Today, Zoa and special guest Sarah DeBlock, founder of Soma Yoga Healing Center, dive into the fiery world of Agni in Ayurveda! Agni, which means fire, is all about how we digest not just our food but everything else in life—like media, conversations, and even our environment. Think of it as the engine that keeps us running smoothly and feeling awesome! We chat about how to keep that fire balanced because, let’s face it, too much or too little can lead to some digestive drama. So whether you’re feeling bloated, anxious, or just a bit off, we’ve got tips to stoke your inner flame and help you feel like a rockstar again!

Takeaways:

> Agni is like the engine of our body, driving health, energy, and vital digestion.

> Understanding agni helps us digest not just food but also our life experiences and emotions.

> A balanced agni can handle all types of input, whether it's food or media; it's all connected!

>When dealing with stress, boosting our self-care is key to maintaining a healthy agni.

> Signs of low or high agni can manifest in various symptoms, from bloating to skin issues.

> Fasting can reset our digestive fire when we feel unbalanced, but it should be done wisely.

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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 going to talk about the concept in Ayurveda of agni. So agni is also known as fire and digestion. And, Sarah, what other words do you come right to your mind when we talk about agni?

Oh, I see agni as almost like the engine of our body and health, vitality, energy, and then of course, you know, digestive fire.

So those are really important things for feeling really awesome all day long and all throughout your life. So we know that for agni and this fire concept and digestive concept, is it only digestion of food?

No, that's the amazing thing about agni. And I think one of the best ways to apply Ayurveda is to think of it way beyond the food and the herbs.

But you know, Agni is about how do we digest the media we're intaking, the books we're reading, how the relationships, what are we talking about, is it uplifting, beneficial conversations, are we gossiping? And even our environment, music, everything we intake we are digesting and Agni is supporting us.

Yeah, so our Agni supports everything that we take into the body and have to process. Which means that sometimes we are overstimulated and sometimes we are under stimulated.

But is that more a matter of whether we have enough acne to balance what we're taking in or is that always just an intake problem?

Yeah, so Agni is not always an intake problem. I think that's one of the best ways to start to heal it is like how much am I intaking?

But if we had a really strong Agni we could intake anything, right? Like if, if our agni is healthy we could digest everything. And that's the empowering thing.

Like even when people talk about pollution in the air, of course we don't want pollution in the air. But if we have a strong Agni, we're going to be able to digest that and process it and still be healthy.

Or the issue arises, is it part our digestifier? Agni is too low or too high. So our own fire can actually be in either direction.

And if it's too high, so you know, you could actually have an over reactive or overacting agni and that could be heartburn or show up in a myriad of ways, but it can actually be in either direction. And so there's always that balance we're looking for in Ayurveda.

So for each of our individual human bodies, right, we have stimulation and life and food and everything to digest and we have to have enough fire to balance that.

And so if we're, if we're feeling unbalanced and we've got, you know, bloating symptoms or not getting that great daily poo or having problems with our skin, maybe just really the world is tiring us as well. How do we know? Should we take away something that we're trying to digest and take in?

Do we need to reduce our exposure or how do we know if we need to boost our internal agni?

Yes, definitely recommend it. There's a lot of symptoms, definitely meet with a practitioner.

But on the overall concept, almost always some kind of fast can be a good thing for a reset. So you know, if you have a low one, you don't want to do a long fast.

You may even need to have a liquid fast and still be Taking in food or even kitri, like kitri you could consider like a berry. Well, it's lentils and, and rice with spices in it. But you could even just think what is a really easily digestible plain food.

So if you have a low agni, it's like, how do I eat? Just for a while, just very simple, very plain and let the fire kind of rekindle, almost see it like you're giving it kindling wood.

But if it's really high, doing more of like a liquid fast or a one day fast, and that's going to just naturally help your digestive system reset and do what it knows how to do and work it's inner genius. But I would say like when it's too high, to me that's sometimes like okay, maybe we've overfed it. Like let's reduce, you know, my media intake.

Let's try not having as many desserts or caffeine or whatever. You know, personally you've overdone. And when it's too low, there's still somewhat of that fasting concept.

But thinking it as it is, nourishing myself with very easily digestible foods, and I would say that would be one of the first places that we can all start no matter what our constitution is.

One of the things that always interests me is that sometimes you might be experiencing digestive symptoms which could be low or high agni, depending on what's going on, but they're not associated with the foods you're eating.

Yeah.

So it's easy to blame, well, I had that food or I didn't have that food, but maybe it's what else you're digesting in the world. Maybe it's the conversation that you had to digest yesterday, or maybe it's the fact that you spent too much time listening to the news.

You know, other things to digest that are not strictly food and gut health related, but that the agni is connected between them.

Absolutely. Because everything starts in the mind. Right. So our, our thoughts create an emotion and that emotion creates a physical effect.

And so, you know, sometimes we go at solving our digestive fire with the food, but it's really starts in the, in the mind with our thought. And so you're absolutely right.

And I think something we can all relate to is maybe you have an event in your life that makes you nervous and you start feeling those butterflies in your stomach. And it's like those butterflies could then turn into gas in the stomach or, or maybe even like some kind of digestive issue.

But it didn't start because you ate. Ate something and had food poisoning, Right. It might have been because you had a public speaking event and that made you really nervous.

And it's the same with any thought in our life that a lot of times reducing stress and getting grounded through whatever means, meditation or, you know, one of the most beautiful things in Ayurveda is abhyang, an oil massage. But really getting the nervous system grounded will be one of the best ways to help our digestifier.

And a lot of times people that I work with and probably that you also work with, Sarah, you know, we're. We're strong, independent women. We feel confident that we can handle stress, that we can make all the things happen.

And yet our bodies give us messages that we try really hard to ignore, because that must be something that doesn't impact what I can make happen in the world. Right? So I've always been, you know, here's an example person. I've always been someone who can handle stress really well.

You know, I'm great under pressure. But like these digestive discomforts, I've, you know, I've had them for 10, 20 years, but I handle stress really well.

That person is feeling some symptoms of an imbalanced agni, Right. And they might be thinking that they handle stress well, but their body might be disagreeing with them.

Absolutely. And I think both can be true. I think we can be strong, independent women who handle stress well.

But at the same time, if you're living that really full, vibrant life, every time you go to a new level, you're dealing with a different magnitude of stress that you personally have never managed before. And so, you know, you're stressed.

If you're a CEO, you're handling stress well in the sense that you've really created a big life for yourself and have really held a big space, but that level that you're at is still new. And so if your body is talking to you with digestive issues, it is telling us, hey, there is more to learn.

There is more to learn about grounding the nervous system at this new level.

And so I think a lot of times we might push away those symptoms and ignore them, because maybe we associate it with failing or shame or I'm supposed to be stronger than this. But I think if we can look at it as, what if both can be true?

What if I am really strong and really incredible and my body is telling me that I am stressed and I need to listen to it?

And I think our full power comes when we do listen to the body and One of my favorite like quotes, I don't have the exact quote, but one of my favorite kind of things that RVA teaches is that disease can be a blessing.

And what it means by that is when those physical symptoms come up and it really does show itself in our body, it's showing us what we didn't know consciously. And so it's giving us that gift of like, maybe we weren't consciously aware that we were stressed about something, but the body's letting us know.

And I think it's important in that context to remind listeners that doesn't mean you are being taken down the notch by your body. You're not being removed from your ability to make those wonderful things happen and to keep your life vibrant and exciting.

What you are being encouraged to is to also add in the fact that your body needs care and your resilience might need to go up. So you might handle stress well in your mind, but not in your body as well. And things can build up and start to deplete you. Right.

And so that kind of gets us an idea that maybe your agni is something that needs to be supported at more times in your life than other times. Right. If you're dealing with more stress or more inputs, then you're going to need a higher agni level.

Right.

But your agni changes, it changes throughout the day, it changes throughout your life.

So the low agni periods are times when you're going to need a little bit more help and support of maintaining a high enough level or you're going to need to decrease something that you have to digest, right?

Absolutely.

So as we age, our agni changes, right? It goes down.

Yes, yes, it can for sure. So what there's practices we can do to, to keep ourselves healthy.

But absolutely we're changing, like you said, in all the cycles, daily, seasonally and by age.

So if someone's looking to just create kind of a maintenance plan for their agni, it's not going to work, is it?

If they're already imbalanced, yeah, a simple maintenance won't be enough.

And you know, you mentioned that word resilience and I think this is what really can set people apart is when you are handling a lot more obstacles or challenges, you also need to up your self care and I think you use that word too and absolutely. That's where I think the most resilient people increase both at the same time.

But probably like what we think is common sense would be, oh, I'm dealing with all these obstacles, I'm just going to lower my other responsibilities and like I'll do self care when this is over and that's when we're not going to be able to continue on that full, full, vibrant path. And resilience comes and you know the people who really go far, they know to step both up at the same time.

Absolutely.

When you have more stress or you're making big changes in your life or in the world, that is the best time to up your self care and that will support both your agni and your vibrancy in life. This was a great conversation. Thank you so much Sarah. I look forward to having you back.

Thank you.

So Sarah, thank you so much for joining us for these Ayurveda related episodes 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 somayoga 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.

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