Digestive Fire
8 Keys to Healthy Eating
According to the system of Ayurveda, here’s how to keep your digestive fire, or agni, burning bright.
Eat according to your dosha. We all need different types of foods, and it is a classic saying in Ayurveda that “what may be medicine to one may be poison to another.” Learn more about your dosha, or constitution here.
Use digestive herbs to stimulate the agni. Always cook with herbs and spices appropriate for your dosha and when necessary, take digestives after a meal to remedy the occasional over-eating or when working with a particularly weak agni.
Don’t drink water around meals. Think of your agni like a campfire in your belly. Water would put out your fire. As a general rule of thumb, refrain from having water 30-50 minutes before a meal and an hour to hour and a half after.
Don’t overeat. Even a few bites beyond our digestive capacity overloads our system and stifles digestion. We need approximately one-third solid, one-third liquid and one-third air in our stomach for proper digestive action. The liquid is our digestive juices, the air is for appropriate movement and the solid is our food.
Eat mindfully. We want to greet our food like we greet a lover. Smell it, breathe it and enjoy and taste each bite, connect with it emotionally, as eating is a sensual experience. Be present with your food. Remember ‘we are what we eat’, which applies to nutritional as well as emotional content. Eating slowly and chewing well allows us to notice when we have eaten sufficiently and prevents us from overeating. Presence is the key to digestion!
Eat in silence. This may seem like quite a challenging concept! But some of us don’t even eat in silence when we are alone. We have phones and computers to keep us company, which distract our attention, often making us eat faster and mindlessly. When you eat, just eat.
Avoid eating when stressed. In modern life, this is much easier said than done! However, good digestion requires the parasympathetic nervous system to be operating so that our blood is flowing to the inner organs and digestive tract. Stress activates the sympathetic nervous system, which takes our energy away from the core systems.
Stroll after eating. For at least ten minutes after a meal, resting and appreciating the nourishment helps you to assimilate it and allows the mind to be integrated with the physical body. A gentle stroll of 100 steps is recommended within 15 minutes of finishing a meal. Lying down is not recommended.
Adapted from Living Wisdom Ayurveda.