Adjusting your digestion in Autumn

In early autumn 🌈, the evenings are still long, your appetite is strong, and the weather is generally cold and damp. While the sun’s power is diminished by wind, rain and clouds, the energies of the moon gain ascendancy. 

This is the time to get some oil massages, preferably Ayurvedic ones, as well as herbal body scrubs. Warm baths with essential oils are always helpful to soothe away tension. 

At the beginning of autumn, vata starts to aggravate the accumulated pitta from the summer by acting like a bellows. As summer pitta leaves your body, you may develop symptoms such as conjunctivitis, gastritis, rashes, head- aches and irritability. 

Vata-related problems, such as cracking joints, anxiety, irregular digestion and an increased sensitivity to cold, can start to manifest themselves. To combat these conditions, adopt a leisurely and quiet lifestyle during this period so that your system can adjust to the change in seasonal energies. This translates as follows:

✓  Don’t drink cold water or use ice.

✓  Don’t sleep during the day.

✓  Reduce sexual and physical activity.

These simple strategies also help you to adjust to the prevailing forces of nature. Vata characteristics are cold, light, dry and dispersing, and one of the main ways of pacifying these increased tendencies in the body is by increasing foods that are naturally sweet, sour and salty in taste, served warm and in moderate quantities.

Eating the right foods

This is a delightful time of the year when the autumn tints shimmer in an array of colours. All around you is evidence of the earth’s fecundity, with hedgerows filled with blackberries, rosehips and haws, rich in vitamin C. 

An often-overlooked autumn bounty is elderberries, which are packed with anti-viral properties to allay winter colds. Add elderberries to an apple pie, put them in oatmeal, brew them in tea.
 

Colon health should take high priority now, so that accumulated heat can find its way out of the body. Keep your diet rich in fibre. Cooking with both figs and dates helps your colon, and you can also eat them as snacks. 

The modern tendency of eating a large quantity of food at a sitting can easily put out your delicate digestive fire, which you need to stoke at this time of the year. 

To maintain normal digestion, incorporate into your diet old barley (it’s lighter and therefore easier to digest than normal barley), and shali rice, a very nutritious form of rice grown over 60 days, also called red rice. Barley couscous is always a treat to stave off the chill, with the added bonus that it only takes five minutes to prepare. Just add boiling water to a bowl of barley couscous, let it soak for four minutes and then mix in argan oil if you have it, or virgin olive oil for essential fatty acids. 

When it comes to beverages, boil pure water, let it cool and add a teaspoon of honey. You want honey in the autumn because of its heating properties. In contrast, unrefined white sugar is cooling to the system, so you can use it in the summer to help you cool down.