Hello, my friend, it is the last freakin week of June. And I'm not entirely sure how we got here. How was life landing for you these days? For me the last week, and really honestly, up until the moment that I am recording this, it has been a bit of mayhem with the kids and of school excitement and activities and then all of us transitioning to being at home together. Trans transitional periods. As I've said throughout the glitch right are always a bit tough, or can be a bit tough, and they're always tough for me. So I am grateful that we are finding our way through this period, and I am looking forward to whatever is to come. I'm enjoying some ease in little moments and you know, kind of things evening out and and so we can really enjoy each other a little bit more in the coming weeks. And so you know, technically, given that summer began technically, June 21. At this point, when this is airing on June 27, summer mode is officially activated. And so this week, the shit that we need to talk about is enjoying summers fire without overheating or causing a brush fire in your life. So when it comes to summer, the characteristics of the season are bright, hot fire intense, and it's calling us to grow, transform, expand, to reap. And you know, this is all due to the dominance of pittas energy, that's the dosha that's made up of fire and water elements and then there's that subtle energy or depending on where you live or what your natural energy dominance is subtle or not vata energy that brings a lightness and mobility and that expansive vibe. And you know, with the monies out many hours of daylight summer is offering us more space to enjoy life more space to do that transforming that expanding in the Reaping, and summer naturally offers us a time to release stress and restriction so I'm hoping that the sweetness of summer is is revealing itself to you even in just these beginning days. Now, depending on your dosha or energetic dominance or your current state which may be a state of imbalance summer's characteristics may land beautifully for you or not. And as I've been saying over the course of the last few weeks understanding your energy and what it means to be maintained or reestablish balance and what it is that you desire is all of the utmost importance. So if you are naturally pit the dominant powered by the fire and water elements and live the characteristics of heat intensity motivation passion, how are you going to navigate the delicate balance of coming into your season summer is your season to shine enjoying this time that is offering you so much sweetness within you right that you can naturally answer summer's call to transform expand and reap without dough without overheating or causing a brush fire with your intensity your anger or your heart mouth because let's be honest, right? If you're naturally vata dominant, powered by the air and ether which either has space or spirit elements and live the characteristics of mobility, light, flexibility, spontaneity, your energy really does align nicely with Pitta energy. And so this is also a nice season for you to enjoy your expansive and mobile qualities as you answer summer's call to transform, expand and reap but the intensity of Pitta can cause you to overdo it. So you're going to have to slow down and ground yourself often. How will you do this? If you are naturally Kapha dominant powered by the water and earth elements and live the characteristics of calm steady, slow to anger, this is the season for you to lean way into the big aspetta energy in the subtle vata energy to answer summer's call to transform, expand and re now these are very big actions that may feel overwhelming to you. Right you who likes to keep things the same and manageable. So how can you begin to lean into the expansive big ass energy without getting discouraged? Well, friends, if I have left you with a bunch of questions, started this with a bunch of questions. Today we're going to explore answers to all of them. And we'll do this with the help of one of our Vedas seven guiding principles for self care and that is strengthen or maintain your I justifier and we'll talk about all of this generally and also through the lens of summer as always, so our conversation needs to start with Agni. And that's spelled ag and I but the A takes you sound Agni. Basically, this is what I avetta calls the fire within our body deeper than that. And if you've been around with me for even just a few episodes, I avetta is so deep and so expansive. So really, we're just going to scratch the surface here, right? So a little deeper than that just fire within our body. Agni is what governs digestion, the transformation of what we ingest, as well as its absorption and how it's used. And then the elimination of waste is our strength and vitality. It is cell and system intelligence, health and function throughout the body, and really friends just so much more, so much more. In an article from Banyan Botanicals, Agni is called the quote unquote gatekeeper of life. As a result, impaired or imbalanced agony, causes imbalances within us, as well as dis ease as in like not being at ease, and disease. And in all honesty, right, like, this whole concept of Agni, it is so complex and so deep and so rich, and I honestly have a very basic level of understanding, because I've only been studying this, I don't know, for four or five years now. And so I really feel like I'm still scratching the surface of my understanding and my comprehension of everything, right. And so I'm offering to you what it is that I know and what it is that I understand. But obviously, there's so much more to learn at the same time. There's so much value in this simplicity, to suffice it to say, my friends, the harmony and the balance, we are always talking about establishing or I'm always talking about establishing right, you know, in how I keep talking about living into with our nature, and you know, through allied self care practices, maintaining that harmony, it's all about Agni, and maintaining our digestive fire so that it doesn't get too hot or too sluggish. And remember, if you listen to last week's episode, I said everything we do will either energetically create more peace within us or aggravate our system. This all comes back to ugly. When Agni is impaired, we have a feeling of being unwell, we have a feeling of, you know, having difficulty digesting, having indigestion that is too hot when diarrhea happens, or too slow, when like constipation happens, or maybe gas bloating, we may have difficulty emotionally regulating ourselves difficulty sleeping, we may have weight gain or weight loss, low energy, I mean, like the the list goes on and on and on. So friends really balance is key, which is why we always come back to the importance of living in awareness with yourself, knowing your dosha or energetic dominance, or the very least being able to identify what energy is present so that you can maintain the balance by living in harmony with yourself and bring in as we talked about last week, the opposing energy to offer more harmony. Always write live in tune with ourselves enjoy what we like, but always bring in opposing energy to maintain the balance, and then how to meet ourselves when imbalance occurs. And this is all what I do within my work with my clients in the holistic self care collective and how we begin with our personalized self care plan, identifying what their energy is, what their desires are, and how to kind of bridge that gap. Because there needs to be a balance between how you're experiencing life and imbalances that you might be experiencing and what you want to feel like and what you want to you what you want to achieve, both in your health and well being but also just in every aspect of your life. And so this is what we focus on. And so I cannot say enough about truly understanding yourself because this is what we need. This is how we get away from that one size fits all thing that capitalism wants. And that perfection that white supremacy culture once right, we honor ourselves. Now my friends are something else to consider in this conversation of Agni and strengthening or maintaining your digestive power is the concept or the the entity of Alma
and Alma is a sticky substance that represents toxins that are undigested on digestive stuff, and left over within the body. And so it is important to maintain the vitality of, of Agni to prevent the accumulation of armor, then there are two ways that you might be familiar with Alma. It's the coating on your tongue you might see after a heavy meal, or when you wake up in the morning before you brush your teeth, or when you have a cold and light Do you have like mucus mucousy stuff going on. It's also the blockages that are present in the vessels, you may have heard of like blocked arteries or things like that. And this all causes disease within the body. And it's why that, you know, tongue scraping is such an important morning ritual and evening ritual, so that any toxins that are leftover from eating or digesting the day that everything that you ingest can be eliminated, rather than swallowed and taking up residence in your body. And, I mean, there are so many other ways to allow for, you know, to not take hold, and these are all through our self care practices, honestly. So remembering that, you know, supporting Agni is not just done through eating and drinking, what's supportive for your body, it's literally through everything in anything that we do. And lucky for us, I are beta offers a ton of wisdom for supporting ourselves. So we'll start with the practices that fall into strengthen your digestive power. And the first one I want to talk about is the daily rhythm guide. In last episode, we broke this down a lot. So that's episode 26. So if this is the first time you're listening, and this concept is new to you, or if you're new ish, or you're like, hell, I just wanna hear what stuff has to talk about, like, what can I learn because for me, every time I teach about anything in Iveta, I realize a shift I need to make for myself. So it's constantly coming back to this education, like we can't get enough of it. Right. So wherever it is that you are head back to that episode, because I break down each of the, the elements of a morning of a daily rhythm. Within that episode, I'm going to glaze over them in this episode. So I encourage you to go back to listen. And so cliff notes in case you missed last episode, and you don't want to pause and go back to it, but you'll go back to it later, of course, right. Your Veda is offering us this daily rhythm as a way to establish harmony with ourselves and the energy of the day. It aligns with how the doshas kind of cycled throughout the day and for our windows. And the reason that having a daily rhythm is so important to us, is because the habits you perform throughout the day, and the schedule you keep for yourself care practices are important for creating that foundation to keep your resource mentally, emotionally, physically and energetically day to day. And yeah, we're talking about a routine but not one of rigidity, right, not fueled by robotic actions, just check them off the to do list, but rather mindful choices based on how you're feeling and what you need in the moment that align with the energy of the day, essentially, creating and maintaining harmony, right, in a very aware and conscious basis. And this is all so that when life life's and the schedule goes out the window, you've got the framework to come back to we talk about daily rhythm every single season, because every season, we are called to shift our self care practices based on how the energy season aligns with us or doesn't, right. And so we will talk about this quarterly. And it is important if you are just establishing a daily rhythm to maybe consider a few of these principles when we're talking about when it comes to summer. Now the daily rhythm guide starts from the moment we open our eyes until the moment goes on to the moment we close our eyes and our sleep for the day. It literally calls attention awareness to every single moment of the day. And remember, if not set it and forget it right metering ourselves in the moment. You know, creating this, this rhythm that we can can rely on it almost kind of feels like a synchronicity that acts like a lullaby for your body. So no Herky jerky stops and starts frantically figuring out stuff on the fly. Right, but rather creating the framework creating the foundation that we can move from. So a big part of the daily rhythm is in our morning routine. And if you've been around the show for a few months, you may remind be may remember that I talked about this in the spring in Episode 18. And possibly even in the winter, too. And remember, I'm going to continue to talk about this quarterly, right. So head back to Episode 18. If you want the full explanation of each of the steps in the morning routine, because I'm just going to kind of glaze over them here. Remembering that for your morning routine, I'm offering some main practices, but this is not an exhaustive or rigid list. And the key here again, is to create the framework but be flexible based on how you're feeling your bandwidth, your capacity and how you're experiencing the season. So first begin your day by waking up by 6am or before right, keeping it consistent at or around the same time every day. Using the vata energy between two and 6am to kind of get you moving and using the energy in your favor. offer a prayer. This is the second tip offer a prayer or expression of gratitude for waking up this morning devotion to yourself. Community your God God's before leaving the bed and especially for waking up because how often do we actually say I'm so grateful for waking up today. Go ahead and use the bathroom, empty your bladder and your bowels and if a bowel movement is not part of your first thing, regular morning routine, drinking warm water plus all the practices we're going to talk about is going to help you it is very important to have a bowel movement first thing in the day because then you will eliminate all of the stuff that was digested overnight and you're not going to take it in new with you to the day and kind of be sluggish about it. Your hygiene, oral and face hygiene is gonna be really important. scrape your tongue, brush your teeth, oil Swish, you could do this with coconut oil in your mouth, you might buy an oil that is used for specifically for oil swishing, you can massage the gums then rinse with warm water, splash cold water on your face in your eyes. This is especially wonderful in the summer months to help us feel more awake and also aids in cooling and soothing and relaxing the ice from sleep. Then you'll drink your water room temperature or warm you can add a lime in the summertime lemon is kind of left for the cooler months because it is quite heating and this will also aid in your evacuation and stimulate digestion. So if you haven't had the bowel movement at this point, you probably will soon after enjoy some quiet alone time. Now friends all of this that I'm going to talk about can shift based on summer, you might do pranayama meditation or quiet reflection practice to calm your nervous system to allow for self study self connection. And also your you know you might even create a little space or a little nook or an area for this special time for yourself. So when it comes to pranayama and I'm gonna be coming episodes diving into these practices more completely, but for now pranayama in the summer here are some really supportive practices she delay which is the cooling breath she'd Khari which is hissing breath Chandra banana, which is left nostril breathing if you practice alternate nostril or naughty Shan annum. This is just breathing through the left nostril. These are all especially supportive in the summer. Also though you can still practice Kabbalah bati as well as full torso breathing because remember full torso breathing really is balancing for all the doshas, it offers grounding through belly breathing, spaciousness through the ribcage, breathing and uplifting through the breathing through all the way through the torso to the collarbones. And then alternate nostril is great all year round. When it comes to meditation, the focus here is gonna be watering, nurturing, nourishing, expanding, transforming transmuting growth and reaping. And so creating space to imagine this to sit with these words to sit in a space that offers any of these words come to life is going to be really important. And again, I'll talk about this more in upcoming episodes. Remember also the when we talk about Quiet quiet doesn't mean still, it can but it doesn't have to you can adjust your quiet practice based on you guessed it your energy, bandwidth and capacity, getting my drift. So in the summer Kapha dosha could benefit from uplifting moving spontaneous and leaning into like warming energetic practices when it comes to anything you do that's quiet. For pitta, if especially if it's a hot morning or you're feeling intense energy, something you know, quiet that offers spaciousness, something that is slow and grounding fun or playful that even within quietness is going to be beneficial. And for vata energy, if you're feeling unsettled, maybe you overdid it the day before and you're feeling kind of like a hangover of sorts, you're quiet practice maybe something slower, grounding, soothing, and calming. Only you can decide what these practices might be. And if you're like stuff I really don't know I'm not really sure how to navigate this. Come see me in the holistic self care collective, let's create the personal self care plan. We literally break down each of these things for you the individual and we established together practices that
feel aligned and that will allow you to balance yourself just a little bit more that my my call clients that are working with me in the collective really find this to be beneficial so I cannot say enough about it. The next thing that you're going to do in your morning routine is move your body so movement or exercise again will adjust with the season in the summer. This is a great time for exercise. I have a whole episode coming dedicated to exercise but for now the general guidelines are exercising between six and 10. A M is best to balance coffered Kapha energy or pm six and 10pm in the summer morning is going to be best because it's cool. It's the coolest right but you might notice on the schedule for the holistic self care collective. I offer Zumba Monday and Wednesdays at 6pm Eastern as well as a line yo But at 6pm, Eastern on Tuesday, so monday, wednesday, Zumba Tuesday align yoga. And so what I do, because it's still pretty hot those days as I adjust what we are doing and the intensity based on the heat of the day. So it's not just, you know, set it and forget it doing what we always do, but it's actually considering what's going on. Because Pitta energy is dominant in the summertime adjusting your intensity of your exercise to 50 to 70%. So you're not overheating is going to be a good place to be. allow for more time to cool down and pay attention to your energy to adjust accordingly for whatever movement you're going to do. If coffered energy is dominant for you use the Pitta and vata energy for an invigorating and warming practice to promote clarity and uplifting energy for the day. If vata energy is dominant grounding and slow practice or less intense is going to be beneficial and for pitar dominance. A light hearted Asana, especially if the Pinta energy is running high, light hearted leisure Li, slower moving maybe, but not static. An exercise that does not push you to your limits. You'll sit and eat breakfast and notice I say sit and eat breakfast right take your time with your food be present with it between seven and 8am. You might have one or two cups of coffee or caffeinated tea by 10am. And consider how you might prepare from the night before so that you can have a leisurely breakfast, believe it or not, my friends. Simply establishing and keeping this rhythm or as close to it as you can will help keep you cool in the summer months. It'll help you keep grounded and also energized without overdoing it. So before you begin, consider how does your morning typically start? Where do capitalism white supremacy, culture and old beliefs or habits show up in your morning routine? How do you want to feel this month this season? Remember, so much of how we experience life is is tied to our morning routine. And our ability to navigate issues is bolstered by the foundation of our morning routine. Create space for all this inquiry and to get started, choose one step to start with for the next week or two. If it's something new, come to the practice three to four times a week. If it's a shift you already do aim for five times a week, maybe get the habit solid where it doesn't feel like part of your to do list before you add on. And remember, you can shift the practice day to day it should shift on how you're feeling whether you're imbalanced or not, as well as your bandwidth, your time, your capacity, your available energy. And maybe even consider for those of you who are ready to take a step further establishing a weekend routine that's not too different from your weekday routine. And remember what I said in last episodes creating a daily rhythm a morning routine for the summer that is not too different from the rest of the year, especially if your summer is different from the rest of the year. Make sure that it's something similar so that way when you head back to your rigorous schedule in the fall, you're not feeling like holy shit, what am I going to do? A few more ideas for strengthening or maintaining your digestive fire. Perform self love acts not just in the morning through your morning routine but throughout the day in the evening as well. This is why the daily rhythm is so important because it basically establishes self love acts throughout the day as part of your schedule. And it's important to not just include them in the morning and then bypass gas light or run yourself into the ground for the rest of the day. This ties into the next aspect of strengthening your digestive power which is slowing down and pausing more often. Friends, this is the step in disrupting the grind. That is an the key to start is to soften the intensity and hear me out especially for up to dominant folks. When you are moving quickly through the day hurried from one thing to the next Are you typically feeling easeful and spacious? Or are you feeling tense and like you're in a pressure cooker? Because here's the thing, what you perceive slow to be might feel unsafe or really impossible. So let's just start with softening the intention of the intensity, which may be the gateway to slower speed. Ah, right. So, softening your eyes. Notice when you're pushing notice when you're tense, relaxing that right? Taking a pause between thoughts. Slow, soften the intensity. Another option is to insert pauses into your day that are very short, taking a few breaths between one email and the next, getting up from your desk after you finish or find a stopping point in your work before you move on to the next project. It could be looking outside the window of your building your bus or your train rather than scrolling while waiting. It could be holding your tongue when you want to interrupt somebody. Right? There are so many ways and the last offering for strengthening your digestive power is meal timing as well as the size of your meals in the daily Rhythm guide that we talked about last episode, the eating windows that I read offers us would allow us ample time, basically four to six hours to digest before the next meal. Now, these windows are breakfast between 7am snack if needed between nine and 10 lunch between 12 and one snack if needed between two and three and dinner between five and 730. Now, this allows for when we stop eating at 730 that allows us to be fully digested before we go to bed. And this is essential, so that those processes that happen during the night for us to digest the day not just a food, but our experiences for cell regeneration to happen for cell rejuvenation to happen all the other systems and processes to happen. That can happen without being interrupted by digesting our food. There's another thing that is a little different from American culture, which is having lunch be our biggest meal of the day. Okay, so don't skip it anymore. And having that be our biggest meal instead of American culture. Where we usually have dinners the biggest meal, allowing lunch to be the biggest meal to take advantage of Agni, the digestive fire being at his highest and hottest allows you to properly digest that meal before dinner and everything is fully digested by the time you go to bed. Think about it. If ever you have a large dinner, or a late large dinner or something heavy, sometimes you go to bed and you're like not really able to sleep very well you wake up the next day kind of feeling like little sluggish blah. Yeah, that's because the body wasn't able to digest in time and didn't then get to do its rejuvenating processes so that you could wake up feeling clear and ready to go. So friends remember the key to a harmonious summer and beyond is to maintain all of your Harmony, sustain yourself, preserve your sweetness and above all, slow and steady wins the race unless you have your coffee dominant, which is like going forward with the intensity and the mobility. But we want to make sure we head into fall feeling stable and resource that is the key friends. So even though we're enjoying summer in the moment, we are thinking ahead to how are we going to feel grounded and resource unstable in the fall. So friends, consider what's coming up for you. How can you meet yourself here with compassion and grace? And how can you use these teaching? Or what's coming up for you to support and uplift those in your community? Especially those who are different from or hold identities, more marginalized than your own? How can you use it to connect more authentically and deeply to your community? How can you use all of this towards mass mutual reliance? Now friends, here's the thing. I have been talking about the disruptors Leadership Academy for the last couple of weeks and all of the information the application it is all live. Let's face it. For us who identifies identify as disruptors. It's bananas for us out there in the world, centering, disrupting equity, inclusion, centering your care, it's a journey that is uncomfortable and an uphill battle, especially in our work in our workplaces. And that burnout is real struggling to take care of yourself is real. So what if instead of going on the journey on your own, maybe you're feeling like you're just scratching the surface on any equity inclusion initiatives. We want to end you know, instead of enduring the burnout, low bandwidth, minimal capacity, limited resources or feeling guilty when you establish your boundaries or don't have them. Maybe instead of taking care of yourself for with whatever whatever's left over after you do your important work or carrying around unhealed harm that's happened along the way. Like what if you take the guidance and I'm always offering you small, sustainable steps and have them that are intentionally designed to create maximum impact, while also creating space to care for yourself in a meaningful way, meaningful way? If you're saying hell yes, my friends join me in the disruptors Leadership Academy we start August 13. Because disrupting day in and day out is fucking hard. And
it's just not working when you're trying to read and go to all the meetings and save articles and hoping to piece it together your seat trying to do what other people are doing, but it's not working right? Like it is not working because you're not really digging into the root cause of the inequities and injustice that are specific to your situation. What works for someone else may not work for you grant actions. They don't come to fruition because they're unrealistic to commit to piecing things together, it can lead to miscommunication, frustration, disillusionment, because there's so much information out there and ultimately figuring out the right way for you is a whole task in and of itself. And so we created the disruptors Leadership Academy Abriola Bala, my badass colleague, so that we could create an online place of study for leaders professional than anyone committed to interrupting The systems in their workplace in their life. We consider disrupter to be a term held an identity or that you'd like to create claim in your identity. As you endeavor on your journey of interruption, leadership we consider to be being a careful and responsible steward of self others in the change we endeavor to make. And Academy a cohort of people showing up to the study and the work with a sense of pride in our camaraderie, friends, it is here for you to hold you and guide you through so please grab all the information via bit.ly/dla 2023 friends we have 15 spots available and Applications close on July 28. We are offering four tiered justice pricing as well as a limited number of financial support places as well. So please apply early because we only have those 15 spots we will close registration once we get there. We hope to see you in the disruptors Leadership Academy and please also reach out with any questions until next time my friend please be kind and gentle to yourself just as you would those who are most precious to you, whether that's a human animal, baby or a plant. I'd love to hear your thoughts as always so reach out about whatever a has you had whatever questions anything that you want to kind of talk through, please reach out and share it with me. If you've been loving the show, please please please share it with your nearest and dearest and leave a review or rating that is so helpful with getting this out to the people who need it and letting people come in who really really are aligned with this work by friends. Remember you are a badass and you are enough now go be your favorite self and be well
