Divas That Care Network

Food for Thought

• Divas That Care Network • Season 15 • Episode 18

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Gia-Raquel Rose, owner of Airs Above Yoga, LLC and a real estate sales associate in Tewksbury, New Jersey has had a love for horses stemming from early childhood. Growing up in “horse country” afforded her the privilege of beginning to ride from the tender age of four. It was a childhood illness, which brought her riding aspirations to an abrupt halt. It took twenty years before she was able to reunite with her long lost passion for horses and their ability to heal. In that time, she received a Bachelor of Arts in Corporate Communication from Arcadia University and became a twice two hundred hour certified yoga instructor in both Hatha and Vinyasa. It was the loss of her mother, Rose, to breast cancer, which ultimately shifted her trajectory from the corporate world to the internal work for which yoga, as a practice, is renowned.

We explore Ayurvedic nutrition for the upper chakras, specifically the third eye and crown chakra, as part of our ongoing discussion about creating balance in physical, mental, emotional, etheric, and spiritual health.

• Upper chakras connect to colors - indigo blue for third eye and violet/white for crown chakra
• Foods that support these chakras often match their colors - blueberries, blackberries, purple carrots, eggplant
• Third eye chakra benefits from lighter foods with high nutritional content but lower sugar and fat
• Crown chakra responds well to detoxification practices rather than specific foods
• Leafy greens, garlic, and clear beverages (without caffeine or alcohol) support cleansing
• Heavier foods, dense carbohydrates, and saturated fats can hinder upper chakra function
• Healthy fats that support brain function (nuts, seeds) can benefit the third eye chakra
• Consciousness is key - bringing awareness to what you eat creates connection with higher self
• Balancing all chakras requires different nutritional approaches for different energy centers
• Living lightly and making conscious food choices supports intuition and spiritual connection

Follow me on social media at Above the Ground Podcast and visit airsaboveyoga.com. Check out more episodes on divasthatcare.com, available on Spotify, Apple, Amazon, iHeartRadio, and other platforms.

For more Divas That Care Network Episodes visit www.divasthatcare.com

Speaker 1:

It's Divas that Care Radio Stories, strategies and ideas to inspire positive change. Welcome to Divas that Care, a network of women committed to making our world a better place for everyone. This is a global movement for women, by women engaged in a collaborative effort to create a better world for future generations. To find out more about the movement, visit DivasThatCarecom after the show. Right now, though, stay tuned for another jolt of inspiration.

Speaker 2:

Namaste and welcome to the Divas that Care Network. I am your host, gia Raquel Rose, owner of Heirs Above Yoga, and you're listening to Above the Ground podcast. If this is your first time tuning in, we are headed into our 15th year at Divas that Care and listen to in over 30 countries. I would like to take this moment to personally thank you for the gift of your time. As always, it is my honor to hold space with you and for our little sequence. This month we are going to talk a little bit about our Ayurveda nutrition episode, about the upper chakras, so deep diving into the upper chakras, the third eye and crown chakra, as we have with our talk about inversions and as we did with our meditation on bringing things into fruition to create from the mind out into reality for your highest and best good and hopefully that of the planet and the universe and the world, and also always just thinking about. You know, being of the highest and best good, right for all right, harm to none good of all, is, I think, a great place to come from when we're talking about creation and when we're talking about just being yourself out in existence and you know how you can best support the space around you by being your best self for others, and I think that that's very, very important. And I think that oftentimes, as I talked about a bit and I encourage you, please, to go back and listen to those two earlier episodes that are kind of the tie in for the nutrition aspect right, we're talking about our physical, mental, emotional, etheric and spiritual health, right, all of it. And so you can't really have. It's all about balance. You can't really have, and I don't think anything brings balance to the forefront, quite like an inversion practice, but you have to have balance throughout all things. So it's going to be very, very hard for you to, you know, be completely sedentary or completely, you know, based on a diet that is lacking in nutrients and, you know, high in, let's just say, less than supportive foods, whether they are trans fats, whether they are heavy, heavy diets that are very grain based or and I don't want to just say that grains are bad by any means but heavy carbohydrate based, or, you know, you want to have a balance at life and you know the yoga teacher training. I'll give a little plug to her. Stephanie's business is called Diva Lila and that was who I did my first teacher training with back way, way back in 2011. And that means, I believe it means divine play, and so she was a very animated woman and I was very grateful to study with her.

Speaker 2:

And to that end, it's like you know, we're bringing this, this idea of embodiment, when we talk about yoga and having your body be your, the physicality of the body be representative of having the, the chakras aligned, bringing forth into the physical the spiritual and acting literally within the space around you, using your body as your, your medium to spirit. In theory, right, if you want to take it that way. Otherwise, for those that just like to do downward facing dog, you know I don't mean to push any buttons, and so I hope that you enjoy your practice for the physical benefits it brings you, if nothing more, the detoxification benefits that it brings you, if nothing more. And then, when we talk about the, that's where we start to move from the physicality of those lower chakras up through right, our voice, our fifth chakra, our third eye and our intuition. Right, our divine crown connection to source chakra. And so when we're talking about these upper, upper chakras and we're talking about nutrition to support them, it's it's kind of a fun one because, generally speaking, and what I love about, what I do love about Ayurveda and what I do love about eating for your chakras or supporting the chakras, is the literal in the, in the figurative right.

Speaker 2:

So chakras are associated with colors right From the colorsras are associated with colors right From the colors of the rainbow, essentially from the root being your red, your base, your safety. Orange at your sacrum for your creativity. Yellow at the center for your power center. Green at your heart as the bridge, then basically a blue, if you will like, a turquoisey blue at the throat chakra and then moving to more of an indigo blue at the third eye chakra and finally, either a gentle violet or a white is usually associated with the crown chakra. And so what I what I love about the literalness of it is the fact that the foods generally are associated with the color.

Speaker 2:

So when we're talking about our third eye and our crown, a lot of the foods actually align because they're going to be your deeper, darker, purple and blue sorts of fruits and or vegetables. So, if we're being literal, think veggies, think your purple carrots, think your purple cauliflower, think cauliflower in general, because it also is white, so it can align with the white theory of the crown chakra as well. Think about your blueberries, your blackberries, your eggplants, right, any of those foods. But you know, if you're noticing a theme here, the general theme is light and fresh and the reason for that is because, as we start to move from the density of the earthly plane in the lower chakras and in the roots that connects you to the earth, you move into the lighter upper chakras and the crown literally has, in theory, right, because this is like a whole separate episode or multiple episodes to unpack but the crown chakra, in theory, doesn't have a grounded location. Sure, it's at the crown of your head, but your third eye is literally in the middle. So the crown chakra literally, in theory, sits above the head, right, so it doesn't actually have necessarily a tangible physical location. So when we talked about asanas to support it, there was a lot of head bowing, there was downward facing dogs, there was moving energy upside down from the root up to the crown, getting the idea of bringing these more etheric planes into recognition, into the forefront, and so to do that with food, let's talk a little bit specifically about the third eye, because there's a little bit more when we talk about the crown chakra with regard to food that I want to touch on because it gets a little bit, a little bit different when we're talking about the third eye. We can still relate with the the rest of the chakras, simply because there it's technically tangible. There go my air quotes for those of you that are not watching, because it's still situated generally in the middle of the forehead representative of the pineal gland. Again, that's a whole other can of worms.

Speaker 2:

I'm not going to open because we're going to talk about the nutrition aspect, but we're thinking about foods that don't weigh you down, foods that provide energy, foods that, unless you are allergic to, are considered generally healthy for you, and foods that are going to have a very, very high nutrition content. And what they are not going to have, it's a high sugar content. What they are not going to have is a high I shouldn't say high fat, but generally for the third eye if we're not talking about the crown chakra but the third eye chakra a lesser fat content and certainly not more of a trans fat content. We're not going to think about our really thick and heavy carbohydrates, right, we're going to think more of those gentle, lighter carbohydrates like, let's say, for example, a purple carrot or potentially even a purple sweet potato. So, even if they do have a little bit of density to them, they are going to have those, those lighter, more easily processed, beneficial. They're going to have a lot of fiber. They're going to have nutrient based carbohydrates rather than kind of filler carbohydrates. Think like corn, right. Think, think like bread, right. There can be nutrients in them. They are not without nutrients, but they are more for calorie content and true energetic carbohydrate rather than the nutrient value of them. And so, to that end, we're thinking about the continuation of light and fresh and with that in mind, even though it's not purple, our one of the I will call it the gateway vegetable was going to be your cabbage. So if you think cauliflower or anything, cabbage, you think they have purple varieties, they have white varieties. Those are both gonna link over and even though they are not white or purple, our leafy greens are always going to be beneficial for most chakras, but definitely for the upper chakras, because they are again very, very light, very, very nutrient based, very nutrient forward. They're not going to weigh you down as you move through your day and they're going to help to detoxify the body. Now, why is that important?

Speaker 2:

Moving from the third eye to the crown chakra, there's arguments to be made that food in and of itself is not necessarily a support of the crown chakra, and that the opposite is a support of the crown chakra meaning fasting. So I encourage you to go back and listen to an episode that I did a little while back, called Too Fast or Not Too Fast. I'm not going to go as nearly deep as I did on that particular episode. However, for this one, it's not just about fasting, but it's the idea of detoxification, of cleansing right. So not fasting for the sake of weight loss, not fasting for the sake of, you know, nutrient deprivation and there are many. There are tons of benefits to fasting and I do encourage you to look them up. There are also some risks associated with it, which is why I always kind of am trepidatious with when I speak about it or bring it up.

Speaker 2:

It is not for everyone, and so when we talk about the detoxification aspects of the crown chakra, you are beginning to again, as we move up from density to lightness, you are beginning to clear the channel of your body, and one of the most beneficial things for the crown chakra is detoxification, is clearing those channels, is making way in the denser channels to receive energy from the crown down, from source, from your higher self. Whatever you know I say that all the time whatever you want to call it down into your body, into your heart space, into your inner knowing, through your third eye, right For processing, if you will, and just have this connection, foster this connection between your body, your mind and your spirit, hopefully. And so, with that in mind, there are some foods that will help with the detoxification process, and those leafy greens are going to be one of them. Garlic is another one.

Speaker 2:

If you are not, people that are on a low FODMAP diet generally take issue with onion and garlic. Um, I also don't prefer, my body doesn't respond super well to a lot of onion and garlic, even though I'm Italian and Spanish. So it's like I don't know what happened in my, in my gene pool that made me not love oil and garlic and and all of the, all of the onions, but because I do love them they are delicious, but I don't, my body does not love me back when I ingest them in any sort of frequency. So you know, there are garlic pills for detoxification and for I encourage you to look up all of the potential benefits, for you know garlic in general, because it is a very if you don't have a reason to avoid it, then it can be a very, very beneficial food to incorporate into your diet, one of the healthiest ones, without an aversion to it. So, with that in mind, garlic is a great detox.

Speaker 2:

And then you know, you think about your beverages, think about cleansing, right. So we talk about detoxing, we're flushing toxins from our body and liquids hydration is the best way to do that. So one of the things to avoid, things to avoid for both upper chakras, your third eye and your crown, are going to be anything heavy, anything dense. Now, so I'm not going to say because I I'm on a paleo diet. I've talked about that a lot and, again, I'd always prefer to be vegetarian. So it's just my body does same same reason.

Speaker 2:

I can't enjoy the garlic as I much as much as I would like to. I do tend to feel better and kind of get cravings for meat. Unfortunately for my, you know, mental and emotional state, my physical state does require that in some, in some form, some lean protein. So, without getting too much on that think, think of your like heavier, denser, fattier meats, any, any sort of animal proteins, in theory, save maybe egg, are going to be more weighty. They're just going to. You know, take you while they're best, great for the body and they are beneficial for some of those denser chakras, for your upper chakras, you're thinking.

Speaker 2:

You're thinking that you want to keep things light and so saturated fats, heavy dense carbohydrates, heavy dense meat, things that are going to make you like think think Joey Tribbiani in his Thanksgiving pants right, things that are going to make you want to unclip your buckle, are not going to be supportive of your third eye and crown chakras. But your blueberries, again, your, you know, think your fresh smoothies. Even when we talk about, you know, we have the third eye centered in the brain, the crown above. So think about healthy fats that support your brain health. Something like nuts and seeds, right? Maybe coconut milk, those types of things, almond milk, those types of things that are going to again processed is not always great, but we don't live in a perfect society. So when we talk about, you know, detoxification, general processed foods, which include nut milks, coconut milks, like fruit juices, those types of things, those are going to be included because they are technically processed Now, that being said, I drink coconut water in my smoothies every morning and while, yes, it is processed, I still consider it to my smoothies every morning.

Speaker 2:

And while, yes, it is processed, I still consider it to be beneficial for my health. And so, taking everything with a bit of a grain of salt and understanding that you need to meet yourself where you are and live in the reality of the world that we live in and, you know, be grateful that we have access to fresh, ready maybe not, maybe not totally fresh, but ready coconut water shipped to us via Amazon, or that we can go and pick up allergen free milk alternatives at the grocery store if we are dairy free, those types of things. So think about, when you're detoxing, much like the fasting episode, much like the fasting episode crystal clear beverages and those and, to that end, clear does not? This is is counteracted by those beverages, by those beverages containing alcohol and caffeine. So, while there can be benefits to your matchas, your coffees, right In for our intents and purposes, just with regard to the crown chakra and detoxification, alcohol and caffeine are not going to support the crown chakra.

Speaker 2:

So we want to think about our decaffeinated herbal teas. We want to think about potentially, you know, using herbs in the teas. For example, you might make a tea with ginger, you might make a tea with turmeric, you might make even golden milk and while and I love golden milk golden milk is is kind of like a latte and again it's not going to be clear because milk is implied. You're going to use some form of milk, some form of milk, but again it is going to be beneficial for the cleansing and the flushing of toxins out of the body. So, whether it's chamomile tea, whether you can go to your local health food store and pick up milk, thistle tea, which is great for the liver, there's a bunch of different brands that that serve for cleansing, detoxifying and restoring, you know, the body to its its natural, hopefully toxin free state, which I don't think we can ever ever be toxin free in our in our first world existence.

Speaker 2:

But you know, we strive to be conscious and I think nothing else. When we're talking about the upper chakras, becoming conscious and high and heightened in our consciousness is really what it's all about, and so we've talked about how to do that a bit with the body. When we're talking about our inversion practices and our humbling ourselves and bringing, meeting our third eye with the ground, grounding and bringing, bringing some density up to those chakras to bring them into our awareness right, not in a not in a descending way, but just simply to begin to cultivate a relationship. Because if you're not a yoga practitioner, if you're not into the health and wellness thing the way that I have been, the way that I am, then you know this might be new to you and you may, you know, not have a relationship with your chakras at all, or maybe you're just starting to learn about them. But the bottom line is that bringing your conscious awareness to your body first, right, whether that's through yoga, through running, whether that's through any sort of physical exercise, bringing your body, your awareness to your body when you sleep, bring your awareness to your body, just consciously choosing to check in with your body, is a huge first step and kudos to anyone that has done that at least once. Great job, I applaud you Lots. Great job Moving that consciousness up from the recognition of the body to the recognition of the breath, to beginning to consciously change your mood by breathing to.

Speaker 2:

You know and I will kind of chuckle as I say this, some people around me, when I get upset, I tend to breathe like this Like this, and people will know that about me, that if I start to breathe like that, it's a bit of a little bit of a little alarm bell, danger, danger. It's a danger alarm because I am using my breath to calm my nervous system and I talked a little bit during the meditation episode about alternate nostril breathing and how you can go to that, let's say, if you're driving in traffic and you're starting to get wound up because we do live in an existence where we get wound up and we have stresses and we have, you know, the mundane is not going away just because we're trying to elevate and raise our consciousness, it's still. And then there's laundry, right, I forgive me because I don't know who to give that quote to, but it wasn't me. I definitely heard it somewhere else and I believe it was. It was might even be the title of a book. Definitely heard it somewhere else and I believe it was. It was.

Speaker 2:

Might even be the title of a book, but you know, there there is, you know the deep meditations that bring you to insight and to intuition, and then you still have to walk your dog and pick up their poop, or you still have to go about your day and go to work and you still have to wake up to a buzzing alarm clock, because this is the the world that we live in. And so when we do all of these things, we are essentially trying to bring our awareness higher, to feed our body with nutrients that support it so that it can best support us, bringing it into balance and balancing your chakras. Meaning means to start to pay attention and give awareness to the chakras that we may not necessarily pay that much attention to our physical body. Our root chakra probably screams at us. A lot people have lower back pain. They'll have hip pain, right, if you have, you know, an issue, maybe in your heart chakra, you may have a slump. You may be hunched over, right, if your power center is, is lacking or you're not feeling strong or not, you know, projecting yourself. You may have, you know, a weak core. Our lower chakras, you know, scream at us. They are, they are there and they are reaching out for attention. But our upper chakras, if we're not developing, they can. They can often go go, dismiss people.

Speaker 2:

Everyone has the power to connect with their intuition. Everyone has the capacity to reach, reach these states of of awareness. You just have to practice. You just have to make a conscious choice to get there and hopefully, incorporating some of these foods, some of these little sneaky healthy habits into your day to day will will help you to get there. You know. So, when we're talking again about our crown chakra and about foods that support it, or the lack thereof, again think about the crown of the two chakras because, because not only for their proximity, right, um, but they are, the crown chakra is basically your connection to your higher self, your higher power, the divine source, god, whatever you choose to believe in or not, is totally respected by me, but it is that that connection to source, it's not there in the physical. So we think about clearing the channel and remembering that a lot of our remembering how much power our brain truly has, empower yourself through what is best for your body and for your mind and by clearing that channel, by eating those healthy, nutrient dense foods, by living lightly right, step lightly, live lightly, leave little impact unless it's a positive one, do no harm. These are all principles of you know.

Speaker 2:

I'm going to throw it back to when Ann was on and we talked about sustainability. Conscious awareness is the first step towards any forward motion in a positive way and clearing your channels, to create the space to become more mindful, to say, oh, I'm going to eat some blueberries this morning because I want to connect with my intuition. I'm going to bring my awareness to that connection with my intuition. I want to be able to receive guidance about what the next best step is for me in my life, and I want to be able to create from a place of inspired and aligned action. And how am I going to do that if I'm living totally in my lower chakras in pain, in fear and out of alignment? And so we talk a lot about the lower chakras, but for right now, I want to bring our attention up a little bit and I want us to focus on things that are going to support our connection with our higher selves, with our divine purpose and with our third eye and crown chakras. Because, let's face it, those are the path, that is the divine path, that is what is going to be able to get us into a place of love, receptivity, consideration for others.

Speaker 2:

And consideration starts with yourself, being considerate to yourself first, making healthy choices for your body, healthy choices for your mind, setting clear boundaries, detoxing from things that no longer serve you, whether they are, you know, random stops to fast food restaurants and potential taking a little bit longer of a drive to go to a farmer's market, whether they are. Knowing that your body doesn't align with garlic, and so things that might be beneficial for detox for one person are not going to be beneficial for you. Knowing that you might have a nut allergy, so anything I said about nut milk goes right out the window for you. Knowing that you need to come together with yourself, know your body, find out what about your body is out of alignment whether it's for an allergy, whether it's for a lack of your awareness and start to really get to know yourself first, and then you can begin to clear these channels, and then you can begin to open up and inspire and be the best version of yourself for yourself, your loved ones, the world around you, and so that you can shine. Shine, and I'm going to say sparkle, and I'm going to say connect with that higher version of you that's always there and already knows what the right answer is, even when you do not.

Speaker 2:

And I will be the first one to say that I go to that higher self for answers, because I know that my monkey mind is definitely working against me many, many times, and living in that space of fear-based reaction as opposed to inspired and aligned action is what we're trying to pivot, and no better way than to flip upside down and begin to develop a relationship with your upper chakras.

Speaker 2:

So I hope that, through all of these different resources, tidbits, different ways for you to incorporate those blue and purple and white foods into your diet.

Speaker 2:

Thinking about I won't say eliminating or completely fasting, but thinking about maybe having a part of the day where you drink a lot of water or where you drink a lot of, you know, herbal tea, or just bringing a lot of that idea of clearing the channel through your day, and whether that means clearing the space for your mind, clearing the space for your body, feeding yourself with nutrient dense foods and living as lightly as possible are all ways to connect to the upper chakras, your higher self, your mind and body and hopefully, maybe, if you choose to believe in it, your spirit or your higher self.

Speaker 2:

And so I just want to tell each and every one of you how much I appreciate you for sharing your space with me and ask that you please feel free to share the same with your loved ones For more goodness. Follow me on all the socials at Above the Ground Podcast and visit my website, airsaboveyogacom. As always, don't forget to check out my other episodes and all of my amazing sisters on divasthatcarecom. You can find us on Spotify, odyssey, apple, amazon, iheartradio or anywhere else that you might feel guided. Again, my name is Gia Raquel Rose, owner of Heirs Above Yoga, and you are listening to Above the Ground Podcast, where every day is a good one.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for listening. This show was brought to you by Divas that Care. Connect with us on Facebook, on Instagram and, of course, on divasthatcarecom, where you can subscribe to our newsletter so you don't miss a thing.