In this episode of Ash & Honey, host Alexandria Quinn Love explores the second of Ayurveda's three doshas — Pitta, the principle of fire and water. The leaders and the achievers. The sharp minds and the driven souls. The people who get things done, set the standard, and hold themselves to impossible expectations.

If you listened to Season One's episode on Yellow Bile, this will feel familiar. Different continent, different century, same human pattern: the fire that builds empires and burns out before forty.

We'll explore the gifts of balanced Pitta — intelligence, courage, determination, the ability to transform raw ideas into reality. And we'll face the shadow: the anger, the perfectionism, the criticism that cuts others and cuts yourself deepest of all.

Along the way, Alexandria shares honest stories from building Ash & Honey — the week before launch when she was impossible to live with, the acid reflux and sleepless nights, and the moment she realized the perfectionism wasn't about quality. It was about fear.

Because here's the truth: your fire is a gift. But fire that burns without rest eventually burns out. And fire that turns on itself destroys the very person carrying it.

🎧 In this episode:

• What is Pitta? Fire, water, and the principle of transformation
• Portrait of a Pitta person: the leaders, the perfectionists, the hangry ones
• The gifts: intelligence, courage, determination, passion
• The shadow: anger, judgment, perfectionism, burnout
• Cooling the fire: food, lifestyle, and the Pitta entrepreneur's survival guide
• Pitta season: why summer requires extra care
• Honest stories from building Ash & Honey (the perfectionism behind the dream)
• The essential medicine: "Your worth is not your work"

Done is better than perfect. You are lovable even if you never achieve another thing. Let the fire rest.

Next Episode: Kapha — earth and water, the nurturers and the builders, stability and what happens when stillness becomes stuck.

Let the burn teach you. Let the honey keep you.
Until next time — be gentle with the body that carries you.

In this episode of Ash & Honey, host Alexandria Quinn Love dives deep into the first of Ayurveda's three doshas — Vata, the principle of wind and space. The artists and dreamers. The visionaries and the scattered ones. The people with seventeen brilliant ideas and notebooks full of half-finished projects.

We'll explore the gifts of balanced Vata — creativity, enthusiasm, intuition, the ability to imagine what doesn't exist yet. And we'll face the shadow of Vata imbalance: anxiety, insomnia, overwhelm, and the particular chaos of a mind that won't stop moving.

Along the way, Alexandria shares honest stories from building Ash & Honey — the scattered notes across three journals and two apps, the sleepless nights, and the moment her husband looked at her and said: "You're teaching people about balance. Maybe you should try some."

Because here's the truth: you cannot build something new without Vata energy. But wind without ground scatters. Learning to harness the creative force without being blown away by it — that's the Vata journey.

🎧 In this episode:

• What is Vata? Air, space, and the principle of movement
• Portrait of a Vata person: the creatives, the entrepreneurs, the anxious ones
• The gifts: creativity, flexibility, intuition, vision
• The shadow: anxiety, scattered energy, starting but not finishing
• Grounding the wind: food, routine, oil, and the Vata creative's survival guide
• Vata season: why autumn requires extra care
• Honest stories from building Ash & Honey (the beautiful chaos behind the dream)

Your wind is a gift. The world needs people who can imagine what doesn't exist yet. But wind without ground scatters. Let's learn to build a container for all that beautiful air.

Next Episode: Pitta — fire and water, the leaders and achievers, ambition and anger.

Let the burn teach you. Let the honey keep you.
Until next time — be gentle with the body that carries you.

Close your eyes. Come with me somewhere.

We're standing at the foothills of the Himalayas. It's five thousand years ago — maybe more. In a clearing, sages sit in meditation, watching. Watching the stars and the seasons. The way certain plants heal and others harm. The way some people run hot while others run cold.

What they're building will become one of the oldest and most sophisticated medical systems in human history. They call it Ayurveda — the Science of Life.

In this episode of Ash & Honey, we leave ancient Greece behind and travel to ancient India. Host Alexandria Quinn Love, M.A., introduces the foundational concepts of Ayurveda: the five elements, the three doshas — Vata, Pitta, Kapha — and the revolutionary idea that what keeps you healthy is different from what keeps me healthy.

You'll learn about Prakriti (your original constitution) and Vikriti (your current imbalance). You'll discover Agni, the digestive fire that transforms not just food but experience itself. And you'll begin to see the echoes — the remarkable parallels between Greek Humorism and Indian Ayurveda, two traditions that never met yet arrived at strikingly similar truths.

Different map. Same territory.

🎧 In this episode:

• Why Ayurveda now: the echoes between Greek and Indian wisdom
• The five elements: Ether, Air, Fire, Water, Earth
• The three doshas: Vata (air + ether), Pitta (fire + water), Kapha (water + earth)
• Prakriti vs. Vikriti: who you are vs. where you are now
• Agni: the sacred digestive fire that determines everything
• Portraits of each dosha type — see yourself in the descriptions

This is personalized medicine — five thousand years before we invented the term.

Next Episode: Vata — the wind and space dosha, the artists and dreamers, the anxious ones who live in their heads.

Let the burn teach you. Let the honey keep you.
Until next time — be gentle with the body that carries you.

There's a door I've been dreaming about. Wooden, old, with a brass bell gone green. A physical sanctuary where time moves differently.

That door isn't open yet. But today, a different one is.

Welcome to Season Two of Ash & Honey. I'm Alexandria Quinn Love, M.A. — historian, researcher, maker. And in this episode, I'm announcing something that's been years in the becoming: Ash & Honey Botanique — now open online.

www.ashandhoneybotanique.com

Not a physical store — not yet. An online apothecary. A modern sanctuary rooted in ancient wisdom, where the Kitchen Pharmacy becomes something I make with my hands and send to yours.

Whipped body butters in seasonal formulations. Healing salves and aluminum-free deodorants. A scent library of eight signature blends built entirely from essential oils. All of it made in small batches, all of it built on one principle: if you can't eat it, why would you feed it to your skin?

This episode is about what it means to build something before it's perfect. About starting with a website when you're dreaming of a storefront. About the courage it takes to offer what you have, even when what you have is just the beginning.

🎧 In this episode:

• The announcement: Ash & Honey Botanique is open online
• The Body Care Collection: The Ash & Ember, The Storm Break, The Honey & Hive and the Lionheart Collections.
• The Scent Library: eight seasonal signatures
• Why now: building before you're ready
• Season Two roadmap: Ayurveda, TCM, guest practitioners
• The dream: the brick-and-mortar sanctuary still to come

Maybe it's a website instead of a storefront. A beginning instead of an arrival. But it's real. And real things can grow.

Let the burn teach you. Let the honey keep you.
Until next time — be gentle with the body that carries you.

We've traveled a long way together.

Through fire — the yellow bile of ambition and the cost of burning bright. Through air — the blood of connection and the art of giving without losing yourself. Through water — the phlegm of stillness and the wisdom of waiting. Through earth — the black bile of melancholy and the courage to feel.

Now, in this Season One finale of Ash & Honey, host Alexandria Quinn Love weaves it all together. What does it mean to hold all four elements at once? To be a whole person in a world that constantly tries to reduce us to one thing?

This episode is about integration — living with the seasons, knowing your constitutional tendency, and working with your nature instead of against it. It's also about vision: the larger world of Ash & Honey that's beginning to take shape. A cookbook called The Iron Orchard: A Kitchen Pharmacy Companion. A philosophy of living called Ash & Honey Living. And a Season Two that will explore Ayurveda, Traditional Chinese Medicine, and more ancient wisdom waiting to be remembered.

But most of all, this episode is about the mantra you've heard at the end of every episode — and what it truly means.

🎧 In this episode:

• The dance of elements: why you are not one thing
• Living seasonally: a practical framework for the humoral year
• Knowing your constitution: which humor is your home base?
• The Kitchen Pharmacy: food as the first medicine
• The larger vision: introducing Ash & Honey Living and The Iron Orchard
• The mantra explained: what "let the burn teach you, let the honey keep you" really means

You are whole. You have always been whole.

Coming Soon: The Iron Orchard: A Kitchen Pharmacy Companion — Simple Nourishments for Body & Spirit

Coming in Season Two: Ayurveda, Traditional Chinese Medicine, and the continuing journey.

Let the burn teach you. Let the honey keep you.

Let the burn teach you. Let the honey keep you.
Until next time — be gentle with the body that carries you.

This episode is different. It's the one that asks us to sit with something our culture desperately wants us to avoid.

The ancient Greeks called it melaina kholé — black bile. The humor of earth, of autumn, of endings. The darkest of the four vital fluids. And they understood something we've forgotten: there is wisdom in the dark. There is medicine in melancholy. And some of the most important work of being human can only happen when we stop running from the shadows.

In this episode of Ash & Honey, host Alexandria Quinn Love descends into the deepest of the four humors. We'll explore why Aristotle believed all great thinkers and artists were melancholic. We'll name the gifts of black bile — depth, authenticity, creativity, compassion — and we'll face its shadow: the despair that has no bottom, the isolation that feeds itself, the darkness that becomes prison rather than passage.

Because here's what the ancients knew: black bile is not your enemy. It's the compost from which new growth emerges. It's autumn's necessary work. And learning to honor it — without being consumed by it — may be the most important skill we ever develop.

🎧 In this episode:

• What is black bile? Earth, autumn, and the melancholic temperament
• The gifts of darkness: depth, creativity, and the wisdom of impermanence
• When darkness becomes prison: recognizing dangerous excess
• Tending black bile: ancient remedies for warming and moistening the spirit
• A meditation on autumn: the tree that knows when to let go

You are not broken. You are composting. Something is being made in you that could not be made any other way.

Content note: This episode discusses grief, depression, and despair. If you're struggling, please reach out to someone you trust or a crisis resource.

Next Episode: Season One Finale — The Whole Person: Weaving Fire, Air, Water, and Earth.

Let the burn teach you. Let the honey keep you.

Let the burn teach you. Let the honey keep you.
Until next time — be gentle with the body that carries you.

We talk about "bouncing back" like it is a virtue—as if the goal of trauma is to return to exactly who you were before the fire. But you cannot un-burn a house. And you shouldn't try.

In this inaugural episode of Ash & Honey, historian and herbalist Alexandria Quinn Love opens the door to Apocotherapy: the practice of healing by moving away from the toxic and returning to the root.

In this episode, we cover:

• The Table in Texas: The moment Alexandria realized her body had forgotten how to exhale after three years of grief and hyper-vigilance.
• The Ancient Diagnosis: Why the Greeks wouldn't call it "stress"—they would call it a war between Yellow Bile (Fire/Ambition) and Black Bile (Earth/Grief).
• The Nervous System Bridge: Understanding how Fight or Flight dries out our internal resources, leaving us brittle and locked.
• The Invitation: A simple practice to stop fixing yourself and start naming your season.

If you are tired of treating your burnout with more productivity, this episode is your permission slip to stop.

Join the Circle: Subscribe to Ash & Honey for weekly episodes on reclaiming ancient wisdom for modern healing.

Next week-Fire in the Blood: Healing Anger, Ambition & The Hustle

Let the burn teach you. Let the honey keep you.
Until next time — be gentle with the body that carries you.

You know that person. The one who walks into a room and makes it warmer. Who remembers your name, your dog's name, that thing you mentioned three months ago. Who laughs easily and makes everyone feel like they belong.

Maybe you are that person. Or maybe you're the one who can't stand to be alone — who gives and gives until there's nothing left, then wonders why you feel so hollow.

The ancient Greeks called this the sanguine temperament, from the Latin word for blood. And blood, in the humoral system, was the humor of warmth, connection, and joy — mapped to air, to spring, to the heart itself.

In this episode of Ash & Honey, host Alexandria Quinn Love explores the gifts of blood: the ability to connect, to hope, to savor life's pleasures, to build communities that hold us. But she also explores the shadow — the people-pleasing, the scattered energy, the inability to be alone, and the slow depletion that comes from giving without receiving.

Because here's what the ancients understood: blood has to circulate. It flows out and it comes back in. And if you're always giving your warmth away without letting it return, eventually there's nothing left.

🎧 In this episode:

• What is blood? Air, spring, and the sanguine temperament
• The gifts of blood: connection, optimism, pleasure, and resilience
• The shadow of blood: people-pleasing, depletion, and the fear of being alone
• Tending the blood: ancient remedies for excess and depletion
• The rhythm of warmth: why givers must learn to receive

You are allowed to have boundaries. You are allowed to rest. You are allowed to need.

Next Episode: Phlegm — the humor of water, stillness, and deep calm.

Let the burn teach you. Let the honey keep you.
Until next time — be gentle with the body that carries you.