Many of our morning routines have undergone radical changes in recent times, including the way we nourish ourselves. Maybe your hour-long commute on public transportation has become five steps from your kitchen to your home office, or maybe the quiet time you once had while your children were out at school has become a rallying of sleepy heads around devices and praying the WiFi will hold out for the next several hours. Eating a proper meal around the same time every day might have fallen to the wayside, especially if a work-from-home situation means all-day access to the pantry.
All of these changes and more have not only put a strain on our sense of routine, but the particular strain on morning and breakfast can be a recipe for imbalances indigestion. Over time, this can impact our ability to focus, our mood, and the health of all our body’s systems. How and when we “break the fast,” after a night’s worth of internal detoxification during sleep, is key to regulating our digestive fire, known as agni in Ayurveda.
Besides literally “cooking” our food through the fire element it comprises, agni is responsible for the transformation of all the things we take in through our senses—whether it’s the day’s calculus lesson, the instructions for a new project at work, or what we see on the news or social media. And when agni does not get fed at regular intervals—normally somewhere between three and five hours between meals, with around twelve between dinner and breakfast—it’s prone to get a little . . . finicky.
Read the recipe on The Alchemist’s Kitchen, published on September 1, 2021
