Pachana
The action that "cooks" and digests ama, the residue of incomplete digestion: the quality of herbs that help the body finish a digestion left half-done.
Pachana comes from the Sanskrit root pac, "to cook": it is the action that helps digest what has been left undigested — first and foremost ama, the residue of incomplete digestion that the tradition regards as the root of many imbalances. Where dipana kindles the digestive fire before a meal, pachana clears out what is already clogging the system: together they form the fundamental pair of Ayurvedic digestion.
The great pachanas are heating or bitter herbs: dry ginger, pippali (long pepper) and cumin, but also bitters such as guduchi. The simplest pachana protocol is also the oldest: sipping hot water throughout the day — the warmth gently "cooks" ama. Another concrete example: skipping or lightening dinner when the tongue is coated and there is no appetite on waking, two classic signs of ama, to let the body catch up on its backlog of digestion.
Pachana belongs to the broader strategy of langhana (lightening): before nourishing or strengthening, Ayurveda almost always starts by digesting and lightening. That is the logic behind kitchari mono-diets and the gentle detox approaches we detail in our article on clearing ama without extremes. To put it all in context, revisit the central concept of agni, the digestive fire.