Be a Detective of Your Body: Tongue Scraping 101
Tongue Scraping is a practice that is a little strange looking today, but historically has been done since the 15th century! Have you ever noticed your tongue when you wake up? A lot of us tend to have a coating on our tongues. This has a lot to do with the type of foods we eat and how we sleep.
Is it bad?
I don’t think of the coating as “bad” unless it is super thick. I like to think of it simply as information about my body I can use to balance throughout the day. The color of your coating is going to tell you a bit about your diet. It shows what you need more and less of throughout the day.
This is actually incredible! Our body provides us with natural and symptom-free clues to bring us back into balance.
Once we know how to read the color code we can shift a little of what we eat that day to avoid long term illness and even short term colds. Pretty neat huh?
The color code
White
I personally feel like white coatings are the most common because of the abundance of dairy, oil, and fat in our diets. A white coating means we have had too many earth element foods (oil, dairy fat, potatoes, gluten root veggies, avocados) A thick coating would mean more of the foods is processed. Simply try a few more stem veggies, fruits, and rice!
Yellow
I notice this color more if I have had a drink or two the day before. Yellow coating means you have too much fire element in the body. This could be from fermented food, spicy food, acidic fruits, and alcohol. If this is the case try to bring in some earthy foods and water to help balance.
Brown
This one always throws people off. Your tongue won’t be fully brown, it will be more like a dirty white or greyish color. This means you have had too much air element food. Things like crackers, pretzels, popcorn, too much salt. You will also just feel dried out. Try to stimulate with more fire foods and water!
Hope this easy code helps on your holistic journey!
If you want a full personalized plan hit me up! This is just one of many ways to tune into your body’s clues to balance before illness. I would love to work with you to teach you even more <3
This work has given me so much joy and inspiration. Don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions or hesitations you have about Ayurveda, I love talking with new people about this ancient science! (and I offer sliding scale people!)
