ayurvedic living INSTITUTE AGNI: KNOW YOUR DIGESTIVE FIRE Agni (Ug-nee) is a word you might recognize, Fire, one of the five elements of Ayurveda. The classical texts of Ayurveda open with the concept of Agni. Keeping your digestive fire strong is the number one thing to consider. If one has the correct amounts of water, fire, space, and food in the stomach, one should digest food well, meaning the stomach makes a nice Ahara Rasa, juice of the food. The juice of the food is the building block of healthy tissues. When Agni is burning bright and even, toxicity is not allowed to lodge in the tissues, rather it is broken down and eliminated. In this way, good digestive fire keeps the body free of ama, undigested matter, which gunks up the works, weakens the system and promotes imbalance. The health, stamina, and luster of your body/mind begin right in your stomach! Agni resides principally in the stomach, where the body’s main fire, the jathara agni resides. This is where the food that has been chewed and mixed with saliva is transformed into the building blocks of your tissues. But fire also pervades the entire body, providing the heat necessary for transformation. Think of jathara agni as the command central for all digestion and metabolism. The state of agni in the stomach governs all of the later digestive phases that affect processes such as absorption, assimilation, metabolism, complexion, hormones, and intelligence. The jathara agni in the stomach builds like a little campfire. You must have kindling to get it started, and a smooth breeze. If you put too much wood on it, the fire is smothered. If you don’t give it enough wood, the fire can’t burn strongly to create light and warmth. If you blow on it too hard, or not enough, it won’t burn evenly. AGNI: KNOW YOUR DIGESTIVE FIRE // 1 CAUSES OF AGNI IMBALANCE • Overeating • Eating too early in the morning or too late at night • Grazing • Too much cold food and drink (iced water, soft drinks, ice cream, etc) • Too much dry food (crackers, popcorn, coffee, etc) • Too much heavy food (burgers, fried food, cheese, etc) • Complicated food combinations* • Too much fasting • Drinking too much water • Antibiotics • Excessive alcohol and drug use • Extremely rainy weather • Suppression of hunger, burps, gas, and poop • Stress • Anger • Anxiety • Grief *A note on food combining It’s wise not to get too worked up over food combining, unless you are having persistent digestive illness. I observe the concept of food combining to cause a lot of stress when students begin to learn about it. Stressing out about your food disturbs agni, absolutely, so take it easy. For the general case, mixing it up every so often is fine (say, monthly) as long as it doesn’t cause untoward gas, bloating, acidity, or burping. To preserve your agni, try not to mix the following: • bananas with anything (especially dairy products!) • melons with anything other than other melons • raw fruit with food (can be ok when cooked together for some) • fish with dairy The Four Types of Agni Agni can be of four types. One is balanced and the other three are states of imbalance. Balanced (sama agni) Irregular (vishama agni) Overactive (tikshna agni) Slow (manda agni) The three imbalances often correspond to the doshas. The cold quality of Vata can decrease agni, while the erratic, mobile quality causes irregularity. The hot, sharp quali- ties of Pitta can cause agni to burn too intensely. The cool, slow, dense qualities of Kapha can dull the digestive fire. If you aren’t familiar with the doshas, don’t worry, each of the agni types is described in detail below, along with a worksheet to help you recognize what’s going on in your gut. AGNI: KNOW YOUR DIGESTIVE FIRE // 1 Sama agni (balanced) occurs when your health is in a relative state of balance. You will enjoy a rhythmic and predictable appetite. Generally, a square meal digests well, elimination is regular and there is little wind or acidity to complain of. The metabo- lism will be good, and the skin and eyes glow. Any body type can enjoy balanced agni, though it may come easier for some than others. Vishama agni (irregular) results from aggravated Vata. A Vata type person, where air predominates, is more likely to have an irregular agni due to the increased amount of wind in their constitution. Imagine trying to light a candle in the wind. Digestion will be disturbed by eating while walking or driving; dry, cold weather; dry, cold food and drink; travel; anxiety; and lack of routine. Feels like: The appetite will be inconsistent and may arise and leave quickly without any reason. You might forget to eat, then overeat later, or eat a bunch one day and very little on another day. This kind of fire can undercook or overcook food, as well as leave it in partial states of digestion (eek! ama time!). This type of food juice will create gas and bloating and irregular elimination. Stool may vary in amount and consistency from day to day, and some days you may not poop at all. Tikshna agni (sharp) results from aggravated Pitta. Due to the predominance of fire element, the appetite will flare up quickly, and can be insatiable or even constant. Tikshna agni is exacerbated by spicy and acidic food, alcohol, and by stress and anger. Feels like: Tikshna agni may cause hypoglycemic feelings if meals don’t happen on time, and it may be difficult to get through a day without snacking. Large amounts of food will still leave you feeling unsatisfied, physically and mentally. You may have to poop soon after meals, and/or see undigested food in your stool. There may be some degree of pain, nausea, or acid stomach and dryness of the lips, throat, and mouth after eating. Manda agni (slow, dull) results from aggravated Kapha. Increased amounts of water and earth elements cause too much moisture, heaviness, and mucous in the stomach. Heavy, oily foods; rainy weather; sadness; and lack of exercise all contribute to a slow, dull digestive fire. Feels like: The appetite is sluggish, as well as the metabolism and elimination. You may rarely feel truly hungry. Food will sit in the stomach for a long time and feel heavy. You may burp hours later and still taste food. Over time manda agni leads to undigested food sticking around in the body causing fatigue; body pains; allergies; congestion; sadness; low energy levels. Please take some time to complete the Know Your Agni Worksheet after listening to the lectures and looking over these notes. AGNI: KNOW YOUR DIGESTIVE FIRE // 2 Agni and Ama Slow, dull agni is the most likely imbalance to cause a build-up of ama. Ama has similar qualities to manda agni: slow, moist, heavy, dull. You can see how the two can feed off each other, and how a diet heavy on those qualities can bring it about. Smothering the fire by overeating is a direct route to ama. Eating too often also creates ideal circumstances for putrefaction. Imagine making rice and 15 minutes into cooking it, you decide to add another handful of raw rice. You will end up with unevenly cooked food that will upset your stomach. This is what happens when you put fresh food into the stomach before the last meal has passed from the stomach to the small intestine (usually at least 2 hours, depending on the size of the meal and the state of agni). This is why regular mealtimes are such a big part of the Ayurvedic lifestyle. Overactive agni incinerates everything quickly and its sharp quality can eventually damage the tissues of your digestive tract. Waste products from this hyper-metabolism can putrefy and become ama. In time, your body will try to put out the digestive fire in order to protect itself. This allows for ama to form, and can lead to a slow, dull agni. Later stages of absorption and assimilation will be affected and can cause imbalances in meta- bolic processes and tissue layers. Removing aggravating factors of fired-up foods and behaviors is often enough to get an overactive agni to simmer down. Eating while angry or stressed, pushing through hunger to finish a project, and overdoing coffee, alcohol, pickles, and chili peppers will feed the fire. An irregular agni produces partially digested food juice, which turns to ama in the gut. This type of agni does not digest food well in general, and it is common to have eyes that are bigger than your stomach. While you may not be eating large quantities of food, the result is as though you overate. Due to an irregular fire that is coming and going, this load of food remains and forms toxins. The rule is to increase the fire in a strategic, measured fashion. Training it with regular times and amounts of digestible foods will allow the agni to find its way back to balance, perhaps with the help of some digestive aids. Consistency is key, and forgetting to eat or willfully skipping meals when hungry will promote irreg- ular agni. AGNI: KNOW YOUR DIGESTIVE FIRE // 3 Know Your Agni Worksheet Circle the appropriate answers while thinking about your general state—not while overly stressed or traveling, for example (and if you are overly stressed or traveling most of the time—well, this will help). You may want to observe and answer the questions a few times over the course of a week or so, maybe keep a journal of your diet to help you see how often you are hungry, and how often you are eating.