For the past year, I have helped to manage the clinic at Pure Land Farms in Topanga, California, see patients, and perform the duty of clinical assistant to Dr. Nida when he is in residency.

Expanded Sowa Rigpa Dietary Principles, Practice, and Food for Mental Health

In consideration of the prevention and adjunctive treatment of mental health complaints, from a Sowa Rigpa perspective, one must not forget the importance of diet, as one of the four treatment methods, the others being lifestyle, medication, and external therapies. Diet is essential to consider because it is an activity that one repeats many times every day, and because of this fact, it can either reinforce underlying imbalances or create new imbalances which contribute to mental health complaints. When used therapeutically, it is a home remedy that because of its regularity, has the powerful ability to support change, bringing mental/ emotional stability and resiliency, and pacifying difficult, habitual, mental states causing various levels of suffering.

Any of the 3 Nyepas, or energetic and physiological principles of the body; loong, tripa, and beken, can become the source of humoral imbalance that leads to mental health complaints, but the most common and definitely most insidious is loong, the wind element. Because of the pervasive contributing factor of Loong imbalance in mental health, the topic of the proposed research is to summarize this involvement from the Gyü Shi and oral commentary, and explore the traditional Sowa Rigpa dietary therapeutics for mental health complaints, proposing an expanded dietary selection of food, based upon Sowa Rigpa principles, more readily available to the consumer, and more agreeable to the modern palette. Foods not found in the Gyü Shi, but commonly found in the industrialized marketplace, will be ascribed traditional categories, of ‘taste’, ‘nature’, and ‘potency’, drawing from, when applicable, the works of current English language Sowa Rigpa literature, Ayurvedic and traditional Chinese Medicine resources, and biomedical and evidence-based research. Along with suggested dietary guidelines and recommendations, easy and delicious recipes will be provided, as home-based, self-care, to support conventional and holistic based mental health approaches, including Sowa Rigpa. Vegan and vegetarian options will be included.