What is Ayurveda | Essential Oil

Health is not a one day activity instead it is a never-ending and continuous mission until your soul departs your body. To stay healthy is to stay on par with the flow of nature without interrupting the natural temperament of your system and Dean Ornish rightly said that ‘Health is not something that you need to get; it’s something you already have if you don’t disturb it’. That is what the ancient remedial science known as Ayurveda suggests mankind to simply tag along the cadence of nature. A daily systematic life that strikes perfect balance with the natural pace of Mother Nature needs no cure or meets no disastrous diseases. Such an inspiring Ayurvedic Routine is popularly termed as ‘Dinacharya’ and seasonal routine is known as Ritucharya.

Ayurveda strongly states that there is a time for everything with a natural meaning in it. If things are done at the right time, you are striking balance with nature and your body functions perfectly and in close connection with your mind. This natural tempo controls our predominant natural urges like food, sleep and sex, also known as the three pillars of life. Today’s modern living has sickened our lives and has forced us to lead it as blindly as a lost kitten in the middle of the forest. Only when we practice certain vital things on a scheduled time, we can live in harmony without the compulsion of any other external factors misleading our lives. To remember it easily, I have listed the daily Ayurvedic routine as 11 simple points to follow as per the Ayurvedic body types. They are:

Wake up early in the morning before sunrise. For Vata it is just about 6 AM, Pitta it is approximately 5:30 AM and for Kapha it is around 4:30 AM. This aids your senses to rise above and ascend along with the sunrise.
Gargle your mouth and drink a cup of warm water with few drops of fresh lemon juice and one teaspoon of raw honey. This supports your body’s normal bowel movement in the morning and helps the digestive system to function properly. Regular bowel movement will aid in eliminating the toxin from your body and make you feel refreshed without carrying the toxins of the previous day’s food.
Brush your teeth twice daily early in the morning and before going to bed. Scrape and rub your tongue thoroughly in the morning to clear away toxins or the poisonous particles sticking on your tongue from the remaining of the previous day’s food items known as ama in Ayurveda. You can either use a good tongue scraper or a stainless steel spoon to clean your tongue front to back. Clean your nasal passages, ears and eyes regularly.
Go for a brisk walk for about 15 to 20 minutes. This helps in improving your blood circulation and aids you in enjoying the healthy rays of the sun fully filled with Vitamin D and other essential nutrients required to boost the functions of your brain and uplift your skin from within. Vitamin D deficiency might end up in skin cancer, rickets, cardiovascular disease, cognitive impairment in elderly people, muscular weakness and much more.
It’s time to caress, pamper and massage your skin with Abhyanga, the Ayurvedic massage therapy with the use of Ayurvedic essential oils all through your body and your head. Leave it at least for 20 minutes.
Meanwhile, you can practice the life saving skill nothing but the great sibling of Ayurveda, popularly known as Yoga. This grants you strength, endurance, resistance and the potential to enhance the functionality of your entire system.
It’s time for a revivifying bath with few drops of energizing Ayurvedic essential oils like lavender essential oil, bergamot essential oil, rose essential oil, jasmine oil, sandalwood oil, grapefruit essential oil, cinnamon essential oil, orange essential oil and few other citrus essential oils to give a right start to your day.
Offer prayers to the Almighty and a calm meditation for about 5 minutes will give you all the energy that your mind needs for accomplishing your challenging tasks all through the day. A powerful meditation influences self-realization and mental strength.
Eating right is very important than just filling your stomach. Taste your food, like it and chew it well as it promotes quicker digestion and absorption of essential energy required by your body. Ensure that you take up a rich and nutritious breakfast between 7:00 to 8:00 AM in the morning.
Have your lunch in between 12:00 to 1:00 PM. Let the not-so-easy to digest food items find a place in your lunch rather than during any other meals of the day because there is enormous time to digest and the Agni or the digestive fire is very active during this time. If possible, go for a small walk after lunch to help easy digestion.
Ensure that your dinner is taken before 8:00 PM and you floss and brush your teeth before going to bed to keep away from harmful germs. Go to bed by 10:00 PM at night making certain that you have enough rest after working throughout the entire day and for gifting a dynamic start to the day ahead. Spend 5 minutes before sleeping to recollect all that you’ve done for the day. Think whether you have accomplished all that is required or have something left behind to finish? This will keep you informed about where you are and direct you towards where you want to go. Utter a small prayer and thank the Creator for all He has given you and sleep peacefully with the hope of being in a new day at dawn.

This might appear as a huge or an impossible list to many but you’ll certainly feel its simplicity and its greater benefits on your healthy and harmonized living once you start practicing it as the celebrated adage ‘Practice makes a man perfect’ appropriately fits in this context and a regular following of these Ayurvedic routine in your life will indeed make you perfect, peaceful and proficient. Start with one and its positive impact will naturally influence you in choosing the whole lot.

Best wishes for your methodical living in the pink.

Thought for the day:

The best six doctors anywhere
And no one can deny it
Are sunshine, water, rest, and air
Exercise and diet.
These six will gladly you attend
If only you are willing
Your mind they’ll ease
Your will they’ll mend
And charge you not a shilling.

-Nursery rhyme, What the River Knows, 1990, quoted by Wayne Fields

Suggested Reading:

Perfect Health: The Complete Mind/Body Guide, Revised and Updated Edition by MD Deepak Chopra
Yoga for your Type: An Ayurvedic Approach to Your Asana Practice by Dr. David Frawley, Sandra Summerfield Kozak
Dhanwantari: A Complete Guide to the Ayurvedic Life by Harish Johari

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Tongue is a tantalizing part of the human body. Though it is scientifically proven to perform numerous significant tasks like cleaning the teeth, phonetic articulation etc, the predominant function of the tongue is often associated with gustation and the taste buds. Drinking and eating are highly essential for survival and every single time the food that we intake is encountered first by our tongue, which helps us identify the real taste. This is the entry point that decides the quality and nature of the food or medicines that we ingest. Ayurveda, the noble Indian science of healing had described about six different tastes of our food and insists that our diet should be a balanced proportion of all the six tastes for a healthy living.

Importance of tongue in identifying the basic tastes: Tongue might seem very simple to us but you will be surprised to know that there are about 8 intrinsic and extrinsic muscles. The basic tastes that are identified by our tongue are bitterness, saltiness, sourness, Umami, sweetness and metallic taste. The cell membranes and the receptors on the taste buds play a vital role in recognizing the unique tastes. I feel like saying ‘What a splendid Scientist, Genius, Master, Physiologist and Inventor our Creator is!!!!’

Super six tastes of Ayurveda: The ancient healing system known as Ayurveda defines six tastes for harmonized living. They are sweet, sour, salty, pungent, bitter and astringent. Ayurveda states that ‘the sense of taste is the natural guide map for a balanced nutrition’. This heavenly method of healing humanity says that each and every taste has a unique mechanism for nourishing our body, mind, spirit and senses gradually.

Most of the times the taste of our choice determines our personality and a popular adage that witnesses this statement is ‘We are what we eat’. Tasteless items are not at all considered and the booming restaurant industry proves the importance of taste since ages. According to Ayurveda, the six tastes are derived from the five vital elements. The significance of the six Ayurvedic tastes are as follows:

Sweet: This taste is derived from the combination of earth and water. It is present in food items that are rich in carbohydrates, amino acids, fats, sugars, oils, milk and milk products, fruits, beans, and certain vegetables like beetroot, carrot and cooked potatoes. This taste has a heavy, oily, moist and cold characteristic. It is popularly known for building tissues of the human body.
Sour: Sour taste is a combination of fire and earth. This taste in present in fermented food products, citrus fruits and vegetables with acids like ascorbic acid. It stimulates digestion by fortifying the digestive fire. It is hot, moist, oily and light in nature.
Salty: It is derived from the fire and water elements having a moist, heavy and hot nature. Salty taste is found in sea salt, rock salt, refrigerated sea foods, salted nuts, pickles, chips and certain vegetables like kelp and seaweed. It calms the nerves, enhances digestion, supports in waste elimination and brings down anxiety and fear.
Pungent: Being derived from air and fire elements, this taste is light, dry and hot. Pungent taste is a part of onions, garlic, ginger and chili peppers. It supports trouble-free digestion, reduces muscular pain and boosts circulation.
Bitter: Bitter taste is a combination of ether and air. This taste is cool, dry and light in nature. It is found in spices like dandelion root, turmeric, fenugreek, green leafy vegetables like bitter guard, spinach, egg plant etc, Tea, coffee and olives also taste bitter. It has excellent detoxifying properties that aids in treating skin rashes, weight reduction, fever, water retention and much more.
Astringent: This is a combination of the earth and air elements. Astringent taste is found in beans, potatoes, raw honey, resins, tannins, cranberries, cauliflower, broccoli, pears, turnip and few other spices like marjoram and turmeric. It is slightly cold in nature and purifies the tissues of the body.

Wow! Is all that I have to utter here as it’s really amazing to know the tastes that are good to our health. Hope our blind eating would stop here and help us start a healthy Ayurvedic diet with a combination of the all these six essential tastes.

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