Skullcap and L-Theanine work to calm an overactive mind and promote sleep, while Chamomile helps to relax and soothe. California Red Poppy is added as a powerful and effective herb that supports the nervous system and helps restore and calm the nerves, promoting sound sleep so that when you awake you’re ready to meet your day with energy and clarity. All of these wonderful and effective sleep herbs are combined with sweet, creamy Rooibos, Caramel, Vanilla and a hint of spice for a delicious, warming flavor that’s just right for drinking before bedtime. Relax, and enjoy a cup of our enchanting Soothing Caramel Bedtime tea for a good night’s sleep.

If you’d like to try our new Soothing Caramel Bedtime tea, we’re giving away 6 boxes!** To enter, send an e-mail to giveaway@yogiproducts.com with your favorite bedtime ritual before midnight on Sunday, October 30, 2011 and you could be one of our lucky winners!

Be Well,

Guru Hari

** Offer is for US residents only. Winners will be notified via email within three (3) days after the Giveaway Period and will have an additional ten (10) days to respond to claim their prize. For questions, or to receive a complete copy of the official rules for the Yogi Bedtime Giveaway please email facebook@yogiproducts.com before November 30, 2011.

We all experience occasional irregularity at some point in life, particularly during times of stress, change of routine or diet, during vacations or long trips in the car.

Here are a few tips I find useful for improving your overall digestive health as well as for getting relief during these uncomfortable times:

Drink Water: Make sure you’re drinking enough water. Water helps make bowel movements softer and easier to pass.

Diet: It’s also important to maintain a diet rich in fruits, vegetables and grains high in fiber, such as apples, dates, prunes, pears, and wheat or oat bran.

Sleep: Getting sufficient sleep plays an important in helping maintain good digestion.

Yogi Get Regular Tea: If you are irregular, drink one soothing cup of Soothing Mint Get Regular before you go to bed for overnight relief. It’s a soothing and delicious herbal laxative tea that contains organic Senna Leaf, which is a natural, reliable and effective laxative. Soothing Mint Get Regular also contains other relieving herbs that support regularity and balance bowel function, such as Dandelion and Yellow Dock, while Licorice, Peppermint, Anise and Coriander help lubricate the colon and sooth the intestinal tract while combining for delicious flavor.

When drinking Soothing Mint Get Regular I recommend starting with a small dose, drinking plenty of water and gradually adjusting dosage to your physiology and body’s requirement. Also, during special times such as pregnancy and nursing, or if you’re taking any medications or have a medical condition, I recommended that you consult with your health care provider prior to using stimulant laxatives such as Soothing Mint Get Regular.

Be well,

Guru Hari

In response to several comments about our newest teas, I wanted to share how these teas work. Refreshing Mint Revitalize™ and Vanilla Spice Perfect Energy® are designed to support and increase your energy level. When you observe your body and mind you will find that your energy level fluctuates quite a bit during the course of each day and also during the month and during the seasons of the year.  Energy is a very dynamic thing and at Yogi we focus on three essential factors - unblocking energy, increasing energy and balancing energy in the body and mind.   To unblock the energy we need to improve circulation.  In both of these new teas, Organic Assam Black and Organic Green teas are used to naturally open circulation. 

Refreshing Mint ReVitalize is an invigorating blend of Organic Peppermint and Organic Assam Black tea with added energizing botanicals Gurana Seed and Kola Nut. Spices cinnamon, cardamom, clove, ginger, and black pepper enliven your senses and assist in detoxifying and circulating the energy in your body and mind. 

Vanilla Spice Perfect Energy is a delicious blend of Organic Green tea and Organic Assam Black tea in combination with Organic Rooibos and Honeybush. L-Theanine, naturally occurring in green tea, helps to keep the mind calm and focused – leaving you energized without jittery side effects. Vanilla bean and exotic spices are included to provide deep rich flavor  and help with circulation.

Be Well! 

- Guru Hari

Food cravings are common, and I'm sure we've all lost the craving battle a time or two before. As it turns out, it can be pretty predictable to what you'll be drawn to eating when life gets stressful or celebratory. It all boils down to the doshas.

Your personal constitution is such a dominant force in your mood and biochemistry that you literally construct an entire life and lifestyle around your strong and weak points. Look at your career, romantic relationships, and, yes, food cravings and it's pretty obvious which dosha dominates your metabolism.

Mr. Kapha, for example, was born into a body that excels in stamina. Slow and steady, that's him in a nutshell (albeit an extra large size nutshell). Since solid stamina is his birthright, Mr. Kapha creates a life in which he gets strokes for having stamina, being able to work hard and long without a break. He doesn't set any speed records, but he's that guy who is always available to take that extra overtime shift when his coworkers are totally drained.

We are also unconsciously drawn to foods that help us be our best. We are drawn subconsciously to the food chemicals that support our behavioral gifts in life.

Vatas excel at being creative and are drawn to white sugar, which digests instantly and gives them a blast of quick euphoria.

Pittas, those habitual overachievers, are productive and really, really like spicy food, which blasts them into the stratosphere of determined energy and intensity.

Kaphas go for grease and salt (think that Costco tub o' chips), which give the body the ingredients to make adrenal hormones, which are like the life blood to the solid and steady Kapha.

Just in time for Valentine's Day, researchers have come out with some information that will brighten the day for Chocoholics.

The scientific study, sponsored by, who else, Hershey, compared dark chocolate to popular superfruits, including acai, blueberry, cranberry, and pomegranate.

Dark chocolate was higher in antioxidant chemicals than all the so-called superfruits. Pretty super!

Happy Valentine's Day, and now enjoy your "antioxidant" snack.

You can always use Yogi's version of a chocolate snack in an herbal tea.

I blogged about the new USDA Dietary Guidelines for Americans recently, and now a heavyweight weighs in, and his praise is stinting. Mark Bittman, long time food columnist, admits that the new guidelines are an improvement on previous versions, but thinks they don't go far enough. I agree with him.

Bittman points out that our government speaks out of both sides of its mouth. In an effort to not offend giant food lobbies, it delivers a milk toast message that is nowhere near as strong as it could, and should be.

Far better would be, as Bittman mentions, a step up to Michael Pollan's now famous motto, "Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly plants." I am also a fan of Pollan, and recommend his books as a great way to understand nutrition and the American food delivery system.

Our constitutions affect how we behave with our families. Because this is determined largely by heredity, families usually have a concentration of people with the same dominant dosha. Two pitta parents, for example, will almost always have all pitta dominant children.

When the parents are of different constitutions things can get less predictable. A child's constitution is also influenced by the age of the parents and the prenatal health of the mother.

Vata parents tend to be distracted and spaced out. Since the hallmark of vata is irregularity and inconsistency, vatas tend to have a problem with their own discipline, not to mention maintaining a consistent routine and sense of discipline. Of course, kids are masterful at sniffing out these lapses in the rules so a vata parent's house is usually stimulating with a plethora of just-started art projects, but little sense of routine or well established rules and procedures. Think nobody washing the dishes.

Pitta parents tend to be intense and demanding, just like they are at work. They tend toward easy anger, but the flip side is that they will be consistent disciplinarians and run a tight ship. Everyone knows the rules. A pitta household is productive and often the parents, especially if they are athletes themselves and have pitta kids, will encourage their little ones to excel in sports.

Kapha parents are likely to be slow, even lethargic, and easy going. In the race between the tortoise and the hare, they are the tortoises. Mama and Papa Kapha like consistency and regularity, so the family will usually have evolved a pretty set schedule. Kapha parents dislike confrontation (let's hope they never have teenagers...), so discipline may be hard to find in the home. Kaphas are built for comfort, not for speed, and the family pace may seem like molasses to an observing pitta. But they make up for it with stamina, so the family unit actually does often get a lot done in the long run, they just don't set any speed records.

If milk is such a good source of calcium, and Americans get 70% of our calcium from milk, why do we have so much more osteoporosis than many other nations?

It turns out that calcium metabolism is a complicated question, and it involves a lot of cultural and individual factors.

MSN Health had a good overview of this conundrum today, and I think, if you dig a little deep into it, you'll gain some insight into your calcium needs, and maybe even the best sources for you.

I liked the idea that people in many nations consume far less daily calcium than we do, and yet have much stronger bones. Chinese people eat no milk products, and yet their hip fracture rates are some of the lowest in the world. Bantu women, who hail from Africa, consume only about 350 mg of calcium a day, while its suggested that we get 1,200 mg to 1,500 mg, so you would expect these ladies to get a lot of hip fractures as they age. Instead, Bantu women tend to lose a very small number of teeth and break few bones.

Every 5 years, the American USDA issues dietary guidelines. The 2010 version just came out, and there are not a lot of surprises.

On the positive side, the new guidlines suggest that we limit solid fats, added sugars, salt and refined grains - all excellent suggestions.

For the first time, this version of the guidelines aims at general eating patterns and health effects, with a focus on two major themes:

• Eating the proper amount of calories to maintain a healthy weight
• Getting most calories from nutrition-rich foods

There is the ever present suggestion to eat more fruits and vegetables, which is no news to anyone by this time.

The 2010 version of the dietary guideline are an improvement on the last revision, in 2005, and I think they are worth a look.

Mr. Pitta at work

We spend a lot of time at work. Most of the time it's where others get to see our constitutional tendencies on display and where the stress is, so it may not always bring out the best in us. Understanding your nature and personality can be a big help to achieving success in your work environment, in terms of your day-to-day behavior, and as a help toward achieving your long term goals.

Mr. Vata is drawn to creative pursuits and often does not do so well in a hardball business environment. His natural strength is in creative activities and he reacts to stress with fear and anxiety. He gets easily enthused about new projects but is easily distracted, so he may miss deadlines He is likely to be timid, so confronting snarly workplace situations is not his forte.

Ms. Pitta likes to be the boss, and is often good at it. She is focused, driven and gets projects done on time and under budget, or heads will roll! She usually enjoys a sense of accomplishment from her productivity. She responds to stress with anger and argues when feeling hurt. If Ms. Pitta can stay calm and centered, she can do well in business, but if she allows herself to get angry and intense, she can alienate the very people who could help her succeed.

Mr. Kapha is good as a merchant. When he has enough time to think things through completely, he can come to well considered conclusions. He achieves his career goals through slow and steady work and since he is good at teamwork, tends to do well in groups. It takes him a while to develop an interest in a new venture, but once he gets behind it, he will slowly and consistently apply his stamina to bring it to a successful conclusion. Mr. Kapha tends to like the finer things in life, including good food and comfortable surroundings, so he'll work hard to acquire these things for his family.

For many years, our government has encouraged us to eat 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day for good health. Now it turns out that even that goal might still fall a little short.

Research published in the last 2 weeks reveals that 8 servings is more like what is needed to cut the risk of dying from heart disease. Scientists studied 300,000 Europeans and concluded that people who ate high fruit and vegetable diets, including at least 8 serviongs per day, had a 22% lower risk of dying from heart disease than people who consumed only three servings per day. And each serving reduced the risk by another 4%.

Considering that heart disease is the main killer of Americans, eating more fruit and vegetabes seems like a pretty easy choice.

Fruit and vegetable consumption among Americans is pretty dismal, even if you include French fries in the statistics. Only about 11% of Americans take in the recommended number of portions of fruit and vegetables.

The research on the benefits of fruit and vegetables continues to accumulate. The new 2010 American Dietary Guidelines, just out, call for an increase in these food areas. I'll blog about these new recommendations soon.

Enjoy your broccoli and that apple a day!

From the Ayurvedic perspective, the doshas are the all important factor in how you grow and manage your life. Your constitution plays a major role in your organ weak links, disease tendencies and, yes, attitudes and behaviors.

People with a vata constitution tend to be creative, but insecure. Throughout their lives they tend to be easily distracted from pursuing their long term goals. In romance, they get excited easily and find themselves getting in deep quickly only to lose interest, so they often build up a list of many causal relationships. In the friendship, department they often follow the same pattern, by making friends quickly and easily and having many short friendships.

Pittas are productive and intelligent. They are often very focused on work, which can sometimes cause their romantic lives to suffer. In the love department, they tend to be passionate yet dominating. Their intimate relationships are often intense, but may flag after a while. For your typical pitta, friends may not be as important as career accomplishments so they often find friendships with people at work.

Kapha people are usually calm, placid and receptive, so they will quietly hear all your ideas and take some time to mull them over. All their behaviors are likely to be slow and steady, so they achieve their goals through persistence and stamina. Kapha romantic relationships are long and deep; they usually develop their love interest slowly and take a while to get excited, but once committed, they tend to be solid and stable. As far as friends, a few long lasting pals is just right for them.

Whatever your constitution may be, getting to know your inborn characteristics helps a lot in navigating the waters of personal relationships. I think it is one of the most significant skills you can bring to your life.