I was asked a bunch of questions by Sarah Murray, a student reporting on the juice bars of Chicago for HUBBUB blog. You probably already know this, but just in case.juicebar

1. How long to juice fast?

That depends on the level of toxicity. A good place to start is 3 days. 7-10 days will effectively detox your lymph and blood. 21 days will get much deeper, and some people juice feast for one to 3 months. We’re all at different levels of mind-body integration. If you’ve been eating the standard american diet, you can ease in with a 3-10 day juice fast.

2. Why drink more juice?

Juice added to a Standard American Diet won’t make much of an impact. It’s more about what you’re taking out. Take everything else out – the coffee and muffin, the turkey sandwich, the chicken and rice, and glass of wine, and your body naturally starts to optimize. For most people, optimizing means detox. Fasting on juice versus water has the added benefit of flushing your cells and energizing your blood and brain.

3. Prepackaged vs. Fresh Juice?

One has usable nutrients from the plants and the other just adds calories without nutrients. Our ecosystem, where the plants (fruits and vegetables) come from is alive. The fewer steps between being plucked from the living plant to being chewed in your mouth (chew your liquids, drink your foods), The more alive the plants -the more the plants lend their intelligence and energy to your system. You get smarter and energized. The more processed and manipulated the plant is between harvest and consumption – the less intelligence and energy it can lend to you.

4. Do most juice bars use good ingredients?

They can’t. Organic juicing is very expensive, and much cheaper if you buy half cases of vegetables in bulk and do it at home. The next wave of what we’ll see is green smoothie bars. It’s much cheaper, it adds fiber, which is a scrub brush for your body. But, you need to start with where you are at. If you’re choosing between coffee and a green juice – one will take away nutrients (like calcium) from your blood and bones. The other will add nutrients and energy. The cost is short term (adrenaline rush vs. energy rush) and long term (adrenal depletion which will trigger endocrine disruption) or deep integration, disease prevention, and acceleration of wellness.

Visit www.yogidetox.com to get Cate’s FREE Recipe Book + Detox guide.

Desiree Rumbaugh and I are psyched to be in the March 2013 edition of Yoga Journal for our Eat Green Challenge. Check out p. 37-44 – the article by Lavinia Spalding called Crunch Time: Revitalize yourself with a plant-based eating plan that celebrates fruits and veggies. Also, Des and I want to get a shout out to our dear old friend and colleague, Stacey Rosenberg, who is the “student” of Eat Green in the article.

Eat Green goes Mainstream

Perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself, but we’ve all seen signs that the mainstream getting hip to the idea that most of what needs to be on the plate and go into the body needs to be greens and fruits and roots.

Human Everyday Diet = Greens, Roots, Shoots, Fruits + some nuts and seeds

This diet, while once convenient and available has been made inconvenient by the industrialization and commercialization of “food” and of “healthcare”.  I need to start using the obnoxious “” because you and I both know that 95% of what is sold in the conventional grocery store doesn’t quality as optimal fuel and body-building material for your awakening human body. What qualifies as “healthcare” is something like insurance, prescriptions. And maybe some radiation thrown in – with either the “food” or the “healthcare”.  We know you know this, and that you’re taking your food and healthcare to the next level. So are we.

The Evolving Edge of Eat Green

Future Human Everyday Diet =  cultivated + wild Greens from your local ecosystem+Roots, Shoots, Fruits + some nuts and seeds

During the hours of talking and emailing with Lavinia for Yoga Journal about the Eat Green Challenge, we talked about specifies diversification in the human diet and health evolution. For a long time. Unfortunately, this didn’t make the cut. Which means perhaps that they didn’t think you’re ready for that. I know it’s a leap – it’s the next frontier. It’s the level 4 of yoga poses – the syllabus Darren and Noah are working on.

Desiree and I talk make a practice of to people who on the edge of  human health evolution and evolving their diet. We compare notes. We keep hearing the same thing. The diet gets more green, more in your kitchen, more sprouting, more in your yard, more in your ecosystem.

If this seems cutting edge, it’s not. It’s prehistoric. Deep gratitude to the all of the personal and planetary tribe leaders who have been getting the word out over the eons and eons about knowing and eating  and caring for our plants friends.

Prehistoric Plant Friends Meet the Vitamix

Yes, I did use the word plant friends. During the Eat Green Challenge, you may choose to eat exclusively fruits and vegetables. You start to eat a lot of greens. Maybe 3 times a day in various smoothies, juices, soups, salads. You start to wake up to Eating Green. At some point you notice God’s Earth is Green. As you notice our Earth, where it looks healthy, wears a green mantle you start to think there are a lot of free nutrients just hanging from trees and bushes, and shooting up through the cracks in the concrete.

This is such an outrageously progressive and outrageous prehistoric idea. This is where the progressive and prehistoric come together. For anyone struggling with immune issues, degenerative disease issues, aging and feeling feeling like your aging issues, you need to pay attention to this. The edge of the Eat Green Challenge goes to getting more involved with where your greens and shoots, in particular, are coming from. Getting clued in to what you can sprout in your house, eat from your yard, and nourish to thrive in your ecosystem is where this game plan begins. All of this becomes convenient and saves you money to boot.

Where it ends, I have no idea of the kind of communion future humans and future plants will be capable of. I leave that to all of us to find out.

Where it begins… is with you and your dandelions and your vitamix.

Leave a comment if you want us in Yoga Journal regularly:

Desiree and I want to have a monthly column in Yoga Journal on body-mind-diet evolution. We want it to be a Q+ A column, something like,

Eat Green: Evolve Your Diet with Your Practice  Q+A with Desiree + Cate
that covers the dietary transitions on the yoga path, plant-based eating, the lowfat vegan edge, Ayurveda, and include a local/ecological and wild food component.

We need YOU if you’re interested in reading an Eat Green Q+A column in Yoga Journal. Just leave a comment below and we’ll make sure it gets in front of the right eyeballs. Thanks for your time.

Print me!

Kitchari Recipe for You

I’m frequently asked for a kitchari recipe. Over the last decade I’ve maybe been asked 300 times. One might think I would have posted a kitchari recipe like this in my first blog post and avoided a few dozen of those emails asking for a recipe. If you want the recipe – click the image and print it. And if you’re wondering why so many people want to eat kitchari, read on.

Why Kitchari + Ayurveda:

Kitchari is the traditional detox food of Ayurveda. The philosophy is simple. The body detoxes when it is given the opportunity. Lighten up what you eat, and nourish the 6 tastes, and 5 senses at the same time, and voila, you’ve created the opportunity.

Kitchari is a considered a complete food in Ayurveda. You can eat it for weeks. Or do kitchari for a day. It’s like baby food. Simple to cook and digest … and then you don’t have to worry about food for the day.

Kitchari is also a great transition food. Whenever you lose interest in food, go to kitchari until a more complex  cuisine beckons you to diversify. If you’re stuck in a rut, or your habits are hellacious… go to kitchari for a day or two.

What is Kitchari?

Kitchari, kitcharee, kicharee however you spell it is the most basic nourishing meal from the Indian sub-continent. It’s a mushy mix of rice and beans. Turmeric turns it yellow and enables g.i. tract reparation and optimization. Other spices are added to warm the gut, digest ama, and work their adaptogenic magic. All in all, kitchari is the simplest healing meal that you can live off indefinitely. Mung beans are used because they are the easiest legume to digest. White basmati rice is traditionally used for it’s not-too-heavy, not-too-warming, not-too-drying qualities which help Kaphas, Pittas, and Vatas respectively. However a zillion variations exist which affect the doshas in all sorts of combinations. Dr. Cousens has a raw buckwheat version in a few cookbooks.. but most of the Yogidetoxers find it unpalatable.

When to eat Kitchari:

• you’re stressed out or overwhelmed
• you’re sick
• you’re cravings are unhealthy
• you need a change of diet
• you need to give your body a break
• you’re too busy to prepare other food and need deep nourishment

Vegetables in Kitchari

This recipe is the most basic for detox or rejuvenation. Adding 2-3 cups of vegetables is a good idea. The strict detoxers might not add vegetables to their kitchari. This is bizarre to my body as I need vegetables to poop. Take out the vegetables … no poop. Many people suffer from constipation on the kitchari monodiet. If this is you… definitely add lots of vegetables, and more water to the recipe as well.

• Add diced roots in the last 20 minutes of cooking: carrots, beets, turnips, parsnips, or sweet potato.
•  Stir in greens when done cooking. Allow to sit for a few minutes: kale, chard, collards, celery,or shredded fennel
• Stir in delicate greens just before serving: spinach, arugula, alfalfa sprouts, sunflower sprouts.

Kitchari Troubleshooting

If kitchari makes you constipated … add beets and sprouts. Radish sprouts are particularly good for this.
If kitchari tastes bland to you… add more spice. Go crazy. Add cayenne or hot sauce… unless your pitta is spiking. Then just add more cilantro, mint and lime juice.
If you’re looking at this recipe and thinking… I need more calories then add fat. Replace half the water with chicken stock or add a cup of coconut milk. Works wonders for Vata.

Have a kitchari suggestion? Leave a comment below.

Ayurveda Guidelines for Summer is a 1 page Cheat Sheet.
Click on the image below for the print version.

Print  and Share.

Ayurveda 101: How to Feast 

Thanksgiving is obviously all about the feast. The best way to feast is to fast before the feast.

1. Start your day with a thermos of hot water with lemon.
2. See how long you can enjoyably last just on how water and lemon. Get in touch with the empty, clarifying effect. Let your deeper hunger awaken.
3. If you start to feel uncomfortably hungry, make a quart of green smoothie in a blender, a green juice, or stewed apples. Then, return to hot water with lemon.
4. Go for a walk with your people. Breathe. Be in nature. Move your body.
5. When the feast is ready, pause.

Pause. Rest in presence. Be grateful for bounty.

Absorb the bounty with all 5 of senses.

• Drink in the aromas.
• Hear the chatter and excitement.
• Feel the we-space between you all.
• Receive the vibrant colors and textures on the table with your eyes.
• Taste. Savor. Delight. Taste the love and the effort.

Eat with gratitude for our abundance. Eat the Earth’s abundance and celebrate the connection.

Enjoy the noursihment. Taste all 6 rasas, or flavors.

Contribute to the conversation with enhancing connectivity. Bring people together. Be grounded and inspiring.

Relax.

Then walk.

The back to hot water and lemon.

Ayurveda 201: How to Feast + Party

Autumn is the season of nourishment below and movement above. Plants send sugar and moisture to the root. You’d be wise to do the same.

If you don’t act like the plants outside your dwelling, you lose access to the potent seasonal energy. Your body will get dry… your mind will get anxious.  So, act like a plant. Print your perfect autumn day and attune to the perfection of autumn.

Ayurveda for Autumn

Root and lube is a sound ayurvedic mantra for autumnal bliss. Many of us do the opposite – run around and dry out. Don’t do that. Root and lube. Declutter. Print your perfect autumn day and follow the simple daily focus and daily food recommendations. You’ll have many a perfect autumn day.

This October in the yogidetox course we’re focusing on attuning to the perfection in nature’s cycles. Ease. Love. Nourishment. Join us.

Your body is changing with your yoga practice. Some bodily changes come as a surprise…. such as your old “comfort foods” make you feel a little awful. If that is happening to you… that’s a great sign. Your body is becoming more intelligent… and  more sensitive. What is catching to your eye and truly tasty to your tongue is also changing… evolving… becoming more intelligent.

Are Yogis Neurotic Eaters?

Today I received this inquiry from a client:

“I wonder if my passion for eating consciously, eating living and wild food, knowing more about living food & ayurveda – has not somehow turned into an eating disorder.”

I paused and thought… what a fantastically honest and endearing question. This was my response:

“About eating/ayurveda/disorder – from an ayurvedic perspective, gratitude for food is most important. Just having gratitude for food and our food body comes first, and creates a relationship of deep nourishment. Take time and pause before preparing food and eating. Most yogis have a hypersensitive relationship to food – they have the highest standards for what good food is and a very well developed understanding. most western therapists are less informed about the energetics of food – so their opinion is tricky to take into account. However, I tend to emphasize the gratitude and conscious relationship, without being that cognitively analytical.”

Here is the issue: you’re discovering and cleaning up your subtle body anatomy. Your body is starting to store prana in the fabric of your tissue. You are becoming more energetically transparent to consciousness. This is an ever evolving process, with bumps, hurdles, plateaus and peak experiences.

What Yoga Teachers Don’t Tell Yoga Students about Diet

My jaw dropped and I was quite fascinated (& pissed) when I was informed by the Anusara Yoga Curriculum Committee that they were alotting an hour of Ayurvedic training in 100 hour Anusara Yoga Immersion programs… and about the same for their Yoga Teacher Training programs. This is typical of modern hatha yoga schools, and creates unaddressed problems for yoga teachers and students.

When you become a serious yoga student you are seriously shifting your physiology… both energetically and physically. As your channels, or srotas open and carry more oxygen, prana, and consciousness you experience more wakefulness, sensitivity, alertness, and aliveness. When you eat foods that were typical in your Standard American Diet… you suffer either with digestive issues or emotional issues of food remorse.  It’s mostly avoidable. I teach yoga teachers how to teach their students about adapting their diet with their increasing appetite for yoga and meditation. Their yoga students learn they are not alone in needing to change their diet and how they eat, not only for their constitution, but more for their awakening subtle physiology.

Sensitive or Neurotic?

As your subtle physiology awakens, your become more sensitive. Literally, your 5 senses get clean and clear and you can know the inner and outer world more accurately. Does that make you neurotic? No. Neurosis is characterized by hysteria, anxiety, depression, or obsessive behavior. So you can no longer enjoy or feel nourished by meat, wheat, dairy, cooked food, white sugar, white flour, grains, caffeine, alcohol, hot sauce, or the like. To most people eating the Standard American Diet you are now obsessive about your food. And yet….

Obvious to you, the awakened yogi you are no longer attracted to putting non-nourishing substances in through your 4 sense organs… let alone into your mouth. You don’t want junk or gunk in your body ecology. This sensitivity was hard won on your mat… why fight the larger momentum of your health evolution? But, to your spouse, parent, or friend… you do appear neurotic. If you can minimize that through not making your food choices public, that might help. Just knowing that this is part of the yoga package can help all of you understand what is going on.

The Sattvic Diet

The yogis of yore termed the dietary evolution on the yoga path the journey to the sattvic diet. Sattva is an old school yogi term from the old school yogi texts, including The Yoga Sutras. Classically, sattva is an explanation of the peace-inducing and lightening qualities that arise with yoga and meditation. In Tantra, it’s the balance that comes from the deepening pulsation of becoming more grounded and more expansive simultaneously.

The traditional Ayurvedic Sattvic diet is big on basmati rice, ghee, almonds, sweet fruits, mung dhal, turmeric, ginger, lemons, and a few other choice victuals. The living foods sattvic diet is more expansive in the fruit and vegetable kingdom yet adds an additional prerequisite that the nutrients be living, either raw, dehydrated or fermented.

In my experience moving towards a sattvic diet is a process and an ever evolving process, with bumps, hurdles, plateaus and peak experiences.

What Yoga Students and Yoga Teachers Eat

From the interviews I’ve done so far with John Friend, Richard Freeman, Desiree Rumbaugh, Sianna Sherman, Elena Brower, & Christina Sell most describe a sattvic diet. For all it’s been a path, full of bumps, hurdles, plateaus and peak experiences. Some have grativated more towards cooked foods, others more towards living foods. No one mentioned having a diet heavy in processed foods, meat, refined sugars, refined grains, caffeine or alcohol.

In conclusion, dear yoga students, know this: your diet will change as your appetite for yoga and meditation increases. Your diet will become more intelligent, more living and more local. This is normal, and is bound do wreak a little havoc when you eat with your relatives and old friends. Knowing this ahead of time can help you navigate this skillfully. And if you’re really interested in why and how all this works, study Ayurveda.

Simply enough, dehydrating food is nature’s way of preserving the prana (life force), the enzymes (or energy converters) and the nutrients (building blocks of bodily tissue) in our food. Sunlight and wind are the primary dehydrators which we mimic with the modern dehydrator, which is a box with a heat source (usually electricity) and a wind source (a fan).

Canning and freezing foods to preserve them, on the other hand, greatly diminish instead of preserve the prana, the enzymes and the nutrients. These traditional practices render food with less taste (& more need of salt, sugar or spice) as well as less of the stuff your body needs.

Dehydrating Food & Ayurveda = prana, enzymes and nutrients.

Let me expound:

Living Foods have their natural energetic intelligence intact.

Prana (Vata) and the Dehydrator

Enzymes (Pitta) and the Dehydrator

Dehydrating food (below 115′)  keeps the plants enzymes alive and nutrients bio-available (useful for your body).Canning, on the other hand, puts the food in boiling water that destroys the enzymes.

Nutrients & Minerals (Kapha) and the Dehydrator

Example of Nutrients Required by Plants from Pukka Press

Dehydrating & the doshas

When you take the moisture out of plants and meats it requires moisture from the body to digest. If a body has excess moisture, as Kapha people do, this is a good thing. If the body is already dry or dehydrated, you must rehydrate your dehydrated food. This is essential for Vata people, especially. Soaking dried fruits or dried soups is necessary for Vata. The process of dehydrating doesn’t effect Pitta as much, unless the foods are heating in nature. For example, dried ginger root is more heating than fresh ginger root.

Which Dehydrator should I buy?

Which Dehydrator?

What temperature is best to dehydrate?

Dr. Gabriel Cousens, author of Rainbow Green Live Food Cuisine, and founder of Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center has the most reliable opinion when it come to understanding Ayurvedic prinicples and living food. Here is what he has to say on temperature:

Recent research by The Excalibur Dehydrator Company suggests that it is actually better to begin the dehydration process at 145 degrees F for the initial stage of the drying process. The reasoning is that as the food is dehydrating, it literally “sweats out” the moisture it contains. This moisture inside the dehydrator reduces the food temperature, as much as 20-25 degrees.

This information changes how we think about the entire process of food dehydration. It means that the safest way to dehydrate is to begin drying at 145 degrees F for a maximum of three hours for foods with a high water content. After this the temperature is set in the “normal” range of 110 to 115 degrees F through the completion of the drying process.

By doing this we are inhibiting bacterial growth by reducing the time the food spends in the dehydrator. The longer that a food is in the dehydrator the more potential exists for the enzymes to be destroyed, even at lower temperatures. Low-temperature dehydration for sustained time, as practiced for years by the live-food community, may not be safe because sustained low-temperature dehydration encourages bacterial growth and fermentation.

At the Tree of Life we feel that the new approach is both safer and more efficient.

If you’re looking for tips and recipes I’ve posted, start with Top 3 ways to cut your food bill with a Dehydrator. And let me know your tips for the bodytypes and dehydrated food.