Todd Caldecott

16/10/2026

The idea that Āyurveda is inherently vegetarian is so widespread that it’s often treated as an established feature of the tradition. But neither the classical literature of Āyurveda nor the broader cultural history of India supports such a simple conclusion.

The classical texts discuss animal foods extensively, describing different meats according to their qualities, effects, and therapeutic applications. Māṃsa-rasa—meat broth—is repeatedly employed therapeutically, including during saṃsarjana-krama, the graduated restoration of diet and agni following purification therapies.

Vegetarianism certainly has deep roots in India, particularly in ascetic traditions. But its association with spirituality developed within a much broader religious history. Ahiṃsā assumed particular importance in Jainism and Buddhism and subsequently profoundly influenced Indian religious culture. Over time, vegetarianism also became associated with ritual purity, sattva, and spiritual development.

I was trained more than 30 years ago to recommend vegetarianism and was myself vegetarian. But clinical experience increasingly showed me that this wasn’t appropriate for everyone. More than 25 years ago, I returned to the classical texts and began exploring nutritional anthropology, eventually becoming one of the earlier voices in the West challenging the assumption that Āyurveda is inherently vegetarian.

The deeper issue is satmya—what is compatible with the individual. Diet in Āyurveda depends upon constitution, current condition, doṣa, agni, age, strength, habitual diet, climate, season, food preparation, and the condition being treated.

Āyurveda was never meant to prescribe one diet for everybody. Its genius lies in determining what is appropriate for this person, in this place, at this time.

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12/10/2026

The familiar classification of foods and herbs as “sattvic,” “rajasic,” or “tamasic” is often presented as though it were intrinsic to classical Āyurveda. The textual and philosophical history is considerably more complicated.

Sattva, rajas, and tamas are first of all the three guṇas of prakṛti in Sāṃkhya—the ontological system that profoundly informs classical Āyurveda. As manifestation unfolds through mahat and ahaṃkāra, its sāttvika dimension gives rise to the subjective and perceptual apparatus, while its tāmasa dimension gives rise through the tanmātras to the five mahābhūtas—the constituents of material reality. Āyurveda itself can use sattva synonymously with manas, or mind.

Thus foods, herbs, the physical body, and the doṣas belong to the material domain. They can certainly affect consciousness, but an object affecting the equilibrium of mind is not the same thing as a mental or spiritual quality being an intrinsic property of that object.

This is also where historical context matters. Later religious formulations increasingly employed the guṇas as ethical and spiritual categories. The Bhagavad Gītā famously extends this threefold framework to food in 17.7–10, describing foods preferred by sāttvika, rājasika, and tāmasika persons.

That is not the same classificatory system used in classical Āyurvedic dietetics and pharmacology, where foods and herbs are evaluated through concepts such as rasa, guṇa, vīrya, vipāka, prabhāva, karma, doṣa, and—crucially—the individual and context in which they are consumed.

This distinction matters because the later association of vegetarian foods with sattva and meat with tamas helped reinforce another widespread assumption: that vegetarianism is intrinsic to Āyurveda.

More on that soon.

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving!

01/10/2026

Spreading pellitory (Parietaria judaica; P. diffusa) belongs to the nettle family, or Urticaceae, sharing a close medicinal tradition with pellitory-of-the-wall (P. officinalis). The genus name derives from the Latin word ”paries”, meaning “wall” — a reference to its characteristic occurrence in the crevices of old masonry.

In A Modern Herbal (1931), Maud Grieve describes pellitory as diuretic, refrigerant, mildly demulcent and laxative. Her principal urinary indications include bladder stones, “gravel,” dropsy (edema), and other urinary complaints. She records the aerial parts being prepared as an infusion or decoction, often combined with wild carrot and parsley piert.

Citing John Gerard, Grieve describes decoctions for persistent cough and honey-containing gargles for sore throats, alongside external applications as poultices and ointments. These accounts illustrate pellitory’s historical role beyond the urinary system.

My own association with this herb began in the early 1990s, when Chanchal Cabrera included it in a formula for my grandmother’s hydronephrosis. In my practice, I often combine pellitory with herbs such as nettle seed, gokshura and shilajeet, within individualized approaches to chronic kidney disease.

24/09/2026

This is something I have observed for decades; many patients that later end up with IBD can trace it back to this. The problem? The condition is not treated properly! Either insufficient and untimely treatment, or too heavy a reliance on antibiotics. Traditional herbal practices take care to not just correct floral imbalances but actually restore digestion, in a multistage, graduated process.

For many, food poisoning ends when the digestive disruption stops. But for some, it's just the beginning of lingering conditions that cause recurrent abdominal pain and diarrhea lasting for months—or even years. Scientists have been trying to uncover solutions to these conditions for decades, and are now turning to the gut microbiome and the brain for answers: https://on.natgeo.com/nJ9Hk9

23/09/2026

We’re constantly told that yoga and Āyurveda are sister sciences, but their historical relationship is considerably more complicated.

Classical Āyurveda prescribes vyāyāma as part of dinacaryā, the daily health regimen: physical exertion appropriate to one’s strength and constitution, something closer to calisthenics and strength training than modern postural yoga.

Yoga itself has a heterogeneous history, with roots in ascetic, non-Vedic and ta***ic traditions. In the Yoga Sūtra, Patañjali describes āsana as sthira-sukham-āsanam: a stable, comfortable posture within a broader contemplative discipline, preparing the body and mind for meditation.

Medieval haṭha yoga developed through several esoteric traditions, including Vajrayāna Buddhism and Śaiva Ta**ra. The eleventh-century Amṛtasiddhi is among its earliest identifiable textual sources. By the fifteenth century, Svātmārāma’s Haṭha Yoga Pradīpikā synthesized earlier practices involving āsana, prāṇāyāma, mudrā and the manipulation of subtle energies. These traditions thought these practices would yield spiritual liberation, magical powers, and physical immortality.

Quite a departure from your average yoga class!

Modern postural yoga took much of its present form in the early 20th century, influenced by European gymnastics and bodybuilding.

My concern isn’t with yoga itself. It’s with the assumption that everyone benefits from the same postures and sequences, or that greater flexibility necessarily means better health. Repeatedly pushing joints to their limits, especially under load, can aggravate musculoskeletal problems. Not every posture is appropriate for every body, and struggling to keep up with an instructor isn’t necessarily therapeutic.

And as we age, flexibility alone isn’t enough. Preserving muscle mass and strength to stave off sarcopenia requires resistance exercise: like calisthenics and weight training.

By all means, continue practising yoga. But consider approaching āsana at your own pace, as an individualized, embodied form of meditation, alongside vyāyāma, rather than as a substitute.

21/09/2026

Kombucha is a good example of how quickly a wellness narrative can become accepted as fact.

The familiar claim that it originated in China around 220 BCE is repeated throughout the modern literature, but the historical evidence is surprisingly thin. The firmer documentary trail appears much later, particularly in Russia and Eastern Europe—where the increasing availability of black tea and refined sugar provided exactly what kombucha requires: sweetened tea.

A SCOBY is a variable community of yeasts and bacteria maintained on fermentable sugar. Yet “fermented” doesn’t automatically mean “probiotic,” and consuming living microorganisms doesn’t necessarily mean they will benefit your microbiome.

Clinically, I’ve seen a number of people with digestive problems worsen with regular kombucha consumption. I’ve also observed cases where regular consumption coincided with weight gain, metabolic issues and increased consumption of high-carbohydrate foods.

That last observation raises an interesting question. We know the microbiome communicates bidirectionally with the nervous system through microbial metabolites, endocrine and immune signalling, and neural pathways including the vagus nerve. Microbial ecology can influence appetite, food preference and feeding behaviour.

So I’m not arguing that kombucha is necessarily bad. But I do think some caution is warranted—and its reputation as an ancient health food deserves considerably more scrutiny.

17/09/2026

Taking ayahuasca for multiple nights in a row has become normalized in contemporary psychedelic culture. I think we need to question both the therapeutic rationale for doing this and the claim that it represents an inherently “traditional” practice.

I’ve been involved in psychedelic therapy for more than 20 years. I’ve seen psychedelics facilitate profound, life-changing experiences—but I’ve also seen people become profoundly destabilized.

One pattern I’ve encountered repeatedly is a euphoric or transcendent first ayahuasca experience followed by much more difficult subsequent nights. Sometimes this is interpreted as “going deeper,” as though greater suffering necessarily means greater healing. It doesn’t.
A nervous system that has just undergone hours of intense neuropsychological, emotional and autonomic stimulation—often with little sleep or food—may need recovery and integration, not another powerful psychedelic experience 24 hours later.

But what about the claim that this is the “tradition”?

There is no single Indigenous ayahuasca tradition. The ethnographic work of Richard Evans Schultes, Luis Eduardo Luna and others documents considerable diversity in Amazonian use. In some cultures ayahuasca was consumed communally; in others, it was particularly associated with the shaman or healer, who drank to diagnose, obtain information or conduct healing. The patient did not necessarily drink at all. Thus, the contemporary multi-night retreat should therefore not automatically be presented as an ancient, universally Indigenous therapeutic protocol.

A difficult psychedelic experience may ultimately prove meaningful. But difficulty itself isn’t evidence of therapeutic benefit, and “traditional” isn’t synonymous with safe.

Sometimes what follows a profound psychedelic experience shouldn’t be another dose.

It should be integration.

10/09/2026

There is nothing inherently wrong with the eye-gazing, trust exercises, and authentic relating associated with the human-potential movement. Some may be genuinely valuable. But these are modern Western practices—not traditional Indian Ta**ra—and applying the word “tantra” to them does not make them so.

Ta**ra refers to a vast body of texts, teachings, and practices spanning Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain traditions. References to sexual rites do occur, but they constitute a small and highly contextualized part of a much larger philosophical and ritual tradition. In many contexts, sexual union is symbolic or visualized. For example, Tibetan yab-yum imagery represents the union of wisdom and method—an integration extending far beyond gender or sexuality.

The problem is not cultural exchange or modern innovation. It is removing a Sanskrit word from its historical context and using it to confer spiritual legitimacy upon practices largely developed outside Indian and related South Asian traditions.

Words have meaning. Traditions have context. Western intimacy practices should be described on their own terms, without appropriating the name of an unrelated spiritual tradition. In this day and age of cultural sensitivity we need to do better.

**ra

28/08/2026

Deep prayers for the people of Nepal, with the devastating Bhotekoshi Flood. Already suffering from years of political instability not to mention the earthquake of 2015, this poor country can’t seem to get a break. Please consider donating to the Nepali Prime Minister’s Disaster Relief Fund:

https://pmdrf.nchl.com.np

23/08/2026

We’re well past the dog days of summer, and I’m taking some time to relax on SaltSpring Island with some friends. I recently launched a local herb group in qathet, and we’ve had an incredible response, with hundreds joining in just a few weeks.; Likewise, the interest among local folks apprenticing with me. We’ll have an orientation session mid September to talk about what this is going to look like. And starting next year, I’ll start looking at how I can expand this opportunity for out-of-town folks. Stay tuned, keep cool, and hydrate, imagining your future like a juicy fat pear butt.