Just as a person brushes their teeth every morning, it is a good health habit to also clean the tongue. A metal tongue cleaner is the most efficient tool for this purpose and is traditionally used in Asian countries such as Japan and India. Overnight, “ama” (by-products of digestion) as well as mucus and bacteria, collect on the tongue – and scraping with a tongue cleaner is more effective than just brushing. You will notice a much cleaner feeling in the mouth when using a tongue cleaner daily.

Daily tongue cleaning improves oral health by reducing bacteria count and the debris that accumulates overnight.

There are reflex points relating to all the organs of the body on the hands and feet, and similarly there are reflex spots on the tongue. By massaging the hands and feet, different parts of the body can be benefited; and by scraping the tongue carefully with the tongue cleaner, all the internal organs are indirectly energized, and the gastric fire – digestive enzymes – are stimulated, thus improving digestion and assimilation.

Also, by daily observing your tongue both before and after cleaning, much can be learned about your health. A much coated tongue, especially if the coating is hard to clean off, can mean approaching illness, or toxicity that may be helped by a day of fasting or light diet , or drinking hot ginger tea.

Gently scrape from the back of the tongue forward until you have scraped the whole surface (six to ten strokes), washing off the tongue cleaner as needed during the process. It is helpful also to gargle with warm salt water. Just wash your tongue cleaner well and store until the next use.

Healthy Brown Rice Pilaf with Vegetables

Brown rice is a nutritious and filling choice, which is why it features in many vegetarian diets. The following recipe combines healthy brown rice with vegetables, and includes vegetable stock and parsley for flavor.

This is a very simple recipe which you may serve hot or warm, as the main dish or as a side dish. This recipe makes 6 servings but may be enjoyed cold the following day or reheated gently on the stove instead. Leftovers will keep in a covered container in the refrigerator for several days.

A Versatile Dish

You can make any tweaks or changes to the recipe that you like, such as swapping the carrot for pumpkin or fresh spinach, the yellow onion for green onions, or even the parsley for cilantro or diced chili pepper. Add some finely chopped walnuts at the end of the cooking time if you want to add a wonderful crunch.

Just take a look and see what you have in the refrigerator to use up. That is the great thing about pilaf recipes – you can combine the rice with any vegetables and seasonings you like, and the result will always be tasty. You can use olive oil or your favorite type of cooking oil, or even a vegan or vegetarian-friendly margarine spread.

What You Will Need:

3 tablespoons olive oil or vegan margarine
1 coarsely grated carrot
3 sliced button mushrooms
1 finely chopped yellow onion
1 cup (200g) long grain brown rice
2½ cups (625 ml) vegetable stock
Handful of chopped fresh parsley
Salt and black pepper, to taste

How to Make It:

1. Add the oil or margarine to a large pan over a medium-high heat.
2. Add the carrot, mushrooms and onion, and cook for 5 minutes.
3. Stir in the rice and cook until it browns a little.
4. Stir in the vegetable stock, then grind in a little salt and pepper.
5. Cover the pot and simmer the mixture for 45 minutes or until the rice is tender.
6. Stir in the parsley, cook for 1 more minute, then serve immediately.

Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 50 minutes
Serves: 6

Chips and guacamole is always a nice part of eating at a Mexican restaurant. The chips are made in house and the guacamole is full of flavor, texture and richness. When they combine a tasty and healthy appetizer is. To elevate the nutritional value even more why not add mangoes to the guacamole for some tartness and sweetness and bake the tortilla chips rather than fry them? Here is how to make baked tortilla chips with mango guacamole.

Total Time: 10 minutes

Serves: 4

Ingredients

Chips:

• 1 package corn tortillas
• ¼ cup vegetable oil
• 1 teaspoon chili powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• Lime juice
• Food safe spray bottle

Guacamole:

• 2-3 Haas avocados
• 1 mango, peeled, pitted and diced
• ⅓ cup chopped onion
• ⅓ cup chopped cilantro, fresh
• 1 jalapeno, seeded and diced finely
• 1 tablespoon lime juice
• Salt
• Pepper

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Prepare 2 baking sheets by lining with parchment paper or aluminum foil.
3. Cut each tortilla in 8 wedges
4. Arrange tortilla wedges in a single layer on each baking sheet so that each one gets nice and crisp.
5. Add lime juice and oil into a food safe spray bottle. Shake to mix well.
6. Mist tortillas with mixture.
7. Sprinkle tortilla wedges lightly with chili powder and salt.
8. Place into the oven to bake for about 5 minutes.
9. Rotate tortilla chips and bake for an additional 5 minutes or until chips are crispy and golden.

Now that the chips are out of the oven it is time to make some guacamole! To do so:

1. Cut avocados in half, remove the put and scoop avocado flesh into a bowl.
2. Add in mango, chopped onion, cilantro and jalapeno pepper.
3. Add lime juice and season with salt and pepper.
4. Mash with a fork until smooth and chunky.
5. Taste and add more salt and pepper if needed.

Once the chips and guacamole are complete simply serve together and enjoy. With one bite your mouth will be engulfed by bold flavor. Lightly seasoning the chips compliments the ingredients in the guacamole extremely well. The mango guacamole itself is the perfect balance of savory and sweet with a just the right amount of acidity and spice.

Tofu Coconut Curry Soup

On a cold day there is nothing like a hot bowl of homemade soup. It is warm, comforting and very delicious. One must try soup recipe is tofu coconut curry soup. This soup is packed with dynamic Thai flavors that will wake up and warm your palate. There is the lovely texture of the tofu, tender slices of carrot and that signature curry flavor which is complimented flawlessly by the addition of coconut milk. These components are then enhanced with the perfect amount of spice along with sweetness to balance it out. The best part is, making this soup is so simple.

Total Time: 40 minutes

Serves: 3

Ingredients

• 7 oz. water packed soft tofu
• 1 can coconut milk, light
• 1 ¼ cups vegetable broth
• 1 cup sliced carrots
• ¾ cup fresh green beans
• 2 tablespoons red curry paste
• 2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
• 2 tablespoons fresh minced ginger
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic
• 1 tablespoon reduced sodium soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon canola oil
• ½ tablespoon brown sugar
• Chopped cilantro for garnish

Preparation Instructions

1. Drain tofu and cut into 1 inch cubes.
2. Drizzle canola oil in a large skillet over medium high heat.
3. Add minced garlic to the skillet and sauté until lightly browned. Stir to prevent burning.
4. Add curry paste and stir constantly. Sauté for 30 seconds.
5. Add brown sugar and cook for an additional 30 seconds while stirring.
6. Pour in the coconut milk, vegetable broth, lime juice and soy sauce.
7. Toss in the minced ginger and reduce heat to low.
8. Cover and allow to simmer for half an hour.
9. Add the sliced carrots and cook for an additional 5 minutes or until the carrots soften.
10. Then add the green beans and cook for 5 more minutes or until crisp.
11. Put the cubed tofu into the soup and cook for an additional 3 minutes to warm through.
12. Serve and garnish with chopped cilantro.

In the end you have a really yummy vegetarian Thai soup. All the ingredients in this recipe work together so well. This soup is hearty but will not weigh you down and the level of spice is amazing. The ginger along with the red curry paste adds so much depth to the soup and then the coconut milk comes in and cools it down. It is quite phenomenal. The soup is flavorful, healthy and vegetarian. What more can you ask for?

I have a dear friend with a strong interest in health and nutrition.  He works as a hospital librarian and therefore has access to all the latest research so he often sends me snippets on health and nutrition related issues. I was just watching one such video today, which talked about the method by which broccoli provides such potent anti cancer properties, as well as myriad other benefits.  I once put money into shares of a company researching the anti cancer properties of broccoli, hoping to produce a saleable product.  It wasn’t a smart move really, as all you have to do is eat raw broccoli to get the benefits.

Why raw broccoli you ask? You know those light emitting tubes that start to glow when you bend them to break the internal compartments so that 2 separated chemicals merge and produce a neon glow, popular at music festivals and useful in wilderness situations? Well broccoli is like that. It contains a precursor compound called glucoraphanin and an enzyme myrosinase.  When the broccoli is munched on, or cut, the two compounds meet up and produce the magic sulforaphane.  But myrosinase is destroyed by heat so when you munch cooked broccoli you don’t get sulforaphane.

There is a good trick however…  sulforaphane is not destroyed by heat, so if you chop up your broccoli and leave it for say an hour before cooking, there will be a decent supply of sulforaphane in the cooked broccoli.  Or if you are making soup, blend up the broccoli before cooking it.  Or even more magically, just add a pinch or two of mustard powder to your cooked broccoli, not in the cooking but on your plate so it doesn’t get too hot.  Mustard seeds contain the enzyme myrosinase, and mustard powder is just ground up mustard seeds.  And the precursor glucoraphanin is not destroyed in cooking so when you mix the two the enzyme goes to work and sulforaphane is produced in your very innards.

Going back to my medical librarian friend.  He is always trying for an optimal healthy lifestyle, and is well educated in what that means, yet finds himself continually acting in less than healthy manners.  (Don’t we all!  Speaking for myself here…) Anyhow, recently he wrote me, “here is the million dollar question hon – i know all the things i should do (or at least try) but never seem to quite get there so a bit of a mystery why not – not like the hardest thing in the world really and potentially the benefits could be very significant.  what say you?” 

My response was that deep questions require deep answers.  The fact of the matter is we think we are in control of our actions but we are subtly bound up by the modes of material nature, which the yoga texts called tri-guna, the three gunas.  These are tamas (ignorance), rajas (passion), and sattva (goodness).  All products of material nature are controlled by a combination of these three energies, and this includes our bodies and our minds.  In as much as we identify with our bodies and minds we also are controlled by these modes.To explore more about our real identity and essence, check out the amazing Self Discovery Series by Jagad Guru.

One can consider these energies as being like the 3 primary colours that are used to produce a myriad of hues and shapes in an artist’s work.  So while I will describe each mode as a single entity, they are never found purely in material nature, but always in come combination.

Tamas, the mode of ignorance is that energy which draws one down into excessive sleep, lethargy, laziness and ultimately madness.  It is increased by eating stale old foods, flesh foods, wine, and drug taking.  Places that are controlled by this energy include pubs and slaughter houses.

Rajas, or passion, is the energy of ambition, striving, strong desires.  Food that is overly spicy is one example of rajas.  Cities, stock markets, bustling shopping malls are all passionate rajastic places.  The energy of rajas is creative, making one active and productive.  But it has a terrible downside, which is the frustration that develops when these strong desires are not fulfilled as and when one had wanted.  And frustration leads to anger which can then draw one down into tamas.

Sattva, the mode of goodness is a more desirable energy to be influenced by.  A person in the mode of goodness is peaceful, kind, thoughtful and gentle.  Foods that are healthy, juicy, sweet, fresh, and vegetarian are sattvic.  The countryside and natural settings, and clean, quiet and airy places are in this mode.  One who is predominantly influenced by this mode tends to find it easier to enquire into the deeper purpose of life, and to be engaged in practices of meditation and spiritual endeavour.  There is still a downside to this mode, which is that one can become so attached to the sattvic lifestyle that one will avoid less peaceful situations, and not be willing to enter into the stress that sometimes accompanies a sincere search for spiritual enlightenment.

So in response to my friends questioning why he didn’t act in his best interest even though he know how he should be acting, I said that as long as we are controlled by 3 modes of nature so we are not fully in control of our own minds and desires.  We think we want to do something, but that desire is instigated by whatever combination of the modes we are currently influenced by.  Just think of how advertisements work! The three modes are even more subtle, insidious and all encompassing.

So we have conflicting desires and behaviours, sometimes influenced by the mode of goodness to eat well and act in healthy way and sometimes influenced by one of the other modes to act in less beneficial ways.

It is important to realise that it is actually possible to surpass the influence of all three modes.  This is the goal of the more subtle yoga practices, especially mantra yoga, which, when appropriately practiced, is nirguna, beyond the control of the triguna, the three gunas.  When one moves beyond the modes of nature into a state of nirguna, it is possible to be one pointed, not switching from one desire to another. But as long as we are embedded in material nature, we are under the controlling influence of the three modes, which churn our desires like a washing machine so sometimes one desire and behaviour surfaces and sometimes another.  Even if for some period we have stability it is only relative.  In time the pendulum will swing.  There is really only one stable place, and the practice of the deepest aspects of yoga will bring gradually bring one to that place.