How to Do Tongue Scrapping To Clear Toxins - Ayurveda

Tongue scraping is an ancient Ayurvedic practice that removes toxins from the tongue, preventing illness and disease. It also enables you to enjoy your food fully throughout the day.

Most people will have some debris on their tongue in the morning, but an especially thick coating is often a sign of ama in the system. Ama is the sticky waste product of poor digestion. It builds up in the digestive tract when agni is weak or has been overloaded by the wrong foods.

If ama isn’t cleared properly, it accumulates and eventually circulates around the body, finding places to settle, causing blockages in the energy channels and unbalancing the doshas. This can lead to a condition known in Sanskrit as Amavisha, a chronic buildup of toxins. Amavisha may cause a heaviness and fogginess in your mind, stiffness in your joints, and a sleepy, dull feeling after you have eaten.


Awakening The Tongue

As well as removing toxins, tongue scraping removes any lurking bacteria, such as streptococcus, so that they do not get reintroduced into the system and cause infections. Scraping also helps revitalize the taste buds by removing the coating that dulls their sensitivity. Ideally, you should scrape your tongue every morning and evening before you brush your teeth.

First thing in the morning, before taking liquid or food, stick your tongue way out and look in the mirror. If your tongue has a white (Kapha), yellowish (Pitta), or blackish (Vata) coating, you have some toxins in your digestive system. This coating is a great way to get an indication of which dosha might be out of balance. But if your tongue looks pink and clear, you are doing great! Nevertheless, a tongue scraping is still beneficial.


How to do Tongue Scrapping

Use a stainless steel or copper scraper, you can buy these from any good pharmacy and health store or if you don’t have one, use the edge of a spoon. Stick out your tongue and allow it to become heavy and relaxed, then scrape the surface of the tongue backward and forward repeatedly as you silently count to five. Rinse the scraper, then repeat.

When you are finished, clean your scraper with water and allow it to dry naturally, then rinse your mouth out. Brush your teeth as normal, then drink a small glass of warm water to gently soothe the digestive tract.

When you scrape your tongue, not only are you removing many toxins and bacteria you accumulated in your mouth overnight, you are actually massaging the organs in the digestive tract, which are represented on each quadrant of the tongue based on Ayurvedic knowledge.