Living Ayurveda

Maybe it’s that I feel a particular and pressing need for nourishment of body, mind, and spirit during the darkest days of the year (and the coldest, even if here in Central Texas, “coldest” doesn’t always mean objectively “cold”), but Claire Ragozzino’s gorgeous book, first published in 2020, is holding particular resonance for me right now, specifically the winter section. Although her book functions as a workbook of sorts—grounding first in Ayurvedic principles and practices and then organized by seasons and offering a range of yoga sequences, holistic rituals, and Ayurvedic recipes for each—its visual and tactile aesthetic is of a coffee table book, offering easy immersion in beauty, itself a balm and salve and inspiration. 

Last night, we enjoyed her Winter Vegetable Biryani (p. 285)—which I made, as I always do on a first go through a recipe, specifically to her plan, even as I can already see how I will adapt and adjust it to our tastes in the future—and although the recipe included the normally odiferous brassica cauliflower, the house filled instead with the mingled scents of brown basmati and garam masala, of coriander and cardamom, anise and cinnamon, a splash of rose water. Claire suggested cashews (or pistachios), pomegranate seeds, cilantro, and yogurt as the garnishes, and the colors of Christmas against the pile of warm golden grain and veggies, the bright hit of the pomegranate juice before the crunch of the seed within the soft chew of the rest was every kind of encouraging to me, someone who is (obviously) food-oriented and -motivated, a kapha dosha within the Ayurvedic system.

I hope to have for you next week a new yoga nidra, written and recorded specifically for the Winter Solstice, for you to enjoy as you wish over this season. Here in the Northern Hemisphere, the solstice is just a moment—Thursday, December 21, 2023, at 9:27 PM Central Time—that marks the earth’s ceaseless movement around, away, and toward the sun, the moment when the daylight hours begin to lengthen again, when our gathering and sheltering and celebrating provide and mark our hopes for enlightenment.