The wars, the fires, the gun violence. The world is dealing with a major Pitta (fire) imbalance.

The inflammation within us has created inflammation in society. As is the macrocosm, so is the microcosm. What is going on in the global sphere is a reflection of what is happening in the internal sphere.

The anger, duality and aggression within ourselves has manifested into those Pitta qualities in the global compass. And that means we can do something about it.

Ask yourself:
1. Where am I still holding onto anger?
2. How am I judging others?
3. How can I show more patience?
4. Who do I need to forgive?
5. How can I be more of service?

Focus on eating cooling foods, particularly leafy greens + coconuts. We must all stay away from spicy food, coffee and excess garlic, all which trigger a Pitta imbalance (I share over 100+ things you SHOULD eat instead in my new book #EatFeelFresh and my book The Idiots Guide to Ayurveda has over 300 pages on how to balance your Dosha )

When you heal yourself, you heal the planet.

This is the biggest act of activism you can commit. Let’s reduce the fires, in ourselves, in our communities, in our societies. And let the world come back into balance again.

Intro + Outro Music: Silent Ganges by Maneesh de Moor

Let’s take the discussion further in the Mind-Body Balancers FB group: www.facebook.com/groups/1213662491998309/

Discover Your Dosha (Mind-Body Type) with my free quiz: iamsahararose.com

Connect with me for daily Ayurvedic and modern spiritual wisdom at Instagram: @iamsahararose Facebook.com/iamsahararose Twitter.com/iamsahararose

Order Eat Feel Fresh: A Contemporary Plant-Based Ayurvedic Cookbook and receive my Essential Oils for Your Doshas E-book FREE here: eatfeelfresh.com/book

 

Episode 141 – The World’s Major Pitta Imbalance with Sahara Rose

By Sahara Rose

Namaste. It’s Sahara Rose and welcome back to the “Highest Self” podcast. A place where we discuss what makes you your soul’s highest evolvement. I am speaking to you right now from a really crazy time in Los Angeles. Just last night we were made aware that a fire is heading our way and this fire has caused more than 300,000 homes to be evacuated. Many people have had to leave everything behind and animals have been killed in the fire, including horses, even pets that people couldn’t bring with them. And it’s just been 24 hours and it’s really taken us all on a whirl.

Today I was on my regular walk right by Santa Monica Beach and I looked out across the ocean to the most—I don’t even know the word for it—just all-encompassing black cloud that took over the entire sky and just engulfed what is normally a sunset into ashes. And this cloud you could see it coming out of the mountain and along the edges of the mountain were outlined red flames. And these red flames were the flames that are burning down homes, and trees, and livelihoods that are just on the other side.

So it is a crazy time and not just because of this fire, but this week in L.A. we had a shooting in Thousand Oaks. A man who was a war veteran went to a club and shot and killed multiple 18 and 21-year-olds, all young kids, because he was just mentally ill and dealing with PTSD. And it’s not just in Los Angeles, we are dealing with wars, and gun violence, and hatred, racism, political issues, sexism, Me Too movement, and for most of us it is extremely overwhelming.

So I wanted to take this episode to share my small perspective on it and to see if that can help you be guided towards what we can actually do about it. Because it’s really, really easy for us to just give in into the fear and there’s so much more in our control than we can ever begin to imagine. We’re experiencing a global pitta imbalance.

In Ayurveda, which is the world’s oldest health system, the sister science of yoga, that originated in ancient India over 5,000 years ago that I am author in, and this podcast is about. I’m sure you guys know what Ayurveda, but in case it’s your first time listening, Ayurveda is a health system, philosophical system, and looks at all areas of our life as holistic. So we are dealing with a pitta imbalance, pitta is the fire energy, the fire dosha, the fire archetype. And when pitta is out of balance, we experience excess heat. Not just in our bodies, but also in our minds. And not just in ourselves but also as society.

In Ayurveda we say, “Just as the microcosm so is the macrocosm.” What is happening to the global sphere is a reflection of what is happening to our internal sphere. You see, the two are simultaneously reflecting one another. The inflammation and the anger, jealousy, duality that has existed inside of us for far too long is now just coming out of to be seen by us to no longer be swept under the carpet, but we are coming face to face with this shadow side of us in the pitta dosha that we have repressed for far too long.  And it is coming in the form of flames, and anger, and gun violence, and war because it is a reflection of those same qualities that have been existing inside of us.

Now I’m not saying inside of you specifically, I’m talking about as a global society. There is so much anger on this planet. People are on edge, people are just one honk away from getting out of their car and literally freaking out at someone with a baseball bat—seriously. Sometimes I’m driving, I’m like, “Holy shit, people are so full of anger.” And if you’re not super, super grounded in your truth, it can be very, very easy to play into that anger. And then before you know it, you have become that angry person that you are angry at.

So I spoke about this at my book launch at the Deepak Home Base in New York, but essentially we are a domino effect our energy has that same effect as dominos. When we come face to face with anger we have the choice to either sit with it, dissect it, and then release it, or to take that anger and say, “Ugh, this is not mine, I’m so angry,” and then throw it to someone else like a flaming fire ball. And then that next person’s going to be like, “Oh, this anger,” and pass it to someone else, and it’s this domino effect of anger, anger, anger, anger.

So what that looks like is you’re sitting in your car and someone suddenly starts honking at you because you didn’t turn left fast enough. And then you are on edge when you get to your meeting, and your meeting is not going well because you’re still thrown off subconsciously from that horrific drive over. And then in your meeting the other person’s like, “Oh my god, I don’t think this business deal’s gonna work out. So then they go home to their wife, and they’re like, “Oh my god, I’m going to lose my job, the meeting didn’t go well.” And then the wife is thinking, “He’s mad about his meeting, he didn’t remember our anniversary.” And she’s feeling angry so she goes to her friends and she’s no longer the fun-loving person cause she’s mad that her husband forgot about their anniversary. And then their friends go to their jobs and they’re in a bad, and then their employees are like, “My boss is such an asshole. “And then they go home and their spouses are unhappy, it creates this ripple effect, all because one person honked.

And as a society for too long we have been honking loudly. And for most of us we don’t have the self-awareness to even ask ourselves what we are angry about. You know, if you ask a kid when a kid is having a temper tantrum, “Why are you mad?” That kid’s not going to be able to say, “Well, I’m actually mad because you’re not paying enough attention to me and I want your attention.” No, they’re gonna say, “I’m mad because I wanted the crayons, or I wanted this.” It’s going to be something very superficial, but the real reason why they’re upset is because they don’t feel loved, or they’re hungry, or they’re tired, or something else. And you as the adult have to be the perceptive one and see what they need without them saying it.

Now as a society we have not said what we needed. We have not vocalized that we feel lonely, that we feel unheard, that we feel really fucking confused, that we have no idea what path to turn. So we keep on going down this treaded road that we know is not serving us, we know it is not in alignment with our highest truth, but we don’t know where the hell else to go.  And that is frustrating, and that frustration does not disappear into fine air. It congregates in every cell of your body and creates this harshness, this agitation, this feeling that when someone says something a little off, you snap.

Now some of us have had parents that are very, very pitta—I know my dad was that person—and with a pitta parent you see very early on in life what it is like to walk with someone that you feel like you have to be on eggshells. And you see what that fire can look like that when someone is angry they are no longer themselves at that moment. Something greater than them—not better than them—but greater than them has taken hold of them. Anger is not something that comes from you, anger is a universal energy, it is the anger that we all experience at certain times.

And it is up to us to recognize that anger, to feel it moving through our body and say, “Hey, this is me getting angry right now. I’m feeling hot, I’m feeling inflamed, I’m also feeling like I kind of want to punch someone.” When you can just get into that state of awareness when you are experiencing an emotion, without judging it. I’m not telling you to go, you know, take a few breaths and tell that anger to come home and come back another day. No, I’m telling you to just observe it, just notice what that anger feels like, just really feel that anger.

And for most of us we are unwilling to because it feels too hot, too heavy, too much to deal with. And at the core of it are shadows and wounds that we don’t feel like we have the time or energy to really go to because it’s like opening up a can of worms that we don’t know if we’ll ever get to the bottom of.

So we pass that anger to someone else—to our kids, to the coworker, to the person just trying to cross the street because that anger is too heavy for us to deal with on our own. When you are rashing out at other people, that is your call for love. And when you see someone else rashing out, screaming, yelling, shouting, not making sense, all they really want is to be heard, and not by you, per se, but really by themselves. Because anger is a really heavy thing to hold onto and many of us have been holding onto anger for far too long.

Most of this anger has come from our childhood as well as our ancestry. We may be angry about things that we cannot even put into words. You may be angry about the way that people of your color are treated. You may be angry that if you have a vagina you’re not going to be making as much money as someone with a penis. You may be angry that our society has basically set the systems up, that you have to give your entire life to work just to pay your bills. You may be angry at our political system that literally doesn’t do shit for us.

There are a lot of things to be angry at but you need to recognize it. Because chances are that anger did not actually arise when someone cut you off. That anger has been living in you for far too long, dormant like a volcano whose lava is waiting to erupt because it doesn’t want to sit with it anymore. And the only way to clear out that volcano is to go to its core, the place where the lava is emerging from, get under the tectonic plates and see where is this lava coming from, where is the center of the earth where this is all arising?

And that place may be when you were sexually abused. When your parents got divorced. When the love of your life cheated on you. When you were seven years old and your mom said she’d pick you up from school and she never did. That anger won’t just be in one place it can be in many, many pockets and gravities within the earth. But we still hold onto it and it continues to develop. So the pitta imbalance that is happening as society is a direct correlation with the pitta imbalance happening within us.

So what do we do about it? Well, to heal a pitta imbalance you need to cool. Physically you need to cool off, don’t get yourself all wound up, instead do something that allows you just to breathe a little slower. We so rush to go to the boxing class, the HIIT class, the most intense exercise they have. But really to address this global pitta imbalance we need to become more friendly with our yin side.

What does it feel like to just go on a long walk? To just stretch on your floor. To just meditate, to swim, to breathe. This is what your body really needs. And I’m not saying don’t exercise anymore, you can still exercise, But if you’re especially someone who’s really pitta, really on edge, feeling impatient, irritated, agitated, annoyed, frustrated then I would say it’s important for you at this time to take a step back from high intensity exercise and go towards something that is more cooling, relaxing, and restorative for your body. Because the agitation that holding that plank or doing more push-ups is causing your physical body is actually creating stress in your mind, even if you’re not aware of it.

And that is why so many people these days have adrenal fatigue, which I’ve talked about in this podcast many times that something that I have been healing from myself for the past year. And adrenal fatigue comes when your cortisol level, your stress hormones have been up for too high and too long. Because our body was designed to deal with acute stress, it was meant to deal with, “Oh shit, a lion’s coming, I gotta run.” And then, “Whoo, dodged that lion, I’m safe,” the cortisol goes away.

However in our society we are constantly running from lions. Who else feels like their job is putting out fires all day? You know, I was just at this conference and Gary V, Gary Vaynerchuk was there. And he said that when he goes to customs and they ask him what does he do for work he says, “I’m a firefighter,” because he’s just putting out all fires all day. And I get it, it’s true, but how pitta is that? Our job should not be putting out fires all day. And if that’s what it is, then you’re exposing your body to a constant state of stress that your body was not designed to deal with.

And we talk about this on the podcast, but there are ways that you can transition and change your job so you can have something that serves you. You don’t have to be stuck with someone that is literally driving you insane. And if you’ve been waiting for permission for someone to tell you that it’s okay to leave your stressful job, you can consider this that permission that you already have given yourself, but maybe are not willing to admit it.

So the exercise, the intense exercise needs to stop, the intense working, overworking, being obsessed with what we put out there. I know myself as a lifetime overachiever we create this idea that our worth is relevant to the value that we’re putting out there, that I am only worthy of being loved if I achieve. And that may have looked like, as a kid, coming home to your parents, “Look, I got an A-,” and they say, “Well, why didn’t you get an A?” And most of us children have been brought up to achieve. “Look, you get a gold star. Look, you got good grades. Look, you did well in the parent-teacher conference,” and that is training us to perform. We want to be graded by other people because that makes us feel like we are worthy.

So we need to let go of that. You are worthy regardless of whatever you achieve. You are loved even if you don’t do shit in your life. The thins that you do are not what make you worthy of being loved. So with this global pitta imbalance as a society we need to recognize that because we’ve created a condition that our children are only loved when they do things that we tell them to. And that is creating a great deal of stress within because as a child all you want is love, and when you see that to get my parents’ love I have to memorize these presidents’ names and what happened in the Medieval Ages in Europe, want what mitochondria is, that’ what I have to do to be loved? Okay, I mean I guess I’ll do it. But aren’t I just worthy of being loved?

So if you have children remind them that they can get the grades, they can do anything, but it doesn’t change how much you love them. This is how we rewire the pitta imbalance. Now from a food level to heal a pitta imbalance we must stay away from anything that is rajasic. So the word rajas in Ayurveda means something that causes aggression within the body. So rajasic foods are essentially pitta-heightening, but it is a different quality, it is called a gunas. If you have my book “Idiot’s Guide to Ayurveda” I have a whole chapter on the gunas, the food qualities, so rajas is one, as well as tamas, which means dull, and sattva, which means pure.

So we as a culture are eating too many rajasic foods, which is bringing up our pitta, but in an imbalanced way. Now these foods are spicy foods, overspiced foods, and spicy and overspiced are too different things. Excess oily foods, coffee, stimulants in general, things that are so over indulgent for the taste buds that when we eat just simple foods it doesn’t feel stimulating enough for us.

Now why we are doing this as a culture is because physically we have become so numb. We are out of touch with our bodies, we are out of touch with earth, we are out of touch with our sacral sexuality, and with our souls. So when the body is dull it wants to feel something. We all want to feel something, right? So it goes to the most gross thing. The most gross meaning over the top taste—sexual practice, pornography. These things are exaggerations of something that we naturally need like food or sex. But because we have become so disconnected to ourselves and subtlety we need the most gross form of it.

So from a food level just eating regular vegetables without tons of sauce, and spices, and barbecue sauce, and whatnot it’s not enough for us. We need it to be fried, with some salt, and truffles, and garlic, and cayenne pepper, and then a aioli on the side, and we need all of these tastes to make us feel something. And trust me, I get it, I went to culinary school, I was a food blogger for six years, I have a cookbook, I appreciate good food. But I only eat foods like restaurant style foods on very special occasions. The majority of my food, which my cookbook is, is super simple. Because when you get used to eating overly spiced or spicy foods, you lose touch with the subtlety and the natural tastes and sensations of food from earth.

Now spicy foods like hot foods are very, very rajasic. So if you’re someone that needs hot sauce—Tabasco, Sriracha—with everything that you eat, that is a sign that your pitta is way too high right now. Because when pitta is out of balance like desires like, the imbalance further swings to the side of imbalance. So you want more foods that are going to make you feel more pitta.

So this is why as a society we’re all eating spicy Thai food, and Mexican food, and just putting hot sauce on everything, but a hundred years ago that was not the case. And even if you go to places like Thailand and Mexico, they’re not pouring hot sauce on everything. If you go to the Pueblos they eat very, very simple diets. They’re eating rice, beans, plantains, Mexican food in actual Mexico is not Tex-Mex. Thai food in actual Thailand is not your favorite Thai takeout. This is Americanized, over the top, super sensationalized foods just like our movies here that are so rajasic for the senses that it makes it feel almost impossible to go back to just eating boring old carrots.

You know, them deep-friend and, you know, wrapped in some dough with an Oreo on top, right? And when you go to places that have, in general, lower consciousness they need more over the top foods. That is why processed foods are so much bigger in places where conversations like this are not the norm. And I’m not saying you can’t switch, I grew up addicted to junk foods—McDonald’s, KFC, Taco Bell, you name it. But I was able to shift and retrain my taste buds, which really only takes 21 days of just eating the foods that come from earth and your body wants to be sattvic, it wants to be pure, it wants to be clear.

So when you just help your body by getting rid of those over the top sensational foods, you’re going to see after 21 days of not eating them, you try it again and you’re going to say, “Wow, how the hell was I eating that? That is so spicy, that is so sweet, that is salty,” because you’re going to be more in touch wit h the subtlety of food. And I’m sure for everyone listening like you guys are already healthy people so you remember what it’s like to eat Pringles, and candy, and things that now you literally could not eat because your vibration is too high, your cells are too high frequency that they no longer match with that gross of a taste.

So you already know what it’s like. For most of us listening we are the ones who have perhaps parents, or friends, or someone in our lives that really have this pitta imbalance. But I don’t think it’s the people listening to this podcast, we are the ones who are meant to help those people. But I think a lot of people listening to this podcast do this thing: drinking coffee. Now drinking coffee is extremely imbalancing for pitta, it is very, very rajasic. Why? Because coffee is essentially pitta juice. It is highly, highly stimulating and it makes you move faster, quicker stronger. It makes you go over the top, and talk like this, and want to do a million things at once, and that is exactly the opposite of what a pitta really needs.

So if you feel like coffee is really what gets you going and it makes you feel yourself, then you need to get off the coffee so you can actually get in touch with yourself. And I know when you drink a lot of coffee and you don’t have it you feel like you’re dull or numb. But you’re not a dull or numb person, this is just the weaning off of a drug essentially. And I know coffee comes from earth and coffee can be medicinal in its own ways, and Ayurveda we do recommend perhaps—we don’t recommend but we say it is possible for a kapha to drink coffee because they’re so sluggish that that bit of caffeine and energy can help them.

But if you have a pitta imbalance coffee is the exact opposite of what you need. So as a society we are drinking way too much coffee. There are Starbucks, and Dunkin Donuts, and Peet’s Coffees on every corner, and multiple within that corner. It is too much. We are feeding our body speed—and why? Why do we want to drink this stuff that makes us shake until we start doing something? Because our society has set it up for us to become addicted to achievement. This pitta juice is only perpetuating the pitta problem. The more and more we drink this coffee and we feel on edge and like that we need to just go and do everything, and attack, attack, attack. Guess what? We are creating the global pitta problem.

Now I’m not saying that you should not attack your goals. Like sure as hell, attack your goals. But it should not come from an external source or need for validation. It should come from within, from your own energy, and your own desire. Too many of us are shooting targets that we don’t actually give a shit about. So you need to take a step back and say, “Why am I drinking this coffee?” Am I using this for good? Is this going to be a long term thing?”

I think that you can use coffee medicinally in certain periods of your life. I mean I know that when I was a freshman in college I would drink coffee because I would pull all-nighters studying. And that’s because I was in this system of college that made it pretty much essential for you to study all night to memorize things from a textbook so you can pass, which is a pretty screwed up system, thank God I’m not in that anymore. So I was using coffee as a tool for that.

It wasn’t a good idea to pull all-nighters all the time, but I was stuck in that. And then I drank coffee again when I was writing “Idiot’s Guide to Ayurveda,” and funnily enough, I had to drink that coffee then because I was on a two-month deadline to write a 400-page book start to finish.

So I am not saying, “Never drink coffee again.” I am saying have a purpose with when you drink the coffee. Since I wrote “Idiot’s Guide to Ayurveda” now two years ago, I haven’t drank coffee since. I wrote my book “Eat Feel Fresh” without drinking coffee. At this point, with my vibration, I can’t drink the coffee anymore. Even if I take a sip of it, it’s so dehydrating, and it’s so Rajasic that it no longer works with me.

 And as your vibration shifts you’re going to see that too. And now I take different herbs, adaptogens, I drink my Rasa Koffee, which has ashwagandha, shatavari, medicinal mushrooms. I have my Four Sigmatic mushrooms, I have to take my YouVeda mood formula. I do so many other things that naturally give me energy that I don’t need coffee anymore. And this doesn’t take energy from my energy reserves like coffee does, but this allows me to utilize my own natural source of energy and create true everlasting energy that comes from within.

So if you’re drinking a lot of coffee, try to wean off. And for some of us, it may be cold turkey. You may say, “You know what? I’m addicted to this coffee and I don’t want to be addicted to this anymore because that means it has control over me. So I’m going to stop this right now.”

And for others of you, you may just love the taste of it, and the feeling of it, and you have this little coffee morning ritual, and you really don’t want to give that up. So I would say then have half a cup of coffee. And then maybe you’re doing it every other day. And then maybe it’s just something you do on the weekends. And then after that maybe it’s just something you do on special occasions when you’re out. Just wean yourself off and replace it, replace it with the adaptogens, with the mushrooms, with something else that is really going to serve you and not imbalance the pitta.

And if you see others around you, I know people who drink six cups of coffee a day. These are the people that you need to help educate and don’t do it in a daunting, aggressive way because again, that fear and the shame is going to further fuel the pitta, and that’s not what we want to do.

Maybe bring that person some adaptogens, some Rasa Koffee or Four Sigmatic and say, “Hey, I’d love for you to try this, it’s a really good coffee alternative. I’ve been trying it myself and it’s made me feel so much better.” Don’t force it on anyone. Allow them to come to their own state of evolvement. But just offer solution because for most people, they don’t know that there is an alternative to coffee. They think that the alternative to coffee is just tea, and they don’t know the wide range of herbs and medicinal mushrooms we have available to us that will allow us to think clearer and to have heightened states of mental clarity similar to coffee without the rush, the jolt, the aggression, and the rajas of coffee.

So what we want to have instead of these spicy foods, these stimulants is coffee, excess garlic as well, garlic is very Rajasic. Why is it Rajasic? Well, in the ancient yogic times they said that garlic lowers your vibration. So when I was writing “Eat Feel Fresh,” my contemporary plant-based Ayurvedic cookbook, I was like, “I want to look into that. How does that make sense?”

So I looked up many, many studies about garlic. Does it change your vibration? Couldn’t find anything. Then eventually I found a study that said that when you consume garlic , it triggers a spasm in your esophagus. Now this is something that they can actually measure scientifically. So when the ancient yogi said that it would change your vibration, they were entirely accurate. When you consume garlic, that spasm in your esophagus for someone who is so self-aware like a yogi is enough to alter their subtle vibration, and to take them off their yoga practice.

So from a literal cellular level it is changing your vibration, but also from a taste level. I know whenever I have something that has a lot of garlic, after I have this like garlicky aftertaste in my mouth, and I just want to get rid of it. So I’m like, “I need chocolate. I need ice cream. I need something. You know, I just want something to get rid of the taste in my mouth.” And I actually feel off edge, and then I’ll even go brush my teeth, and I still can feel it in like my tongue pores, and I’ll scrape my tongue, and I can still feel it. Because when you’re more heightened aware, little things like the taste in your mouth can actually really bother you.

Like I can’t eat something that has a bad aftertaste, it really, really affects me. And I’m sure for many of you guys you’re the same way. So this is why in Ayurveda we do not recommend garlic because it is pitta imbalancing. You can still have garlic, raw garlic clove, as medicine because it is anti-parasital and anti-bacterial. In Ayurveda they would literally swallow it like an antibiotic, but they did not cook with it. And if you ever go to an ashram or any spiritual center they do not have garlic and onions in their food, and now you know why. Onions are considered tamasic, they create more dullness in the body, that’s for another episode.

So I’m not saying never eat a garlic again, but I’m saying if all you eat is garlic sauce, and garlic pasta, and roasted garlic, and garlic on everything, then I would take a look at maybe can you reduce your garlic consumption, maybe try to do some garlic-free meals, see if that feels different for you. You may not notice it instantly, but over a period of time of not having garlic you become more sensitive to it. That then when you do have it you’re like, “Whoa, that’s really garlicky.”

I remember I have this meal I love here from Café Gratitude. Like if I was on death row, that would be my meal, it’s like my death row meal. It’s the whole bowl, it’s so good, it’s sweet potatoes, sea vegetables, quinoa, adzuki beans, and steamed greens with this garlic tahini sauce. And I love the garlic tahini sauce, and I still have it once in a while. But before I would have it all the time, like every other day, and I never felt like—I didn’t even know what garlic breath was, like it never bothered me.

And now that I don’t have really garlic ever, I never cook with it at home and the only time I would have it is if it was something that I ordered out, or specifically this whole bowl, that when I do have it that taste of the garlic, it is something that really bothers me after. So you’ll notice that when you get rid of something that could potentially not be serving you, your body quickly, quickly moves up, and rises up, and then you’re going to see that it feels so different.

So what we want to consume are more cooling vegetables, more cooling foods, more leafy greens, Brussels sprouts, asparagus. Now they can be raw, or they can be cooked, that depends on your specific digestive system. If you have a more vata digestion you get bloated, gassy, constipated, stick with cooked, steamed, roasted. If you have a more pitta digestive system, which a lot of people do, we need actually more raw foods, more alkalizing foods—not 100%, but we do need more raw foods.

And this is again where I differ from traditional Ayurveda because traditional Ayurveda was made in India, of course, and in India it’s not safe to eat raw foods. Trust me, been there, done that, you get really sick. But in America and other parts of the world it is safe to consume raw foods and it’s something that people have been doing for just as long as Ayurveda has existed, if not longer cause we actually didn’t have ways of cooking our food back then. So I do think that raw foods should be part of the human diet, but you just have to listen to your body and make sure that that works with you.

But if you have a lot of pitta, like all these angry, inflamed men in politics, like I want to send them some cilantro. I want to send them some salads and some cooling herbs because that is exactly what they need. They’ve eaten way too much cooked and overly processed foods that they need to juice the fuck up. Am I right? So eat those leafy greens. Eat those cooling veggies. Eat those juicy fruits. If you have either of my books—“Eat Feel Fresh” or “Idiot’s Guide to Ayurveda”—look up pitta foods and those are the foods that you’ll want to stick to: coconut products, coconut oil, coconut butter, coconut meat, coconut water—so cooling. Why? Coconuts naturally grow around the equator, the part of the world that is the hottest. Because nature provides us with the foods that we need to come back into balance. Coconuts don’t grow in Russia, they don’t grow in Alaska, they grow where people need coconuts, in hot, tropical places.

So if you’re feeling hot, you’re feeling on edge, drink some coconut water and not the processed stuff, actual raw coconut water, preferably from an actual coconut. That is the best way you can get it, and that’s the only way you can make sure it has not oxidized, which is exposing it to light and oxygen, which decreases the mineral content and electrolyte content.

Those coconut waters in a carton like Zico, they’re not real coconut water. They may have once been and a few lifetimes ago, but they’re heat-treated, so they no longer have any nutrients in them. They’re essentially sugar water, so just a little FYI on that. We want real coconut water, raw coconut water. The best place to get it is, again, a coconut, or a juice place that you know that they’re actually cutting open the coconuts, and they did it recently, not a month ago.

Coconut products you want things to cool your system down, and you want to avoid red meat, heavy foods. Because these foods are going to increase the rajas, processed foods, they’re so heavy on the system, they take so much energy to break down, they heat up your body, and not in a good way, not in the same way ginger heats up your body, in a really imbalancing and rajasic way.

So foods that bring up your pitta may not be per se rajasic. Rajasic is kind of the negative aspects of pitta. So garlic is heating, cumin is heating, but they’re not rajasic, they’re sattvic. But stuff like processed foods like hot sauce and all of that, that’s rajasic, that is decreasing your vibration. So we want to alkalize our systems, we want to allow ourself time and space to heal, to think, to feel, to meditate, to play. Playing is how we solve the pitta imbalance. If we can just find ourselves as children again and do the things that just used to light us up—dancing, creating art, singing, going outside, playing with animals—if we can bring that same innocent joy back into our lives, our body can naturally do so much healing without us even doing anything.

And the two mantras that I say are the most healing for pitta are trust and surrender. If you can just trust that the universe 100% wants the best for you, that you were put on this planet for a reason. That even if you don’t micromanage everything, things will still work out. And if you can just surrender, surrender to the flow, surrender to the opportunities that unfold in front of you, even if they may not look like the ones you put in your Google Cal. If you can just surrender to being loved just as you are, stop fighting it, then I can promise you that that pitta inside of you that just so wants to be held will naturally fall back into balance.

So we do this for ourselves because that is how we do it for society. The problems of the world are not going to be solved just from marching and protesting, and trust me, I was the biggest political advocate growing up, went to many, many protests in my time, moved to D.C. to become a human rights lawyer. Like trust me, I get that you want to be active and I love that about you, but the real work comes from within ourselves. Because if we can shift our consciousness, if we can drop the anger, if we can stop screaming and yelling at the politician, and instead realize that that is giving into the fear, that is feeding the fire.

And when we feed the fire, guess what? It’s only going to get bigger and spread. We will not beat Donald Trump with Donald Trump tactics. We will not beat this fire by adding more fire to it. We have to rise above it. We have to change our thoughts, change our vibration, change our emotional state. But also, take responsibility, don’t wait for someone else to come solve the problem. Don’t say, “Well, I’m not perfect yet, so I can’t get involved.” Do the work within so you can do the work without.

Because I see too many good people thinking that they’re not good enough. Too many spiritual people keeping all that juju stored up in their kundalini box. We need to bring the work out there. We meditate so we can take that meditation to others. And again, that doesn’t come from screaming and yelling, “You need to meditate, bitch!” It comes from going to our schools, it comes from going to our elders, it comes from having a conversation with the person in front of you, it comes from using your social media for good instead of for another fucking selfie.

This is how we can change the world. We have so much more power than we are allowed to even believe that they don’t want us to know how much power that we have. If we just use our social media platforms to do nothing but spread love and raise consciousness, the world would be such a different place. And I know it sounds really weird and farfetched to think, “Well, how is that going to stop school shootings? How is that going to stop war? How is that going to start fire?”

But again, these greater catastrophes are collectively created from all of this anger, hate, jealousy, duality that has existed inside of us that has bottled and accumulated and grown, and grown, and grown, and grown until it builds up and creates essentially this bomb that erupts over and over and over again until we address it and we do the healing, and we do the work.

So I know it may feel like, “Well, I’m not the one who’s angry, I’m not the one with the problem, why do I have to keep doing the work?” Honey, you keep doing the work because you’re a light worker, and that’s why we’re here. We are here to do the work so we can spread that work to others. And more than work it is an honor and a privilege to be able to raise consciousness. What a privilege it is to sit in front of someone that thinks Ayurveda and spirituality is bullshit, and to be able to be that first person to open up their mind.

What an honor and privilege it is to be at Thanksgiving dinner, and sitting next to your Trump-loving uncle. And to be the first person to really ask him, “What is it that you’re so afraid of from the outsiders? What are you scared of?” What if you’re that person who just helps create that block, create that shift. And I’m not saying start crazy political conversations at your Thanksgiving, but hold the space of love. And when we hold that space of love and we don’t get angry, and we just ask, “Why? Why do you think they’re going to take our jobs? Why do you think that you’re not worthy enough? Why do you think that we have to bring down people in the Middle East, or gay people, or women, for you to feel important? I genuinely, I want to know why.”

And that person who is angry at everyone that doesn’t look like them is really just angry at themselves. And if we can hold that vibration and hold that space that it is okay to not have everything figured out, and it is no one’s fault, and you are still loved regardless of what you achieve. Then this right here is how we re-parent the angry pitta people out there without ever having to compromise our own integrity.

So we are so much more powerful than we are aware of. We can change the world by changing ourselves. The foods that we eat literally change the planet, being your healthiest self is a political form of activism. But also don’t let it stop there, take that green juice, take that energy, and bring it out into the world. Use your social media platform for good, spark up a conversation with someone with love and keep on vibrating positivity. Be that person that every time someone meets them they feel like they just had an incredible day. Be that person that is smiling, that is glowing, that is beaming, that makes everyone around them want to be a better person. Hold that vibration because that is how we change the world.

Thank you guys so much for listening. I hope you appreciate it. Would love to hear your feedback in the “Mind Body Balancers” Facebook group, my free Facebook group for all “Highest Self’ podcast listeners. And if you love this episode and you’d like a little gift for reviewing it, I would love to send you the first half of my unreleased book, it’s called “Eat Right for Your Mind Body Type.” It is not available for sale anywhere, never will because now it is Eat Right for Your Mind Body Type 12-week guided program infusing Ayurveda with modern nutritional science.

So as a free gift for reviewing this episode in the iTunes store, you just head over to iTunes on your phone, on your computer, click “write a review,” write a nice review, take a screenshot of it, and email it over to me before you hit submit. My email is sahara, S-A-H-A-RA, @eatfeelfresh.com and I will send you back the first half of my unreleased book “Eat Right for Your Mind Body Type.” I hope you loved this episode and I’ll see you on the next one. Namaste.

Episode 141 – The World’s Major Pitta Imbalance with Sahara Rose