Unlocking the Secrets of Tongue Health from Ayurveda Wisdom with Vaidya Jayagopal Parla [Episode #997]

This Week’s Episode Special Guest: Vaidya Jayagopal Parla

In this enlightening conversation, Kimberly Snyder and Vaidya Jayagopal Parla delve into the significance of the tongue in Ayurveda, exploring its physical, energetic, and emotional aspects. They discuss the importance of tongue scraping as a daily practice for maintaining health, the indicators of tongue health, and how it reflects our overall well-being. Vaidya Jayagopal Parla shares insights on how different body types relate to tongue health and offers practical tips for incorporating Ayurvedic practices into daily life.

About Vaidya Jayagopal Parla

Vaidya Jayagopal Parla is an internationally known speaker, educator, and practitioner of Ayurveda, with extensive clinical, teaching and research experience. He is founder and director of Athreya Ayurvedic Integrative Health Center, Long Beach, CA, and Vice President of Athreya Herbs. Faculty at Southern California University of Health Sciences, Mount Madonna Collage of Ayurveda, Kerala Ayurveda Academy, and Japan School of Ayurveda.

Vaidya Jay holds a Bachelor of Ayurvedic Medicine and Surgery (BAMS) from Bangalore University, India, and a Master’s Degree in Ayurvedic medicine with a specialty in herbal medicine from Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences, India. He also graduated with a Master of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine program from Southern California University of Health Sciences. He is a fellow of the Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine. Vaidya Jay is a certified yoga therapist and completed a yoga teacher training program at the Bihar School of Yoga.

He is a Southern California University of Health Sciences faculty member and clinician. Additionally, he serves as faculty at Mount Madonna College of Ayurveda, Kerala Ayurveda Academy, and serves as a visiting faculty member at the Japan School of Ayurvedic Medicine. His additional work on behalf of complementary and alternative medical approaches includes extensive travel to foster the growth of Ayurveda worldwide and numerous presentations on Ayurvedic medicine at various national and international conferences.

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Guest Resources 

Website: https://www.athreyaayurveda.com/

 

Episode Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Mindfulness and Presence
02:49 Navigating Chaos and Embracing Emotions
06:01 The Journey of Self-Discovery and Healing
09:00 Living from Fullness vs. Lack
12:00 Understanding Our True Essence
15:07 The Role of Inquiry in Personal Growth
18:01 Practical Steps to Connect with Self
21:02 The Impact of Information on Our Lives
24:04 Nurturing the Next Generation
27:03 Conclusion: The Gift of Presence and Authenticity
27:26 Understanding Misunderstanding: Embracing Our True Selves
28:52 Visionaries and the Courage to Follow Inner Guidance
30:25 The Role of Technology in Human Connection
32:45 Wellness: The Balance Between Self-Care and Self-Obsession
34:52 The Intersection of Spirituality and Health
37:48 AI and Humanity: Navigating the Future Together
41:14 Rethinking Society in the Age of AI
44:50 The Essence of Humanity: Connection Over Technology
47:52 Creating Conditions for Our Gifts to Flourish

 

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OTHER PODCASTS YOU MAY ENJOY!

• Wellness Insights: How to Listen to Your Body for Nutritional Guidance [Episode 878]
• How the Power Foods Diet helps with Weight Loss with Dr. Neal Barnard EP. 877
• How Not to Age with New York Times best-selling author Dr. Michael Greger [Episode #873]
• How to eat to reduce anxiety with Harvard nutritional psychiatrist Dr. Uma Naidoo [Episode #867]

 

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Transcript: 

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (00:01.358)
Hello everyone and welcome back to our Monday interview show. We have a very special repeat guest here with us today, Vaidya J who is an internationally recognized Ayurvedic physician, speaker. He is the founder and director of Atreia Herbs, Integrative Health Center in Long Beach as well. And you guys have heard me talk about Vaidya J so much because he’s also my personal  Arya Vedic teacher and I studied with him for years and I still go to him for counseling. He’s been here on the show with us. I don’t even know, Vaidya J, how many times? 10 times? he creates these amazing organic formulations from Atreya herbs. And he’s so knowledgeable about Arya Veda. I can throw out any subject at Vaidya J and he really just pulls it.

Vaidya Jay (00:39.261)
More.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (00:57.838)
out of this incredible depth of wisdom and consciousness within him. So welcome back to the show, Vidya J. I’m so excited to have you back as always.

Vaidya Jay (01:06.515)
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Kimberly. Namaste, everybody. And I’m looking forward to sharing some more useful but also longevity-provoking thoughts.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (01:19.338)
Yes. You know, when I started studying with you years ago, Vajay Jay, I was such a newbie to RU Veda. And I have to say now it’s been, it’s been over 10 years, I think, because I’m, you know, Emerson, my older is nine. And I was well, more than 10 years ago, I was studying with you. And then I remember I was pregnant in the, in the clinic with you when it was at Beverly Hills. And it’s really amazing how it just, really does get deeper and deeper. And

I really am cooking a lot of Ayurvedic foods more than ever. It feels like I’m doing a lot of the practices. And so it’s beautiful how it keeps unfolding.

Vaidya Jay (01:59.667)
It slowly embraces you and then finally you realize that you have become part of Ayurvedic You know path you have taken this path and then you have reached a destination that is being happy healthy and long-living

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (02:21.652)
Exactly, exactly, which I think can be a missing part of today’s approach to wellness, which can just be about numbers and data and how much we weigh and all that can be great. But what I find the more I embrace our uVEDA is this really deep sense of self-care groundedness, which has become such a big thing for me. Vida J, as you know, I tend to run very Vata and a lot of us in the modern world can have a lot of that.

air or just kind of spaciness, anxiety. So here we are today. And I, you know, back to that, I remember years ago, we did a whole class, I feel like on oral routine, and how much that was important part of Dina Charya daily routine and Ayurveda spending a lot of time around the mouth area. And I’ve gotten really into tongue scraping by JJ, I have to say, it’s a part of my life now I never

I never miss it. feels great to just scrape the ama, the toxins off the tongue in the morning. So I started thinking about this topic about tongue, tongues in general, because in the Western world, we don’t really pay that much attention to our tongues. And I know in Ayurveda, there’s we did a whole class on tongue reading. So as we kick it off, so you and I were texting and I said, you know, Vajay Jay, I feel like we need to do a whole

conversation around the tongue because it is so important in Ayurveda. So could you start by sharing why? Like why is it important? What’s the Ayurvedic view of the tongue in general?

Vaidya Jay (03:52.467)
Tongue is known as Ji Hua in Sanskrit. Ji Hua is seen as a very important organ, not only for taste perception, but also for speech. And it is seen as something that is a dual sense organ. It works as sensory as well as motor in communication.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (04:18.723)
Yeah.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (04:23.022)
Hmm.

Vaidya Jay (04:23.313)
So that’s a broader perspective of what the tongue relates to in Ayurvedic well-being and human activity and performance. So given that, tongue is also representation of the entire body.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (04:43.886)
Mmm.

Vaidya Jay (04:45.309)
So we see tongue as something that shows GI health, immunity, longevity, even to an extent how the person’s body will age is seen on the tongue. Yeah. Yeah. It’s fascinating. In many cultures, the

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (05:06.315)
Really?

Vaidya Jay (05:14.259)
process of tongue observation. When I say cultures, in India we have many subcultures. So in there, when we go and look at people will always, no question they use different things to scrape their tongue, but they also observe their tongue.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (05:33.196)
Hmm.

Vaidya Jay (05:34.419)
So for the reason to see where do they stand in terms of their health and where do they stand in terms of their gut well-being.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (05:44.63)
Right. Right. Well, before we go a little deeper into that, Vajrayade, there’s also this energetic aspect of the tongue I’m interested in as well. I know in yoga, they say there’s a connection between your sacral chakra and your throat, your Vaishuda chakra. And Yogananda, who you know has great spiritual significance for me, talks about how working with the tip of the tongue and certain pranayama practices has a great effect on your energy.

Vaidya Jay (06:15.365)
Absolutely. So we are now shifting from the physical and sensual aspect of the tongue to the energetic and the prana, nadi aspect of the tongue. So when the tongue is activated, it does have a direct impact on both ida and pingala nadis. So ida and pingala

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (06:16.355)
soon.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (06:19.822)
Yes.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (06:29.484)
Yes.

Vaidya Jay (06:44.151)
As our audience know, one is something that is more seen as planning, energetic, and active. Another one is, huh? Yes. Solar and then the lunar. Yes, most of you know about it. So when the tongue is active, it constantly shifts between the two like the nose does.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (06:57.134)
The solar we can say, the moon.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (07:12.353)
Yes.

Vaidya Jay (07:14.009)
Nose does it with the prana that is coming from the breath whereas the tongue does it from the prana that is coming from the food.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (07:23.532)
Right.

Vaidya Jay (07:24.157)
So it distributes it. OK, this is hot. It goes towards the moon channel. this is cold. It goes towards the heart channel. That distribution is very well done by the tongue.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (07:35.68)
And would you say to Vaidya J that the Vashuda chakra, our expression, which is connected to the sacral, the tongue is an extension of this whole chakra area?

Vaidya Jay (07:48.027)
Yes, true. What happens is when the body is needing certain type of activation, let’s say there is what is called as K-chiri mudra, where the tongue goes up onto the upper palate and you press hard on it and then you do certain breathing exercises. It is said that when we do such type of mudra or

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (08:10.359)
Yes.

Vaidya Jay (08:17.181)
posture with the tongue, it brings about subtle energetic changes which are impossible in the conscious state of a person.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (08:24.62)
Mmm.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (08:31.128)
Wow.

Vaidya Jay (08:31.335)
Let’s say somebody had a very strong, unexpressed feeling about somebody who is loved or close to them. They have something that is very deeply bottled up. By doing this, it not only helps to open the Vishuddhi, but not

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (08:50.295)
Mm-hmm.

Vaidya Jay (08:59.847)
hurting somebody or hurting themselves. It just does it so subtly that the tongue is now released this unexpressed emotion or unexpressed feeling up.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (09:13.198)
Wow. So how do we do that practice by JJ?

Vaidya Jay (09:19.569)
Yeah, so if you say, I’m doing something like Ujjayi breathing. So in Ujjayi breathing, one can take the tongue and press against the upper palate, which is harder, not the soft palate, but the hard palate. You press against it, and then you bring your chin to the chest, and then you breathe because it does

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (09:26.604)
Yes.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (09:38.581)
Okay.

Vaidya Jay (09:48.765)
push against the thyroid and then naturally into the energetic aspect of the Vishuddhi chakra. So you’re doing this. You’ll see how difficult it is to put the tongue in there and then bring the chin to the chest. So when we do that, it definitely makes the prana to circulate more at this level, where the unexpressed emotions and

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (10:05.132)
Mm-hmm.

Vaidya Jay (10:18.501)
and then the speech or the talk that was bottled up here, it gives the opportunity to bring it up, not by verbalizing, but by just energetically releasing.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (10:34.038)
Wow, that is so beautiful. you know, just another, just another example of how powerful again, everything works on so many levels. Like you said, there’s the physicality of the tongue, there’s the energetics, there’s the connection with everything else. Wait, if I do, hold on one second, we’re going to edit this. I can just hear Momo making a noise. Wait one sec.

Vaidya Jay (10:53.487)
Okay, no worries, no worries.

Vaidya Jay (11:07.603)
Yeah, so if you scrape the tongue, John, what Ayurveda says is your speech becomes more crystal clear.

Vaidya Jay (11:18.225)
That means you don’t come up with the same old patterns of talking.

Vaidya Jay (11:28.295)
Yeah. Right.

Vaidya Jay (11:50.323)
Careful, careful.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (11:52.006)
Sorry, Vyga J. I don’t usually do podcasts this late, so I was just trying to entertain Momo. was kind of… We’ll edit this part out. John will recognize it. Okay, you ready? Go back in. Okay, so that’s fascinating. Let’s shift back for a moment to…

Vaidya Jay (11:57.863)
Milvins, Milvins.

Vaidya Jay (12:03.271)
Yeah.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (12:10.412)
the physicality of the tongue, as you mentioned, it can give cues about our immunity, about our digestion. What does a healthy tongue look like? I mean, I imagine it’s smooth.

Vaidya Jay (12:24.403)
So that will be interesting. Now, every one of our audience in there, they will look into the mirror like, is he saying about what kind of tongue is it? Good. We need to make that very clear to everyone. A healthy tongue should look bright and pink. There are two aspects of the tongue. When I say it’s bright and pink,

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (12:49.126)
Mm.

Vaidya Jay (12:53.049)
It is the body of the time.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (12:56.844)
You mean like that?

Vaidya Jay (12:56.967)
Second thing, yeah, the tongue is the whole, like, you know, if you look at the shape of the tongue, it’s like a mountain, you know, like a, whole body of the tongue needs to be pink, bright. Whereas the coating on the tongue, which is a different thing, right? When we scrape the tongue, we are scraping that coating off, right? So this coating needs to be thin.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (13:05.184)
Yes.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (13:22.965)
Yes.

Vaidya Jay (13:26.469)
and slightly white.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (13:28.59)
So it’s good to have a coding. Okay.

Vaidya Jay (13:30.503)
Yes, because we will, you know, I want to tell that the coating represents something in our cut.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (13:39.639)
Right.

Vaidya Jay (13:40.849)
which is healthy bowel.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (13:45.046)
Okay, so it’s not that we never want a coding, we do want a coding. Okay.

Vaidya Jay (13:48.519)
We do want to coat it. It’s like your gut has to make poo. Can you live without producing a poo? It’s a waste product. It has to go out. Same thing, tongue makes that coating, representing how the body has separated waste from nutrition. Nutrition is absorbed. The waste is ready to be expelled.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (13:55.309)
Right.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (14:15.316)
Okay, because you sometimes you hear misinformation by DJ and I had heard someone say once that you know you’ll know that your body is more free of toxins if there isn’t the AMA on your tongue.

Vaidya Jay (14:28.947)
They may be talking about the thickness of the tongue coating. If the tongue coating is not like what I explained, thin and white, if it has become more thicker and unevenly distributed. So you will see the tongue coating is a little bit thinner in the front and as it go backwards, it becomes more more and more thicker.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (14:33.538)
Mm.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (14:48.001)
Mmm.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (14:56.579)
Got it.

Vaidya Jay (14:57.777)
So that says the person is having a upper GI. The front of the tongue is upper GI. Upper GI is working clean. When it goes to the middle GI, there’s a little stagnation. And then it goes to the back, which is the lower GI, which includes colon and then the rectum. So that area, not everything is clean. Not everything is getting eliminated or excreted.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (15:23.165)
Okay, so it’s the quality, it’s the distribution of the tongue coating every day. So that’s a really good sign. And you’re talking about first when we wake up in the morning, before we brush our teeth, before we drink water, just taking a walk before you scrape your teeth.

Vaidya Jay (15:35.795)
exam. That’s right, perfectly said. And then the color of the coating is also different. So if a person is generally a body type that is water or the wind type or thin, lean, built, very active, very imaginative, et cetera, sorry. Sorry about that. Sorry, I need to edit that. I don’t know how this came. OK, hold on.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (15:50.21)
Yes.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (16:02.35)
Bye, DJ.

Vaidya Jay (16:09.469)
Krishna Krishna

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (16:09.528)
Couple of others, I’ll tell John too.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (16:17.486)
Is that your son?

Vaidya Jay (16:18.508)
Yeah, he’s trying to call. I don’t know why, but I’ll call him back and I’ll I’m in the podcast. No, he’s here! Yeah.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (16:23.722)
Is he in India?

Vaidya Jay (16:35.175)
Just a second.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (16:36.46)
Yeah, no worries. We got the babies.

Vaidya Jay (16:38.515)
Yeah. I’m in a podcast. When you come in, you can just be waiting for me, and then I will be out in about 15, 20 minutes. No, you went to home?

Okay, come inside.

Vaidya Jay (17:01.683)
Not because Cat is there so you can you can knock she will open

she may be using in the restroom come on

What? Yeah.

Vaidya Jay (17:19.859)
He’s at the office, so he wants to come inside and nobody’s opening the door. said, my friend’s office is there. All right. So, ready?

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (17:25.767)
Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (17:31.682)
Yes, ready.

Vaidya Jay (17:33.597)
So the color of the coating is very important for us. Generally, because in Ayurveda we have the body types, the tongue coating also depends on the body type. Vata types, who are more active, thinner, leaner, more of creative side, they tend to have a slightly drier and somewhat grayish tongue coating.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (18:00.014)
Mmm.

Vaidya Jay (18:01.393)
which generally gets more thicker at the back of the tongue.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (18:05.278)
Yes, I feel like that’s a pattern I have is a little thicker at the back.

Vaidya Jay (18:10.195)
Whereas the second one is the pitta type. Pittas tend to have more wet coating. Then they also show a slightly yellowish tinge. And this one, the tongue coating is more pronounced at the center of the tongue.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (18:29.837)
Huh.

Vaidya Jay (18:31.847)
And when it comes to cuffer types, are like little, know, strongly built, heavily built, sluggish and then sturdy, these people will have a tongue coating that is uniformly, you know, more thicker in coating. But you can see from the front of the tongue all the way to the back of the tongue, it’s uniformly coated and it’s whitish in

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (18:54.956)
Okay.

Wow. And so we can observe, all of us can go in the morning following this podcast and observe. And once I started tongue scraping, it’s like, once you start flossing, right? You’re like, wow, like this is, you know, I can’t not floss because you see what you get out. When I started tongue scraping, felt so good. Can you tell us about, which is basically for everyone who’s new to it, it’s like a stainless steel, hold it.

it’s curved and it just takes all that coding off. Can you tell us about the benefits of doing that?

Vaidya Jay (19:29.587)
Mm. These details come from a textbook that is about 3,500 years old, Charaka Samhita. You know Charaka Samhita. So in this book, they give exact measurements. They say that it is to be personalized. Tongue scraper needs to be personalized. So it needs to be 12 finger lengths long, like this, 12. And then it should be bent.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (19:38.328)
Yes.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (19:55.821)
Hmm.

Vaidya Jay (19:59.035)
And then it should be flat, but it should not be sharp.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (20:04.108)
Right.

Vaidya Jay (20:05.789)
So ideally, copper is the best metal to use. Second best is the silver. So the best is gold, but then you have to have an insurance for your tongue scraper. It takes your next level altogether. So but I think for all of us, copper tongue scraper is the

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (20:15.788)
Mm-hmm.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (20:25.326)
I’m getting a gold card. Yeah, hilarious.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (20:35.862)
Okay.

Vaidya Jay (20:36.787)
And then we take it and when we scrape it, it is starting from the base of the tongue as much as you can reach without causing a gag reflex. Sometimes it has a little gag reflex, but you get used to it. And then you go to the back of the tongue and then you scrape to the front of the tongue on center first and then on either side. And then you do it like a couple of times and then that’s about it. It takes 30 seconds.

to do tongue scraping. And when you do that, you know, we talked about, you know, is it important to scrape it out because the bowel is represented here on the tongue. So as you go to the bathroom every day, you have to clean your tongue every

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (21:25.228)
And there’s toxins in there, amma.

Vaidya Jay (21:25.551)
And exactly, exactly, there is number of studies to show how the oral biome signals the gut

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (21:38.958)
Mm-hmm.

Vaidya Jay (21:40.541)
So oral biome, again that Vishuddhi chakra, the sacral plexus, then even our solar plexus, sacral, solar, and then the throat, all of them are communicating even though physically in terms of the biome, but energetically too.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (22:07.318)
Wait.

Vaidya Jay (22:09.277)
So when we scrape out, what comes out is not only what we call as debris, debris in the sense left out food particles that are in between our tongue taste buds, that comes out. But at the same time, we have large colonies of bacteria like lactobacillus, Staphylococcus, Streptococcus. These bacteria live in our mouth.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (22:19.158)
Yes.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (22:22.776)
Yeah.

Vaidya Jay (22:36.263)
That’s when we wake up in the mouth, the mouth smells bad because these bacteria have eaten all the food that we had eaten at the night and then they pooped a lot into our mouth and the mouth smells.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (22:48.078)
And also what you’re describing, Vajay Jay, is very different than just brushing your teeth, right? When you scrape your tongue, and I’ve noticed this myself, it’s completely different. I scrape and then I brush. And it’s a…

Vaidya Jay (23:02.419)
Yeah, very different. Yeah, it makes a whole, because one is that most people don’t understand how much tongue can hold on to it, because tongue is, even though it looks like a smooth surface, but it has a normal surface because each taste bud is holding a space around it. So, huh?

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (23:24.898)
Would you all? sorry, I was gonna say when you scrape because of the practice you gave us, do you think it can help release emotions too?

Vaidya Jay (23:35.283)
True, because let’s say if you want to put your best face out, you need to scrape your tongue because scraping the tongue is to make old stuff to go away from you. Whatever was in the yesterday in the past, whatever emotions you had, you gag it out, you scrape it out, you start afresh and old energy naturally leaves.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (24:03.928)
Wow, especially when we have that intention.

Vaidya Jay (24:06.291)
Yeah, for that matter, Kimberley, every Ayurvedic practice is geared to that. How do we leave the old patterns and move on to the new patterns?

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (24:13.73)
and

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (24:18.158)
That’s so beautiful.

Vaidya Jay (24:19.283)
So tongue scraping is not only removing these bacillus and bacteria, sometimes people also have other growths happening on the tongue, like they may have candida on the tongue. It looks geographical. It’s white in color. People have to scrape it out. Otherwise, they colonize and they relocate themselves. Sometimes it can be even other forms of

organisms that come into the tongue and then you scrape it out and then you let it go so that body can have an opportunity to rebalance not only oral biome, but also the immune system that is governing our oral system, our oral cavity.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (25:06.702)
What does Arjuveda say, Vajayjay, if you get canker sores on the inside of your mouth or even on your tongue? Say it more regularly.

Vaidya Jay (25:15.383)
It purely indicates indigestion in Ayurveda, especially acid indigestion. Pitta being excess will show up as burning of mucous membranes.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (25:20.222)
Okay.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (25:30.145)
Mmm.

Vaidya Jay (25:31.355)
So when you scrape the tongue, of course it helps to get rid of the possible infection that may happen on these sores. But it also tells the gut is that I’m clean now and I can feed myself with healthy stuff so that the acid in digestion slowly clears up. Ideally what people do is after brushing the teeth, scraping the tongue, they will drink water. That’s the first thing because when you clean it,

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (25:57.196)
Mmm.

Vaidya Jay (26:00.423)
The most conducive thing to do for the gut is to drink water that balances out all the pitta, all the acid in the stomach.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (26:08.622)
Right. And of course, in Arivada, we’re talking about room temperature, warm water. We do not mean ice water.

Vaidya Jay (26:15.515)
Not at all. We had ice water like this.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (26:19.798)
yeah, I just as a VATSA person as well, like I just can’t even drink anything really icy. I’m already, you know, running cold. But then when I learn about how, you know, detrimental it can be for your gut, for your ugly, for your digestion, you know, I’m really not wanting the ice water.

Vaidya Jay (26:37.479)
Yeah, sometimes even the tongue represents what’s happening in the mind as well. For example, if somebody looks at their tongue and the tongue is having these ulcers or canker sores on the tip of the tongue, that means you’re extremely stressed out.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (26:44.27)
Mmm.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (26:56.428)
really? Why would it manifest there? And I know there’s another discussion, there’s like fascia that runs, it’s related to, it’s so connected to everything.

Vaidya Jay (27:05.523)
The easiest way is to say, if you look at your tongue like this, imagine your head like that. So the tip of the tongue is your head. Like this. So when you have too much going on, then the tip of the tongue becomes red and also ulcerates. If the tongue is really quivering, when you look at the tongue, you extend it out, the tongue is quivering. That means you are really unsettled and anxious.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (27:16.398)
Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (27:26.318)
Good.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (27:30.529)
Thank

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (27:35.662)
Could it be, Vyjayjay, what you were saying about emotions? You get a lot of sores on the tip if you’re holding in emotions, or maybe you’re going through a big release, like trauma release. Could that happen too?

Vaidya Jay (27:47.879)
Absolutely, If the tongue becomes extremely swollen sometimes people have this swollen tongue and then the sides of the tongue becomes they are dealing with a lot of ang…

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (27:58.136)
Really? Wow. So it’s, the tongue has so much emotional energy in there.

Vaidya Jay (28:05.563)
Yes, yeah because when you have to express my emotions how do I express I speak it out

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (28:12.108)
Right. Are there any, you know, besides the breathing, do you recommend stretching the tongue to release energy or doing any other sort of physical movement with the tongue?

Vaidya Jay (28:23.123)
We have after the tongue scraping in the routine we have oil pulling, know that complements it so where we stroke the tongue continuously with the oil to rinse the tongue, but also Speech is one thing that when done excess will Tire out or Puts the nervous system under a lot of stress speech

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (28:28.63)
Hmm. Okay.

Vaidya Jay (28:51.387)
If I keep on talking whole day, Ayurveda says that our nervous system doesn’t relax easily.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (28:51.512)
Right.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (28:57.166)
It’s like John, you know, my husband, he’s on the phone all day for his job. It’s a lot of talking.

Vaidya Jay (29:01.213)
Yeah. Yeah. After some time, cannot even though you don’t have a Vata personality, you may be Kapha or Pitta, but speaking made your Vata to get directly into the mind. Yeah. And then once the tongue is swished, oil is the best way to calm down the Vata, nervous energy. And then you do that and then you spit it out. That will make the not only tongue to

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (29:14.069)
Yeah.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (29:25.1)
Okay.

Vaidya Jay (29:31.143)
work very hard and all the lymphatic glands that are around the throat and then the slavery glands, the tonsils, they all get squeezed so that they can let go all these stagnant secretions in that.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (29:47.598)
Mmm.

So it’s a very powerful practice as well, the oil pulling, which I remember in class you said only needs to be what, two minutes? Sometimes again, there’s a lot of people talking about different information. You hear people saying you need to do it for 30 minutes. mean, no one, there’s no way I could do it that long. And I just, you most of us certainly don’t have time.

Vaidya Jay (30:00.371)
Two to three minutes max,

Vaidya Jay (30:14.835)
It’s always extremes, know. Do it where it is useful for 100 years, not for one day. Where you’re doing it so much that after some time your muscles will get tired.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (30:27.818)
Exactly, exactly. And so yeah, we want it to be sustainable and everybody has very full lives. I know for me, especially in the morning, I’m making breakfast and lunch and getting the kids dressed and, you know, meditating ideally before they get up. And so there isn’t so much time to do these.

Vaidya Jay (30:44.125)
Time to do everything, yes, absolutely. Same with me too. You have to squeeze in so many things to be at your best, not only healthy at your best. So I do sometimes do these practices, like for example, tongue scraping, I do it as you said, right, know, wake up and then do it. But, you know, oil pulling, sometimes I do it in the shower. When I’m showering, I have the oil in my mouth and I just process it and then I spit it out and then finish my shower and then come back and spit

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (31:15.01)
Wait, but why do you are you still getting up at 4am to do your Dina charia?

Vaidya Jay (31:19.665)
That’s my, I cannot separate from that routine. I know how good I feel about myself and my day, how it sets the tone. can’t, I can’t move away from.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (31:24.7)
So.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (31:32.172)
What time do you go to bed?

Vaidya Jay (31:33.939)
I go between 9.30 and 10. That’s the time when I go to sleep.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (31:38.678)
Wow. For me, it’s 5 a.m., about 5 a.m. wake up, but four is a little… I mean, except for when I’m writing books.

Vaidya Jay (31:47.283)
I know how you do that but you’re really good and I love your books.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (31:54.894)
Oh, thank you so much, Vyjay. Let’s talk about cracks. Okay. I remember and it’s gotten a lot better and I’m not going to show you my tongue right now, but I remember when I became your student and we were doing this tongue discussion and I showed you my tongue and you said, Kimberly. I was like, what? I feel like there’s cracks. Oh my gosh. I consider myself such a healthy person, but there were a few cracks and it did take time.

Vaidya Jay (31:58.941)
Mm-hmm.

Vaidya Jay (32:04.499)
you

Vaidya Jay (32:18.355)
Yeah, yeah.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (32:24.034)
But I don’t know, know, maybe it’s a combination of different things I was doing. They’ve lessened. I still have some cracks. My skin, I mean, my tongue is not like my children’s, which is like perfect. What are the cracks? I mean, there’s different kinds, I’m sure.

Vaidya Jay (32:33.383)
Hmm. Yeah, beautiful. There two things. One is the cracks. Another one is the indentations. So the indentations are usually seen on the sides of the tongue. Cracks are usually seen in the center of the tongue. So if the body is having less of absorption, if the body is having

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (32:44.374)
Mmm.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (32:50.891)
Okay.

Vaidya Jay (33:03.961)
less of lubrication in the gut, and also having less nourishment going to the tissues, the tongue shows cracks. That means it’s not cohesive. The body is not cohesive. The gut is not cohesive. So as you said, you started doing some of the things, and it slowly started coming together. That means that

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (33:17.358)
Hmm.

Vaidya Jay (33:31.539)
process of deficiency due to lack of nourishment is now slowly replanting.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (33:37.292)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Vaidya Jay (33:38.973)
Whereas the impressions, or what we call as indentations on the tongue, on the sides, those represent malabsorption. That means you’re breaking down food, but your body is incapable of absorbing. So you can look at the tongue and say, I have a lot of tweet mark on either side that’s indentations. And then you say,

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (33:49.454)
Mm.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (33:56.366)
Got it.

Vaidya Jay (34:04.647)
That means I’m not absorbed everything that I’m eating. Either I’m overeating or I’m eating but I’m not absorbed.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (34:12.472)
Got it, got it. For me, it was the cracks and it was pretty correlated with my childbirths. And I felt like what helped for me was adding a lot more fat and oils, like healthy oils, just to ground more and to nourish because I do run drier and thinner.

Vaidya Jay (34:21.757)
Mmm.

Vaidya Jay (34:34.707)
Yeah, that makes perfect sense because your body was showing I’m lacking something and you understood, yes, my body lacks this because I’ve been giving to my children in different nutritional forms and I’m not getting enough. My tongue is showing my tissues are getting dry and I put things like perfectly healthy fat will

keep on building what is lacking, and then the tongue comes back to its normal state.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (35:10.112)
And how long could that take potentially if someone’s like looking at their tongue right now, they’re like, I have those indentations. I have cracks. I mean, on average, of course, we need to make some real lifestyle shifts here.

Vaidya Jay (35:21.427)
See, typically about nine months to a year to slowly come back to that healthy metabolism in the tissues.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (35:28.526)
Mm. And again, we’ve had so many other podcasts with Vita J that talk about nutrition. We’ll link to some of these in the show notes at my saloon.com. We’ve done seasonal conversations. We’ve done conversations around women’s health. We’ve done menstrual health. We’ve done pregnancy. We’ve done a lot of if we could just give one quick tip for each body type by DJ like, again, not to generalize, but Vata types.

Vaidya Jay (35:47.251)
you

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (35:58.254)
could the dryness you speak about, and I spent a lot of my earlier life being constipated, those healthy fats and all the forms, you know, for our community, largely plant-based, but the oils, the fats, that is a very powerful way to rebalance.

Vaidya Jay (36:14.863)
No doubt, no doubt. if they can, the way I would say is, waters like movement, if they can take healthy fats in the form of seeds and nuts and chew them until, because waters have to move. the chewing process will also calm their water and then they can swallow, like they can choose how much quantity they want, but it is vital that they chew it into a liquid before they swallow.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (36:45.058)
Got it, got it. Okay, and then what about if there’s someone’s really pitta, very fiery?

Vaidya Jay (36:51.581)
So pitas definitely have to work with vegetables. Pitas have to move away from carnivorous diet. They cannot.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (36:57.079)
Mmm.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (37:01.88)
my gosh, I love it. you do, we talked about, know, John was a carnivore for a couple of months and it was not good. It is not good. And he had to, he had to discover on his own. can’t tell our spouses how to eat, right? But sure.

Vaidya Jay (37:06.909)
See you.

Vaidya Jay (37:15.485)
Yeah, exactly. You have to leave them on their traits. They come back, tell you, yes, this is what is happening. And then you take the reins in the hands and then guide them. So pitas have to be more of vegetable lovers. And that will help them tremendously. And kafas need to go more towards fiber-rich food.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (37:27.499)
Yeah.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (37:34.251)
Yes.

Vaidya Jay (37:45.611)
and food that is more of somewhat a stringing quality, like which includes lentils and beans and legumes because they tend to hold a lot of anyway, know, nutritional fluids and fat in them. So it’s better to move that out so that the gut becomes more healthier, tongue looks less coated.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (38:12.48)
And is it true that kaffas can handle more raw foods the best?

Vaidya Jay (38:17.105)
Yes, more raw foods and also somewhat pungent like black pepper, turmeric, things like that they settle very well with kaffir pipes.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (38:21.944)
Thank

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (38:26.804)
that’s so helpful, Vajayjay. So if you’re seeing cracks and then you can determine your body type, there’s all these quizzes online or you have a general, or listen to some of our other shows where we talked about the doshas, then these are some good general steps to get you back to that balance, which you can then see in your tongue.

Vaidya Jay (38:46.225)
Yes, that’ll be amazing. And I think it’s such a easy, quick tool to do on everyday basis, just creeping the tongue. I think everybody should do it. And not with the gold, but copper. Copper takes the lead. Yeah, silver one is good too. If you have silver, it’s good. Copper is even better. And we at Atreya have a copper things paper they want to buy. Yes, we do.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (39:01.038)
I’m gonna get a copper one because I have a silver one.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (39:13.144)
Do you? incredible. Which leads us to summing it all up. Thank you so much, Vajajay, as always for being here for the community, for being such a guiding light in our uVeda. are and will always be my go-to. I always, we love having you on the show. We welcome you here. And reminding everyone that Vajajay has a wonderful clinic in Long Beach.

Vaidya Jay (39:22.941)
thing.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (39:41.282)
His company, Atreia Herbs, uses only organic. They’re formulations that Bai Jijie has created himself. I myself love many of the formulations. I love the herbalized oils, especially for a biyanga. I’m gonna go get the copper tongue scraper. Is there anything else I’m forgetting Bai Jijie that we couldn’t include?

Vaidya Jay (40:02.339)
No, think we inspired people to do this very simple technique or daily routine that will be such change in their life that they can really feel it.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (40:19.118)
Yes, so daily tongue scraping and some tongue observation as we talked about can be really powerful as well. Amazing. Well, namaste, Vajay Jay.

Vaidya Jay (40:31.731)
Namaste Kimberly, Namaste everyone. Be healthy and live a long healthy life.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (40:38.178)
Thank you everyone so much for tuning in. And once again, please check out the show notes at mysaluna.com. We will link to all of Ida J’s information as well as prior podcasts we’ve done together, other shows I think you would enjoy. We’ll be back here in just a few days. While you’re over there, be sure to sign up for our newsletter if you haven’t yet already. I’ll catch you on social at underscore Kimberly Snyder. Till next time, sending you so much love and take great care.

Vaidya Jay (41:05.021)
Thank you. Namaste.