The Exercise Agni Connection
As we round out our series on exercise, let’s take a look at why it is so important to break a sweat from an Ayurveda perspective. But first, if you missed Week One’s post with specific tips for exercising in the summer, you can find it HERE. If you missed Week Two’s exercise by the dosha post, you can find it HERE.
What is Agni?
Let’s start with reviewing arguably the most important concept in all of Ayurveda, Agni. In fact, agni was considered so important by the authors of the ancient vedic texts, that they made it the very first word of the Rig Veda.
So what exactly is it? Well, at a high level, we can think of agni as our body’s digestive fire. It is in charge of digesting and assimilating all the “foodstuff” we consume. **Foodstuff includes anything we intake… from the food we eat to the media we consume to the interactions we have. Agni is also the intelligence that decides what to hold onto and digest or what needs to be eliminated.
Other functions of agni include maintaining our body temperature and determining the complexion, glow, and luster of our skin. From a mental perspective, it determines our alertness and is what gives us clarity, strength and vitality.
Why We Want Strong Agni
When agni is weak or impaired, we don’t have the digestive capacity to fully process the foodstuff we consume. This unprocessed foodstuff is what we call Ama in Ayurveda and it gets stored in our tissues to be processed later. Stored ama can wreak havoc by blocking the body from functioning fully. It further dampens agni leading to lessened digestive capacity which leads to more ama and can eventually lead to dis-ease.
To highlight the importance of agni and ama on our wellbeing, my teacher said the following: Ama is the root of all disease. And impaired agni is the root of all disease.
When agni is strong and balanced, however, we are fully capable of processing what we consume and we have the space to process the stored ama. Woo hoo!
The Dhatus
For this exercise conversation, the next concept to understand are The Dhatus..
Ayurvedic Anatomy is different from western anatomy in the way that it organizes by tissues (known as Dhatus) and processes (known as Srotas) and not by organs.
There are 7 Dhatus (tissue-types) in Ayruveda:
Rasa which is related to lymph and plasma
Rakta, which is related to the red blood cells
Mamsa is the muscle tissue
Medas is fat tissue
Ashti is the bone
Majja is related to marrow and our nervous system
Shukra (male-sexed) or Artava (female-sexed) is the reproductive tissue
Every dhatu (tissue) in our body contains agni. As a matter of fact, every cell of every dhatu has agni that gives it the ability digest and assimilate what it needs and eliminate what it does not. Dis-ease appears when our agni is diminished and the cell no longer has the ability to process “food” or the intelligence to determine what is food vs what needs eliminated. In both of those cases, ama is created.
Ayurveda does understand that most disease starts in the digestion system and we absolutely want to keep our digestive agni strong. Click HERE for digestive agni tips. But it is just as important to keep the agni in our tissues strong and balanced and our tissues ama-free!.
How to Improve Dhatu (Tissue) Agni
Rasa -> Break a sweat daily, self massage, movement
Rakta -> Aerobic exercise to increase oxygen demand
Mamsa -> Stretching and strength training
Medas -> Sweating
Ashti -> Weight bearing exercise
Majja -> Stress reduction, pranayama, mediation, gentle asana, savasana
Shukra or Artava -> Will be balanced when rest are balanced
As you can see, movement and exercise are important components of keeping our tissue agni strong and balanced! Hooray exercise! Of course, just like with everything, we can have too much or too fiery agni. So be sure to exercise for your dosha and balance your activity with rest and rejuvenative practices.
Until next week,
My love and balanced 🔥 my friend!
Megan
