Balance through lifestyle
The ancient wisdom of ayurveda focuses on the maintenance of health and wellbeing and the understanding that this will prevent ill health, rather than focusing on the treatment of illness.
The key to maintaining balance is to understand the individual doshas and their characteristics and influencers, to determine your prakriti and your vikriti, and to learn how to best manage your lifestyle to balance these.
Aside from the specifics of balancing your dosha, there are basic tenets that allow us to live well.
Eat a colourful, flavourful diet.
Food is our fuel and we should consume it in a state as close as we can to the way nature provided it. A plate filled tasty foods in the colours of the rainbow will engage our senses, encourage us to eat with awareness, and provide us with high levels of nutrients. A well fuelled body means a well fuelled mind, allowing us to function at high levels at all times.
Ayurveda acknowledges six tastes - sweet, salty, sour, pungent, bitter and astringent. Including all of these tastes at all meals will leave you feeling satisfied and content and reduce the desire for snacking and binge eating.
Get abundant, restful sleep
Sleep is the bodies repair mechanism and human beings need between six to eight hours restful sleep each night. Restful sleep strengthens the metabolic system, the immune system and slows down the ageing process.
Live in tune with nature
We are part of nature, we don't operate beside or outside of it. Take a walk outside, enjoy the sun, lie on the grass, swim in the ocean or a river or a lake, take your shoes off, feel the snow or the rain or the sand.
Feed your senses with uplifting experiences, and realise the impact this has on you emotionally, mentally and physically. Your senses are the most direct route to being in the present, acknowledge them and let them guide you in your decisions.
Strengthen your digestive fire
Strong digestive energy (known in ayurveda as agni) creates healthy tissues, efficiently eliminates waste and produces ojas. Ojas are the source of vitality, the basis for clarity, perception, physical strength and immunity.
Tips to strengthen your agni
- eat when you are hungry (not because the clock says it is time to eat)
- sit down to eat
- don't eat when you are agitated or upset
- eat at a moderate pace, don't rush your food
- prefer cooked foods to raw ones
- include all six tastes at each meal
- drink warm water with ginger throughout the day
- exercise moderately and regularly
- perform daily self-massage
- meditate every day
Take it easy
When your awareness is broad, when you are able to trust that all is well and wisely set, when you acknowledge that we are a part of a glorious infinity, then you know that struggling or trying to force things to go your way is futile. Align yourself with the infinite organising power of mother nature, take the pressure off yourself and trust that the universe will provide for you the best that you deserve.