Pitta Balancing Toolkit

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The Qualities of Pitta

Ayurveda is fundamentally a qualitative medical system. Everything in the universe that is external to us affects its counterparts within us by means of its inherent qualities. The qualities that characterize every substance we consume and every action we perform also serve either to reinforce or to attenuate the natural qualities, or attributes, of the doshas. The characteristics of Pitta dosha are:

  • Light

  • Sharp

  • Hot

  • Oily

  • Liquid

  • Spreading

Pitta Personified

With the qualities of each dosha making up everything in the universe, they are expressed in the human form in the following ways:

  • Light: Lightness often manifests as a trim, fit physique, easeful digestion, light-heartedness, a bright and alert mind, a magnetic or charismatic personality, lightly-colored eyes, and fair skin. In excess, it can cause a flighty ungroundedness, light-headedness, excess upward moving energy (think headaches or baldness), low blood sugar, or sensitivity to sunlight.

  • Sharp: A sharp mind is characteristically inquisitive, penetrating, quick, and highly capable of mastery. Sharpness is also behind decisiveness, discernment, a strong appetite, penetrating digestive capacity (that easily breaks down ingested food), and sharp vision—whether literal, figurative, or both. In excess, it can lead to a short temper, sharp words, the capacity to judge one’s self and others harshly, and sharp hunger.

  • Hot: The hot quality creates a healthy blush in the cheeks, a naturally strong digestive fire, the capacity to stay warm in cold conditions, and gives the personality passion. In excess, it can manifest as skin rashes and breakouts, burning sensations, inflammatory disorders, excess acidity, and hot emotions like anger and rage.

  • Oily: Oiliness makes for naturally soft and lubricated skin, smooth movement in the joints, and it bolsters our capacities to relax, accept nourishment, and give or receive love. In excess, it can lead to oily skin and hair, acne, excess mucus, or an especially manipulative (think slippery) personality.

  • Liquid: The liquid quality supports proper salivation, healthy digestive juices, an appropriate capacity to sweat, and fluidity of movement throughout the digestive tract, blood, joints, and body. In excess, liquidity can dilute the digestive fire, cause bleeding gums, bleeding disorders in general, a tendency to bruise easily, and excessive sweat.

  • Spreads: The spreading quality can manifest as charisma and charm, the capacity for spreading influence, and may lead to exceptional achievement, broad recognition, and even fame. In excess, it is often behind a spreading rash and the capacity to create a toxic emotional environment.

Pitta Imbalances

When pitta is out of balance, you will experience the following symptoms:

  • Red, inflamed rash, acne, cold sores

  • Acute inflammation in body or joints

  • Acid reflux, gastric or peptic ulcers, heartburn

  • Nausea or discomfort upon missing meals

  • Loose stools

  • Uncomfortable feeling of heat in the body

  • Frustration, anger, irritability

  • Judgment, impatience, criticism, intolerance

  • Red, inflamed or light-sensitive eyes

  • Excessive perfectionist tendencies

Food as Medicine

To balance Pitta dosha, you must seek out opposing characteristics that balance it’s inherent qualities by choosing ingredients that have opposing qualities such as dense, grounded and nourishing. These characteristics can be found in sweet, bitter and astringent foods and spices. Each of these tastes have their own unique energy (gunas), emotional affects, health benefits and actions.

Sweet Taste: The sweet taste benefits the mucus membranes throughout the body, including those lining the mouth, the lungs, the GI tract, the urinary tract, and the reproductive system. This taste is strengthening, nutritive, energizing, tonic, and soothing to the mind. In fact, the sweet taste is often used to enhance clarity and awareness in spiritual realms. It also relieves thirst, soothes burning sensations, and has a sustained cooling effect on the body. The sweet taste benefits the skin, hair, and complexion, hastens the repair of wounds, is pleasing to the senses, and lends melodious qualities to the voice. It also enhances the integrity of the immune system, improves longevity, and ultimately, increases ojas

Bitter Taste: The bitter taste is deeply cleansing to the body because it scrapes fat and toxins. It improves all other tastes, alleviates thirst, stimulates a healthy appetite, kills germs, and clears parasites from the GI tract. It serves to clear heat, dry ama, clear congestion, purify the blood, cleanse and support the liver, while draining excess moisture from the body. It can reduce fainting tendencies and also benefits the skin, relieving burning, itching and swelling. It also tones the muscles and skin, relieves intestinal gas, promotes peristalsis, and serves as a digestive tonic – kindling the digestive fire with its dry, light qualities. The bitter taste even enhances the release of digestive secretions and digestive enzymes

Astringent Taste: The astringent taste absorbs excess moisture, stops leakage of fluid, inhibits bleeding by promoting clotting, cleanses the mucus membranes, decongests, scrapes fat, improves absorption, and helps to bind the stool. Its tendency to draw inward helps to compress and hold the tissues together, which promotes bodily cohesiveness. This same quality makes the astringent taste a very effective tool in combating excess bleeding, sweat, diarrhea, leucorrhea, etc. Similarly, its binding effect lends tone to loose and flaccid tissues and can correct sinking imbalances such as prolapse. The astringent taste also helps to heal wounds, and averts coughs.

Foods to Favor

The sweet, bitter and astringent tastes can be found in the following ingredients and spices:

Fruits:

Fruits that pacify pitta will generally be sweet and somewhat astringent. Dried fruits are typically also acceptable, but are best in small quantities, so as not to further accelerate pitta’s tendency toward rapid digestion. Fruits to avoid are those that are exceptionally heating or sour (like bananas, cranberries, and green grapes). You’ll find many fruits in both the favor and avoid columns below because different varieties of the same fruit can truly be pacifying or aggravating, depending on how sweet or sour they are. When trying to balance pitta, learning to distinguish between these tastes and choosing sweet fruits over sour ones is always very helpful.

  • Apples

  • Mangos

  • Applesauce

  • Apricots

  • Berries

  • Cherries

  • Coconut

  • Dates

  • Figs

  • Grapes

  • Limes

  • Oranges

  • Papaya

  • Pears

  • Pineapple

  • Plums

  • Pomegranates

  • Prunes

  • Raisins

  • Watermelon

Vegetables:

Vegetables that pacify pitta will generally be somewhat sweet and either bitter, astringent, or both. Many vegetables include some combination of these tastes; so experimenting with a wide variety of vegetables is a great way to diversify your pitta pacifying diet. Pitta can usually digest raw vegetables better than vata and kapha, but mid-day is often the best time of day to have them because digestive strength is at its peak. The only vegetables for pitta to reduce or avoid are those that are particularly spicy, heating, sharp, or sour—like garlic, green chilies, radishes, onion, and mustard greens.

  • Avocado

  • Artichokes

  • Asparagus

  • Arugula

  • Bitter melon

  • Broccoli

  • Broccoli rabe

  • Burdock root

  • Brussel sprouts

  • Cabbage

  • Cauliflower

  • Celery

  • Dandelion

  • Green bean

  • Horseradish

  • Kale

  • Leafy greens

  • Lettuce

  • Mushrooms

  • Okra

  • Olives

  • Parsley

  • Parsnips

  • Radishes

  • Sprouts

  • Sunchokes

  • Summer Squash

  • Spinach

  • Sweet Potatoes

  • Watercress

  • Wheat Grass

  • Zucchini

Grains:

Grains that pacify pitta are cooling, sweet, dry, and grounding. Grains tend to be staples in our diets, and overall, pitta benefits from their sweet, nourishing nature. You’ll also notice that many of the grains that benefit pitta are rather dry; this helps to offset pitta’s oily nature. When it comes to balancing pitta, avoiding grains that are heating (like buckwheat, corn, millet, brown rice, and yeasted breads) is the most important guideline.

  • Amaranth

  • Barley

  • Couscous

  • Granola

  • Oats

  • Quinoa

  • Rice

  • Rice cakes

  • Spelt

  • Tapioca

  • Wheat

Legumes:

Legumes are generally astringent in taste and are therefore largely pitta pacifying, so feel free to enjoy a wide variety of them. Beans that are not appropriate for pitta are those that are especially sour or oily and, not coincidentally – also heating.

  • Adzuki beans

  • Black beans

  • Black-eyed peas

  • Garbanzo beans

  • Kidney beans

  • Lentils

  • Lima beans

  • Mung beans

  • Mung dal

  • Navy beans

  • Pinto beans

  • Split peas

Nuts and seeds:

Nuts and seeds tend to be extremely oily and are usually heating, so most of them are not terrifically balancing for pitta. That said, there are a few types of nuts, and several seeds that are acceptable in small quantities; these varieties tend to be less oily, and are either mildly heating or cooling in nature.

  • Almonds (soaked and peeled)

  • Charole nuts

  • Coconut

  • Flax seeds

  • Halva

  • Pumpkin seeds

  • Sunflower seeds

Dairy:

Dairy products tend to be grounding, nourishing, and cooling, so many of them are balancing for pitta. Those to avoid are exceptionally sour, salty, or heating. As a rule, dairy milks (cow’s milk, goat’s milk, sheep’s milk, etc.) should be taken at least one hour before or after any other food. For this reason, avoid drinking milk with meals. Almond and rice milks are good substitutes, if you need to combine milk with other foods, or if you don’t digest dairy milks well.

  • Butter

  • Cheese (soft, not aged)

  • Cottage cheese

  • Cow’s milk

  • Ghee

  • Goat’s milk

  • Goat’s cheese (soft, unsalted)

  • Yogurt (fresh and diluted)

Oils:

Despite being oily in nature, pitta does well with a moderate amount of oil – as long as it is cooling. The very best oils for pitta are sunflower oil, ghee, coconut oil, and olive oil. It’s also important to keep in mind that toxins tend to concentrate in fats, so buying organic oils may be more important than buying organic fruits and vegetables.

  • Coconut oil

  • Flax seed oil

  • Ghee

  • Olive oil

  • Primrose oil

  • Sunflower oil

  • Walnut oil

Spices:

Most spices are heating by nature and therefore have the potential to aggravate pitta. The spices to favor are only mildly heating, help to maintain a balanced digestive fire without provoking pitta, and, in some cases, are actively cooling. In particular, the cooling qualities of cardamom, cilantro, coriander, fennel and mint help to calm pitta’s heat. On occasion, these spices can be used to make foods that would otherwise be too hot for pitta more tolerable. Cumin, saffron, and turmeric, though heating, also offer some particularly valuable pitta pacifying properties.

  • Basil (fresh)

  • Black pepper

  • Cardamom

  • Coriander

  • Cumin

  • Dill

  • Fennel

  • Ginger

  • Mint

  • Neem

  • Orange peel

  • Parsley

  • Peppermint

  • Saffron

  • Spearmint

  • Tarragon

  • Turmeric

  • Vanilla

  • Wintergreen


Pitta Pacifying Lifestyle Practices

Your primary focus through the summer months will be to keep pitta balanced by staying cool, mellowing intensity with relaxation, and grounding your energy through the following methods:

  • Wake up before 6am: Ayurveda is all about timing. It is not about whether you're clocking eight hours of sleep per night but rather what time you're going to sleep and waking up. The last phase of our 24-hour body clock is from 2 to 6 a.m. This is the period of Vata, or movement. If you're asleep, it’s during this period that you tend to dream a lot. To stay in sync with nature, Ayurveda recommends that it's best to wake up before sunrise, when there is natural movement in the atmosphere. To give you a surfing analogy, waking up before sunrise is like catching a wave. That wave will ensure that you ride through rest of the day effortlessly. In comparison, the period between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m. is Kapha time. Kapha energy is heavy, slow, and steady. By getting up before this Kapha period, you'll avoid that feeling of heaviness you can get even after a good night's sleep.

  • Abhyanga: This ancient practice of self-massage with oil calms the nervous system, lubricates and rejuvenates the tissues, and promotes healthy circulation throughout the body. It is no coincidence that the Sanskrit word for oil, sneha, also means love. Abhyanga is a profound practice of rejuvenation and loving self-care that benefits both the physical body and the more subtle realms of consciousness. Each morning, before a shower or bath, massage about 1/4 cup warm Organic Sunflower Oil into the skin.

  • Stay out of the sun: The most important thing you can do for yourself is to keep cool, physically and emotionally. Plan your time to be out and about—especially if you’ll be in the sun—for the cooler parts of the day, in the early morning or in the evening. Cover up, shade yourself

  • Eat dinner before 8pm: As the sun goes down, so does our digestive fire or Agni goes down as well. Dinner should be lighter than lunch, and should ideally be eaten before 8:00 p.m. Late-night meals interfere with sleep, and after 10:00 p.m. the body is working to burn off toxins and continue to digest food from the day. If you eat after 10:00 p.m., the food may cause toxins to accumulate in the system, and as a result the next day you wake up tired.

  • Avoid leftovers: In Ayurveda, all food has inherent energy or prana which is absorbed into our bodies during digestion. The optimal time to eat food is within 8 hours of cooking as this is when the prana of food is at it’s highest. After 8 hours, food begins decomposing and loses it’s inherent prana making it more difficult to digest and results in the accumulation of ama or toxins.

  • Stay hydrated: Low Agni or digestive fire, results in improper food digestion. Ayurveda teaches that drinking ice cold water is like pouring cold water on fire. Cold water extinguishes the digestive fire that is necessary to keep strong and balanced in order to maintain good health and help reduce the build up of ama. Drink 4-6 cups of water each day to stay hydrated in the summer heat.

  • Pranayama: The practice of pranayama (yogic breathing exercises) is one of the most potent subtle therapies around. Practice Sheetali, the Cooling Breath, is excellent for releasing excess heat—particularly useful during the pitta time of day, between 10:00 am and 2:00 pm, when the sun is highest in the sky and the heat is usually at its maximum. And don’t forget to meditate—it will lower your mental/emotional temperature. Committing to just ten or fifteen minutes of pranayama each day can dramatically improve one’s state of mind and overall well-being.

Stephanie Wright