Carrot and Sweet Potato Soup for Yang

Balance your yin and yang energies with this tasty sweet and sour yang soup.

ying and yang

This soup is especially good if you are heading into the colder months of the year. In yoga we work on balance on and off the mat, so let’s work on some balance on your plate too! 

Yin & Yang Foods – Winter Dish

Everything we experience in life has certain energies in it. Those energies are called yin and yang. They are each other’s opposites.

Yin is cool, expansive & moistening.
Yang is warm, contractive, grounding & drying.

For example, savasana is more yin, sun salutations are more yang. Living in a quiet small village is more yin, while living in a large and busy city is more yang.
What you eat has the same qualities, in different doses. In general, yin foods are sweet, yang foods are salty.

Because yang is warming, it’s the best food to eat during the cold winter months. Winter is yin, so balancing it with warming yang foods will help to keep you in balance. If you know you have a lot of yin in yourself, eating warming yang foods regularly might help to bring some balance throughout the year. 

Too much yin might come up as feeling cold, feeling sad, depressed or very tired. So whenever you need a little more yang in your life, this warming dish is for you!

Carrot and Sweet Potato Soup

  • 5 – 6 sweet potatoes
  • about 3 cm ginger
  • turmeric
  • 1 bundle carrots
  • Celtic Sea salt
  • pepper
  • ½ block (or less) coconut cream
  • water (enough to cover all veggies)

Method

  1. Wash the potatoes and chop them in any way you like. Add them to a pot. Chop carrots and add to the pot. 
  2. Pay attention to the breath as you chop, calming the body and mind, instilling the yang qualities. 
  3. Add ginger (peel it first), coconut, turmeric, pepper and salt
  4. Top to pot up with water until all the vegetables are covered. 
  5. Boil until vegetables are cooked
  6. Blend ingredients using a hand blender and enjoy! 

Watch Irina make this soup

Learn more in Irina’s series: Ayurveda: Yoga and food for your dosha

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Irina VerwerIrina Verwer is a yoga teacher, Somatic therapist, intimacy coach, Ayurvedic practitioner, vegan chef and writer of two yogic cookbooks. Very grateful for and inspired by all of her teachers, Irina has created a unique style of teaching that is both intense and gentle.