Sick Season Is Here: Ayurvedic Rituals, Yoga Practices, Breathwork, and Food for Immunity
If you live in Omaha right now, you may be feeling it too. There’s something unpleasant moving through the community, touching nearly every age group. In my own experience, it’s reached students, friends, family members, and even my babies. No one seems immune.
The symptoms vary but follow a familiar theme: sneezing, congestion, coughing, fevers, fatigue, and in some cases vomiting. It feels less like one isolated illness and more like a collective immune challenge, as if everyone’s system is being tested at once.
As I write this, I’m sipping warm broth, caring for my family, and leaning into practices that support resilience rather than quick fixes. This season has been a powerful reminder that prevention, nourishment, and slowing down are not indulgences. They are foundational.
Why Are So Many of Us Getting Sick?
From an Ayurvedic perspective, widespread illness often reflects deeper imbalances beneath the surface.
Stress is one of the biggest contributors. Chronic stress weakens immunity by keeping the nervous system in a constant state of alert. Add hustle culture, inconsistent meals, overstimulation, poor sleep, and little time for rest, and the body simply runs out of reserves.
Another key concept in Ayurveda is agni, or digestive fire. When agni is low or irregular, food and experiences are not fully digested. This leads to ama, a buildup of toxins that can clog the body’s channels and compromise immunity. When digestion struggles, the immune system often follows.
Seasonal transitions also play a role. As temperatures and rhythms shift, the body needs adjustments in diet and routine. Without them, imbalance quietly builds.
Daily Ayurvedic Practices to Support Immunity
No single practice is a guarantee, but consistent self-care creates a strong foundation for healing and protection.
Warm Oil Abhyanga
Daily self-massage with warm oil, such as sesame oil, calms the nervous system, improves circulation, supports lymphatic flow, and nourishes the tissues. Even five to ten minutes can be deeply grounding and protective during stressful or cold seasons.
Neti Pot
Using a neti pot with warm saline water helps clear nasal passages, reduce congestion, and remove allergens and mucus. This can be especially helpful when respiratory symptoms are circulating widely.
Tongue Scraping
A simple morning ritual with powerful benefits. Scraping the tongue removes accumulated ama from overnight digestion and offers insight into overall digestive health. A thick coating often signals that agni needs support.
Breath of Fire and Immune Support
One practice I’ve been returning to daily is Breath of Fire. This rhythmic, stimulating breath is known to support digestion, circulation, detoxification, and immune strength. It generates internal heat, helps clear stagnation, and awakens the body’s natural vitality.
There are several variations, including:
Tongue-out panting, similar to a dog’s breath
An O-shaped mouth version
Rapid breathing in and out through the nose
Each variation offers slightly different benefits, but all work to invigorate the system and move stagnant energy.
You may hear the phrase “11 minutes a day will keep the doctor away.” It’s important to know that this does not mean 11 minutes straight. Especially if you’re new to the practice or feeling depleted, Breath of Fire can be spread throughout your yoga practice or even across the entire day. One or two minutes at a time, woven into movement, meditation, or pauses in your routine, is often more sustainable and just as effective.
Consistency matters far more than intensity.
Rest as Medicine
Alongside breathwork, I’ve been leaning deeply into yin yoga, restorative yoga, and yoga nidra. These practices activate the parasympathetic nervous system, the state where true healing occurs. Rest is not passive. It is active repair.
When the body feels safe, digestion improves. When digestion improves, immunity strengthens.
Food as Medicine During Sick Season
When illness is present, food should be warming, simple, and easy to digest.
Supportive options include:
Warm broths and soups with ginger, garlic, turmeric, and black pepper
Stewed or roasted vegetables instead of raw
Kitchari or simple rice and lentils
Herbal teas such as ginger, tulsi, fennel, or cinnamon
Cooked apples or pears with warming spices
It’s helpful to minimize cold foods, sugar, processed items, and heavy meals during this time, as they tend to dampen agni and increase ama.
A Gentle Reminder
Illness is not always a failure of the body. Sometimes it’s a message asking us to slow down, simplify, and tend to ourselves with more care. This season invites warmth over force, nourishment over burnout, and consistency over extremes.
Want to Go Deeper?
If you’d like to dive deeper into these practices and learn how to support your own system and your family’s health more intentionally, there are ways to work together.
1:1 Ayurvedic Health Counseling
Working with an Ayurvedic health counselor offers personalized guidance based on your unique constitution, lifestyle, digestion, stress levels, and seasonal needs. Together, we create sustainable routines, food strategies, and practices that support long-term vitality, not just short-term relief.
Book Your Free Discovery Call Here.
Moon Dancer OnDemand Membership
Prefer to learn at your own pace? The Moon Dancer OnDemand Membership is filled with practices, lectures, breathwork, and yoga offerings designed to support digestion, immunity, nervous system regulation, and overall well-being. It’s a library of tools you can return to whenever your body needs extra care.
Join The Moon Dancer On-Demand Membership Here.
If this season has been asking you to slow down and listen more closely, consider it an invitation. Support is available, and health does not have to be complicated to be powerful.
