Agni: Tending the Digestive Fire
”All disease begins with weak agni” — Ayurvedic saying
I recently had a client who suffered from irritable bowels, which sent him rushing to the restroom multiple times throughout the day with loose and partial stools.
Yep, we’re going there.
From a modern western point of view, he was doing everything right: He had already eliminated processed foods, took a daily probiotic, and had a morning smoothie with berries, spinach, chia seeds, and protein powder. He kept hydrated and had experimented with eliminating gluten and dairy.
I suggested he replace his cold smoothie with cooked oatmeal and to replace his cold water with warm water (or hot ginger tea). When I saw him the following week, he was elated to report his digestive problems had vanished overnight! How could this simple change yield such a miraculous result? The answer is in understanding your agni, a central concept in Ayurveda not yet widely recognized in modern medicine.
You’re not what you eat, you’re what you digest
Agni is the Sanskrit word for "fire." In Ayurveda, the most important fire in the body is your digestive fire, called Jatharagni. Keeping this fire consistent and unhampered is central to your overall health. It guarantees food is digested properly, leading to effective absorption of nutrients and elimination of the rest.
A well-tended digestive fire leads not only to good digestion, but also stable energy levels, robust immunity, and a clearer mind. So how does Ayurveda teach us to keep our agni strong?
Consistent Meal-Timing
Our bodies love predictability. Keeping a consistent waking and bedtime schedule regulates your body’s internal clock (circadian rhythm). This regularity works wonders for overall health and energy by supporting regulated hormone levels — including cortisol, dopamine, serotonin, testosterone, and melatonin.
Similarly, our agni functions best with regular and predictable meal times. By eating meals at regular times, our organs learn when to expect food and prepare to digest it by increasing stomach acid, bile, and enzymes. Ayurveda recommends having lunch as the largest meal, with the agni’s strength mirroring the height of the sun. In Chinese Medicine, breakfast (taken from 7-9am) is suggested as the largest meal.
Both, however, recommend a smaller dinner taken at least 2-3 hours before bed to allow digestion. Heavy dinners late at night ask the body to use energy digesting that could instead be used toward deep rest and repair.
Why Warmth Matters
One of the simplest ways to support agni is with warmth. Think of your stomach like a cauldron, cooking down your food. You want to keep it heated so digestion can easily take place. Cold causes tissues to contract, constricting circulation and slowing metabolic processes.
This is why Ayurveda favors warm, cooked meals instead of raw and cold ones. Favor cooked soups and stews over smoothies and salads, whose cold qualities dampen the fire and burden your stomach. This is especially vital in colder months, when the sun’s influence is lessened.
The same goes for hydration. Drinking lots of cold liquid before or after eating dilutes digestive enzymes and cools the fire when it is most needed. However, sipping warm water or tea during meals can support digestion.
In addition to temperature, Ayurveda also recognizes some foods and herbs have a warming effect on the body. Ginger, black pepper, cinnamon, fennel, cumin, coriander, and cardamom are energetically warming spices that have been used for centuries to improve digestion and absorption. You know how most Indian restaurants have those bowls of fennel seeds sitting at the register? They not only serve as a tasty breath freshener, but are also excellent digestive aids!
Remember the client with irritable bowels? In addition to replacing smoothies, I suggested he drink ginger tea made by adding a few slices of ginger root and boiling water to a thermos. The warmth in both temperature and energetics helped kindle his agni back to strength, so that the healthy foods he was already eating could be transformed into nourishment for tissues.
Additional Ayurvedic guidance for supporting agni:
Start your morning with a glass of warm water (can add a pinch of salt, lemon juice, and/or ginger powder).
Eat until satiated, about 70% full. Too much fuel on the fire at one meal smothers it.
Constant snacking or eating meals too close together adds new food on top of partially digested food, slowing digestion. Wait three hours between meals and avoid constant snacking.
Favor easy-to-digest foods over heavy, greasy meals.
Walking after meals helps with digestion and reduces insulin spikes. A brisk block after dinner helps you sleep better!
Eat in a peaceful state of mind.
Keep the body upright during and after meals.
Find ways to manage stress, which can cause chronic digestive issues. Meditation and yoga are gold-standard Ayurvedic tools.
Learn about incompatible food combinations in Ayurveda (like dairy and sour fruits) and gradually adjust your diet.
In conclusion
When clients tell me that they start their day with a smoothie, drink lots of cold water throughout the day, and still struggle with IBS, low energy, or bloating, I find simple changes often produce the greatest results.
Build the strength of agni and regulate its burn. Eat at consistent times. Favor warmth over cold. Tend to your agni, and your overall health will undoubtedly improve. When digestion works well, your body absorbs nutrients, eliminates waste, and frees up energy for deeper healing.
The Ayurvedic Doshas: Vata, Pitta, and Kapha
The system of Ayurveda (ayur = life, veda = knowledge, “the science of life”) developed in India over 5,000 years ago and is rooted in the Vedas, making it possibly the oldest continuously practiced tradition of healing. Ayurveda and Yoga are considered sister sciences, in that they arise from the same philosophical lineage and are both technologies for cultivating health, balance, and self-knowledge.
At its core, Ayurveda reflects universal laws of nature. It recognizes that the human body possesses an inherent intelligence that is constantly seeking balance, and its philosophy centers around preserving and promoting health and longevity as well as self-healing through restoring balance when disease arises. Living in a way that cooperates with these natural forces is the brilliance of Ayurveda. Life finds a way, and we are her stewards.
Health encompasses our various dimensions—physical, psychological, social, and spiritual well-being. And while Ayurveda can take a lifetime to master, learning some fundamental concepts and implementing simple lifestyle changes can have a dramatic positive effect on both physical and mental health.
Five Elements, Three Doshas
Ayurveda understands the universe—and the human body—as expressions of five elements: earth, water, fire, air, and space. These elements combine into three organizing principles, or biological energies, known as doshas: Vata (air+space), Pitta (fire+water), and Kapha (earth+water).
Each person is born with a unique constitutional blend of these three doshas, called their prakriti. This constitutional makeup remains stable throughout life (Take the Quiz: Discover your dominant Dosha). From an Ayurvedic standpoint, disease most often arises when an excess one or more dosha arises due to diet, lifestyle, emotional patterns, environment, or season. Ayurveda offers a way to recognize these imbalances and gently guide the system back toward equilibrium, in relation to one’s individual constitution.
Vata is composed of air and space, Pitta of fire and water, and Kapha of earth and water. Their qualities mirror the elements themselves. Vata governs movement, like the wind. Pitta governs digestion and metabolism, consuming like a fire. Kapha provides structure and lubrication, like soil and clay.
from wikipedia
Unlike modern Western medicine, which relies primarily on quantitative measurements such as lab values, Ayurveda is largely qualitative. Cold or hot, Dry or oily, heavy or light. Each dosha presents itself through certain physical qualities, or gunas, within your body. This is why an Ayurvedic assessment might include attention to things like the appearance of your tongue, skin, body frame, sleep, and even prominent emotions.
Rather than treating the symptoms, Ayurveda seeks to understand the underlying imbalance that gave rise to it. Two people with the same set of bothersome issues may receive very different treatments based on the nature of the imbalance.
The Three Doshas
Pitta, like fire, is hot, light, sharp and oily (oil burns). Pitta is responsible for digestion and appetite, body temperature, and the color and luster of the skin, eyes, and hair. Psychologically, it is associated with intelligence, reasoning, ambition, and courage.
People with a Pitta-dominant constitution often have strong digestion, moderate and muscular builds, and tend to run warm and sweat easily. When balanced, Pitta confers clarity and leadership. How does Pitta get aggravated? By things that increase its presence in the body: heat, spicy or oily foods, excessive sun exposure, and hot emotions like irritability or competitiveness. Out of balance Pitta can look like someone easily enraged, and who experiences inflammatory conditions like heartburn, acne, high blood pressure, and inflammatory arthritis.
Vata, like the wind, is cold, dry, light, rough, mobile, and irregular. It governs all movement in the body, including breathing, circulation, nerve impulses, and the movement of thoughts. Creativity, enthusiasm, and adaptability are hallmarks of balanced Vata.
Vata-dominant individuals often have slender frames, lighter bones, dry skin, cold hands and feet, and variable digestion. They may be sensitive to cold and prone to irregular appetite and sleep. When Vata becomes excessive, the mind races, which looks like anxiety, fear, scattered thinking, and nervous system disorders. Physical symptoms of too much Vata include constipation, stiffness, spasms, or chronic pain. Irregular schedules, excessive stimulation, cold foods, overexertion, and worry all tend to aggravate Vata.
Kapha, made of earth and water, is heavy, slow, cool, dense, soft, and oily. It provides structure, lubrication, immunity, and emotional steadiness. In balance, Kapha expresses as groundedness, strength, patience, contentment, and compassion.
Kapha-dominant people often have sturdy builds, smooth skin, strong endurance, and calm temperaments. When Kapha accumulates in excess, it can lead to lethargy, overattachment, depression, and resistance to change. Physically, excess Kapha can manifest as congestion, excess mucus, weight gain, and metabolic sluggishness. Kapha is aggravated by inactivity, overeating, heavy or cold foods, and excessive sleep, especially during the day.
Rhythms of Life
Each dosha also has rhythms tied to time of day and season.
The fiery Pitta is strongest during, you guessed it, summer! Guard against excess by avoiding excess heat (spicy foods, alcohol, fried foods, too much sun), incorporating cooling foods & herbs like cucumbers, melons, and mint, and emphasizing gentle movement and calming routines.
Air-like Vata, being cold and dry, is dominant in fall and winter. Consume warm cooked foods: soups, stews, root veggies, and oats, with warming spices: ginger, cinnamon, cumin, cardamom. Ground vata’s irregular quality with consistent meals and sleep. And stay well-oiled! Ayurveda recommends the practice of a daily self-massage with oil (abhyanga), eating ghee and other healthy fats, and lubricating the sinuses with oil. Videos for further instruction on self-oiling.
And the cold, heavy, Kapha peaks in spring, making spring’s keywords “lighten, dry, and stimulate”. Light, simple meals of bitter greens, legumes, barley, and steamed veggies, with stimulating spices such as black pepper, ginger, mustard seed, and turmeric. Favor more vigorous movement and reduce heaviness in the diet, limiting dairy, sweets, and fried foods.
These rhythms influence our experiences and may highlight flare-ups of imbalances, not just seasonally but also daily. For example, pitta-induced hot flashes or inflammatory insomnia may wake a person between 1 and 3am, whereas Kapha-related depression or heaviness may make getting out of bed in the morning especially difficult. Vata-related arthritis or worrying often worsens in the evening. These patterns act as warning signals, inviting us to study and align ourselves with the natural tides of life.
Making the Universal Personal
In the same way knowing your family history can help you anticipate and reduce health risks, understanding your constitution can help you recognize subtle forms of disharmony before they manifest as illness. A basic understanding of the doshas allows for small, practical shifts that gradually cultivate a healthier and more resilient body and mind.
As you can see, Ayurveda works from the framework that our body and mind are not distinct, but are intimately related. Modern science is learning of the importance of stress on health and the connection between our gut and brain. Ayurveda’s principles are equally applicable for balancing the mind and promoting mental health. Just managing a dosha imbalance through physical changes impacts the dosha’s corresponding emotional and mental manifestations.
Our environments matter too, from homes to our communities. Ayurveda recognizes that our surroundings influence our mental and physical health, a principle echoed in China’s feng shui. Time in nature (just two hours a week leads to better physical, mental, and emotional health), light, colors, scent, and flow in a space all influence how how we feel. A Vata constitution benefits from regularity and warmth (warming colors, scents, etc). Kapha benefits from stimulation and warm, bright colors. Pitta benefits from cooler colors and more softness.
Ayurveda offers an invitation into self-study. It encourages us to see ourselves not as isolated machines that can run on nutrient shakes in our own cubicles, but as living systems that are one with nature, in constant relationship with the natural world—the seasons, plants, animals, the planet, and the cosmos. It offers a framework for curiosity, experimentation, and care. Besides, what better place is there to explore the interplay of nature’s elements than within our own bodies? Ayurveda reminds us that nature is a worthy teacher—if we take the time to listen.
To your doshalicious life!
Luke
Footnote: Many of these ideas will sound familiar to readers steeped in Western traditions of medicine. Hippocrates, often considered the founder of modern medicine, echoed similar principles: “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” “It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of disease a person has.” “Natural forces within us are the true healers of disease.” “Everything in excess is opposed to nature.” “Wherever the art of medicine is loved, there is also a love of humanity.”
Breathing Part II: The Diaphragm, Fascia, and Structural Integration
In part 1, we explored how breathing is a primary source of energy, its direct effect on our nervous system and stress levels, and how breathing mobilizes all of the fluids in the body.
Now, let’s look at how our fascial system connects to our breathing, and how restrictions in that system can limit our ability to reap all the benefits a fully functioning diaphragm can deliver.
Understanding the Diaphragm
When we inhale, the lungs fill and the diaphragm moves down. As we exhale the air out of our lungs, the diaphragm rises. These pressure changes between the chest and abdominal cavities create a natural pumping action, moving fluids and gently massaging the organs.
Full, smooth breathing creates pressure changes that “pump” the organs like sponges, essential for their functioning and detoxification
The diaphragm is the myofascial divider between the upper and lower body. Our major blood vessels to the organs and lower body—the aorta and vena cava—pass through narrow openings in the diaphragm, as does the esophagus (with the vagus nerve hitching a ride). For blood, lymph, and nerve supply to flow freely, the diaphragm must move freely too.
The diaphragm is a muscular-and-fascial shelf in the body that blood and nerve must pass through
The lungs and heart are encased in fascia, and that fascia coats the diaphragm’s entire upper surface. If that fascia gets “sticky” and becomes restricted, it inhibits both lung expansion and diaphragm movement. So too with the lower surface of the diaphragm, from which eight organs hang via fascial connections. The liver, which is roughly the size of a football in adults, covers nearly half of the diaphragm’s underside. Compromised diaphragm movement or an overburdened liver can put a fascial “drag” on the other.
Compromised Function
By now we have seen how a properly functioning diaphragm is vital to our health and wellness.
Now, imagine what happens when the diaphragm can’t move fully. Breathing becomes shallow, stuck either in a partial “inhale” of fight-or-flight and adrenaline, or a partial “exhale” of fatigue and low energy. This can happen for many reasons: a respiratory infection that leaves fascial restrictions around the lungs, or prolonged stress that holds the diaphragm in tension and the system hasn't restored proper motion. It could be from years of sitting and old injuries that gradually limited movement.
Whatever the cause, the results are the same — higher stress, lower energy, impaired digestion, and a more favorable breeding ground for illness and disease. Restrictions in the diaphragm wreak havoc on overall health and wellness.
The good news is that your body knows how to find balance again. Gentle manual therapy helps the fascia release and the diaphragm move freely, restoring full, natural breathing. As breathing becomes more efficient, the nervous system down-regulates and the body’s fluids flow with greater ease. Better breathing means less stress, more energy, and greater health
Restoring Function
As a Structural Integration practitioner, my work is about helping your body remember how to function the way it was designed to. Dr. Rolf, the founder of Structural Integration, said, “In order to enhance function, appropriate form must exist or be created." Structure and function are inseparable. When structure is balanced, the body’s inherent health can express itself.
Through hands-on treatment, I help align the rib cage over the hips, creating a whole-body alignment for the diaphragm to easily descend and ascend through a balanced torso. Freeing up the fascia around the diaphragm and ribcage releases old compensation patterns and allows the body to find a new equilibrium.
A free diaphragm supports every system and improves overall health. The organs function better, improving digestion. Breathing becomes easier, improving mental clarity and vitality. Treating the diaphragm improves circulation and nerve conduction, often easing lower body conditions such as sciatica, plantar fasciitis, and neuropathy.
Conclusion
Treating the diaphragm is just one of many ways that focused, anatomy-informed manual therapy can restore the body's natural function. When we remove restrictions in the fascial system, we create the conditions for the body's innate self-healing capabilities to emerge, and health arises as its natural expression.
Images
By Pearson Scott Foresman - This image has been extracted from another file, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5553368
By OpenStax - https://cnx.org/contents/FPtK1zmh@8.25:fEI3C8Ot@10/Preface, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30131686
What’s So Important About Breathing?
“The way you breathe is the way you feel, and the way you feel is the way you live” -- Stig Severinsen, four-time world freediving champion
A Deep Dive on Breathing
In 2012, Danish freediver Stig Severinsen became the first person in the world to hold his breath for more than 20 minutes. And to make matters more fun, he broke the record while in a shark-filled tank! Now Stig trains peak performers from top athletes to Navy SEALs on what he calls the most under-appreciated biohack in the 21st century: breathing.
His feat is incredible, but Stig emphasizes that breathing is for everybody, and can be made simple! This article will look at the importance of breathing on virtually every aspect of health, how breathwork makes you healthier and happier, and a simple exercise you can do any time to consciously shift yourself out of stress and into health.
The Vital Importance of the Breath
Humans breathe about 25,000 times per day. Each breath draws in oxygen, our most fundamental, constant energy. Each exhale discards spent energy in the form of carbon dioxide, making breathing a primary source of detoxification.
Your brain uses a full 20% of your body’s oxygen, making the quality of breath directly related to cognitive function. What’s more, the rhythm of breathing directly regulates the vagus nerve, shaping stress response and emotional state.
Your breath’s rhythmic expansion and contraction gently mobilizes everything in the body, from massaging the digestive organs to pumping blood, lymph, and spinal fluid. The lungs and diaphragm’s movement is the pump, setting the body’s internal rhythms in motion.
To sum it up, breathing is a primary source of our energy, is directly related to stress levels and emotional regulation, and mobilizes all of our vital fluids in the body!
The Way You Breathe Matters: Change your Breathing, Change your Life
Although he’s an elite athlete, Stig jokes that he’s actually quite lazy, because to accomplish such amazing feats he essentially sleeps for 20 minutes. His point is that the more relaxed, chill, down to earth you can become, the smoother things tend to go and the better you can perform.
Of course, even the laziest of us still encounter stressors. While we can’t instantly change the world, we can change our internal state toward a relaxed, positive state simply by changing how we breathe. Let me explain.
When we breathe shallowly, rapidly, or through the mouth, our body shifts into high alert—the fight-or-flight nervous system. This triggers stress hormones like cortisol, which affect mood, sleep, digestion, inflammation, and immunity, keeping us in a heightened state of stress.
But the good news is that slow, deep breathing engages the “rest and digest” nervous system, taking the body back toward health and happiness. You don’t need to do two hours of yoga—you can practice breathing while at work, in the car, even before you get out of bed.
Breathing exercise: Relax on Demand (the 2:1 breath)
This exercise triggers the “rest and digest” nervous system by exhaling for twice as long as your inhale (2:1 ratio). The momentary pause at the top of the breath improves oxygenation to the brain and body. Try it out now for just 3 breaths on your own and notice how it makes you feel.
Breathe in with your nose (always!) to a slow count of 5
Hold the breath at the top for a few moments,
Exhale slow and controlled on a “sss” like a snake to a count of 10
Repeat
That’s it! With a bit of practice over time, you will start to shift your nervous system toward more easily relaxing on demand, and find yourself with more energy in daily life.
Stay tuned for part 2, where I’ll dive deeper into how structural bodywork can release restrictions and align your body to make the breath deeper and effortless.