O M Ghee, Amazing Ghee! Actionable Ayurveda with Salila#4

Welcome to Actionable Ayurveda with Salila, your go-to podcast for diving deep into the timeless wisdom of Ayurveda. I am Salila, your host and guide on this transformative journey. With a lineage rooted in Ayurvedic practices, I am here to empower you to thrive and flourish through the ancient principles of Ayurveda. It's a beautiful, lovely morning here, and we're going to talk about the benefits and the uses of ghee today. So ghee is magical. Ghee is amazing. So one of the most interesting references of ghee that I noticed that just stood out for me when I started to study about the benefits of ghee was surgery. Acharya Sushruta was describing surgical procedures and how to heal surgical wounds in his Sushruta Samhita, and my mind just blew. It was written that after a major surgery, like a major incision or skin grafting or completely removing a wound or making a cut into the skin where all layers were affected, they would apply a paste of ghee and honey onto that, and then they would bandage it and they would leave that alone for a few days. And then after 3 or 4 days when they would take it out, they would see that the cut, the surgical wound had healed. That is how powerful ghee is. So if we have thought of ghee as this wonderful food that we add to our daily diet because our moms, our grandmothers have done this from the time of birth, we have seen ghee being used in the homes, we have seen ghee being used in our pujas, we have seen Ghee being offered by our grandparents as a gift to families. We should now also realize that ghee is not just food, ghee is incredible medicine as well. In our Indian context, whenever we see some things that are used in the altar to gods like ghee, sesame, turmeric, banana, mango leaves— have I missed anything? There's tons of things— jasmines. What we are seeing is we are seeing very powerful healing herbs and medicines and minerals. Camphor, right? These are all very powerful healing things, which is why our Acharyas, our culture has created these traditions around it so that we never ever ever forget how healing they are and that we use them again and again and again on a daily basis. Just having them around in the house is considered auspicious. There's a beautiful word to describe ghee in Sanskrit, and it is 'a lakshmi hara,' meaning that which removes all that which causes inauspiciousness in our life. So if you are feeling any kind of sadness, any kind of lack of self-love, any kind of 'I don't have enough,' just having a little ghee will help you create that feeling of I am abundant, I am well taken care of, whatever my needs are, God, Universe will fulfill them. It will help you come to that state, not just emotionally, but mentally, physically. It's going to take away those negative feelings of Vata, and it will improve our wisdom, it will improve our memory, it will improve our intelligence, and then we may be able to take the next step that is required for us to feel abundant or to move towards abundance. So we all have that state where irrespective of how much is there in our bank, irrespective of how much we are loved, irrespective of how much we have going on for us, we come into that phase where we are like, mm, I don't have enough, I'm so lonely, oh gosh, finances are a mess, what do I do? At that point too, if you can have a little ghee with a little rice, or have a teaspoon of ghee chased down with some warm ghat peshthi, you will notice that you will come into a state of intelligence, memory, wisdom, and you will be able to then reach out to somebody who will give you maybe a therapy session, or a girlfriend who will hold space for you, or take a step, talk to your financial advisor, or something like that. We will be able to do something productive which will bring us into a state of Lakshmi, Mā Lakshmi, state of abundance, state of feeling like I'm doing all right, everything is okay, there is some challenges, but I can move myself into positivity. That's how powerful ghee is. So ghee is not just amazing for our emotional, our physical well-being, not just good as a remedy and a medicine for various illnesses in our body, It is also great for our intelligence, our state of mind, mood control, anxiety. If we were feeling weak, then we would require ghee. If our body was feeling weak, we would benefit from having ghee. Ghee is not supposed to be had when we are in the thick of a fever or something. But as soon as the fever breaks, we can have ghee because fever creates that increased vata, that weakness. After that, we can have ghee. Now here are some conditions where ghee is amazing. When the temperature outside is really hot, when it's very dry outside. So think of places that are in India that are like desert region. You will see that they drink ghee, they pour ghee over their food, especially during the afternoons. Why do they have that kind of a food culture? Because it is very beneficial when it's hot and dry. But keep hydrated in the body. Ghee is amazing when it is really cold. As soon as North India moves into like that freezing cold state, what happens? Everybody brings out their desi ghee. Desi ghee is cultured ghee. Cultured ghee is homemade. It's made from ghee and from freshly made yogurt. Yogurt is made from cream that is collected over several days, then it is cultured, and then it is churned in a mud pot usually by hands, by the women. And then ghee is made on a low flame. It is simmered till all the solids kind of turn into light pale golden brown. And then ghee is strained from the top. Now that is a slightly warming ghee. That is a strengthening ghee. Ghee is important for children to grow because ghee helps create pushti, strength, bala, strength. Organs form their full potential. People who are above 70, very important to give ghee. If you are sick, any kind of weakness that leaves you feeling down in the dumps and body feels weak, a weak body has an effect on the mind as well, right? Important to give ghee. Women, especially during stages like puberty, lactation, pregnancy, towards the, the third trimester of pregnancy, ghee is a major part of diet, especially because we tend to get constipated during that time. Perimenopause, menopause, super important to have ghee because it softens the body. It gives that, gives that foundational nourishment for our hormones to be made from that. Hormones are in the optimal level in the body when we are giving our body good nourishment. Then wrestlers, people who are active, people who are sports persons, people who work very hard and create a lot of heat in the body. They need ghee because ghee will then calm their bodies down. It'll prevent their bodies from becoming dry. So there's a classic formula for wrestlers. They will have a glass of fresh milk with ghee and butter mixed together as a post-workout drink. So if there's anybody here who loves to work out and who likes a high-intensity long workout, loves to run, is a triathlete, try this out. Your body will recover itself very fast. All that wear and tear on the body, the, the tiny micro tears in the muscles, all that will recover very fast when you have this milk plus ghee plus butter mixture. A teaspoon each in a glass of milk or a cup of milk and try it out. People who have aggravated Vata, people who are feeling anxious, people who are feeling constipated, people who are feeling weak in their mind and their body, they will benefit from having some ghee. Now, if you're taking ghee for constipation, it's important not to work it out. It's important to have it right before we go to sleep at night so that the ghee remains undigested and gets into the colon. Only then will the ghee help our stools soften. If that ghee gets digested because we worked out, or we've gone out in the sun, and we've had a lot of spicy food, we've taken something to digest it very well, then that ghee is not going to work, which is why we have ghee at night with a little bit of triphala, a little bit of honey as a nityarasayana. Nityarasayana meaning that which helps with aging, that which helps with stress-related issues in the body, that which helps with trapping all the free radicals and making the body more healthy, more resilient to aging, more resilient to stress, that which removes wear and tear from the body. Maybe half a teaspoon of triphala, a little bit of ghee, a little bit of honey. Just eyeball it because we are having this to heal our body, so we should know how much we want to eat. When we are in a state of balance, when we develop confidence in our own selves, we look at how much we can eat, and then we take that with a little bit of gud besti at night, or just plain warm water, and we go to sleep. And the next morning, we will wake up feeling a lot more refreshed. A lot more sharper, a lot more well-settled, a lot more feeling grateful and having gratitude. If we have aggravated Pitta, if there is an overabundance of Pitta in our body, there's an imbalance of Pitta because of which we are feeling acid reflux, because we are flushed, rashes, our mind is moving towards a state of aggravation, we are short with other people, we are impatient. In that state also, ghee is amazing medicine. So when we are having an active Pitta aggravation like acid reflux, it's not good to have ghee immediately at that time. That may make it worse. But during meal times, when we have calmed that down with some remedy, we've eaten a meal, we've taken care of that aggravated Pitta, then we can have ghee. It's not good to have ghee when we are having that total acid reflux coming out. It might backfire. Okay, alcoholics. Why are alcoholics advised to have ghee? Because drinking alcohol makes our body very dry. Alcohol is drying. We know that, right? When we disinfect the skin, we all experience this during the COVID era when we were all housebound. When we do too many hand washes with alcohol-based disinfectants, our hands become very dry. So alcohol is drying not just for our external skin but also our internal body. People who are alcoholics, people who drink regularly, they must have ghee. Ghee is one of the ways to handle our mada, meaning intoxication. So if we are hungover, the next day. If you have somebody in the family who is hungover— I don't expect any of you to be hungover because you are all Ayurveda enthusiasts and you are committed to living very healthy lives. If there's anybody else around you who is hungover, ghee is a great medicine. So if you have any sons or daughters going to college, a bottle of ghee would be a great gift in case they decide to party. Also, people who have a lot of sex— if you've had a lot of sex and you feel like your body is depleted in Today's modern world, we all are like, that is the value we must all be aiming for, right? If you're not having a lot of sex, then it means your life is dull and you're miserable. So if we are— we have overindulged, know that your body will be dry. You would have lost a lot of ojas, that fertility power, that magnetism, that immunity, that state of optimal hydration would be lost. Contrary to our belief that this is great and we should all aspire to it. So if it has been lost, it is good to have ghee to replenish that and then to practice some brahmacharya and reel ourselves back a little and just observe the effects in our body and make sure that there's discipline around intimacy. Then ghee is very powerful healing for rasa dhatu, shukra dhatu, and ojas we spoke about. So why is ghee powerful for Rasadhatu? Because ghee helps to absorb nutrition, which is why we have ghee for lunch usually, because lunches are the times when the sun is highest in the sky, or whenever it is that you feel the most hungry. That's another way, because we are all locked up in either offices or homes and we don't have exposure to sun. Whenever we have exposure to sun is when our metabolism is optimized. When we feel really hungry, that is the meal we should have Keeb it so that it mixes with the rasadhatu, the first nutritive essence of food. And when that reaches our bloodstream, that is able to provide us all the nourishment. Maximum nourishment from our food can be extracted because we've had it with ghee. Shukradhatu, our fertility tissue. Anybody has any issues with fertility, they absolutely must have ghee in their daily diet. And when I advise clients to make kshira pakas— kshira pakas are— kshira means milk, pakas means cooked milk, so that milk is more digestible. We do kshira pakas of ashwagandha, of shatavari, for men and women who are fertility challenged. In those preparations, we will have a teaspoon of ghee at the end. When we ask people who are challenged with periods, I will ask them to make strong decoction of dill seeds, a strong decoction of shatapushpa. So we cook shatapushpa with 2 cups of water, reduce it to half a cup. It'll be about a teaspoon of shatapushpa powder, teaspoon of a powder of shatapushpa, reduce it to half a cup. We add half a teaspoon or a teaspoon of ghee depending on where the client is at. And then when they sip on that, that medicinal properties of Ashwagandha, of Shatavari, of milk itself will go deep into the tissues. Body will be able to absorb it very fast and body will be able to use that nutrition because ghee is an excellent medium. It's a yoga vahi. It takes all the healing qualities of herbs and helps the body recover from the illness very fast. Now we talked about how ghee is great for complexion, for wisdom, for memory, for strengthening the body, for making the skin more beautiful, for nourishing the body. There is a ghee called Shata Dhauta Gritta. Shata meaning a hundred times, dhauta meaning washed, gritta meaning ghee, right? So this is a preparation. This is like a moisturizer from ghee. So what we do is We take ghee. You can even do a simple shatadhauta in your own hands. Take about half a teaspoon of ghee, place it in your hands, warm it up. This works great when it's like winters and you want to quickly make it. Add a few drops of rose water and then just mix it up very well. What we are doing is we are emulsifying. Ghee has the ability to absorb moisture. I like to make shatadhauta in silver, because if we use ghee in brass or bronze, ghee will react. Ghee is supposed to be stored in either glass or iron because ghee is powerful and ghee has the ability to draw things out. So little molecules and atoms of iron would be drawn out. And when we eat it, if we are anemic, that'll be very good for our health. So Pak Tu Shatadhota, take half a teaspoon of ghee in your palm. Let it melt. Add about half a teaspoon of rose water and just rub it together this way. And then let whatever excess water is there flow out. Within seconds, within just the time we take to get ready, we can make shatadhauta. And this we can use as a medicine if we have any part of the body where we have a wound which is not healing, cracked heels, cracked lips, our complexion, we can do this. Or you can do it like the way the acharyas have said on a full moonlight. Chanting mantras in a beautiful silver bowl, using fresh spring water and just mixing it with prayers, with good wishes for the person who's going to use that. That is the right way of doing it. But this was my hack of doing this very quickly, which I like to do because I'm all about hacks. I'm all about making life easy for us very busy women and men. I see some men as well here. Thank you for joining. Then The other thing I want to talk about is what are some ghee out there that are good for certain conditions. So the cultured ghee, ghee made from yogurt, is warming and is most superior. This is the ghee made from cow's milk, and this is grainy because it has cultures in it. It has cultures added later in it. It will feel grainy in our hands. When there is grains, we know that it's because of the bacterial cultures in it. It will have a higher percentage of butyric acid because of which it'll have a bit of off smell. So if people are not used to having cultured ghee, they may feel like, uh, this smells a little bit like vomit because it's butyric acid. This is the one which has most amount of healing properties, vitamins, everything is perfect about this ghee. This is the ghee that will get absorbed very fast in the body. There was recently reading that somebody dropped some ghee on their clothes and they washed it out. And it just completely washed out. So they were surprised. They were like, wow, how did this ghee wash out completely? And the dry cleaner was like, yeah, ghee washes out really quickly because ghee is very light. And ghee is what is very, very closely in resemblance to the fat that is in our own body, the fat that is in our brain, which is why ghee is so powerful in our body. The second kind of ghee is fresh ghee made from fresh cream. Cream that has not been made into a yogurt and then churned. This is ghee made from fresh butter. This is great for people who have Pitta imbalance. This is sweet cream ghee. So if you have Pitta imbalance, this is cooling, this is better for you. This is also good for many conditions, but it's not like cultured ghee. Cultured ghee is good for when the temperatures are really cold outside. If you grew up in North India, that by the time the temperature starts to fall, people will start gifting each other bottles of cultured ghee and then talk about how wonderful this ghee is. And this will be dinner table conversation, right? Who's got the best cultured ghee? If you buy cultured ghee from India, please do not throw it out because it has an off smell or it looks grainy, or that if you put it in the fridge or you put in a very cold place where it freezes and then you take it out, it changes color. Please don't worry about it. This is all because of the bacterial culture in it. The third kind of ghee is buffalo ghee. Now, buffalo ghee is excellent in places where naturally we have buffaloes, like places like the east of India, places like several parts of north of India. Even the Deccan region has a buffalo rearing tradition. But if you go to extreme south of India, where there is more Vedic culture, you won't see a lot of buffaloes. But now we are seeing buffaloes there as well. Buffalo ghee is very heavy to digest, and you have to be working out a lot to digest buffalo ghee. Buffalo ghee is used for things like fissures and piles, hemorrhoids, for wound healing. So if you can get buffalo ghee for that reason, it is very powerful. You don't have to be afraid when you're using ghee in those regions. Regions, if you have pain, if you have any kind of bleeding, absolutely use your fingers, go in there, apply the ghee. It is a powerful medicine. This is something I advise all my clients to do who have wounds in that part of the body and they are not comfortable when they're eliminating. Goat ghee. Goat ghee is on the— if we had to put them all in a line, goat ghee would be number 4 at the lowest rung. Goat ghee is amazing for eyes. And it is great for cough. All of ghee is amazing for eyes. Goat ghee is the lightest. So if you are having digestion issues, if you're having things like colitis, irritable bowel disease, it's something you should try and have because it'll have better healing properties. If digestion is really challenged, Agni is very low, you can't have cow ghee, then goat ghee is great. What are some of the Sanskrit words that are used to describe ghee in Hindi? Samhitas. One word is Kshata, Sheena. Kshata meaning injury, Sheena meaning tiredness. This is usually describing anything that has got to do with lung disease. Anybody who has asthma or any kind of injury, any issue. In the olden times, most of the Kshata was from fighting in wars and injuries and stuff like that, right? So people would develop problem with breathing, people would develop lung injuries. So in today's parlance, We can say that anyone who is feeling weak and tired, is feeling chronic fatigue, this ghee is amazing. Just have it during the time when your metabolism is highest or the sun is highest in the sky and you've gotten a lot of sunshine. Chakshu Kama. Chakshu meaning eyes. Kama meaning who wants good eyes, who wants not just beautiful eyes, but powerful eyes, eyes that can see well. Some— all of us who have glasses on need to have ghee. Digestion challenge, important to have ghee for the main meal. So when we say digestion challenge, we do not use a lot of ghee, we do not drink a lot of ghee. We use maybe half a teaspoon, a teaspoon with a nice bowl of spicy soup or khichdi or some kind of a liquidish meal so that the body, as it is digesting the meal, and there is additional help from the spices and the salt, then that little amount of ghee that we've had will digest properly. People who are wanting longevity, people who want to live long, they should have ghee, which is why people who are elderly, people who are above 70, should be having ghee every day. Ghee has vrunaropana properties. It will heal wounds. So in the beginning, I spoke about how ghee is used even for surgical wounds. It's that powerful, right? So ghee has the quality of healing any kind of wound. So not just on our skin, but also if somebody comes to me with any kind of irritable bowel disease, they have inflammation in their gut, I ask them to have ghee appropriately with things that they can have together with that is going to help digest the food properly because their Agni is usually low. Because of which they have irritable bowel disease. So we have to be careful. Ghee is great for visha. If anytime you're feeling any kind of toxicity, any kind of dullness, any kind of weakness and fatigue because you've had something that was dodgy, you did not enjoy it, you're feeling lethargic because of it, it's good to have ghee to help your body work that out. Unmada, unmada meaning madness. Anything that is related to emotions, anxiety, not able to process emotions properly, coming to wrong conclusions, looking at a rope and calling it a snake, and just creating a big hoo-ha about it in our own mind internally or in our family. All these kind of issues, ghee is a powerful medicine because ghee brings intelligence and wisdom, right? Ghee helps to process. Shosha means weakness. So if we are weak from any kind of health issue, having ghee will strengthen our body. So we have people who have PCOS who are lean, people who are lean because of diabetes, we give them ghee to help strengthen their body. There's something called as purana ghrita, meaning old. When we go to buy ghee, we should buy not 1 bottle of ghee or 2 bottles of ghee. We should buy several bottles of ghee and always stock away 1 bottle or couple bottles in our pantry. Leave it for a couple of years. Ghee that is older than 1 year is called as purana ghee, and that is now even more powerful medicine. I have ghee that is 10 years old sitting in my fridge. It's almost like slightly greenish white. And it is powerful for any kind of emotional issues. So Madha, if somebody is an alcoholic and is not able to bring themselves back to normal, that ghee is medicine. Somebody has Apasmarha, epilepsy, that kind of ghee is medicine. Murcha, somebody is weak and faints a lot, that kind of ghee is medicine. Madness, craziness, like outright insanity, That is great. Any kind of visha, gara visha, any kind of poisoning. I've eaten some, some leftover and I'm not feeling good. So once I've thrown up, I'm going to have a little bit of that ghee. Jwara, fever that keeps recurring, fever that doesn't leave, especially for our elderly. They have mild fever, lasts for a long time. Usually such fevers lead to death. So when we are in that kind of a state, when the fever is down and the person is feeling a little better, a little energized, we give a little bit of that ghee. It will help overcome whatever that disease is. So that was all about ghee, and a few instances where I can think that ghee is amazing is ghee is part of our entire life cycle, right? As an Indian person, the moment we are born, mothers will put a drop or two of ghee in our mouth. That's how our body is, that apana vayu is restarted in our body because it's that kind of powerful medicine. And then ghee is amazing for the new mom. As soon as the mother has given warmed up ghee with a nice amount of ghee, that's the first food that the mother is given. So her apana vayu is restored. All that vata, that just, that big whoosh of vata out of our body and that void that is created, that might create that upward flow of vata, that reverse flow of vata. That might create depression and anxiety. And nowadays even higher instances of schizophrenia in new moms because we are not doing any of those beautiful rituals that we used to do before. Right. So when we take that ghee, that ghee calms it down, that ghee helps to restore the vatas, the vayus in the body. All right, dears, let's look at the questions now. Okay. Aarti is asking, when buying ghee, do we need to specifically look for the word cultured. Yes, absolutely. We should look for the word cultured. And whenever we are making ghee at home, we should add a drop or two of yogurt back in the warm ghee after we have filtered it out. Ghee is warm. Add a drop or two of yogurt or just a drop or two of that whey, the liquid from yogurt, so that we are reintroducing the culture back in there. And then that culture will grow and that will create that nice grainy texture that will show that, ah, the bacteria are doing good work in this. Aksha, Akka saying her doctor prescribed medicated ghee because she has high Pitta. Perfect. Yes, thank you for that. What about ghee made out of butter? Yeah, Stushani, we spoke about that. Ghee made out of butter is usually sweet cream, sweet cream butter. Otherwise it'll say cultured butter. So it's good for Pitta. It's good for everything. It's just not as great as cultured ghee. So it's one step down. Absolutely, we can use it for all the conditions we spoke about. Shalini is asking about vaginal dryness and ghee. We can do a vaginal douching with ghee and that'll be amazing. I've not seen ghee being used for vaginal dryness. I've seen more Danavantram oil. Danavantram is what? Is done mostly in homes. Most of the Ayurveda that I share is what I've seen done in homes under moms' and grandmoms' supervision. And in homes, we use Dhana Vantaram oil. Physicians may have different kinds of oils to recommend based on specific illnesses, but for maintenance, for perimenopausal issues, for menopause, for any kind of period health issues, We generally use Dhana Vantaram. We create a Yoni Varti with a little cotton wrapped in a silk, a square of silk, tied it up with thread, and then it'll usually be small sized, and we soak it in Dhana Vantaram, and then we insert it inside, leave it overnight, and then the next morning we can remove that. We can do this as many times as we want. It's very healing. What I personally like to do is use a syringe, take a little bit of Dhana Vantaram oil and insert it inside, squeeze the syringe, and then just allow that few ml of Dhana Vantaram oil to stay inside. I haven't tried ghee. It should be amazing. I'm sure it's amazing because we do ghee Vasti for certain diseases like irritable bowel disease. Can we have ghee first thing in the morning and then sit for a few minutes under the sun? Absolutely. Ghee is amazing. To be had in the morning. It has a very detoxifying property. We talked about how it is amazing for visha. Ghee detoxes the body. So have a teaspoon of ghee with some warm water or gut bestie and then go out in the sun. It's such a beautiful ritual. Shalini is asking, ghee and cancer. Again, this would depend on the agni. It would depend on the stage. It would depend on whether you're on chemo or you're recovering. So definitely there is a place for ghee, especially when the person is feeling their appetite come back. I ask them to have khichdi or congee with ghee, but then having cancer, they could be going through treatment. There could be various stages. We have to be careful. Sindhu is saying, confused about the cooling and the warming properties of ghee. So if the ghee is made from sweet cream, it will have more cooling properties. If the ghee is made from cultures made from bacterial action, it will have more warming properties. But irrespective, it's not heating, it's not imbalancing. Whenever we say it will balance Pitta, it's different from it will aggravate Pitta. The Acharyas have given the verses saying this will increase Pitta. And because we have associated just the doshas with negative connotation, the moment something says increases Vata, increases Pitta, increases Kapha, our mind goes into the negative frame. When it says increases Vata, we think, oh, this is going to cause constipation, it's going to create anxiety. When we hear Pitta, we will go, oh, this is going to create rashes, this is going to create diarrhea, this is going to create heat in the body. When it says this will increase Kapha, then we say, oh, this is going to make me fat. But based on the context, it It can be a balancing of Pitta or an imbalancing of Pitta. Somebody who already has aggravated Pitta, they may have trouble. That's why I say when there is an active acid reflux, if I have ghee on top of that, it's going to make my thing worse. I have to eat something dense like congee or porridge or boiled sweet potato to calm that Pitta down. Come to normal, then I have a meal with a little bit of ghee, then that'll work for me. That'll have a healing effect on that aggravated stage. Does that make sense? So what about ghee for nasya and pigmentation? Pigmentation, shatadauta is great. Balancing Pitta will help with melasma and pigmentation. We use ghee for nasya as well. I left that out. Ghee has a thousand uses, so it will require 6 hours of talking and still we won't be scratching the surface. So this was a quick review of how ghee is beneficial for us. Ghee is amazing for nasya. When we wake up in the morning, before we go to sleep, we use ghee as nasya. For me, ghee is sacred because we treat cow as mother in our culture. And unfortunately, industrial dairy has exploited the poor animal where I don't believe that if something is produced from so much pain and suffering, it can have healing properties. It cannot. It carries karma. So we must have ghee as most sacred food. So for me, I don't automatically think of like putting it in my nose, putting it in my— as Vasti, as applying it in the vaginal region. I don't think of those body parts. For me, it's like the eyes, it's sacred as food because it's nourishing my body. I only think in those terms. That's where my mind goes. But absolutely, if you had access to goshala ghee, Vedic goshala ghee, where the babies are treated with so much love. The calf is allowed to be with the mother. The milk and the ghee I had when I was back home in Kerala, 3 months from December, the cow is sitting here and eating her grass and enjoying sunshine, and her little boy is right next to her, and he's now growing up into a nice little bull. And yes, the sad part is, because of, I don't know, I don't know how many of you are ready to even hear this, because we made his job obsolete. We've outsourced all the work that bulls used to do 50 years ago, 100 years ago. We've put him out of work. Now he is sent to the butcher because there's no other go, because he is going to get bigger and he is an aggressive animal. And just imagine keeping a pet that is really aggressive and that's going to go hit people. It's not possible for people to keep such an animal in the house. And it takes work, it takes money to feed them. So they are sent to the butchers, which is sad because they are such beautiful animals. But imagine a violent dog or a cat in your home that is going to hit you, that's going to create mischief. We're not gonna keep them, right? It's against rules in many municipalities and cities. To keep a violent animal. In Mountain View, where I live, you can't keep a rooster. The moment the rooster starts to crow, you have to kill it. You have to send it off to a farm somewhere, right? It's not allowed. It's illegal. So that's the way it is nowadays. Somebody was asking me, what is ahimsa milk? Even though that cow from home is happy, when she retires, if the farmer doesn't have the wherewithal to you feed it, it is going to go to the butcher. So yes, it is cruel, but then we also have to see that it's a medicine that is most readily available for our body. And last 2 years, I was a very strict vegan, and when I went back to India, Guruji told me my bone marrow had depleted to a very low level, and I was imbalanced, and I could feel that in my body. I could feel that in my mind. I saw that my nails had these deep ridges. And he said, "Ghee is your medicine. You have to drink milk." And he put me on milk and ghee as medicine. And the moment I started having it, I don't know why, because maybe it's my upbringing. Maybe my mother gave me so much milk as a little child. My body was like, "Oh, this feels so good." So I'm back on ghee and milk as medicine. And I send my love to the cow, whoever that cow is that suffered for us, for me, when I drink that milk and I drink it like medicine. So I do not think of putting ghee in my nose or in my butt or my vagina. Firstly, it is sacred for me. It's like, oh, this is gold. Thank you for your suffering. Thank you for your service. That's where I'm at. For now, can I use sesame oil? Shalini, I didn't understand the question. Oh, because we talked about ghee, vaginally use.

I never use it. I've been, somebody has told me, so because I'm so vata and sometimes I turn very pitta, so I'm using sesame oil. And of course I'm going through my menopause. I'm almost done. So I was wondering if I can use sesame oil in the bottom because I'm using what's called the ovistim. It's hormone vaginal. I had to because it was so bad and the doctor said keep on and I want to come out of it. It has been a little bit over than a year and I don't want the hormones, artificial hormones. So I'm like, maybe should I switch slowly to sesame and the other Dhanvantara oil you were talking about? But I have to find it, a good quality one on Amazon. I don't know if I can.

Yeah, sesame is great. Sesame is what I would recommend everybody use. Dhanvantaram, if you have any issues, extra dryness because of perimenopause, menopause, because of any other reason, surgery, people have chemotherapy and they get very dry in their body. Yeah, Dhanvantaram is great. Sesame is slower, but sesame is great in the beginning. However, it's reached a point where it's, it's, it's, it's chronic, it's been a few years, then Dhanvantaram is a lot better. Okay, thank you. Ranjini is asking about ghee during pregnancy. You have to have ghee during the third trimester. To prevent any of those issues like the cold, the coughs, the, the edema, the constipation issues, and helping the baby be nice and healthy because all that ghee is going into the baby's body as well and helping the organs form very well. Sangeeta Nair is asking my thoughts on bullet coffee. This is coffee with ghee. One of my grandmothers would have goat butter, goat ghee with her coffee. So early morning, we call it kaapi for Malayalis, especially the older generation, wake up and the first thing they do is they make a nice piping hot cup of coffee on their coconut wood-fired stove. So it has that smell of wood and coconut. It's the most delicious thing. And then I was playing around and I was in the kitchen and then Grandma took this bharani, this container, ceramic container, and there was melted goat fat in there. And then she took a teaspoon and she poured it into a coffee and she whisked it, and then she had it like it was the most delicious thing. And I was like, what is that, Grandma? So she gave me my first cup of coffee with goat butter in it. So this is a good way to take all Nutrition from coffee. Coffee is nutritious. I don't know why so many Indian practitioners treat coffee and chai as these horrible devilish drinks. It is stimulating, but in a nice way. In Ayurveda, none of the stimulants are bad, including bhang and marijuana. There is a use for it.

Tobacco.

Kerala is very Ayurvedic. So this black tea we have in the morning, black coffee we have in the morning, because of extreme kapha in the atmosphere, because we have such a wet climate, because it's always raining, we need that to balance our kapha in the mornings. And because we bathe every day and we have wet hair every day, our bodies tend to be more kapha as well. So to combat that, we need to have that slight drying stimulating effect of coffee and tea. So when we add ghee to coffee, all that goodness of the coffee is taken into our body parts much more quickly. It reduces the heat in the coffee, that pitta aggravation in the coffee. It just takes that edge off of the coffee. When we add something like goat butter to the coffee, it goes straight into the bones. So if you're 70 and if you're starting to feel a little wear and tear in your bones, bones are making all that cracking noises, add a little goat butter, add a little ghee to your first drink in the morning. And if you are in a place like Scotland or Assam or Florida during rains and it's very kapha, it's very moisture-laden outside, then have a little bit of black coffee or tea with a little bit of ghee or goat butter. Thank you, Sindhu. Sudha is saying, should we have filter coffee or instant coffee? Instant coffee is more processed. I am always wary of something that is processed, even though they say that it is just spray dried. How was it extracted? I don't know the full process of extraction. If it's done in a factory, I don't know what else is happening. I send people to Kerala for panchakarma. So I'm part of the tourism community in Kerala, and I was chosen as a yoga ambassador. In 2000, and they took us to this major tea factory in Munnar in Kerala. They make tons of tea on a daily basis. All the big players, the Brooke Bonds, the Tetleys, the Liptons, everybody buys tea from them and then repackages them and sells it to us. And I was there, and first in that vat you have tea leaves, those 3 little tea leaves are collected and put into like this huge humongous vat. And there's vats upon vats upon vats coming in. And as we are standing there and the team estate manager is explaining the whole process to us, I see that there is a bunch of tea leaves in that vat which have like really bad bacterial infection or something. It's like covered with mold, blue and yellow mold. And they simply don't have the manpower to go through every tea leaf in that giant vat, which, which is like half of the size of this room.

Right.

And they say that they have all kinds of things to make sure there is no toxicity. What they have is, it's not anything negative about them. This is the standard process in a factory. The raw material comes in with all impurities, even in Ayurveda factories, unless they were small. Establishment where somebody was looking at everything, every bit of herb that was coming in. All of this goes into processing. At the end, the end product is tested for toxicity, tested for foreign matter, and then there is a certain percentage. They will see if it's under that percentage, it's healthy, it's okay. Before, it's Garbha Vishya based on Ayurveda because we are giving that very, very minute dose of Vishya to the body, and then the body will hold on to that Vishya, and then it will cross threshold, and then we have disease in the body. So I'm always wary of everything that is processed in a factory. Does that make me stop drinking my black tea in the morning? No, I will still drink my black tea, but then I will also be aware that when I fall sick, that I'm using the right remedies. So if I had to choose between filter coffee and instant coffee, I would choose filter coffee. Long-winded answer to the short question. And if any of you wanted to work with me, you're welcome to reach out. I have an intake form. To all of you, I just offer the discovery session because I want to get to know what you guys are dealing with. Thank you. It was really wonderful. I always used to think, where can I access and how can I learn? And you were amazing, breaking down everything in depth. And thank you so much for your time. Absolutely. Kavitha, sorry, Kavitha, can we use Anavantram oil even if there is no issue? To and how frequently? So Kavitha, I am of the thought that if it's not broken, don't fix it. Because every time we do some kind of a therapy on the body, we are disturbing vata, pitta, kapha balance of the body. We are disturbing the energies of the body. So if everything is working fine and there is no need to do it, then let's not do it. Because you're— if you're going to use a suppository Then naturally we are putting a foreign body in the body, and the body has to deal with it, and it has to stay in the body for this long. So who knows what happens? There might be a bacterial infection. So it's best to not do something if the body is great, body is happy. Don't fix it if it's not broken. Aarti is asking, can I make normal ghee into cultured ghee by adding a little bit of yogurt? Experiment and tell us about it. Because usually cultured ghee is done when the same culture from where it was churned and butter was created and then the ghee was made, a little bit of that same culture is added at the end. It should work, right? When I think of it, yeah, shouldn't be anything wrong. Experiment a little bit. Try it on yourself. Don't have a lot. Have a little bit and then tell us. Report it back. Thank you, Kavitha. All right, my dears, I encourage you to reach out, book a call with me if it feels right for you. And thank you for showing up for yourself. Such a pleasure. Thank you so much. Namaste. We'll see you next week.

Namaskar.