Excerpt from 108 Yoga and Self-Care Practices for Busy Mamas: Make Life Better with Ayurveda



From 108 Yoga and Self-Care Practices for Busy Mamas, an award-winning book:

Make Life Better with Ayurveda

I fell deeply in love with self-care when I met Ayurveda. Ayurveda, the sister science of yoga, is one of the world’s oldest medical traditions, which originated in India around the time yoga did. Ayurveda literally means the “science of life.” It is a personalized approach to well-being and longevity that incorporates wellness rituals into everyday life. When paired with yoga, Ayurveda and yoga form an unmatched powerhouse.

I first learned about Ayurveda in my yoga teacher training in 2010, and that’s when I started to experiment with Ayurvedic practices. Back then, I did not yet know how revolutionary these practices were until I began to weave them into my everyday life balancing a full workload as a working mama. Today, my everyday Ayurvedic practices include

• meditating, breathing exercises, and simple yoga stretches every morning, which typically take 10 to 20 minutes;
• following a consistent daily schedule of eating, working, and sleeping;
• oil pulling;
• drinking hot water with lemon throughout the day, which helps with digestion and detoxifies the liver;
• making lunch the largest meal of the day;
• eating mindfully (and not interacting with technology between bites); • adding spices, such as turmeric, cumin, and ginger, to meals to help with digestion; and
• practicing abhyanga (self-massage with warm oil).

These are all simple things that I can realistically commit to practicing on a daily basis, but this is not a comprehensive list of all Ayurvedic practices. This book gives you a taste of what Ayurveda has to offer. The beauty of Ayurveda is that you have a lifetime to try all of the practices to find those that work best for you now and adjust your practices as you grow and evolve.

Ayurveda teaches that there are five elements found in the cosmic system: earth, water, air, fire, and ether (space). Everyone has a unique combination  of these elements, which make up your mind-body type or dosha.

These combinations create three main doshas: vata (air and ether), pitta (fire and water) and kapha (earth and water). It is common to be dominant in one or two doshas. You were born with various amounts of each element, which make up your dosha at birth.

Leading a busy life can cause your doshas to become imbalanced. For example, your primary dosha when you were born may have been vata and your secondary dosha may have been pitta. Life as a modern mama may cause you to work too much, go to bed too late, and become more irritable, shifting your primary dosha.

Moving away from your original dosha can cause imbalances in your mind, body, and spirit. Once you get to know which dosha is dominant in your life now, you can choose specific Ayurvedic practices to help restore harmony to your well-being and get you back to your true nature.

One quick way to determine your dosha and discover Ayurvedic practices that can help you live vibrantly well is to take a dosha quiz online. These quizzes will ask you several health-related and lifestyle questions to help you identify your dosha.

You can take it a step further and schedule an appointment with an Ayurvedic practitioner (known as a vaidya) who is trained to create a customized lifestyle plan, based on your dosha and imbalances, to help restore you to optimum health.

 9 Write about it: 

Your dosha Take an online dosha quiz. Jot down whether the results are an accurate reflection of how you see your current health. What minor tweaks can you easily make for your well-being?

 10 Practice it: 

Oil pulling Oil pulling is an Ayurvedic practice to clean your mouth and pull out toxins by gently swishing oil around in your mouth. The more minutes you swish, the more benefits you receive. I typically swish sesame oil for a few minutes before I brush my teeth in the morning. 

How to do it: 

• Swish about one tablespoon of coconut oil or sesame oil (as long as you are not allergic to coconut or sesame) in your mouth for a few minutes, or as long as you can tolerate it up to 10 to 20 minutes. Swish the oil similar to how you would swish mouthwash.
• After you’re done swishing, spit out the oil in the trash (not the sink!) since oil can clog your pipes. Also, you want to spit out the toxins, so don’t swallow the oil you just swished.
• Brush your teeth.
• Enjoy the fresh feeling!














Read more by and about Julie Gentile and her book HERE.

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