What Scrooge, Constipation, and Your Bank Account Have in Common

We've all heard the phrase, "He is such a tight ass."

What image comes to mind?

Someone with the greedy temperament of Ebenezer Scrooge, who couldn't part with a tuppence for the ailing Tiny Tim?

Someone with a pinched face who never cracks a smile?

I always think of Sarah Jessica Parker's character in The Family Stone. She's so tightly wound that I can't help thinking, She has to be constipated.

Because "tight ass," it turns out, might be more than a description of how someone relates to money.

Stay with me.

In Ayurveda, there are five primary movements of energy in the body. Energy moves in. It moves outward. It circulates. It moves up. And it moves down and out.

That downward-moving energy is called apana vayu.

Apana governs elimination—not only our ability to poop, but everything that needs to move down and out.

And we want, very much, to be able to let go of what we no longer need.

Because release creates space.

Space for nourishment. Space to receive.

I was sitting in my Ayurveda class this week learning about these movements of energy when my teacher made a connection to money that immediately got my attention.

Sometimes our difficulty letting go is closely connected to our difficulty receiving.

If receiving doesn't feel reliable, letting go can feel terrifying.

What if there isn't more?

More love. More food. More opportunity. More money.

So we hold tightly to what we have.

We grip.

We try to control.

We put a kink in the hose.

And then we wonder why nothing seems to be flowing.

This doesn't mean that spending money magically causes more money to appear, or that financial struggles are simply an energetic blockage. Money is far more complex than that.

It's more about the way we relate to money—the fear, control, trust, and meaning we bring to it. This is part of what I mean when I talk about a holistic self-understanding practice for women: it's not just about food or routines, it's about noticing the patterns underneath everything, including how we hold our money.

I know I'm in a "tight ass" state of mind when I find myself spinning around a financial decision or challenge, trying to get something exactly right or make life work out exactly the way I want.

When I start fixating, I know I need to step back and loosen my grip.

Because our relationship with money can reveal many of the same patterns we carry elsewhere in our lives: our willingness to receive, our capacity to trust, our fear of not having enough, and our ability to release what is no longer serving us.

It reminds me of a favorite line from writer Tosha Silver, whose work on trust and surrender has shaped a lot of my own thinking here: the idea that everything we truly need is allowed to arrive, and everything we no longer need is allowed to leave. (If that resonates, her book Outrageous Openness is worth reading in full—I don't want to flatten her words down to a paraphrase.)

Yes, this can be about money. And no, I don't mean spending recklessly or pretending money doesn't matter.

But it can also mean letting go of old hurts, grudges, and resentments.

Recognizing patterns of thinking and being that no longer serve you—and choosing something different.

Allowing yourself to forgive.

Stepping into generosity.

Making room for something new.

Maybe the invitation is simply to notice where fear has convinced you that holding tighter is the only way to be safe.

Ayurveda continually brings us back to this dance of taking in what nourishes us, digesting what we receive, and releasing what we no longer need. Food. Experiences. Emotions. Ideas. And yes, perhaps even money.

This is really the foundation of sustainable self-care through Ayurveda—not another rule to follow, but a way of noticing where you're gripping and learning, slowly, to trust the flow again.

One of the things we'll explore in Living Ayurveda, my Ayurvedic self-care program for women, is how to work with these different movements of energy in the body—including apana vayu—and the simple practices that help restore their natural flow.

Because whether or not we ever connect it to money, we want these energies moving well.

It is part of our physical health.

It is part of our emotional health.

And it is another way Ayurveda teaches us to care for ourselves with a little less gripping…and a little more trust.