What Your Tongue is Telling You

Over the past couple of blogs I’ve discussed digestion, ama (that toxic goo that is a byproduct of poor digestion,) and appetite. Perhaps you are beginning to suspect that your digestion isn’t buzzing along as well as you’d like. Maybe you feel a little fatigued, bloating, and irregular. Maybe you are wondering: "Could I have ama?"

There’s one efficient way to tell. Tomorrow morning, immediately after hopping out of bed, shuffle over to the mirror and stick out your tongue. Look hard. What is that? A thick white coating? Especially at the back of the tongue? Take the edge of a stainless steel spoon and scrape. Is your reaction “Ewww!” Yep. That’s ama. 

If that isn’t enough to get you bounding out of bed tomorrow morning, think about this. As I outlined in my November blog, Ayurveda believes much disease begins in the digestive system. The toxic product of poorly digested food, ama, is sort of like an undesirable neighbor. It coats our digestive system and then travels our body searching for a home, settling in our bodies weakest tissues. Our lifestyle and/or heredity can determine what these weak tissues are; heart, lungs, skin, joints. Once ama settles in, disease is soon to follow.

Achy joints, dull skin and eyes, bad breath and a sluggish mind are further indicators of ama. If you suspect the presence of ama, check out my blog “Tips to Keep the Digestive System Perking”. Then, take a few extra steps:

• Brush your teeth and scrape your tongue immediately upon awakening
• Avoid old, processed, artificial and fast food
• Avoid cold, icy foods and drinks
• Make lunch the largest meal of the day, when digestion is strongest
• Eat light foods in large quantities, heavy foods in light quantities
• Skip a meal occasionally to let your digestion rekindle
• Fill a thermos with very warm water and sip throughout the day

These are good tips even if your tongue is squeaky-clean in morning. Why ruin a good thing? If you enjoy good digestion and your body is a clean machine, keep it that way. And if not, a few extra steps can have you enjoying good digestion, better energy, and vibrant health.

Tips to Keep the Digestive System Perking

Lime juice and ginger
stimulate digestion. Herbs
make certain foods more
digestible.

Good digestion, according to Ayurveda, is the #1 way to keep ama at bay. Ama is undigested food, a gooey substance that takes up residence in the weak tissues of the body, leading to disease in those tissues. How to keep the digestive fires burning bright?

Eat when hungry. Develop a good appetite. If you never feel hungry, perhaps you are eating too often. Or, maybe you need to enhance your appetite with exercise. And remember, appetite and cravings are not the same thing! One comes from the belly, and the other from the mind. When a sense of hunger strikes, close your eyes and assess; do you feel content in the body, but anxious or bored in your mind? Or, is this truly hunger in the belly?

Give your digestion a little rest between meals to build appetite and allow digestion of previous meal to complete. Leave a little space in your belly from time to time. 

Chew completely. Chewing is the first step to digestion, and the more food is broken down at this stage, the more able your system is to utilize it.

Avoid cold drinks with meals. The digestive process is a heating process. The digestive juices work better warm and undiluted. Take sips of room temperature water with meals. Give up the icy drink habit and see if you feel less tired and bloated after a meal.

Stop eating before feeling 100% full 

Eat in a calm environment, and only when calm (stress affects digestion). Yes, having a family, I have an occasional laugh with this also. At least, take a slow, gratitude breath before diving in.

Use ginger as an appetite stimulant. Simmer a few slices in water to ingest as a tea. Or, make 1/8 in. thick slices, and eat with a little sea salt and lime. Also, soak 1/8 in. think slices in fresh lime juice for a few hours. Strain, and sweeten juice with a little honey to taste. Take a shot. Also, you can eat a slice or two of the ginger. Try these appetite stimulants 30 - 60 minutes before a meal to jump start the process.

Spices to use in cooking for digestion: cumin, coriander, fennel, turmeric, ginger, black pepper. Add these to a dish while cooking, the heat releases their digestive enhancing properties. These can be especially helpful to add to foods you find difficult to digest, like dairy, meat, or other heavy foods. But, they are delicious in vegetable and egg dishes.

And, yoga sure can help. Yoga can help increase appetite, especially a more vigorous practice. Standing poses help draw energy down, enhancing the downward flow of, umm, energy. And twisting poses tone and stimulate the digestive system.

Despite our best efforts, our digestion might cough and sputter occasionally, leading to the dreaded ama condition. Next week we'll look at this nasty substance to learn how to tell if we have it, and how to eliminate it before it settles in for a long stay.

Keeping the Digestive Fire Burning

Yep, it’s getting colder outside.  But have you noticed any changes inside? The cold and dryness outside means we need to create our own heat inside, and within ourselves. In Ayurveda, the inner heat that transforms our thoughts, perceptions and, yes, food, is called agni.

Strong, healthy agni means food is broken down and utilized efficiently. Hand-in-hand with strong digestion is strong elimination (you know what I mean). Ideally, what we take in as food is broken down, absorbed, assimilated, and the balance eliminated. 

But what if our agni is poor and our digestion and elimination is sluggish? During the colder, less active time of year, this may be an issue. Sure, we may feel a little uncomfortable, but is it really important? 

Yes. According to the ancient health science of Ayurveda, much, if not most, of disease begins in the digestive system. The toxic product of poorly digested food, ama, is sort of like an undesirable neighbor. It originates in our digestive system and then travels our body searching for a home, eventually settling in the areas not strong enough to keep it out: our bodies weakest tissues. Our lifestyle and/or heredity can determine what these weak tissues are. Heart, lungs, skin, joints...ama will find a hangout where there is a vacancy shingle. And once it settles in, there goes the neighborhood; disease is soon to follow.

Many of us aren’t really in-tune with our inner workings. Our digestive system may have the pizzaz and gusto of a snail and we wouldn’t notice. But clearly, we want to keep the neighborhood safe and happy...so it’s worth getting a little sensitive to what’s going on. What are the tell-tail signs of poor digestion?

• Lack of appetite
• Over-fullness after eating
• Tiredness after eating
• Bloating and/or gas
• Irregular (less than once a day) bowel movements
• Small, hard or otherwise constipated BMs

Any of these sound uncomfortably familiar? Check in next week. I’ll list some Ayurvedic and yogic remedies to help stoke agni and keep the digestion burning strongly.

Quick Squash with Yummy Herbs

One of our beautiful CSA shares

One of the things I love about being part of the Focus Yoga CSA is that it forces me to figure out what to do with a kohlrabi, or that weird, green Japanese pumpkin Randy snuck in my box, not once, but three times. And, I never enjoyed typical acorn squash recipes, either. Squash is so sweet, adding butter and brown sugar sent me into a puckered-lip sugar rush.

So, now that I've discovered savory Ayurvedic herbs and cooking, squash has taken on a whole new appeal. In this recipe, the cumin and coriander stimulate digestion, and the cumin also relieves congestion. Turmeric is an Ayurvedic powerhouse; it not only improves digestion, but reduces inflammation (think achy joints), strengthens the immunity, and even adds luster to the skin!

Plus, I think my simple recipe for acorn squash below qualifies as fast food. Throw one in the oven just for yourself if the kids prefer a pizza. If nobody is around to share the second half, enjoy it for lunch the next day, as I just did!

Acorn Squash Delish!

One acorn squash, halved and seeded
1/2 to one onion, depending on your taste, sliced thin
butter or ghee
1/2 t. cumin
1/2 t. coriander
1/2 t. turmeric
1/4 - 1/2 t. salt
Saute the onion in the butter or ghee till soft. Sprinkle the spices over the cut squash halves. Fill cavity with onions. Bake at 325 until soft, about 30 - 40 minutes. Easy!!

An Ayurvedic Massage for the Mind

After a 14 hour drive to PA last Thursday, three days of training, and a similar drive ahead of me, I decided to indulge in an Ayurvedia massage and Shirodhara treatment. While massage is pretty mainstream nowadays (for good reason!), Shirodhara is less familiar.  Shirodhara is it’s own experience, but following a massage, it makes the experience complete. It is a massage for the brain.

This is not me. But, the treatment looks
like this.

I had an amazing, vatta-balancing massage and ended on my back. Neema (my intuitive Ayurvedic therapist, and co-student at my training this weekend) covered my eyes with cotton. My head tipped slightly back, she positioned a pot of warm oil several inches above my forehead, the spigot aimed at the hairline. With a word to ready me, she opened the spigot, and warm oil began to flow, touching down, then flowing toward the back of my head and into a pan.

While the oil was warm, and only touching one spot, my whole body sprang into alertness. After a few breaths it calmed, and after a bit, Neema slowly moved the stream to first contact the center of my forehead. Then she sat quietly by my head.

I’d like to say that I immediately went into a deep state of bliss, but that wouldn’t be true.  Although I’ve had this treatment once or twice before, it’s still fairly new, and my mind stayed active for awhile. “What should I be thinking about? Should I be more relaxed? Should I be meditating right now? If I leave right after lunch, I’ll get home about....2:00am?  What is for lunch?  Is Neema meditating? How big is this pot of oil?”

Thankfully, it was a big pot. Gradually, my mind slowed to match my heavily relaxed body, and all the sensation, all the focus and energy, gradually gathered at the tiny point where the oil met my forehead.

That spot, the center of the forehead, or third eye, was abuzz. I think I have a pretty active third eye (judging by the way people are looking at me sometimes I think it must be glowing), so it jumped to the ready for this treatment. The rest melted away, and all the hype was right in that one spot.

After a good 30 minutes, the oil drained. As the last drops touched down and the stream ended, I felt a literal sucking sensation, from the ends of my hands and feet, right to that third eye and out. I’m a great visualizer, so I envisioned that all my bad habits, limitations and samskaras were being sucked right out of me. I’m sure that was true, as now I find I am perfect in every way. Hmmm.

Neema took some time to massage the oil into my scalp, wipe away the excess, and sent me off into a steam room for a final cooking. After 20 minutes I emerged, exfoliated and showered, ready for a sattvic lunch and a 14 hour drive. Which, amazingly, ended up being only 12 hours. I’m certain it was my newly-honed mental focus that allowed me to cut through any traffic and obstacles and get me safely home, in bed, by 1:00am. 

If you'd like to know more about Shirodhara, here is an interesting link.  And, if you think you'd like to try it, there are practitioners closer than Pennsylvania. One, Monica Yearwood, an Ayurvedic therapist that has presented at Focus Yoga, practices in Chicago.

Aparigraha and Bugs

This weekend found us at our farm with another family. They also have two girls, the oldest of which is in the same grade and school as our oldest. The mother informed me of some homework the girls had in science; they were to find three bugs, pop them in a jar with a cotton ball soaked in nail-polish remover, and then stick them with a pin onto a foam diorama, making a display of the bugs depicting them in a “natural habitat.”

The other mom and I are good friends, and kindred spirits in following a spiritual path. It didn’t take much discussion to discover we were both a little torn. The idea of the girls tossing a living thing into a stinky jar to asphyxiate it didn’t settle right, even if it was “just” a bug.

But, let’s be honest. I’ve thoughtlessly smashed quite a number of bugs in my day. Wasn’t it a little hypocritical to suddenly take the high road now? And...we were at the farm, probably the best location in the world to find bugs, both indoors and out. Finding three bugs each would be the easiest homework they’d have all year.

That much was true...within minutes they had two bugs each, and without even leaving the dining room. Given that the critters were in “our” space, it just didn’t feel that evil to plop them in the jar.

Wanting the girls to also find some bugs in nature, I led them outdoors to the tall grass around the ponds. We crawled around, and suddenly came upon a crowd of crickets. We grabbed up several, quickly surpassing the required three bugs, and viola! Mission accomplished.

But, hanging around the pond in the sunshine felt so good that we took our time heading back to the house with our bugs, and that’s when it happened. In the very tall grass right next to the pond, I saw him.

“Eva! Look at this!” 

This was it...our triple A+, eye-popping, celebrity-ensuring, cherry on the cupcake find. The most gorgeous spider in the world. An inch and a half from the tip of one long, thin black leg to the next, with a very large, bulbous black body highlighted in bright, lemon yellow spots. Spread out in the center of a huge web woven in the grass. Amazing. 

“I want it!!” Eva said.

“It’s wonderful!” I said. “You’d get an A for sure!”

Then, my friend spoke up. “But Eva, you already have your three bugs. He’s so beautiful. Don’t you think we should just leave him?”

Silence. Damn. Damn. I knew she was right. But, he was so gorgeous. Wouldn’t that be the insect to bring into school!

“But I want him!” Eva said again. She came forward with her jar. “He is so cool!”

“Eva, I think she’s right,” I said. “We already have all the bugs we need. Why don’t we leave him here?”

Eva countered, I did also, and after a couple of rounds we sat there, just looking at him, so still in his web.

“Maybe he’s dead,” I mused. “If he’s dead, then it would be okay to take him.”

“Yeah!” Eva said. “He’s so still! I bet he’s dead.”

We moved forward with a little stick. As we got closer, we both saw a leg move. Damn.

We sat there a little longer, debating this spider’s life vs. my daughter’s potential coup. Then it happened. Quick as a flash, instead of a spider sitting alone in it’s net, there was a spider holding a bit, fat fly.

“Did you see that?!” I cried. “He just caught a fly!”

“Cool!” Eva said. It sat very still, but, having read Charlotte’s Web several times, I believe that at that moment, it was slowly sucking the blood out of the fly.

The plot thickened. Since the blood-sucking spider clearly wasn’t following ahimsa (non-violence), did that maybe let us off the hook? After witnessing this viscous display, maybe it was okay to let it have it’s last meal, then toss it into the stinky jar?

Fat chance. I knew killing for survival and killing for an A were not the same thing. But, Eva clearly wanted the spider, so I had to try another line of logic. Eva had told me once that she liked the philosophy of Taoism. 

Now, other than every so often reading a few pages of the Tao Te Ching, I know nothing about the concepts of Taoism. Maybe Lao Tsu’s home was lined with little bugs, impaled with stick pins onto painted replicas of “natural habitats.” But, I really doubted it.

“Eva, don’t you think that Taoism frowns on killing that beautiful spider?” I asked.

“Mom!” she rolled her eyes. “That’s not what Taoism is about!”

“What’s it about?”

“It’s about loving and appreciating nature and animals and stuff!”

“Well, doesn’t loving and appreciating this spider mean not killing it and sticking it with a pin?”

“No, it doesn’t.”

We both knew that neither one of us knew enough about Taoism to score any points. But, there was one thing I did know.

“Eva, sometimes following the high road on our spiritual journey means making difficult decisions.”

“What’s ‘the high road’ mean?”

“It means doing the right thing, even if we don’t get the A, or impress other people. It’s following our spiritual principles, even if that means giving up something we really want.”

Just then, in a flash, there was another flurry of action. Suddenly the fly was completely wrapped in white.

“Ooooh!” we both said.

We sat quietly for a minute longer, watching the spider finish the process of creating his meal. “You know,” I said. “If you had killed the spider, we would have never seen this.”

“I know,” Eva agreed.

I looked at the big, beautiful spider, in the sunlight, enjoying a meal in the high grass on the banks of the pond. That would be the coolest thing in the world to bring to school. And the saddest.

“Eva, do whatever you want to do. I have to go in to make lunch,” I said as I got up.

I went inside and as I worked I looked out the window at Eva still sitting in the grass, watching the spider. A couple minutes later she came inside.

“Did you get it?” her friend asked her.

“No,” she said. “If it was already dead, I would have taken it. But, I didn’t want to kill it.”

Now, I wish I confidently led her in the morally right direction, but truthfully, a part of me wanted her to plop that spider in the jar. It would have been amazing to share. The farm has so many truly beautiful bugs; dragonflies, beetles, grasshoppers. We could have created a kick-butt diorama. That spider would have been so impressive.

It was a little unnerving. After all, if I was truthfully following the “spiritual path,” with the “spiritual principles” that I held up so righteously to Eva, I wouldn’t have thought for one minute of harming that spider, right? If I were really successful with my practice, wouldn’t the greed of wanting to impress, at the expense of a life, have never existed? Is practicing aparigraha (non-greed) not feeling greedy...or feeling greed but not following through?

The answer is, aparigraha means not feeling greed. It’s the feeling as well as the action. Clearly, we made the right decision for us. However, I needed to talk both Eva, and myself, into it. My friend never had a moment’s hesitation about what was right, and I admire her for it. Perhaps as I continue practicing, I will flow into such clarity. 

But, I also have no doubts that if this day had happened 10 years ago, that spider would be stuck onto foamcore right now. There has been progress. 

We will find ourselves struggling with decisions, and hopefully make the right choices, many times. Each small decision can be a small triumph in our practice. “Practice” does not mean perfect. It means needing to think, over and over, until it becomes second nature. And, if we need to consider or even struggle with each decision, instead of automatically doing the right thing, so be it for now. Over time the rough edges of effort will smooth into ease, and there will be no choices. We won’t need to think. 

Tapas and Pulling Weeds

This morning I finally went to my backyard to pull weeds from the vegetable garden. It really isn’t a vegetable garden anymore, as I’ve  let it go this year. My focus has been in other directions, and the garden had become a jungle. Weeds were, and I’m not kidding, at least 4 feet high. I feel empathy for the neighbors who have been watching it get to this state over the past couple of months, as I certainly haven’t.

Anyway, it didn’t get like this overnight, and it was going to take some hot, sweaty, and itchy work to find what few plants I have still growing between the weeds. As I started pulling, I was trying to find some sort of lesson in the mess (cause I do that). 

Finding the lesson really was fairly easy. Most of us have aspirations of living in a healthy, balanced way. At some point we make a plan, and begin to follow it. This is my garden at the beginning of the summer, weeded, mulched, with seeds planted.

We do well for a while, then, something happens. Perhaps we’ve eliminated coffee (I raise my hand) and have a particularly tough day. We treat ourselves to a cup. (I raise my hand.) A few weeds pop up in the garden, and nobody is looking.

That cup tastes so good. The next time we feel a little sluggish or cranky, we think about that cup of coffee again.  The weeds begin to gain height and strength, and several more begin to take root. 

But once we’ve opened the door of opportunity a little bit, these habits get a toe hold in and slowly, when our back is turned, inch the door open wider. While an occasional treat of anything is generally fine, it’s when the occasional becomes habitual that we lose ground. Soon the weeds become a ground cover...where is the garden? 

Our best intentions often go this way. We sincerely want a healthy life (clean garden) and know how to create it. What is missing?

In yoga we call the missing ingredient "tapas". The translation from Sanskrit is “heat”. In yoga is it used to describe the focused effort and self-discipline of the yogi on the spiritual path. But the connection to heat is very important.

First, it is important to remember that nowhere in any yogic texts is it implied that the practice of yoga is easy. In fact, the very difficulty, the very effort, creates a sort of friction. The friction is created between our cravings and goals, our desires and the higher path, our attachments and our inner knowledge. When we are working with a deep desire or attachment, and trying to follow the right path, that friction we feel creates heat. That is the heat of tapas.

Heat creates transformation. Heat transforms our food, allows us to change the shape of metal, and rejuvenates landscapes (think forest fires as a natural occurrence). The heat created by our efforts is what transforms us.

Given this, we should not feel discouraged when we have trouble in creating change in our lives. We should allow ourselves to feel the effort, the discomfort. Back off and give in, and the heat of transformation dissipates.

Tapas is a good thing. It needs to be created and cultivated, like my garden. It needs to maintained through constant applied effort, like regular weeding. With regular effort, the weeds may pop through from time to time, but will never again take over the original plan, a clean, productive garden.

I created a little heat this morning bringing the mayhem back in order. In retrospect, perhaps the heat of a blowtorch would have been useful. Sigh.