Ayurveda is a 5,000-year-old holistic approach to health and wellness. One of the main principles of Ayurveda is that the mind and body are indissolubly connected. According to Deepak Chopra, “Freedom from illness depends on expanding our own awareness, bringing it into balance, and then extending that balance to the body.”
Ayurveda is a way of life. It is a way of life that has started to become more mainstream in the past few years as many of us are becoming more conscious of our own mind-body connection. Western medicine has long viewed the body as parts that make up a whole. Eastern medicine, on the other hand, sees the body as an entire entity inextricably connected. Our modern approach to health and wellness though is starting to blend the two.
An understanding of Ayurveda and the lifestyle associated with this approach to comprehensive wellness can help you lead a more fulfilled, healthy, and happy life. When you understand your body and what works for you and doesn’t work for you, you are better suited to make decisions that will affect you in only a positive way.
There are three doshas (Vata, Pitta, and Kapha) associated with the five elements of nature (space, air, fire, water, and earth). Discovering your dosha, which is based on your body frame, weight, complexion, eyes, hair, joints, sleep pattern, body temperature, temperament, and how you react to stress, can help you create a lifestyle that is best suited for your unique nature.
You can take a simple quiz to discover what your dosha is by clicking here. Most of us are a blend of physical, emotional, and mental characteristics and for that reason a blend of doshas.
Living in harmony with your mind and body can be done through eating a healthy and colorful diet, living in tune with nature, getting sufficient and restful sleep, exercising, and embodying the law of least effort.
This isn’t a call to prescribe to one wellness approach over another, but more of an invitation to develop an intuitive and conscious relationship with your mental, emotional, and physical self. It is this invitation that many of us are starting to RSVP to, especially as we move into 2019.
Simple Ayurveda practices that you can start incorporating into your daily life:
- Mediate
- Drink warm water with ginger two to three times a day
- Laugh out loud
- crape your tongue
- Sweat
- Eat your biggest meal at lunchtime
- Rise with the sun
- Give yourself time to rest