Dinacharya is the daily ritual that we practice as per the ayurvedic text. The benefits of doing them are seen immediately.
The first one is to wake up forty-five minutes before sunrise. This period is called Brahma Muhurta where the Vata dosha is predominant. The predominance of air and space allows us to meditate calmly, sharpen our faculties and senses, connect with our aakashic record and build a stronger sense of purpose. It also allows us to build and improve our intellectual and emotional capabilities. The morning time is a great time to connect with your breath, let go of your past baggage, improve your resolve and devise long term strategies for your future plans. Between 5 and 7 in the morning, the colon is the most active and so it is best to wake up, do some stretching and exercises, and drink 200 ml of warm water to aid in the smooth evacuation of waste from your body.
The second ritual involves oral dental care straight after waking up. This routine consists of 4 steps namely oil pulling, gargling, brushing and tongue scraping. To oil pull, take 1 teaspoon of sesame oil and swish it around the mouth from left to right for 5-15 minutes. It’s important to ensure that the oil doesn’t enter the throat as it can then cause a throat infection. Spit the oil out when you start noticing some kind of discharge from your eyes or mucus from the nose or throat. This helps in preventing and curing cavities, caves, other dental-related disorders and also helps in improving the overall health of the head region. It increases blood circulation to your face, eyes, ears and mouth. It releases the mucus from the sinus glands and also improves your hearing as well as your sight. Another method of oil pulling is taking a full mouth of oil and holding it in your mouth till your eyes start watering. This is a great way of reducing the kapha from your eyes and increasing the pitta in your eyes. After oil pulling, always ensure you gargle with warm water, turmeric and salt or saptachadi kashayam to ensure that there are no remnants of the oil left in the mouth or throat region. Then, brush your teeth with bitter, pungent, and astringent toothpaste. You can also use clove oil to improve your dental health and maintain a healthy gut and oral bacteria in your body. Scrape your tongue with a copper tongue cleaner. Remember that the toxins in your body start getting expelled overnight. Your body works overtime at night to expel the toxins. Sometimes these toxins get collected on the tip of your tongue and form a white coating which you should not swallow. Tongue scraping allows you to remove this coating.
The next ritual is to drink two hundred millilitres of warm water. A lot of people tend to drink water even before brushing their teeth. This is not advisable simply because our food carries toxins and preservatives which get accumulated on the tongue, and is not easy to digest if we swallow it back in.
Complete the 4- step dental routine before drinking 200 ml of warm water. You can add a teaspoon of ghee to your warm water to aid in lubricating your gastrointestinal tract and treating constipation as well as dry and dehydrated skin. You can also add sabja seeds to water, soak it overnight and drink it early in the morning on an empty stomach. This helps in reducing pitta imbalances, hyperacidity and acid reflux. You can also squeeze some lemon juice into a glass of warm water and drink it on an empty stomach. This helps in alkalizing the body and cancer cannot exist in an environment that is alkaline.
Engaging in an abhyangam, or a full body oil massage, at least on the weekends, is highly beneficial. Sneh basti, or pooling oil on your body, helps in balancing out all your doshas, improving the texture of your skin and hair, increasing blood circulation all over your body and stimulating the toxins towards the gut for easy elimination. Follow this with a dry powder massage also called udwarthanam, with an ubtan. This allows us to exfoliate dead skin cells and also break subcutaneous fat under the skin.
Nasyam is another popular ayurvedic ritual that can be done in the morning. A nasyam introduces medicated oil through the nostrils to help eliminate pollutants and allergens that may have gathered in the nasal passages. You can do a nasyam with anuthailam or balathailam or even shirabalathailam which is even stronger. You can even introduce plain clarified ghee through the nostrils. You can also have a warm bath and add some Epsom salt to it. Follow this up with a bowl of fruit. It is advisable to have 1 or 2 fruits at the most. Do not mix fruits as they start fermenting with each other. Do not mix fruits with milk or yoghurt as they start reacting badly and become toxic and poisonous to the body. Consume seasonal fruits that are locally available because they have the local bacterial enzymes that enhance your gut flora and boost your immunity against other bacteria. After having fruit, wait for an hour for it to get fully digested, absorbed and assimilated in your body before you have a big bowl of healthy breakfast. You can either have a sweet or a savoury breakfast based on your taste buds. A bowl of porridge made from jowar, bajra, makhai, ragi, broken wheat, or any such millet is advisable because they are fibrous and help in improving your digestion, absorption and assimilation and eliminating constipation issues. You can also have mung dal khichdi.
Embrace Ayurveda as a way of life, not something you go to when everything else has failed.
About the author: Dimple Jangda, Ayurvedic health coach and Founder of Prana, an Ayurvedic Healthcare centre.
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