Wash your tongue, young man!

Every morning before I drink water, eat breakfast, or go back to sleep (mostly this one), I clean my tongue. According to Ayurveda, all diseases stem from the digestive system (from the tip of your tongue to the bottom of your colon). This is the reason why food is considered to be nourishment to ensure our bodies proper functioning, as well as medicine to help our bodies heal. In fact, according to Ayurveda, the tongue absorbs prana from food. So that’s reason enough to keep a clean tongue.
In a world where the “Live to Eat” motto has taken over (and eaten) the “Eat to Live” motto, we are in constant “damage-control” mode. The good news is that every little change counts.

During the night, our digestive systems work full force to digest food, selecting the good stuff and trying to get rid of the bad stuff. (I always imagine how one day, dead bodies will just stop decaying thanks to all the preservatives we ingest during our lives). Over time, Ama, which is the body’s toxicity, will accumulate in the weakest areas of our bodies and cause disease there. But during the night, Ama will also accumulate on the tongue. The tongue, by the way, is always a good indicator of the body’s current health or lack thereof. So, when you wake up in the morning and you have a coated pasty tongue, that’s Ama. The problem is that when we drink or eat without washing our mouths, we just re-ingest the toxic substance and it’s impossible for the body to digest it properly. Brushing your teeth is good, but brushing your tongue will just move the Ama back and forth around your mouth. However, with the new optimal tongue cleaner technology, we’re able to extract the toxins and expel them forever (down the drain). No, actually tongue scrapers are as old as time. They come in a variety of different materials. Most of the tongue scrapers you find in regular store will be plastic, but it’s best to get one that is made of metal such as steel, brass, tin, sterling silver, copper, or gold (yeah…sure.. let me just get my checkbook). I use a copper tongue scraper, as the metal itself helps destroy bacteria. You won’t have to replace it like you would a plastic one. Plastic is evil and unhealthy anyways.

So how do you user a tongue scraper? It’s simple! You start as far back as you can, place the curved edge of your utensil on the tongue, fingers holding the stems and make a few short movements dragging the scraper down. Every few drags, you rinse the scraper off and repeat. Little by little you move the curved part down until you’re scraping the tip of your tongue. The first few times it may make your tongue a bit raw, but your tongue will adapt. After I’ve scraped my whole tongue, I do a few “whole tongue” scrapes for good measure and then I’m good to go.

Recession tip: Use a spoon if you don’t already have a tongue scraper.

Scraping the tongue helps remove disease, mucus, bad breath and it will help with lethargy and all those kapha-related problems. And get this: Scraping the tongue of the toxins will also help release repressed emotions. Inneresting!
A lot of the information online will talk about tongue scraping as a method to get rid of halitosis or bad breath. While this is true, it’s only a minor advantage compared to the disease reducing, emotion releasing goodness I talked about in this post. I can’t help but think: Oh the fools! If only they knew! There’s a whole paradigm of health practices that they don’t know about. And they still think bad breath just comes from bad oral hygiene! I wouldn’t be surprised if there existed a “Chronic Halitosis” pill. (Okay I just looked and there is! Hahaha that brings the Lolz). I wonder if there’s a “chronic messy room” pill for me…

The tongue is really interesting: The back of the tongue is Vata territory, the middle is Pitta and the tip is Kapha. There are different types of coating that refer to each dosha-related problem. For example, thick white coating is Kapha imbalance. And the way the tongue looks can give you an idea about which part of the body is diseased. For example, marks around the edges of the tongue that look like slits means that nutrients are not being absorbed properly. A line down the middle suggests immune problems (source: The Ayurveda Encyclopedia by Swami Sada Shiva Tirtha).

On a side note, it’s really important to taste food in Ayurveda, notably when you take medicinal herbs. Tasting even the most bitter herb will send messages to your body to prepare itself for what is to come. So if your practitioner asks you to take herbs with hot water or honey instead of swallowing capsules, it’s not to torture you! You body will better prepare itself to be healed and will absorb them more effectively. Just imagine swallowing a capsule of herbs- one moment you stomach is relaxing, being all stomachy and the next thing you know, BAM! there’s an herb there, in the corner, waiting to get taken care of. Talk about a surprise! Your stomach never saw that one coming! I wonder what you’re stomach thinks it’s supposed to prepare itself for when you’re munching on Doritos...