Don’t let the summer season rock your doshas

Pitta, a combination of fire and water, is the predominant dosha of summer – mirroring the hot and humid weather. Pitta is associated with strong digestion, transformation, and comprehension. Too much pitta, or an imbalance, can lead to the more destructive aspects of fire like burn out, acid indigestion or malabsorption, and anger.

During the summer season, it is easy for pitta to become imbalanced, especially as temperatures all over the world are rising. To avoid this, we need to focus on eating cooling foods, staying hydrated and conserving our energy so as to not become burnt out (i.e. generating too much fire).

Our Cleanse Pack Gift Pack which includes Digestive Tea, Trim Tea and our Vigoris Super Tonic is designed to help you stay balanced and is especially useful over the summer holiday season. For more information click here.

6 Ayurvedic practices to improve your digestion

Agni is the Sanskrit term for the ‘digestive fire’ that breaks down the food and other things we ingest from the environment, assimilating what is useful and eliminating the rest. When our digestive ability, or agni, is strong we create healthy tissues, eliminate waste products efficiently, and produce a subtle essence called Ojas. Ojas – a Sanskrit word meaning strength – can be envisioned as the innermost vital essence. According to Ayurveda, Ojas is the basis for clarity of perception, physical strength, and immunity. If our agni is weakened through improper eating, inactivity and/or negative emotions our digestion is hampered and we produce toxins that store in our body. According to Ayurveda this toxic residue, known as ama, is the root cause of disease.

Proper digestion with a strong agni, plays a central role in our physical and emotional wellbeing. As the saying goes – we are not what we eat, but we are what we digest. By making choices that strengthen our digestive ability, we form the foundation for good health and vitality.

Ayurveda recommends a variety of practical techniques for keeping our digestive fire strong. Making these practices part of your daily life can strengthen agni and also facilitate weight loss, improve your metabolism and minimize uncomfortable symptoms such as bloating, gas or indigestion.

Powerful ways to strengthen your agni

Meditate on a regular basis – Evidence confirms the genetic changes that occur with regular meditation, which can help restore the body’s homeostasis, including the processes controlling digestion. To achieve maximum benefit, meditate for 20 to 30 minutes, twice daily, once in the morning and once in the evening.

Move a little every day – Whether it is a little yoga every morning or a daily walk – a study by Diabetes Care showed that a short 15-minute walk after each meal helped to control sugar spikes after eating. These short post-meal walks were more effective than taking a longer, 45-minute walk once daily.

Avoid overeating – When we eat more food than our stomach can accommodate, we cannot break it down properly. Overeating tends to produce more acid, causing reflux and indigestion. The number of digestive enzymes produced may not be able to completely break down the amount of food ingested, which leads to more gas formation, discomfort, or bloating. Ayurveda recommends that we leave one-third to one-quarter of our stomach empty to allow space for our body to easily digest our meal.

A simple way to gauge the ideal portion of food based on your body size is to cup your hands together with your fingertips touching, forming the shape of a bowl. The recommended amount of food for any meal is equivalent to two (2) of these handfuls. Of course, you can eat less if your appetite is smaller.

Ginger Tea – In Ayurveda, Ginger is known as the universal remedy due to its many benefits and it has been used for more than 2,000 years to treat digestive issues. Ginger can relax the smooth muscle of the intestines, thereby relieving symptoms of gas and cramping. Research has shown that ginger stimulates digestion by speeding up the movement of food from the stomach into the small intestine and helps eliminate digestive discomfort after eating. Ginger can stimulate saliva, bile, and gastric enzymes to aid in digestion of food. Ref: https://journals.lww.com/, 2008

Simple Ginger Tea Recipe – Add one teaspoon of grated or sliced fresh ginger root to a cup of hot water. You can prepare a larger batch and keep it with you in a thermos bottle to sip throughout the day.

Make your largest meal lunchtime – Our digestive system secretes the highest concentration of “digestive juices” around noon, making this the best time to eat our largest meal. In the evening, our bodies are slowing down and preparing for sleep. If we eat our biggest meal at dinner, when our digestive fire is weaker, we will feel heavy and bloated and will be more likely to have difficulty falling asleep.

Release negative emotions – You may have noticed that your emotions influence your digestion, for example getting heartburn when you’re under stress, losing your appetite when you feel sad or feeling sick or vomiting before a big exam or presentation. Research shows that the stress associated with unprocessed negative emotions inhibits the natural digestive process and can lead to chronic digestive issues. We now know there is an intimate relationship between our brain and our gut – and our digestion responds to our thoughts and emotions. When we experience a situation that we interpret as stressful, signals from the brain can alter nerve function between the stomach and esophagus, resulting in heartburn. With extreme stress, the brain sends signals to the gut immune cells that release chemicals leading to inflammation. This inflammation can then lead to malabsorption, and even food sensitivities if the stress becomes chronic.

By learning how to manage stress and release emotional turbulence, we help our digestive tract to work naturally and efficiently.

Source: www.chopra.com