Radically Rosie

Asana and meditation teacher and popular podcast personality Rosie Acosta says yoga and a sunny outlook saved her life. Here’s how.

- Lindsay Tucker

On a sunny afternoon in the Hollywood Hills, Rosie Acosta sits on the sofa in her bright living room, knees to her chest, facing best-selling author and Ayurveda practitioner Sahara Rose Ketabi. The two women are friends, and they’ve greeted each other warmly with hugs and excited chatter. They dish for a few minutes about Acosta’s herbal tea obsession and Ketabi’s recent engagement, but the pair have come together on official business—Ketabi is making a guest appearance on Acosta’s wellness podcast, Radically Loved, to discuss her new cookbook, Eat Feel Fresh (see page 38), which features modern spins on traditional Ayurvedic recipes.

Both Ayurveda enthusiasts, Acosta and Ketabi have recently returned from a sixday panchakarma, the most intense detoxification ritual in Ayurvedic medicine. The process consists of five aggressive therapies said to eliminate doshic imbalances in the body. (In Ayurveda, doshas are the three energies believed to govern physiological and mental activity.) To hear them describe it, it’s purging, pooping, and bathing in oil until you come out anew on the other side. Oh, and there’s a ton of ghee: “They put ghee in your eyes to clarify eyesight. They clean your ears with it,” Ketabi marvels. “I mean, there’s ghee in every crevice.”

Of course there’s also meditation and self-reflection and carefully prepared Ayurvedic meals of kitchari (and more ghee), and it was during a panchakarma lunch that Ketabi discovered something rather radical about Acosta: “She’s literally a psychic guru,” she tells me.