Yusha: the little soup that could
Seems everyone has been sick in the last few weeks. Largely due to our bodies trying to adjust to the gyrations of the weather.
The best way to recover more quickly from a bout of the common cold or flu is to think of it as an unplanned 'cleanse'. If you treat it like this then you will be less likely to get sick (or more likely to get less sick) the next time the cold comes around.
During cleanses and colds reduce the amount & variety of foods (and stimulus in general) so that your body can more deeply and more quickly detoxify & reset. Allowing the self-cleaning & self-righting tendencies of the body to act will strengthen your long term health. Conversely, suppressing your body's natural responses to imbalance will lead to ever increasing cycles of illness (ever wonder why ordinarily immune systems get weaker & diseases get stronger as we grow older?).
Yusha is a light soup (more like a broth) that is so easy to digest that it doesn't interrupt the cleaning process and yet is rich and tasty enough to satisfy. Yusha is a food & a medicine. It supplies baseline nourishment while it carries the qualities of the herbs, spices & ingredients you add. There are hundreds of recipes in the Ayurvedic texts for different yushas to be used in specific diseases (see below). But in general yusha improves digestion & helps in toxin elimination, it is especially good for weight loss & any time there is swelling. I have seen it very successfully used as a 'meal replacement' (one or 2 meals a day) over a period of time for weight loss. Plus it is very easy to make.
Basic Yusha recipe:
1T green, unpeeled whole or split mung beans
6 cups of water.
Rinse dhal & add to water and boil until the beans are quite soft. (pressure cooker 15 min / stove top 40 min / all day in a slow cooker so it is ready when you arrive home). The liquid will be a faintly opalescent milky color. You can strain the dhal out or leave them in.
Add to taste:
Salt & Pepper
a dab of ghee
a squeeze of lemon.
Drink as much as you desire.
Variations:
Head colds & congestion: use 1 Tbsp kullatha (horse gram) instead of mung, or make regular mung yusha but add a splash of wine while it cooks.
Headaches and other diseases of the head add: a Tbsp each of unhulled barley & rice
Pain that moves (vataja) add: pink salt and black pepper
Diabetes, headcolds, fevers, lack of interest in food, cough, hiccup asthma, obesity, throat diseases add: mullaka (fresh daikon radish) 1 pt radish to 3 pts mung.
My favorite is called 'Saptamukthik Yusha' is made of 7 things. It is effectively used in diabetes, reducing all the doshas, localized swellings, fever, for people who have been injured, joint pain related to poor digestion, for cleansing the throat, mouth, & heart, cough, pain (in stomach), asthma. Make yusha with 6 cups water and 1 tsp each of: Kullatha/horse gram, unhulled barley, jujube, mung beans, radish, dry ginger, coriander
Any type of bleeding: 1 tsp each mung bean & red lentil & chana/chick peas & mooth bean, 6 C water, ghee, cumin, pink salt
Make up your own! I know someone who is fond of making it with Adzuki beans. I like to add rosemary & garlic in the wintertime.
Originally posted November 17, 2012