Spring It On

This Ayurvedic prescription for springtime health will help you leap from winter to spring with grace and ease.

By Scott Blossom

While the best way to circulate prana in your legs is by engaging them willfully, the best way to circulate prana in the internal organs is to engage in conscious relaxation. Try to combine the complementary actions of willful effort with relaxation in each breath. As you inhale, guide awareness into your pelvis and legs, refining the qualities of muscle tone, circulation, and stability. As you exhale, hold your lower body steady and imagine a wave of relaxation moving up along your spine. As you do this, pay special attention to your upper back, heart, throat, lungs, and brain.

Turn Up the Heat
According to the principles of Ayurveda, a healthy digestive agni, or "fire," is key for health. Agni gives us the physical power of digestion as well as the energy to digest our sensory impressions, thoughts, and feelings. A strong agni is thought to arm you with the discrimination and courage to separate what is essential from nonessential, healthy from toxic, wise from foolish.

Strong agni prevents you from producing ama, a heavy residue left in the body when you experience or consume things you can't assimilate or completely digest. Noted Ayurvedic physician Vasant Lad describes ama as a "morbid, toxic, sticky substance…that is the root cause of many diseases." Unlike kapha, which is a natural by-product of metabolism, ama is a poison. It contributes to fatigue, weakened immunity, inflammation, cravings, and depression. If left unchecked, it can lead to more serious conditions such as obesity and heart disease. (For information on ama and springtime allergies, see "Sneeze-Free, Naturally,".)

The recipe for balancing kapha includes stoking agni in your practice, your breathing, and your diet. To produce agni in your practice, you must generate tapas, or inner heat. You build this heat by doing strong standing poses, all kinds of Sun Salutations, and backbends, which pump prana throughout your body. The prana acts like a bellows and gradually builds the heat of tapas.

You support and sustain tapas mentally by concentrating on your breath. Try practicing Uddhiyana Bandha Kriya, a traditional cleansing practice. When you suspend the breath after you exhale, it encourages your mind to focus, which stabilizes the flame of agni. Likewise, creating a smooth, rhythmic breath while performing postures, particularly Sun Salutations, is key for maintaining concentration and ensuring that prana spreads heat equally through your body.

But don't confuse inner heat with outer heat—a sweat-drenched yogi is not necessarily the poster child for tapas. When you breathe this way, you actually sweat less because the heat stays inside. This inner heat melts the kapha and breaks down ama in your tissues so your body can eliminate it. If your breathing is erratic or forced, it will disturb both sukha and agni; as a result, kapha and ama won't budge—and may even increase slightly.

You will know when you've created enough tapas if, after practice, you feel light, warm, and invigorated, with an alert mind, clear senses, and fluid emotions throughout the day. Or you can follow Lad's advice to exercise to half your capacity, just until you feel sweat on your forehead, under your armpits, and along your vertebral column. How soon this happens into your practice will vary and will increase as you build strength. To keep the momentum of tapas going, it's important to be consistent this time of year. Showing up regularly on your mat ensures your body will get what it needs for a gentle, gradual reduction of excess kapha, and your mind will wake up from the fog of wintertime habits.

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