chAiYURVEDA 101.
Ayurveda, “ the knowledge of life,” is the ancient healing system from India that illuminates how an understanding of one’s interconnectedness with the natural universe is the key to a life of balance within the body, senses, mind and soul. It reveals that we exist in a creation of essential energies that are in a constant dance to maintain the balance of the Universe, internal and external. Everything in the world is seen as interconnected and, therefore, effects and is affected by everything else.
Lesson 1: The Karma of a Cup of Chai
Everything that exists in the universe, you, me, our thoughts, the season, the elements, spices, a cup of chai, absolutely everything, has inherent qualities, called gunas in Sanskrit. These qualities are understood along a spectrum, between pairs of opposites. Something can be hot or cold, light or heavy, moving or stable, etc. We can take any substance, look at its qualities, and know the effect it will have on anything else. For example, fire is hot. The hot quality of fire has the effect of warming anything it comes into contact with. The fire, its heat and its ability to warm are inseparable, so we know that when we sit next to a fire, we will warm up.
As far as masala chai goes, with an understanding of the qualities of the substances that we are ingesting, we can know the effect, taste, feeling and healing properties that are present in our cup of chai. Every”thing” held within the liquid vehicle of our masala chai, the water, spices, tea leaves, milk, sweetener as well as the love, prayers, intentions, and thoughts that are imbued into the chai during preparation, has a specific action, or karma, on anyone who imbibes it.
Lesson 2: Like Increases Like and Opposites Balance
Any substance, even masala chai, can have a healing effect on our being if it brings about balance, or a detrimental effect, if it brings us into imbalance. The scientific law applied is that like increases like and opposites balance. For example, you are very cold while taking an unheated overnight 2nd class sleeper train across Northern India in January. You are suddenly awoken by a train station chai wallah, yelling “chaiiiii, chaiiiii!” and a steaming cup of masala chai is placed into your frozen hands. You happily drink it up and become comfortably warm. Opposites balance. Cold + Hot = Balance. If you had an iced, unspiced chai (we never saw iced chai in India, but just for the sake of an example) you would have become even colder. Like increases like. Cold + Cold = Colder.
This law is universal and applies even outside of India. When cooking up a batch of chai in the winter, which where we live, is dominated by the quality of coldness, we choose ingredients with a hot quality that will balance the cold quality of the season. We utilize warming spices like ginger, cardamom, cinnamon and maybe even some very hot spices like black pepper or clove. If we had a visitor who was hot-headed or had a fiery bodily symptom like a red rash or heartburn, we would make them a masala chai without so much heat. If you are a person whose constitution is dominated by heat, especially if it is the middle of the hot summer, it would be wise to prepare a cooling masala, using spices like mint, coriander and fennel.
In this way, we can consider how much tea to use, if at all, depending on whether we are serving a person who is tired or anxious. The amount and type of milk can be determined by whether the drinker has congestion, is overweight or has digestive issues. Asking questions like: “What will the weather be like today? Who is coming over? How buzzed do I want to be?” will help determine the formulation you choose as you brew up your chai.
Lesson 3: A Strong Agni (digestive fire) is Essential for Health
Another factor to consider is digestive strength. In Ayurveda, our digestive capacity is likened to a fire in our stomach. It is called our Agni, or fire of transformation. Promoting a strong digestive fire is essential for good health, because when food is digested properly we are able to assimilate all of the nutrition and Prana, or life-force, present in the food. The qualities of our digestive fire are hot and light. If we apply the above lessons, we know that eating light, warming foods will help keep our fire burning while eating cold, heavy foods will put out our fire and hinder digestion. Milk is a food with cold and heavy qualities. Ayurvedically speaking, drinking a large, cold glass of milk out of the fridge will extinguish our fire, making it difficult to digest and potentially causing indigestion and mucus formation. What to do? Make masala chai, of course! Milk can be made into a balanced, digestible food by heating it up, watering it down to make it lighter and infusing it with warming chai spices. Yummmm.
