Photo by Benjamin DeYoung
Please enjoy this awesome excerpt from our upcoming book, coauthored by in-house Ayurvedic Doctor Manish Chandra. It’s about Agni, or metabolic fire, a crucial Ayurvedic term for understanding how to harness the healing power of digestion.
According to Ayurveda,
the most powerful medicine ever known comes from within the body and determines your states of wellness, vitality, energy, strength, and longevity. It is called agni, a term that literally means “fire.”
In your body, agni is the life of your digestion and metabolism. In your mind agni determines your power of perception or your capacity to “digest” or take sensory information into your mind and to comprehend. Ayurveda calls this mental power digestion because it involves consuming and converting raw sensory data into comprehensible insight. Agni is the experience of the completely integrating your experiences — the transmutation and conversion of all external contacts with the world into the being of body, mind, and Spirit; and the balancing and integration of all aspects of the being into oneness.
In Ayurveda, you are as old as your agni.
Strengthening your life fire will not only strengthen the force of your natural immunity, but also the resilience of your mind. Thoughts create biochemical reactions which affect the bodily function through their affect on the life fires. Every thought, feeling and emotion you have influences your life fire or agni. Strengthening the life fire allows you to easily maintain a positive frame of mind; and cultivating positivity strengthens improves the functioning of your biological life fires.
- Exercise regularly
- Whether that means daily surf session or just a 10-minute walk, keep your internal fire aflame by nourishing your body with movement every day. Ideally, exercise before eating, or 1-2 hours after to allow your body time to digest.
- Eat foods that are easy for you to digest
- Warm, well-seasoned and appetizing to your taste! Ayurvedic diets and recipes according to your dosha and preferences is ideal. Sign up for our Newsletter (visit the Homepage to access) for easy, delicious seasonal recipes every week.
- Fresh ginger before meals
- Use this simple Ginger Appetizer recipe to stimulate your digestion before eating.
Ginger Appetizer
To be taken before a meal if possible. You can do this when you are at home, no need to do it when you are eating out.
Ingredients:
- 1 inch fresh ginger
- 1 lemon
Super simple directions:
- Thinly slice fresh ginger root
- Squeeze lemon juice on top
- Sprinkle with a pinch of salt
Enjoy!
“The body’s own protective chemistry is the most powerful medicine ever known.”
-Speaker at Sports Medicine and Nutrition Conference
Agni is the root of your natural immunity and resilience to stress. The way you respond to stress is determined to a degree by your constitution. But when you are unable to adapt to a stress and re-establish a new equilibrium it is because your agni is not strong enough. Agni plays an important role in your emotions and too, your emotions play an important role in agni. Balance in emotion creates balance in agni, and a balanced agni creates balanced emotions. Anger and fear are emotions of deranged agni. If prolonged, they may impair the function of the immune system.
4/10/24
