Ayurvedic Lifestyle Tips That Work with A Modern Lifestyle
No one truly wants to be unhealthy; it’s just that oftentimes the hustle and bustle of our day to day lives gets in the way of practicing healthy living. Ayurveda is a system of traditional medicine that focuses on strengthening the body and overall health through natural techniques and practices. Even if you are not familiar with (or interested in) the philosophy behind Ayurveda, you can still make use of common Ayurvedic lifestyle tipsthat have been proven to have positive effects on both mental and physical health. More often than not it just seems that eating unhealthily and living unhealthily are easier choices to make because there simply aren’t enough hours in the day. However, the truth is that healthy living does not have to be a chore and it for sure does not have to be an inconvenience that takes over large portions of your day.
From facilitating weight loss to dealing with stress and mental health, here are a few Ayurvedic lifestyle tips that can give you that push that you need to start living a healthier life.
Reshape the Size of Your Major Meals
Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are all important meals of the day in their own right, and none of them should be forgotten or overlooked. There are some radical dieting plans out there that implement strange techniques; like completely forgoing one of these meals or splitting up these three major meals into several parts and complicating things even further. This Ayurvedic lifestyle tip does not introduce any drastic changes like this instead, it puts forth the idea of restructuring these meals in an effort to improve digestion and accommodate your metabolism.
It is believed that lunch should be the largest meal that you eat and then on the flip side of things, breakfast and dinner should be relatively smaller. This is because Ayurvedic lifestyle lessons teach us that the body’s digestive fires are at their greatest when the sun is at its peak in the sky – this correlates to midday, the usual time for lunch.
Another Ayurvedic lifestyle tip that is tangentially related to this is the fact that you should always take your time when eating. Remember how your mom used to always scold you and tell you to chew your food, well she was right. The digestive process starts in the mouth and through the combination of your teeth and digestive enzymes in your saliva, your food starts to be broken down here. Ensuring that your food is chewed properly takes some of the pressure off of your stomach and the rest of your digestive system. Lastly, chewing longer also helps to prevent overeating, since it gives your digestive system time to send signals to your brain to tell you when you are full.
Rest is Always Important
We all know that rest and sleep are important for survival; this is obvious, since without sleep we would literally die. However, aside from dropping dead from a lack of sleep, just how beneficial is rest to our mental health and physical health?
Well on the mental health side of things, it has been shown that a lack of sleep can lead to issues that range from irritability and increased levels of perceived stress, to more intricate issues like paranoia, delusions, and even hallucinations. Meanwhile, on the physical health side of things, studies have shown that not only does sleep provide the obvious positive benefit of feeling energized but it can also greatly influence weight loss and weight gain. This is because the period of time when we are asleep is also the time when our body performs a lot of metabolic processes. In fact, when adhering to the principles of an Ayurvedic lifestyle it is recommended that you get at least an average of 6 to 7 hours of sleep, to give your body enough time to recuperate and rejuvenate itself for the next day.
Try to make the surroundings in your bedroom more conducive towards sleep and also make an effort to limit visual stimulation from your phone, computer, and television, an hour or so before you go to bed.
Make Use of Meditation and Breathing Exercises
This is a simple Ayurvedic lifestyle tip that is often overlooked because many people feel as if they cannot see instantaneous results; however, this is simply not true. Studies have shown that even after just one session of meditation, cortisol levels in patients were shown to have decreased noticeably when compared to control groups.
The sad fact is just that in this modern age of 24-hour news cycles, dozens of social media platforms, millions of viral videos, and countless cute cat pictures – all of which are right at our fingertips or in the palm of our hands – it is hard for the average person to just stop and block out the rest of the world for even a couple of minutes. We are in the age of short attention spans and an oversaturation of information that we will simply never have enough time to sift through. Yet even when faced with all of this, taking a step away and centering yourself is a simple practice that can positively affect your mental and physical health as well.
This Ayurvedic lifestyle tip is completely risk free to implement and all it takes is 10 to 30 minutes out of your day. Breathing exercises (also known as pranayama) and meditation can actually help you to have: improved stress response, better organ function, better digestion, and better quality sleep. What you choose as your form of meditation can vary from something simple like breath awareness, to more complex things like yoga or moving meditation.
Closing Note
These are by no means the only Ayurvedic lifestyle techniques and tips that you can implement in your day to day life; however, these are by far some of the simplest and straightforward ones. Remember, it is better to be proactive rather than reactive, you don’t have to be popping pills to solve every problem. Ayurveda focuses on this mindset by strengthening the body through practice so that health issues can be avoided later down the line.
