Digestion
The Concept of Food in Ayurveda
WHAT IS AHARA? Ahara is one of the important pillars of Ayurveda. It means that it is one of the basic principles upon which health, happiness and harmony rests. It is concerned with diet and lifestyle and is essentially preventive in nature. It is not only the food that we consume, but also what each of the 5 senses (eyes-sight, nose-smell, ears-hearing, tongue-taste, skin-touch) absorb from all that they come into contact with. Our life revolves around food. We begin each day and end each day with some intake of food! Some of us live to eat and yet some eat to live! The first cry of a newborn is for nourishment from his/her mothers milk and touch. From the first moment of our lives, food is one of the most important ingredient for a healthy body and mind. In todays time, restaurants a...
Maintaining Good Digestion With Ayurveda – A Pillar of Good Health
Maintaining Good Digestion With Ayurveda According to Ayurveda, one of the main causes of all diseases is rooted in the impairment of the body’s main principle called Agni, the fire of digestion. A faulty fire leads to improper functioning of the tissue fires and can lead to poor synthesis of tissues. Visualize your digestion as a fire in the stomach; you need to provide the proper fuel and conditions so that it can burn optimally. If you dampen the fire or do not feed it, it will burn out. If you feed it too much or with the wrong fuel, it will burn too hot and be out of control. When Agni (fire of digestion) is strong, we are free from symptoms such as: Irregular appetite Bloating Loud or smelly gas Constipation Excessive burping Intense and unbearable hunger Abdominal cramping Aci...
Importance of Being Mindful While Eating
Avoid multitasking. We can only focus on one thing at a time. Charak Samhita , the ancient Ayurvedic text containing the conversation between the medical sage Atreya and his disciple Agnivesa, states that there is no multiplicity of the mind. The mind is only one and therefore only one sense faculty is motivated at a time; all sense organs are not active simultaneously. It may appear as if we can taste the food and at the same time watch television, however, this is not correct. In reality the various sense faculties are active in a consecutive order, and can be observed when attending to the subtleties of what happens while taking food. Food for Thought ~We are what we think. The importance of positive thinking is well-known and while eating we should pay attention to what thoughts and fe...
Agni: The Fire of Digestion
Agni: The Fire of Digestion In Ayurveda we place a strong emphasis on digestion. In fact, when treating illness, correcting the digestion is almost always the first line of treatment. Digestion is said to be the work of fire element in the body (called agni in Sanskrit). It is this fire that digests our food, provides us with warmth and produces the glow of good health. A properly nourished body with a balanced digestive fire aligns itself with nature and self-adjusts to weather the small shifts and ups and downs of daily life. In fact, sometimes just by improving digestion we can clear up stubborn health problems without any further treatment. On a bigger scale though, agni is the agent of all transformation. Agni provides our actual capacity to transform the food—and situations, thoughts...
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