunflower, the sesame and the ghee types of oil. Pitta is better balanced by sunflower oil, coconut oil particularly and ghee and Kaffa is better using the olive oil or the mustard oil which is a heating type of oil or corn oil or sunflower oil. As part of, as I mentioned, self-care, daily self-care ritual, self-massages are commonly used and advised practice in Ayurveda and it recognises the healing power of touch and the lubrication of the tissues which not only lubricates the skin and fat layers of tissues but also it helps clear any toxins that are accumulating within the body especially if it is done as part of a therapeutic massage. If there is excess oil in the body it can cause problems of its own particularly with increased mucus and obstruction in the lymph channels particularly, problems in the liver and gallbladder and if there is too much oil in the digestive tract it can inhibit digestion and especially the absorption of proteins. So if you are trying to balance the excess oil you just cook with less oil, use a steaming and grilling and baking techniques to cook rather than frying and use fewer fatty foods in your diet which are associated with an increased oil quality and when you are massaging rather than using oils you could try a dry scrub massage on your skin. The dry quality in food can be seen in things like crackers, dry toast, biscuits, dried fruit which have little moisture content in them. In your environment if there is dry heat in the atmosphere or if there is excess wind it can cause dryness and even practice such as having a dry sauna rather than a steam sauna. So too much dryness can cause dehydration obviously, dry skin and constipation and it can also cause restricted thinking in our mind where we don't have that fluidity of thinking and a certain rigidity in our thinking patterns as well. So how to balance it, clearly you would look at promoting again what I discussed the daily oil massage of Abhyanga to bring the moisture into your system, using good fats in our food particularly ghee and olive oil and definitely less dry food, less snacky food, less dry food, less food that is dry in its quality. So once again we have reached the end of the show, I hope you have enjoyed the show, both the content and the delivery. Ayurveda is a way of life and living that now has resonance and relevance now more than ever in its 5000 year history. We live in challenging times, in a fast paced and changing environment with increased demands on our time and attention. The world we live in is undergoing many changes and not all of these are for the good. Our natural world environment is under threat as never before and our weather system is under threat also. And as we are closely connected to nature as we recognise in Ayurveda, even in this modern world this causes stress and strains on our natural constitution and ultimately on our health, perhaps more so than ever. Ayurveda provides a way to manage these external factors through our diet, digestion and lifestyle habits and routines. In this way we can take control of our own health and our well-being to live a better, more fulfilled and ultimately a more conscious and rewarding life. I hope this episode on the qualities as viewed in Ayurveda and how they can be attributed to the foods, the practices and lifestyles and habits and routines that we have has been helpful for you to get an idea how you can try to look at things through your food, your lifestyle and how to balance things when you feel out of balance. Once again it is most helpful to see an Ayurvedic practitioner to get a good insight into this and to establish a plan of action that you can follow because it is confusing when you have to sort it out yourself. So tune in again next week for more discussion about Ayurveda. You can find more information on my website www.anandayurveda.com. Until then, as we say in Irish, Cree for lawn, Fad Saeil. Healthy heart, long life. See you next week.