Properties of Food from an Ayurvedic Perspective by Valerie Hwang

In Ayurveda, food can be as powerful of a healer as medicine, or it can be as harmful as the deadliest poison. The point is, what we put into our bodies day in and day out has an incredibly significant impact on our health. But how do we know how a certain food is going to affect our bodies? Do we rely on food lists, or is there a more intuitive and logical way to see whether food can heal or harm? In this talk, Valerie will introduce the Rasa Panchakas, an Ayurvedic system of understanding the qualities of food and other everyday substances and how they affect the human body. She will go over the basic building blocks of Ayurveda: the 5 elements, the 3 doshas, and the gunas (qualities of nature), the Rasa Panchakas – Rasa, guna, virya, vipaka, prabhav, and how to use this knowledge to make healthier choices in everyday life.

Speakers

Valerie Hwang

Founder, Intrepid Ayurveda

Valerie is a certified Ayurvedic Health Counsellor and the founder of Intrepid Ayurveda. She graduated from the California College of Ayurveda in 2020, and set out to create a holistic health practice that makes Ayurvedic healthcare and education approachable and accessible to all. She believes that with loving care, guidance, and dedication, we all have the potential to overcome our obstacles and live a thriving life of vitality.

Sophia French

Host, Journalist

Sophia has been a journalist for over 15 years, and she has been practising hatha yoga for 20 years. She completed a yoga and Vedanta course at the Sivananda Yoga and Vedanta Ashram in Netala, and she's been practising hatha yoga in the Iyengar and Krishnamacharya systems. She is currently studying Indian philosophy and is a regular journalist