Diving deep into the fascinating world of Ayurveda, Zoa and Sarah explore the concept of Ama, which can be thought of as the baggage we accumulate in our lives. Sarah DeBlock, founder of Soma Yoga Healing, shares her insights on how Ama isn't just physical; it can also be emotional or mental. They discuss how this accumulation can lead to imbalances and ultimately disease, making it crucial to recognize and address it early on. With a friendly and relaxed vibe, they emphasize the importance of being proactive about our health, suggesting simple practices like tongue scraping and mindfulness to keep Ama at bay. They also highlight how the changing seasons can influence our internal balance, reminding us that nature works in cycles to help us stay healthy. This episode is packed with practical tips and insights that empower listeners to take control of their health journey, making it a must-listen for anyone interested in holistic wellness.

Share this episode : https://sustain-your-vitality.captivate.fm/listen

Find Sarah DeBlock:

Soma Yoga (somayogahealing.com)

Instagram @ https://www.instagram.com/somayogaalx/

The Year of Sarah on Amazon (https://a.co/d/b21PGnI)

Find Zoa:

Zen and Vitality with Zoa (zenandvitality.com)

Intentional Vitality Retreats (intentional-vitality.com)

Music Credit goes to Lemon Music Studio at: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4XWZhZ32YrVV5lvpF7cr1E?si=tnbSklR7SJyPNKiHP4MbHA

Welcome to Sustain Your Vitality, the podcast that gives you a nurturing kick in the ass so you can take action every day to feel better, not older. Your lifestyle holds the power to change how you feel, and no matter your age or health issues, you are in the driver's seat.

I'm your host, Zoa Conner, functional wellness guide at Zen and Vitality with Zoa and retreat leader at Intentional Vitality Retreats.

I'm here to help you figure out how to lower your stress, increase your energy, put yourself into a healing state, boost your drive and pleasure in life, prevent disease, and feel the best that you ever have with no regrets later. Let's go.

So today we're joined for a conversation about Ayurveda with Sarah DeBlock. Sarah, would you like to introduce yourself?

Yes. Thank you for having me on. I am the founder of Soma Yoga Healing center or in Alexandria, Virginia.

And so we really focus on bringing Ayurveda into all of our yoga classes. And I trained in Houston at Rasa Yoga with Padma Shakti as well as with Yoga Veda Institute in Ayurveda.

Fabulous. And what do you spend your most time doing now, Ayurveda or yoga?

Well, in form and how I present it. Outwardly, I teach more yoga, but I'm always integrating Ayurveda concepts into everything I teach.

So when I do private lessons, you know, we may be calling it yoga therapy, but we're also looking at, you know, that person's body constitution and what food and lifestyle would make sense for them. And so on paper, it might look like yoga, but really I see them intertwined and inseparable. So maybe both all the time.

That's what it sounds like to me, too. Well, let's. Let's go on with our conversation.

Sounds great.

So today we're talking about the concept of, in Ayurveda, of Ama. And Sarah, you mentioned before we started recording that ama was your favorite concept. Tell me why and what it is for you.

Yeah. So ama is an accumulation, or, you know, with any Sanskrit word, there's always more than one English translation.

But accumulation is the number one word I think of. And that can be a physical accumulation, emotional or thoughts.

Accumulation could even be physical outside of our body, like if we are hoarders or of some. Of everything or some object in our home. And Ayurveda says that ama is the root cause of all disease.

And I really like this concept because I think it really empowers us to be able to catch disease earlier on at early stages.

Because we can watch for accumulation in our life, and it just gives us really clear signs of when something is out of balance so that we can be empowered to take the steps we need to get back in balance.

I really like the word accumulation, too, because it doesn't imply that you've done anything wrong. It just implies that you have had a lot of exposure to things and are carrying them with you. So it's kind of like your baggage. Right.

And even if we don't think we're carrying baggage or toxins or accumulating trash, we know we are right. It doesn't matter whether you travel or stay home. You still make trash when you make food. Right. And inside of your body, it's the same thing.

Just from being alive and just from being out there in the world, you're going to accumulate ama. The question is, how much do you hold on to and accumulate versus be able to get rid of.

Yes. And the, like, awareness of it and the decision to make sure it is processed right is like how.

Yeah, those are the decisions we get to make, which is so beautiful. I do like your concept of it's not always that we made a decision. You know, sometimes it is.

Sometimes it is that I chose to eat 10 cookies, but I knew I should have had one. But other times it is exposure. And then how do we handle that exposure?

And one of my favorite concepts of Ayurveda is like, how the seasons change and rotate and how, you know, if you're in spring, like we do happen to be right now, you may just be exposed to it in an accumulation of pollen and different things out in the world.

But Ayurveda says if you, like, start balanced and you go through the season, that the season will change right when you need it so that the accumulation reduces from that season and the other one begins. And so even the seasons themselves, as they rotate, are helping us never accumulate too much so that we stay healthy.

And I think that's such a beautiful cycle of Mother Nature. Yeah.

I was just talking about this with one of my clients yesterday when she came into this to my studio and was saying, you know, oh, the pollen's killing me. You know, I'm having a hard time breathing and I'm having a hard time with my eyes. And I was like, wow.

Let's just keep in mind that, you know, the earth in springtime is just trying to get plants to grow, trying to make food for us to be able to, you know, eat and keep ourselves alive and feeling good so we don't want to be mad at Mother Nature for doing those things. But we don't need to have pollen getting stuck in our noses either. Right. So we don't want to stop the pollen.

We do want to stop our holding onto it because it's causing problems with our body. So how do we know if we're holding on to more ama than we can handle that, I believe?

Well, one, obviously, if we're like really feeling stressed, heavy fatigued are really good signs because it's always good to look at our thoughts and emotion before going straight to changing our diet.

But, you know, if you at the end of the day feel like I can't do anything after work, like I only have energy to be on the couch, that might be showing that there's been an accumulation of thoughts that day and or emotions. And then also, of course, our physical body shows us when we can't identify it right away ourselves intellectually.

And so our tongue is a really good way to see it. If you.

And as this kind of strange, maybe if you're new to Ayurveda, but if you stick your tongue out and look at it in the morning, if you have a coating on it, often it's white, but it could also be yellow or a bluish. It can depend on what doshik imbalance. But if there's a very large coating on your tongue can be a sign of accumulation.

And tongue scraping is definitely a habit that Ayurveda recommends every morning or other physical symptoms. It could be acne, it could be maybe constipation.

But if you're starting to see different buildups within your own body on symptoms, that is also a sign that there could be ama. Yeah.

And that tongue activity in the morning is super interesting is if you think about it from a scientific viewpoint, you know, the tongue coating relates to toxins or bacterial products that were created from your oral microbiome. Right. Which relates to tooth health, gum health, heart health. Right. So just. Just scraping the tongue off in the morning, is that enough?

I mean, it's a sign. Right, but is it a sign that you just scrape it off and be done with it in the morning?

Or is there is that indications that you have more work to do than just that?

Yeah, I would definitely indicate there's more work to do than simply tongue scraping. There are daily habits that Ayurveda recommends for proactive and tongue scraping would be a proactive.

But if you've already got a large coating on your tongue, that would mean that there are probably further steps you need to do. And, you know, if it is physically accumulating. Fasting is often, you know, one of the first steps that Ayurveda would say, but not in this sense.

You know, I think sometimes in America when we say fasting, we think, oh, I've got to do like a 7 or 21 day fast. That's too extreme. Even like a half day or one day would be enough.

And the reason for that is we don't want to start taking certain herbs or we don't want to be trying to grab for different substances to put in our body if there's already an accumulation that's not helpful for us inside. And so it's almost like it doesn't help to put the world's best medicine on a bunch of accumulated sticky gunk already. Right.

It's like clear the system, let it reset, and then what you put in, it'll truly be able to digest fully and bring you the energy that is intended when we eat.

Well, you know, the wonderful thing about fasting is that we actually all fast every single day. It's called sleep, because most of us are not eating while we sleep. There's that, you know, that hazard of choking.

The question is, how much longer can you extend that fasting period, which is a time of cleansing and healing beyond just your sleeping hours. Right. So this is where that two to three hours before bedtime makes that time longer.

You can process the food, get rid of the things you don't want, where waiting in the morning for a bit before you start taking in more food can help. And that just gives you less time to be holding on to your AMAs and more opportunity to get rid of it.

Yeah. And if it's in the early stages of ama, the not eating three hours before bed might be all that's needed. Right.

If you're currently eating right up to bedtime, that might be enough to change the trajectory to give that space, which is fantastic. Yeah.

And I've had clients say exactly that to me.

You know, when we did a little bit of a fasting work together and we just had them push their dinner a little bit earlier so they had that full three hour window. They were like, wow, I sleep, sleep so much better. I feel so much more energized in the morning.

That was like something so simple could make such a big difference. And it's all because they were able to get rid of their AMAs that they didn't need.

Yeah. It really can bring a lot of fatigue. Right. If we can get less ama, we can Just feel so much more vibrant.

I think one of the main indicators we can all ask ourselves as well with that is am I getting hungry at the right time? So if you're wondering, do I have ama? If you're feeling the hungry hunger pains at the three times a day you eat, and that's regular.

Also if you're going to the bathroom at the same time every day, hopefully the morning, but even if it's once a day at the same time, those are really good indicators that you are in health.

But if you start to not feel those hunger pains, if you start to go to the bathroom too little or too much, those could also be signs that something has become off balance.

But that's where you want to work with someone who knows a little bit more about the body and Ayurveda, because that could be more related to your agni or more related to your ama. And the question is, what do you do about it? Right. There's where you need a little bit more help, but you know that something's off.

Exactly. Yeah.

It's good to just have those questions because if you do answer, you know, yes, that's happening, then that would be, you know, a sign to listen to your body and get support.

But it's not always about what you eat. Right. It's about other things too. It could be about the water you're drinking or the quality of your air or many other things. Right.

What other things besides food can create ama that you have to hopefully get rid of and otherwise start to feel poorly because you're holding on to what else besides food?

Almost anything could create it. Right. And depending on how we are bringing it in. But you know, I think one of the major ones we see today is overthinking or over talking as well.

And you know, because it's really how we process our thoughts and emotion impacts everything, but especially our physical body and our mental and physical state. And so, you know, right now we live in a world where there's sometimes not a lot of space.

Maybe you worry about your to do list your circumstances, you go to work, you solve problems, and then in any free space, we're scrolling on social media or we're talking to someone and if we are just constantly input, input, input, input, and we're not giving ourselves any space where the brain gets to just be, or where we get to be silent and not talk. Because also talking is using our life force, our, our prana.

And so if we're cramming every little space and trying to make every Little space, either productive or entertaining. That is going to increase AMA as well.

It's going to be hard for our body to work in the rhythms that it's meant to if we're constantly giving it stimulus.

I have an interesting story here.

It's very common that I have a new client come into my studio or meet with me virtually, and one of the first things I have them do is I just want to watch them breathe. Right. It's a stress response. When your chest is tight, we can check the engagement of your abdominal muscles.

I can check to see how much you're able to take in to get oxygen for your brain. And oftentimes I'll tell them, like, you're just gonna lay back in the rocking chair or lay back in your chair and breathe.

And they take one breath, and they go, okay, now what? I'm like, we're gonna take a second breath. You're actually gonna take 10 breaths. And they're breathing like, oh, it feels really shallow. Or it feels.

It feels really small. And like, hello. Just. Just breathe. Don't talk, because you can't talk when you breathe.

And when they actually stop and just take 10 breaths, they feel so much better, and the weight of the world has come off their chest and shoulders. Would you call that a release of unneeded amma?

Yes, I think that's the start of it. And I really think that is like the grounding of the nervous system so that the body can process what we're taking in.

So, yes, once we ground the nervous system, then our body.

Well, because, you know, if we go back to fight or flight, especially if we're in fight or flight, that signals to our body to literally shut down anything that's not essential, which is can. Which is also digestion.

And so when we let the nervous system get grounded again, then our body can process everything that's coming in so that it doesn't accumulate. And I do. I'm so glad you brought up breath, because I think that is one of. No, I will say the most powerful healing tool.

To me, that is, like, number one most powerful healing tool that we have.

And it is an awesome healing tool. And it's funny because, you know, people breathe all day long, but they don't have to think about it.

And so when they do get to think about it and make a shift, they make a shift in all kinds of wonderful ways for themselves.

Absolutely. Your story reminded me of how I recently was asked to come to an elementary school and do a short meditation for the teachers.

And we did just a three minute breathing exercise before loving kindness meditation. And one of the teachers said, I came in with such a bad headache and it's completely gone.

And it was reminding me of, you know, even, you know, something like a headache can be cured by a short breathing exercise sometimes. And you know, a headache in a way is. Is AMA or an accumulation of something as well. Yeah.

Your brain is definitely giving you a message when you have a headache that it's dealing with too much and it needs to release something. That would definitely be ama to me.

Yes.

So there's tons of ways that your self care practices can help you reduce your ama. And it's not just about preventing it from coming into you, it's also about not holding on to it. Right. Because of that accumulation concept. Right.

Releasing things that you don't need, things that no longer serve you. And it could be digestion, it could be thoughts, it could be stale breath.

Yes. And I think that's an important concept is it's like what am I taking in and what am I releasing?

And it's always, there's never just one, you know, one thing to anything. Right. And it's looking at the whole cycle and making sure that we're looking at the whole cycle. So I'm glad you brought that back up on both sides.

And it's a balance. Right.

If you don't have a lot coming in, you don't have a lot that you have to hold on to and then you don't have to worry about releasing it very much.

But the more you have coming in, the more you have to release, otherwise it accumulates with you and you've got this intense AMA that you is causing you to feel uncomfortable in many ways.

Yes.

And if we choose to set ourselves up to take in more, like maybe we choose to take on a large challenge or dream in life, then that comes back to digestive fire that we may also need to then make sure we're increasing our digestion. Right. So that we don't hold on to it, that it does digest and pass through.

Right.

Because in order to be resilient, in order to make wonderful things happen for yourself and in the world, you need to be able to process, digest, and get rid of what you don't want to hold on to.

Yes. And I think that's just such an important concept that we don't need to make our lives smaller because there's a lot coming in.

It's how do I make myself stronger and more resilient? And that you'll still be able to live the big life that you want to live, even if.

Absolutely. Yeah. And that's going to vary person to person, day to day, but focusing on supporting yourself rather than minimizing the world around you.

That's the key. Awesome. Well, this has been a delight. Thank you so much for joining us, Sarah, and please tell us how people can find you.

Yes, I am with Soma Yoga Healing center in Alexandria, Virginia and it would be fantastic if you're local that you can come visit, but you can find us@somayogahealing.com and on Instagram soma soma yoga alx and if you want to hear more about my story and how I got to this point of teaching yoga and Ayurveda, I hope you'll check out my new memoir, the Year of Sarah From Heartbreak to Healing. Sorry. From Heartbreak to Happy and the Long Distance in between. And that is linked on my website. It's also on all online platforms.

That's fabulous. I didn't even know you had a memoir out.

Yes, it came out in February, so pretty recent and it has been a fun journey.

Fabulous. And I'll put all the links to those in the show notes. Thank you Sarah.

Thank you.

If the Sustain Your Vitality podcast is helping you understand what you need to feel fabulous in every way with the least amount of effort, please share the show with someone who also needs it. Sharing is easy, just use the sharing link in the show notes.

The Sustain Your Vitality Podcast is a gift from Zen and Vitality with Zoa LLC and Intentional Vitality Retreats based in the State of Maryland, usa. All the podcast things, planning, recording, editing, producing have all been done by me, Zoa Connor, PhD.

Even though you can call me doctor, I'm not a medical professional and your safety is your responsibility.

By listening to this podcast and understanding that any movement, nutrition, lifestyle or health protocols discussed, you are agreeing to take full responsibility for your actions. Zen and Vitality with Zoa are not responsible for any injuries or issues that may occur.

This podcast is intended for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for personalized medical, wellness, nutrition, lifestyle or movement and fitness advice. Always practice any fitness or movement related activities in a safe environment.

I make no claims about the effectiveness of the techniques or protocols discussed for you or any specific results that you may achieve. I recommend you consult with your healthcare professional before changing your diet, exercise, routine or healthcare plan.

Zen and Vitality with Zoa and the guests of this podcast are not liable for any injuries or health problems that may arise from following the information presented.