8 Herbs and Spices for the Fall Season to Increase Your Energy and Vitality [Episode #723]

Today’s solocast topic is: 8 Herbs and Spices for the Fall Season to Increase Your Energy and Vitality

In order to really live an amazingly healthy, energetic, fulfilling life, it is key to take this holistic approach and to nourish yourself across all of these cornerstones because we’re not just going to get there from one pathway. We can eat really well, but if we’re stressed out all the time or we don’t take care of our bodies in other ways, we don’t achieve that level of health.

And we can sit and meditate and be really mindful all the time, but if we’re putting crap food in our bodies, we don’t fully get there. It’s really this wider approach. They’re a very tangible, accessible way to elevate our energy. And herbs and spices have been used for their medicinal properties for thousands of years.

In Ayurveda medicine, the herbs are considered medicine and vice versa. They’re foods and their medicines. And by choosing to stock our kitchens with these herbs for this season in particular, it’s a very powerful way to upgrade our self-care.

This is really the intention and purpose with our solocast today, is to leave you feeling excited, inspired, empowered in your own journey right here, right now, in the fall of this moment in ways in which you can learn to really take care of yourself.

Topics Covered In 8 Herbs and Spices for the Fall Season to Increase Your Energy and Vitality

#1. Which herbs and spices increase your energy and vitality

#2. The health benefits of adding herbs and spices to your daily routine

#3. Tips on how to incorporate herbs and spices to your recipes  

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Other Podcasts you may enjoy!:

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Transcript:

Note: The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate. This is due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.

(00:01): Namaste loves and welcome to our Monday solocast podcast where I’m very excited for a very practical topic today, which is 9 Herbs and Spices for the Fall Season to Increase Your Energy and Vitality. And we talk about a wide variety of topics here, of course, on our feel good podcast covering the range of the four cornerstones, which are food, body, emotional wellbeing, and spiritual growth. And in order to really live an amazingly healthy, energetic, fulfilling life, it is key to take this holistic approach and to nourish yourself across all of these cornerstones because we’re not just gonna get there from one pathway. We can eat really well, but if we’re stressed out all the time or we don’t take care of our bodies in other ways, we don’t achieve that level of health. And we can sit and meditate and be really mindful all the time, but if we’re putting crap food in our bodies, we don’t fully get there.

(01:02): So it’s really this wider approach. And why I wanted to focus on herbs and spices today is that they’re very tangible, accessible way to elevate our energy. And herbs and spices have been used for their medicinal properties for thousands of years. And our uve medicine, the herbs are considered medicine and vice versa. They’re foods and their medicines. And so by choosing to stock our kitchens with these herbs for this season in particular, it’s a very powerful way to upgrade our self-care and say there is spec specificity to the, to the way elements are being expressed right now and the collective and nature and earth. And in our bodies there is more air and wind, there is more vodka energy. And so because of that, we wanna balance the energies in our body. We wanna keep our microbiome as healthy as possible. We wanna support our delicate balance of hormones, our endocrine system, our immune system, our fluid levels.

(02:10): There’s so much that herbs and spices can come in and really support us with. There is a intelligence in plants, an incredible intelligence that is beyond what we completely understand in science. But we know that there is this mix of antioxidants in ways in which the specific properties in these incredibly powerful plant medicines interacts with our bodies to support our functioning. When I started on my own healing path, I found great comfort in being able to just reach in my cabinets and pull these little potent potions, these bottles of these ground up herbs and spices that are taking different specific parts of the plant. Sometimes it’s the herb or sometimes rather it’s the stem or the leaf or the flower or whatever it is, and ingesting that, putting it into simple but specific recipes and elixers and working with these medicines made me feel a great sense of empowerment over my own health journey.

(03:16): And so this is really the intention and purpose with our solo cast today, is to leave you feeling excited, inspired, empowered in your own journey right here, right now, in the fall of this moment in ways in which you can learn to really take care of yourself. And some of the benefits as we’ll get into here in just a moment, include rejuvenation of your cells. So less, um, wearing and breakdown. As you know, we might call in society aging where there’s some natural aging, but some of it is superfluous and comes just from improper nutrition and toxin removal. So these herbs can help rejuvenate the cells. They can help with better metabolism, more enhanced digestion and toxin removal, overall balance, stress management, adaptogenic qualities, so their non-specific but more overall suppo supportive to our functioning so that we are more clear and focused and we can show up in such a more potent, powerful way in our everyday lives.

(04:31): So I’m very excited about this because it is so practical and it’s something when we need a little bit of impetus in our life, we need just a little bit of support. We say, Okay, I know I’m supposed to do this X, Y, and z. I’m just feeling a little bit stuck right now. Or I just want, I just want these little wins. Just adding in a bit of Ric Black Pepper into an elixir or sprinkling in some cinnamon onto your sweet potatoes. All these simple things that we do, we can do. It’s in our power. It takes like less than five seconds, it starts to add up. So these little small steps really are powerful and supportive in our lives before we keep going deeper and deeper. And now we will get into our specific nine spices and herbs that I have chosen for our time right now.

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Solocast: 9 Herbs and Spices for the Fall Season to Increase Your Energy and Vitality

(06:17) Okay. So all of that being said, let’s get right into our spices and herbs today. And I think it’s such a, again, a wonderful practical exercise to think about which ones of these may resonate with you right now, Which ones you’re drawn to in particular, which ones you’re interested or cur or cur curious about because maybe you haven’t worked with them a lot before. Some of this may be a review for you, some of it may be new.

#1. Turmeric

(07:13): So just sit back, stay open. Either way, it’s really great to take in this info to be re or review this invo, to be reinspired and also to spark new ideas. So the first one I wanna talk about because of its bright color, I’m particularly drawn to it, it’s been a big part of my life for many years, is turmeric. And turmeric is this gorgeous, bright color. You wanna be a little bit careful with it in your kitchen because it will stain your cutting boards for a time. It may potentially stain your countertops. So you just wanna respect how powerful this magical spice is. It’s been revered in arve medicine for thousands of years, and it’s an underground stem, so it’s a little bit like ginger. It’s grown in the earth. So it has these very earthy qualities of being able to stabilize your body.

(08:11): This stabilization you can think of grounding in the earth. This sort of just really integrating the energy so it doesn’t get too chaotic. So that’s what it’s doing in your body in terms of having an anti-inflammatory effect, helping to unblock cleanse the blood. It helps with anxiety. It’s known to be anti-cancer, it br it boosts, um, brain health will will link to some of this information over in the show notes if you’re interested. And there’s so much research out today, especially about curcumin, which is known as the compound inside of turmeric, which is known specifically to help with inflammation. Percu has also help is known to help with your gut health. So especially if you’re experiencing any sort of aggravation this fall, a little bit more bloating or indigestion tumor is a really great soothing, rebalancing herb to to pair in or to add into your diet.

(09:16): It’s, it’s bio availability is increased with the presence of black pepper, freshly ground black pepper, which we’ll discuss in a moment. It’s another one of our powerful, easily accessible herbs. So it’s a good thing to pair, like if you’re putting ric in, um, almond or oat or coconut or hemp milk in a golden milk, which I do often with some raw honey, it’s really wonderful to add some freshly ground pepper again to just to help with its absorption. Some other great ways to add turmeric in are two lentils for making any sort of bean dish. It is an earthier spice, so I like to par it with salt with coconut oil. Makes it palatable when you’re, when you’re mixing it with other things. It works really well if you’re making your own sort of curry now that we’re getting into the colder seasons. So you can mix it in with coconut or um, like coconut milk and veggies. It’s pretty, um, it’s pretty versatile and it also pairs really well with other herbs like ginger and card and, um, cuan. All right, so pick up some turmeric. Always look for organic as well. Keep it covered so it stays really fresh in your cabinet. You don’t wanna leave it open, which would sort of, um, diminish some of its potency. 

#2. Cinnamon

(10:28): Okay, so number two is cinnamon. And cinnamon is something that a lot of us grew up with in the western world. We typically equate with sweets and adding into cookies and things like that. Cinnamon rolls. But cinnamon actually is amazing in savory foods. So I put cinnamon sticks, for instance in my doll. I let them simmer in there and then I’ll remove the cinnamon sticks and it adds a, a different flavor profile. Cinnamon is really powerful in the body for helping to maintain balanced energy levels. It’s great for blood sugar, it helps you metabolize sugars. So it’s great for diabetics and anyone that has a little bit of issues with with blood sugar in general.

(11:38): It’s also known to be antimicrobial antibacterial, fungal and viral. Similarly to coconut oil, it’s great for boosting cognition. Um, cognitive function. It’s also known to be anti-inflammatory, which is one of the properties of tumor as well. Anti-cancer. There’s some research that shows that cinnamon’s been able to slow tumor growth. So it’s a wonderful, wonderful spice to keep around in various forms. Oh, hold on. A couple more things I wanna say. It’s also been known to be really wonderful at regulating the female hormone cycle. There’s some reach research out of Columbia University showing that women suffering from P C O S we’re shown to see a positive, positive effect on insulin resistance, P C O S and creating more regularity. So for all of these reasons, it’s a wonderful, wonderful spice to incorporate ground cinnamon is wonderful for shaking onto different foods. As I mentioned in our family, we love to bake sweet potatoes with two additional ingredients, coconut oil, which I toss in and cinnamon.

(12:53): The kids love it. I also like the cinnamon sticks as I mentioned, if I’m making a kitie or a doll, I’ve gotten into the habit of experimenting with cinnamon in savory dishes and I like it in that way very much. I also mix and make oix all the time. So sometimes I will put cinnamon with nutmeg, raw honey almond milk, and that’ll be my evening elixir. So it’s just an incredible, incredible medicinal food. And if you’ve ever had the opportunity to see cinnamon growing it’s, or look at up online, look at pictures, it’s so, uh, inspiring. I really love to see it in that way cause you can really honor the tree in the plant. So the first time I really saw cinnamon in quantities growing on trees was when I was grateful enough to go to Sri Lanka. And it was incredible just to see the cinnamon sticks, to see the trees producing this so sacious, the smell of cinnamon, you cannot help but have so much respect for it. So again, between desserts and also savory dishes, I encourage you to play with cinnamon on a regular basis. 

#3. Nutmeg

(14:05): So the next spice that I’m really excited about right now that I just mentioned to you is nutmeg. This is one of the perfect fall spices where we equate fall with nutmeg. It’s often in things like, you know, um, hot apple cider and other dishes like that. It is wonderful for women. When I’ve had Dr. Jay, my Ayurvedic teacher, who we may have heard some of his shows on here, has made some special herbalized mixes for me over the years. And they often do include nutmeg, which he says is very wonderful, very, uh, balancing for women. It’s also known to be anti-inflammatory. It has some amounts of calcium, magnesium, potassium, copper, folate. It a little bit goes a long way. So you definitely wanna be judicious and how you’re using your nutmeg.

(15:13): But wow, what an earthy pop nutmeg has even been associated with helping to ale alleviate symptoms of pain from inflammation. It’s anti-cancer, it’s antibacterial. Again, it’s an antioxidant. It helps to reduce DNA damage. So for all of these reasons, rotate the nutmeg in. I don’t use it as much myself in cooking, but I do use it a lot in my elixers in my evening elixers and smoothies. It, uh, we have an incredible smoothie coming out in just a few weeks with cherry and nutmeg and it really is magical when you start to play with certain fruits. I think of pomegranate would be really great with nutmeg as well. So smoothies, elixers, you could sprinkle it with cinnamon on your oatmeal and dishes like that as well. All right, so have a little play, Let me know how you do. And the next one, which is in this category, this little family cinnamon, eg.

#4. Cloves

(16:19): Now cloves is something you might have guessed I was gonna be say. I was going to say it has been used for so many years in Ayurveda. It is one of the preeminent spices I remember learning about in my Ayurvedic studies. It’s like, if you see what clothes, these little dried flower buds, you can use whole clothes in cooking sometimes, and that’s called for an aggravated cooking. Or you can use ground cloves. This is also such a wonderful herb for oral health, for helping to eliminate and balance bad bacteria in your mouth. Sometimes in the Ayurvedic oral routine, you can just chew clothes and that’s traditional. You wanna start with a little bit. If you’re not used to it, it’s quite pungent. And you can also see clothes traditionally used in oral care products. If you go to an Indian or are veic purveyor, you’ll, you’ll see that a lot clo are anti macro microbial.

(17:25): They’re also known to be, um, anti pain. There’s, there’s actually compounds as, um, active compound eugenol found in clothes is known to be a topical pain reliever, also incredibly rich in antioxidants to help neutralize free radicals, ravaging our bodies, breaking our bodies down, creating pain, and just so much cellular, um, damage. So cloves are wonderful. They also have a hypoglycemic effect similarly to cinnamon and helping to, um, relieve blood sugar. So that’s, or a relieve, um, lower blood sugar rather. So that’s good to know as well. So you can use clothes similarly to how you would use rosemary. I would say very respectfully. And things like I use clothes in like a, like a seared uh, cauliflower dish. I use clothes with course in, um, sim and elixers smoothies, ginger cookies or anything with ginger clothes pair really well. And that sort of like a, a muffin situation or even in pancakes. I do love pancakes I have to say. So sometimes you can use them in very creative ways as well, but the elixers are always there for you to experiment with. And that’s another reason that that evening elixir is such a powerful part of our evening routine. It gives us a chance to settle in, to sip, to slow down. And I definitely recommend pairing your evening elixir while you’re journaling or post meditation. And it’s just a nice way to really enjoy the evening as well.

#5. Cumin

(19:18): Okay, so the next one that I wanna recommend here is cumin and cumin is some, is it herb, A spice that I actually do incorporate year round in the fall. It’s really great because it helps to boost digestion in the fall there’s a little bit more vodka that gets kicked up. So this in this air and wind energy can definitely exacerbate constipation, bloating, so human, this earthy, incredibly delicious spice can come in and just really help it’s rich in iron. It strengthens immunity. It’s such a wonderful dish, a wonderful spice. I remember the first time I had cumin because my family did not eat a lot of Indian or in or Sri Lankan food growing up or Nepalese food. But I went and did an Outward Bound retreat because I was obsessed with being outside. I wanted to have it a big adventure. I did an Outward Bound retreat for a month when I was 16. We had very bland food, very just rice and beans a lot we cook on our camping stove or crackers, but we had a whole bunch of spices and one of them was cumin. And I remember the first time I had it and I said, What is this? This is amazing. It just, you know, just felt very familiar in a way and exciting at the same time. So if you are new to cumin, you are in for a big treat. This pairs very well with savory foods. 

(20:46): So I added into stir fries, stews. We make so much kitcheree in my house, it pairs really well with Ric, black pepper, corn, ender cu if you wanna make sort of your own curry mix, which Dr. Jay is very much a fan of. He doesn’t like pre-made mixes. He thinks it’s a little bit of, of cheating in a sense. Of course, it’s fine to get things pre-mixed, but it’s great to also buy your own human and mix it in. As I mentioned, it’s, it’s rich and iron, it has antioxidant qualities and to cancer. So it’s just so powerful and wonderful. So you definitely wanna keep that at home.

#6. Black Pepper

(21:45): Okay, so let’s talk about black pepper now, which we mentioned a little bit in the ric section. So black pepper is something that we are very familiar with here in the west, but unfortunately a lot of times it’s already ground up. So you’ll see it in the restaurant in a little sort of shaker next to the salt. And sometimes having it in that form is okay, but at home when you’re more in control of things, it’s definitely a great idea to get a, a shaker where you can ground, no, sorry, you’re not a shaker or grinder so that you can grind your own black pepper fresh. And Aveda says this is really important because you’re releasing the oils fresh in that moment. And the oils are very, very potent and the flavors are very potent. So a couple things about that. It helps with ric absorption. It helps your body absorb the active component of curin, otherwise it can be cleared very rapidly from by your liver. So the peppering and pepper is said to inhibit this quick clearing and allow instead for the bioavailability of curcumin to really be absorbed into the body.

(22:49): So anytime you’re using ric, it’s a good idea to also add fresh black pepper. It also helps with digestion similarly to Cuan. Um, so it’s wonderful to add into all your dishes. You can add it on top of sweet potatoes, you can add it on soups, stir fries, anything you’re cooking when you’re, um, roasting veggies, anything really wait for, um, digestion. It’s anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer. It’s rich in manganese, which is an important, um, mineral for skin health and bone health collagen production. So it’s really great for your skin in this way and it’s easy to find. Of course it’s very common. So we just wanna make sure that we’re keeping that black pepper grinder around.

#7. Ginger

(23:44): Okay, so we have two more. We’re gonna wrap up here. The next one is ginger, which is the mother of all herbs. We could say ginger is such a staple ingredient that we really can and should all be stocking in our, in our kitchens. And I bring it up here in the spice conversation because we can have dry ginger, which is great to keep and to use and you can use this um, when you need things really ground in. And then I like fresh ginger, which I cut up in chunks and add into soups and smoothies are not smoothies, sorry, um, soups and stews and stir fries. And my kids are aware that we have these big ginger chunks and to pull them out or I pull them out for them. My husband likes to chew them and eat them. So ginger is one of those individual things. Sometimes people like that heat when they’re, when they’re taking it in. It’s not as pu penetrating or p aggravating as garlic, though I find it a lot more mild.

(25:51): It is warming, it is great for immunity. So it’s so great right now in the fall I have ginger, lemon tea all the time with raw honey in it. So now that it is getting to be in the fall, if you wanna add ginger into your hot water with lemon in the morning, it’s something I definitely recommend for a little bit of an added boost. So play with that. And then the, again, dried and fresh ginger.

#8. Cardamom

And then the last one I rented to recommend is Cardamom , which can come in pods, you can get ground Cardamom . And this is been used in arve and Chinese medicine practices for balance. So car is said to be, um, this incredible spice for offering relief. It’s great for our throats

(26:43): As we become more susceptible to this vodka imbalance of fall. It’s really great to just steep it and allow it to come through in the licks card ground is also great in certain recipes, it’s great on certain veggies. You can pair it with many other things like cinnamon, like human. So I wanna, um, so, so I wanna mention and and elixers <laugh>. So car was amazing and I wanna mention again as we go through, as you can see, that a lot of these are great in in, in mixing with one another. So I often, as I mentioned, put these mixes together like cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ric, black pepper, and I, I mix it in with a little bit of hot water and the heat comes in through the hot water, let’s say a quarter or a third. And then the other two thirds are heated, hot non-dairy milks like almond milk, o milk, het milk, coconut milk, and so on.

(27:44): So there’s many different ways to ingest these herbs and spices. You can check our Solluna website for lots of different recipes as well. Play with them, keep them around. See which ones you’re drawn to see which pairings you’re drawn to. Please share with us. There’s infinite uses for these incredible spices to just nurture yourself in a deep, deep way. It’s practical, it’s fun and it’s easy. So let me know how you do head over, as I mentioned to the website for recipes, meditations, and more. Keep your questions coming for our Thursday q and a show. I’ll be back here Monday for our next interview podcast to then take care and sending you so much love. Namaste.

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