The base of everything is actually bread, whole grain sourdough from an artisanal baker down the street who mills his own flour. Capucine et Tournesol rye, wheat, spelt, kamut, 16-grains. He keeps the soul in it, his flour is whole, the sourdough is fed from that, and the loaves come out fresh and dense with actual nutrition. After months in Thailand and India where rice was the constant, I barely touch the stuff now. (click to read Part 3 of the series: chiang mai edition). I rotate through the grains instead.
To that I add ghee, quite a bit more than I used to, and tahini, and honey. Canned fish: sardines in olive oil, sometimes mackerel, cod, tuna. I read the labels carefully. Water, spring water, its own oil, or olive oil are fine. Sunflower oil, colza, canola, any vague “vegetable oil” I avoid entirely.
Vegetables have been fennel and broccoli, celery, occasional kale, rarely other cabbages. Sometimes I sprout mung beans and cook them. I have not eaten anything raw all summer except fruit, and even that I try to take at room temperature rather than straight from the cold of the fridge.
The fruit follows the season. Blueberries, strawberries, raspberries in their time. Now stone fruit, and apples coming. Early in the summer I craved grapefruit and ate a lot of it, but it aggravated Pitta and turned my morning stoole too acid, too liquid, so I stopped. The body answers if you listen.
I have phased out most herbalism for now. I still work remotely with Dr. Zuocheng Wang in Toronto, but I brew the formula he designs for me perhaps once a week, drink it a day or two, and that is enough. I have come to a homeostasis.
When I go to a restaurant, maybe once every week or two, I order simply. Lamb a couple of times this summer. If I want a treat I go to Patisserie Lu & I and get vegan, gluten free almond flour cupcake sweetened with agave or fruit. It is dense and rich and actually satisfying as food while also satisfying a craving.
Since the summer solstice I have been smoking cannabis. I started at five days a week and have tapered to one or two. Mostly an Indica called OG Kush, high CBD and low THC. I keep the dose under 0.3 grams a day. A couple of times I tried Sativa and it was fun, energetically opening, but too intense for my addictive tendencies and the hangover was rough. The Indica I can take or leave.
For two weeks I tried CBD oil as a tincture. It was noticeably relaxing the first few days, then I had to increase the dose, then nothing happened. I suspect that if I kept it subperceptual for months it might do something for my nervous system, but I did not have the patience for that experiment. I stopped.
Of course none of this is the whole picture. I also do two to four hours of qigong a day.
The question is always: how do I know any of it is working?
I know because I have no bruises. Last week I took a knee to the nose in contact improv. Nosebleed. It started, it stopped in twenty minutes, like a normal person. I know because I have the energy to train and dance four to six hours a day, several days a week. I know because I sleep through the night, fall asleep and wake up naturally when the sun rises, no alarm, feeling energized. I know because I have no bloody hemorrhoids, which used to be a chronic issue. I know because I look at my tongue every morning and see no accumulation of ama (unmetabolized waste), no teeth marks, no signs of impaired digestion. There is some Vata holding in my cervical spine and upper back, and a slight heat pattern at the tips and ridges, but for a Pitta-dominant constitution in the middle of summer, that is remarkably well controlled.
What I am doing, Ayurvedically, is pacifying Vata and Pitta with strong Kapha qualities. Rich, fatty, heavy, simple, unprocessed. And it works. I do not need to believe in it. I only need to look at the evidence my body gives me.