FRANCE BRUNEL
Alexia G. Studio
“With a weakened immune system and loads of ailments that were too small for Western doctors to pay attention to, but that hindered my quality of life (high cholesterol, eczema flare-ups, insomnia, and unexplained digestive issues), I looked for a holistic, long-term, yet flexible solution. That’s when I found in Ayurveda.”
A certified yoga teacher and an Ayurvedic practitioner in-training, France is the founder and editor-in-chief of YOOM.
YOOM is an online destination that offers everyday recipes, custom diet plans and easy daily practices for personalising your approach to self-care with a blend of Ayurveda and the French way of life.
Born in France — yes, she’s named after her own country, France grew up and lived in Hong Kong and New York, with quick stops in Italy and India. She is now based in Brooklyn, NY.
Follow France:
“Surprisingly, I found a lot of similarities between Ayurveda and the French approach to wellness.”
What does Ayurveda mean to you?
To me, Ayurveda means intuitive living.
Ayurveda shares an intuitive and easy-going approach to living well and feeling good. It helped me develop a more intimate understanding of my unique needs and allowed me to stop feeling like an outcast if the one-size-fits-all wellness tips I was following were not working for my body and mind (e.g. green juices, raw kale salads, vegan diets and bootcamp workouts).
On a daily basis, Ayurveda helps me take a more relaxed approach to self-care that's based on listening to my body. All of its guidelines are not only personalised but its overall philosophy is HUMAN. It advocates small doable changes vs. drastic overhauls, gentle practices vs. hard-on-the-body techniques, it recognises that “unhealthy deviations” are part of living a healthy life and... highly important for the French woman that I am: it puts a great deal of emphasis on tastes, flavours and taking pleasure in the foods we eat.
Gentle and non-dogmatic, Ayurveda is incredibly applicable to our modern Western lives and most importantly: sustainable in the long-term.
When did you discover it? How long have you been practising it?
I discovered Ayurveda 12 years ago when I was doing my Yoga Teacher's Training certification in an ashram in the South Indian region of Kerala. At the time, I naively thought it was just a massage technique consisting of dripping oil on one's forehead. But little did I know it was SO much more. It took me 10 years to realise that Ayurveda is not a massage technique but a complex and holistic health system of which massage is only one tool!
What drew you to Ayurveda?
I reconnected to Ayurveda 2 years ago after years of living and working twelve-hour days in the non-stop culture of NYC. With a weakened immune system and loads of ailments that were too small for Western doctors to pay attention to, but that hindered my quality of life (high cholesterol, eczema flare-ups, insomnia, and unexplained digestive issues), I looked for a holistic, long-term, yet flexible solution. That’s when I found in Ayurveda.
Has it helped you with anything major?
Adopting Ayurveda's principles has helped with three major aspects of my life:
proper digestion and elimination (this is huge since “we are what we digest”)
uninterrupted sleep (something I've been suffering from since I was a teen!)
balancing my FIRE (Pitta) qualities. I've always been high-strung, competitive and judgemental, especially of myself, and Ayurveda has helped tone those qualities down and leverage their positives.
Is Ayurveda part of your everyday life or just for your medicine cabinet or fall-back routine?
Ayurveda is part of my everyday life. I use it to guide most of my everyday choices which, in aggregate, build my state of health and wellbeing.
It shows up in my diet choices: I eat based on my mind-body type, the season and how I'm feeling that day; and in my daily practices like tongue scraping, mouth-washing with sesame oil, dry brushing and self-massaging, drinking hot water and most importantly: being kinder and more accepting of myself.
What are your top 3 Ayurvedic tips that have worked for you?
1. Eat foods that are suited to your own mind-body type (Doshic constitution). We so easily think that healthy foods are healthy for everyone but, from an Ayurvedic point of view, that's not the case. Certain “healthy foods” are NOT recommended for certain mind-body types as they create imbalances in some individuals.
2. Sleep as early as you can (around 10 p.m.). I have a lot of air (Vata) in my constitution. which makes me prone to suffering from restlessness and insomnia. Discovering that we all experience a boost of energy from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. has incentivised me to get to bed before that time window so I can fall asleep easier and benefit from deeper sleep.
3. Drink and eat fruits IN BETWEEN meals (not with a meal):
Drinking water or other drinks during a meal dilutes digestive enzymes making it harder for your digestive system to digest the foods you eat.
Fruits digest faster than any other types of food and, if eaten with a meal, they can ferment, causing bloating and flatulence.
What surprised you most about Ayurveda?
Surprisingly, I found a lot of similarities between Ayurveda and the French approach to wellness. Although the two diets are very different, they both have an intuitive, relaxed, gentle and balanced outlook on wellbeing:
Both believe that working out and eating well should take away stress, not add to it; and that it’s unhealthy to try too hard to be healthy because it can actually disrupt our body’s natural balance.
Both do excess in moderation and moderation in excess. They both believe in practising small yet regular healthy habits that contribute to an overall balanced lifestyle rather than in making drastic, and often exhausting and depleting, 360 changes.
Neither deprive themselves. They don’t believe in suffering to be healthy. They both believe that if a “healthy” ritual makes us miserable then it must be unhealthy.
Neither count calories, but they portion control. They won’t ever eat a whole box of cookies nor a gigantic bowl of kale salad.
Both eat three times a day at regular intervals. They don’t believe in snacking.
Both eat local and seasonal as both know seasonal produce contains the antidotes we need during that season.
Both sit down for meals and eat mindfully. They eat slowly, paying attention to what we are eating, smelling and savouring. Lastly, we chew properly (Ayurveda says that our mouth is like a blender when chewing is the blending action required to make food digestible by our system).
Both prefer preparing their own food and eating at home. We eat out for special occasions only as we know that restaurants cook with too much sodium, high fats and lower quality ingredients. Rather than ordering in on a lazy night, we’ll just cook a quick and simple meal.
Both mimic their elders. In France, healthy habits are passed down from one generation to the other. The good habits start early when, as kids, we saw our mums shop at the farmers market and local specialty shops, cook most meals at home, take time for themselves outside of their mum duties, take care of their skin, dress in something other than sweatpants, and fuel their romantic relationships. In the regions of India where Ayurveda is engrained in the way of life, people are also taught very early on from their mothers and grandmothers, who pass down the principles of Ayurveda by cooking meals that are tailored to the family’s different mind-body types and offer the 6 Ayurvedic tastes.
Both strive for naturalness not perfection. They both believe flaws are what makes a person charming, charismatic, beautiful. They both strive for being the best version of ourselves at any age.
Studying Ayurveda surprisingly reconnected me with the way of life I was brought up in but that I had put on hold to live the “NYC life.”
What is your favourite Ayurvedic recipe or go-to ingredient?
My go-to Ayurvedic ingredients are influenced by my air-dominant constitution (Vata). I cook with the ingredients that counteract my naturally dehydrated, depleted and restless body and mind. I love hydrating ingredients like herbal teas, ghee, olive oil, zucchini; heating ingredients like lemon, ginger and Himalayan salt; and grounding foods like sweet potatoes and oatmeal.
I have too many favourite Ayurvedic recipes but an easy weeknight go-to that everyone likes is a Creamy Coconut Lentil Curry.
What do you wish was easier in our society to make an Ayurvedic lifestyle more accessible?
An Ayurvedic lifestyle (which means adapting your habits to your mind-body type to achieve balance and vitality) is accessible to everyone, because it's based on small logical and practical diet and lifestyle practices and because it encourages a one-step-at-a-time integration.
I think there are two things that come in the way of more people adopting an Ayurvedic lifestyle:
1. Just like modern society is designed for the patriarchy, it's also been designed for “mind over body,” for us to accomplish the most at the quickest pace regardless of the impact that such a lifestyle has on our overall physical and mental health. We disrupt our circadian rhythms by working late hours on screens, our digestive system by eating (convenient yet fake foods) at all and any time of day, our natural balance by overdoing all things that are “good for us,” our immune system by oversanitising everything. We have forgotten how to align ourselves with the rhythms of nature, how to eat and how much impact food has on our physical constitution, our minds and emotions! I relearnt all of that when starting to study Ayurveda.
2. Ayurveda is such an all-encompassing health system that it can also be overwhelming. It speaks in Sanskrit, prescribes foreign herbs, cooks with predominantly Indian flavours, and its 5000 year-old heritage can make it sound old-school and irrelevant at times. That problem of communication or “packaging” is precisely what people like you (Jasmine) and I are working on... with YOOM, my mission is to democratise the principles of Ayurveda so that “non-yogis” can gain from its thousands of benefits! I use only English terms, I cook Ayurvedic recipes with Western flavours, and offer it all in a modern and colourful aesthetic that is current and approachable.
Do people around you/in your circle of friends know about Ayurveda?
I have introduced Ayurveda to the majority of my friends who had never heard about it before but who, upon discovering it, are surprised how easy it is to apply its principles into their daily lives. I get that feedback from friends regardless of gender!
What’s the one thing you would encourage everyone to try or you think would benefit the majority of people’s health for the better?
Eat foods that are suited to your mind-body type as you will digest them better and draw the most benefits from them... digestion is at the cornerstone of health, balance and overall wellbeing.