Create an Ayurvedic Diet for Self Healing

About Joyful Belly - Making Ayurveda easier™

Joyful Belly creates yummy, healthy recipes using Ayurveda. We help you have an experience, understand the effects, and develop a good relationship with food. Joyful Belly can help you achieve a greater sense of well-being and clarity. With articles and seminars chock full of Ayurvedic wisdom, you'll tune into your internal organs and answer fundamental questions like, How's my liver today? or What can I do to help my kidneys? Healthy Joyful Belly eating will be a vital, zesty, refreshing and tasty doorway to a new you.

About Our Website

We're an encyclopedia of food with ingredients and health tips. We make it simple to enter your doshas and create a personal Ayurvedic diet online, complete with a grocery shopping list. Our list of practitioners is ready to support your growth and healing. On Joyful Belly you can also make a reservation for a private or phone consultation with John, schedule a home cleanse, or order Ayurvedic herbs, massage oils, books and products.

About Ayurveda

Ayurveda is a 5,000 year old system of medicine from India, integrating both science with the art of healing. Ayurveda describes disease not only in western medical terms but as patterns of doshas, feelings, and tastes that everyone can understand and experience. Perspective helps us relate better to our body, self-monitor, respect the laws of Nature, and make supportive lifestyle and diet choices.

We welcome practitioners!

Use Joyful Belly to create diets for your clients which means less time explaining recipes and more time healing during a consultation. Promote your services in our online directory and by sharing your expertise on each and every ingredient and recipe page!

Our Approach to Food

"A chef begins with a wish. Through meditation and contemplation the wish is purified. In this way, food becomes enjoyable and healthy for body, mind, and spirit. Every new recipe is a quest. Eating is the one activity that brings everone back in touch with their health every day." - John

About John Joseph Immel, founder of Joyful Belly

John is the founder of leading Ayurvedic dieting website JoyfulBelly.com. He promotes practical Ayurveda at diverse locations nationally from local yoga studios to world renowned Yale University (invite him!). He is a faculty member at the Appalachia School of Holistic Herbalism, director of Ayurveda for Yoga Spirit Studios and writes for the Light on Ayurveda Journal. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University where he was also a teacher of mathematics, business and software development. John studied Ayurveda under Dr. Vasant Lad and in India. He runs an Ayurveda clinic in Asheville, NC. Contact 828-348-4880 for an appointment.

Prior to Ayurveda, John worked on public health projects with a particular focus on South Asia & the Middle East. He continues to manage a public health project using mobile communications for clean water in Bangladesh. John studied the language and culture of Bangladesh over ten years and is fluent in Bengali. He loves Bengali art and spent a year filming folk music in the streets of Dhaka city, Bangladesh. He is also a student of Sanskrit.

In his business career John received the "Internet Pioneer Award" as CEO of technology firm Circle Strategies. Later he raised $1.5 million to create dot com corporation directoryM (originally called rfpMarket) which was listed on the INC 500 list of fastest growing companies for 2007. In 2003, John initiated the first Exchange Program for studying Islamic Gender Studies in Fes, Morocco, with support from Professor Fatima Sadiqi and His Majesty Mohammed V of Morocco. John leads the Harvard NonProfits and Harvard Middle East discussion groups with over 500 members. By appointment, he sat on the 2002 Economic Development Council for the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

On a personal note "I love to cook warming, satisfying foods that bring people together. Delicate flavors and hearty ingredients open people up to a new awareness of how food makes life meaningful. Cooking also brings personal freedom and creativity.

When I returned home from South Asia, I came to love the sweetness of the mountains of Appalachia, the vitality of plants, and wild-crafted foods. Frank Cook, a botanist traveling the world living entirely by donation, taught me how to identify and gather wild medicinal herbs. Finally, I studied Ayurveda, which integrated my passion for cooking, herbs, spirituality and South Asian culture. For me, Ayurveda was an incredible discovery and I truly enjoy studying the ancient Ayurvedic texts.

-John



About Molly Oliver

Molly Oliver is a recipe developer and baker with Joyful Belly. She has been baking cookies since she could stand up, learning first from her mother and then studying her great-grandma's 1920 copy of The Joy of Cooking. She reads cookbooks like other people read novels: with rapt attention,unable to tear herself away to go to sleep or tend to chores.

Growing up in rural western New York State gave Molly a deep connection with the land and the seasonal nature of our food supply. Fresh apple cider in the fall, new maple syrup at the end of winter, the first bitter greens of spring, the thrill of strawberries in June...late summer's overflowing abundance; all inspire an overwhelming joy and incredible awe. The study of Ayurveda has grown this love in Molly and strengthened her commitment to preparing nourishing locally-produced food for her family and friends.

After growing up, traveling, studying art,getting married, and sampling various careers, Ayurveda found Molly. She is grateful to study with Dr. Vasant Lad at the Ayurvedic Institute in Albuquerque, NM. Molly is growing an Ayurvedic practice in Rochester, NY where she lives with her dear husband Scott and 2 adorable cats. When she is not baking,studying,or helping clients she can be found in her garden, at the farmers market, having tea with friends, knitting, volunteering or eating a cookies. Molly can be reached at (585) 755-8471.



* These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. The information and products on this website are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.
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