The seasonal calendar

Ritu-sandhi is the seven days at the end of one season and the seven at the start of the next. Classical texts say change your habits gradually across those fourteen days — and blame most seasonal illness on people who don't.

01-08 – 01-22

Classical Ayurveda rates digestive strength as highest in late winter, and prescribes accordingly: the heaviest, most nourishing food of the year, eaten while you can actually process it.

01-23 – 02-06

Ayurveda models disease in six stages, and the first two have no symptoms at all. Late winter is stage one for Kapha — the accumulation that becomes March's cold.

02-07 – 02-24

The final fortnight of Shishira is where the winter diet begins to come down. Doing it now is the difference between a spring reset and a spring cold.

02-25 – 03-14

Spring's first warmth liquefies the Kapha that accumulated all winter. That, in classical terms, is the spring cold — and the regimen is built around getting it moving rather than suppressing it.

03-08 – 03-22 · kapha aggravates

Ayurveda organises food by six tastes, and each has a predictable effect. Spring's prescription uses the three that nobody orders for pleasure — which is exactly why they work.

03-23 – 04-07 · kapha aggravates

Classical Ayurveda is cautious about exercise most of the year and unambiguous about it in spring. This is the season for effort, sweat and dry massage.

04-08 – 04-24 · kapha aggravates

The tradition's spring cleansing is a supervised clinical procedure, not a diet trend. Here is what it is, what the unsupervised version looks like, and where the line sits.

04-25 – 05-14 · kapha aggravates

Spring's dry, pungent, stimulating regimen becomes summer's sweet, cool, liquid one. It is the biggest turn in the year, which makes this fortnight's gradual taper the most important one.

05-08 – 05-22

Classical Ayurveda treats daytime sleep as directly harmful in every season but one. Summer is the exception, and the reasoning behind the exception is the interesting part.

05-23 – 06-07

Summer asks for the sweet taste, cooling qualities and plenty of liquid — but the tradition draws a sharp line between cool and iced, and puts iced firmly on the wrong side.

06-08 – 06-24

The second silent accumulation of the year. Summer's dryness builds Vata; the monsoon's cold and damp releases it. What you do now decides how the rains go.

06-25 – 07-14

Ritu sandhi again: taper the summer routine over a week, bring in the monsoon one over the next. The Vata that accumulated in the heat now breaks out, and agni is at its lowest point of the year.

07-08 – 07-22 · vata aggravates

One fortnight, one idea: digestive capacity is at its annual minimum, so quantity matters more than content. How to eat lightly without eating badly.

07-23 – 08-07 · vata aggravates

Panchakarma's seasonal logic: each ritu has a therapy that belongs to it. Varsha belongs to basti. What that means, what it doesn't, and the household-scale version.

08-08 – 08-24 · vata aggravates

Ritu sandhi into autumn. The Pitta banked through the rains now aggravates, and the classical mistake is to treat the cooler air as permission to eat heavily again.

09-08 – 09-22 · pitta aggravates

Sharad is the classical window for virechana, Pitta's own purification. Alongside it, the case for bitter — the taste modern eating has almost entirely edited out.

09-23 – 10-07 · pitta aggravates

Ayurveda's most practically useful idea: what a food does to you is not the same as what temperature it arrives at. How to cool an aggravated Pitta without wrecking a recovering agni.

10-08 – 10-24 · pitta aggravates

Sharad is the only season where one dosha is pacifying while another is at its height. Sweet taste, ghee and early nights serve both — the fortnight's answer to an apparent contradiction.

10-25 – 11-14 · pitta aggravates

The turn into Hemanta, and the turn of the whole year: the sun stops taking and starts giving. Digestion and strength climb to their annual maximum, and the rules change completely.

11-08 – 11-22

The classical case for training, eating and rebuilding in early winter, and for not wasting the only stretch of the year when capacity exceeds demand.

11-23 – 12-07

The full case for daily oiling, the classical claims made for it, how to actually do it in a normal morning, and the situations where it is the wrong idea.

12-08 – 12-24

The final issue closes the circle: what rasayana actually means, why it belongs to a season with strong agni, and how the year you have just read about is designed to arrive here.

12-25 – 01-07