Cooling Calming Pitta Foods

Ayurveda works with everyday conditions to heal, as a 5,000 year old nature-based system of healing from India. What follows here is basic Ayurveda info about cooling calming Pitta foods. I offer it to interested novices, as well as to those of us like myself who can sometimes forget the obvious. Whatever scope of experience you bring here to calming Pitta, welcome.

Signs of Pitta being too high, in need of cooling & calming

Why would you want to calm Pitta dosha?

The three doshas Pitta, Kapha, and Vata mediate our physical and psychological experience of the world. More info about the doshas here. When Pitta is in balance, we’re relaxed, calm, creative, assertive, and warm enough.

When Pitta is high, there are different signs: irritability, inflammation, anger, crankiness, impatience, loss of hair, feeling too hot, urinating a lot, or heavy perspiration. After all, Pitta comes from the two elements fire and water.

When Pitta is in excess, the qualities (gunas) associated with this dosha can also be more in evidence: oily (as in skin or hair), sharp (as in tongue or temper), hot (as in body temperature or hot-headed). Dunking one’s head in cool water at this time of year is a real thing, from an Ayurveda perspective.

When the Doshas are in balance

It’s already been mentioned. When Pitta is balanced, we’re creative, assertive, warm, focused. (For a delightful example of balanced Pitta, scroll down in this Substack to hear Leona’s song.)

When Kapha is in harmony, we feel grounded, steady, connected.

When Vata is in balance, we’re flexible, curious, go with the flow.

The doshas under pressure

Under pressure, the doshas can reveal a different story. Pitta can mouth off, Kapha can withdraw and sit on stuff, Vata runs around.

Emotionally under stress, the doshas also push us to behave differently. Pitta can get mad, Vata scared, and Kapha sad.

Environmentally, Pitta likes it cool and fresh, Vata warm and humid, and Kapha fresh and dry. If you are in a battle with loved ones about the temperature of a space, consider what this could indicate in terms of meeting all the doshas’ needs.

There’s more about this in my first book with Urmila Desai, The Ayurvedic Cookbook with a review here. There’s plenty of other great resources about the doshas and Ayurveda now; feel free to explore.

The key to summer wellness is to keep cool, yet nurture healthy digestive fire. (Easy Healing Drinks p. 74)

The tastes can cool us down or warm us up

Ayurveda heals with opposites. Just the way a room can be warm or cool, on a more subtle level, food and drink can be heating or cooling. This is based not only on the temperature of a food, which counts, but also its tastes.

The six tastes – sweet, sour, salty, pungent, bitter, and astringent – each have different qualities. So they can be used to balance a given dosha or aggravate it.

Sweet taste has heavy, moist, cool qualities. Its coolness calms Pitta. Yet it can also inhibit agni, digestive fire.

Bitter taste is cold, light, dry. Think bitter greens, which are soothing to Pitta. It can also paradoxically support digestive fire via samana vayu. When Pitta is high, a splash of bitter before a meal, such as Swedish bitters or a little aloe vera juice, can actually enhance digestion.

Astringent taste is cool, dry, heavy, calming to Pitta. Astringent taste can cause our mouths to pucker and dry out, like an unripe banana or witch hazel. (Warm sour taste, on the other hand, is moistening, to the body and our mouths. Think lime or lemon juice…)

Sweet, bitter, and astringent flavors cool most effectively

Here’s some examples: pomegranate, prickly pear, apples, sweet apricots, avocado, sweet berries, dates, coconut, grapes, limes, ripe mangos, melons, papaya, sweet plums. There’s more info here.

Whereas sour, salty, and pungent/spicy tastes warm us up

The three warming tastes do better to balance cool Vata or Kapha doshas then hot Pitta.

Sour taste is warm, moist, oily; it enhances agni. Think citrus or apple cider vinegar.

Salty flavor is moist, warm, and heavy. It can also enhance agni. Think salty foods, in moderation.

Pungent taste has hot, light, dry qualities. In moderation it can enhance digestive fire.

These three tastes are used in the classic pre-meal digestive remedy of a thin slice of fresh ginger (pungent) with a thin slice of lemon or lime (sour) and a pinch of salt. I’m saving this warming strategy for cool weather.

Practically, if you adore spicy foods yet your Pitta is running noticeably high, go for the “mild” over “hot” choices when possible. If you enjoy cilantro, it can be used in pungent dishes to cool them down. Or you can use coriander, the cooling seed of the same blessed plant.

In Ayurveda, all six tastes are valued as part of a healthy meal. Yet we’ll use them in different proportions depending on your balance of doshas. I write more about this here.

See Easy Healing Drinks from the Wisdom of Ayurveda, Appendix 2, p. 133 for more about the tastes, doshas, and agni.

Pitta, digestive fire, and our environmental homes

This morning I left my home in the forest where it’s HALLELUJAH!!!!! been raining for the last two days. It was 63 degrees F getting in the car there. Thirty minutes later, pulling into my mom’s driveway, it was 79 degrees, overcast, yet still quite dry.

If you are in a cool, moist Alaska village, it will be easier to keep your Pitta calm than if you are in 101 degree F temperatures with smoke. Yet if you’re living in Alaska, you may have to nurture your digestive fire more. You may also need to be more resourceful, in terms of accessing healthy cooling foods.

Easy Healing Drinks and Pitta

There’s an abundance of cooling calming Pitta foods in the Easy Healing Drinks spring E-book like Lavender Rose Lemonade, Key Lime Mint Cooler, Cooling Coconut Green Drink, Artichoke Bay Tea, True Toning Tea, Simple Comfort Tea, and a variety of fresh veggie juices.

The same recipes plus more can be found in the 4-season print book along with Watermelon Spice, Gord’s Strawberry Lemonade, Cool-that-Rakta Green Limeade, The Virgin Pomegrita, Sports Solution, agua frescas, and a Blueberry Apple Bliss dessert. Watch my colleague Iza Bruen-Morningstar make Pomegranate Chia Smoothie here.

Food lists, geek out

If extensive detail delights you, here’s more.

Plus, more ways to keep cool, including breath.

Creativity and joy are powerful ways to balance Pitta

Our creative fire needs healthy outlets to be balanced. We each have different ways to express our creativity. Last month a very young singer, Leona, wowed audiences across the globe with her spontaneous and impassioned rendition of Let it Go from Frozen, sung on a Los Angeles street with her parents in close proximity. Listen to her here. Pianist Emilio Piano models great ways to create space for the powerful and new energy of tiny Leona. May we be so skillful and spacious in our own lives in opening to the much-needed new. Rock out, Leona!

Other ways to create

Any dosha can create trouble – Good Trouble is what we’re after this weekend. It’s a weekend to honor the life and death of Congressional star John Lewis and stand up for protecting the vote and civil rights now.

Image: Summer Rainbow thanks to Renee Lynn and Easy Healing Drinks

Bio: I’m a writer, Ayurveda health educator and Polarity Therapist practicing in Santa Fe, NM. My most recent seasonal cookbook Easy Healing Drinks from the Wisdom of Ayurveda is on special here.