My experience of Ayurveda

If you are a reader of my posts, you will know that I love reading articles and magazines, especially those on health, wellbeing and lifestyle.   You will also know that I’m a sucker for being taken in by most things that I read that promises to improve my health and wellbeing in some way, shape or form.   No sooner have I closed the page, in a flash, I’m online ordering the latest vitamins and oils, buying the recommended self help book and wondering how on earth am I going to incorporate turmeric into my diet and my busy daily life!

The one thing that pops up in most editions of my health magazines over the years is the word  ‘Ayurveda’.  Ayurveda a popular Indian healing method known as the ‘knowledge of life’ and it has been around for years.  It focuses on your diet and lifestyle and incorporates lots of daily practices which are said to improve your wellbeing depending on your ‘dosha’ or body type.

The knowledge of life

Now I hadn’t always paid much attention to these specific articles because in some, the information provided on the subject was a bit too cryptic for the likes of me to understand.  So for example in some you would get little snippets like ‘include bitter tastes to your diet to cleanse the liver’ or ‘massage the marmas for instance anxiety relief’.    And I would roll my eyes at the Ayurveda articles that would describe in detail how the writer travelled to India for ‘deep healing’ at a luxury spa and encourage us to do the same.  Well bully for you I thought,  I’m glad you had a good time but this is NOT what most people can do in everyday life!

But then one day a certain Ayurveda article grabbed my attention because it provided a very simple quiz to help you identify your ‘dosha’.  Apparently, knowing this is the key to finding out what you need to do to help your body to thrive.   For those who are not familiar with Ayurveda,  there are three ‘dosha’ types which are Pitta, Vata and Kapha.  It is said that everyone has a bit of all three of these energies in their bodies but one is usually more dominant and if you live in tune with the principles relating to your dosha type it is said to aid digestion, ease anxiety, balance hormones and help prevent disease.

Normally I would have dismissed it and moved on, but because I love a quiz I started ticking off the questions.

Before I carry on wittering and you start tuning out because you think I’m now straying into tie dye territory here by using posh language like ‘dosha’ and ‘kapha,’ I want to reassure you that I’ve not become all airy fairy or floaty.   At this stage I was just enticed by a quiz, however, the results offered a pleasant surprise for me which I found rather intriguing.

So going back to the quiz – it turned out that I had answered mostly ‘A’ in the multiple choice.  Questions relating to things like what was my body type?  Do I find it easy to gain weight?   What’s my temperament and digestion like and how is my body temperature?  Mostly ‘A’ described me perfectly, it turned out that out of the three dosha types, mine was predominantly ‘Vata’ and because the quiz results were so accurate – I kept on reading.

Lucky Veta

The results read ‘ Lucky Veta’s can eat whatever they want and struggle to gain weight.’  Yes, this was true of me, perhaps more so when I was younger, but even this vata hadn’t managed to shift that ‘covid stone’ (and a bit more) since crawling out of the depths of lockdown.  Moving swiftly on it said that Veta’s were identified as being small boned – yes that’s me.  They have dry bodies, hair, skin and nails – yep me too.  They are indecisive and over analyse things – I do that all the time.  And they are prone to anxiety – absolutely yes yes!!

It then went on to give very brief suggestions of what I should eat to create balance like avoid cold drinks and cold and raw foods.   This is where my little antennas stood to attention and it got me wondering.   So those who have to live with me know that I always feel a bit shit when it comes to Autumn and it’s not because I’ve got seasonal affectiveness disorder.  I seem to get terrible digestive issues which last for a good few weeks around about this time, so why does this health issue seemingly reoccur for me at this point?  Could it be because I’ve spent the summer eating cold things like salad, ice cream and drinking gin cocktails full of ice cubes?  Was my body saying to me all along  ‘ney lass, your dosha is vata – enough is enough – here’s a dose of acid indigestion, heartburn and the gripes to make you suffer up to Christmas?’

My interest in this had now piqued (a new fadulous phrase everyone is now using it seems) so I did what I always do next – I went straight online and ordered a book on Ayurveda.  Now in hindsight, this was probably the wrong thing to do because the book in my opinion was a bit too extreme for a complete novice like me, but I’ll come back to that later.

Daily Rituals

The book described the three doshas and had many more in depth questions to help you to reveal your constitution which again identified me as predominantly ‘Veta’.  It then went on to explain what I needed to do to create balance but this time in more detail than what I’d read in the magazines so that was positive.

In order to work towards a healthier lifestyle according to ‘Veta’ it recommended in summary that I should do the following:

• Get up 30 earlier than usual. Massage the top of my head to my feet with oil and then take a shower.  Clear your nasal passage and then scrape your tongue.  Have a glass of hot water before breakfast to ‘ignite your agni’ (which is said to be your digestive fire!)
• Eat a simple breakfast, a warm lunch (taking time whilst eating) and a cooked dinner.
• Do a complete yoga session once a week.  Practice abdominal breathing and body awareness once a day along with daily positive thinking and use the affirmations.
• Exercise in the morning, go to bed 30 minutes earlier than usual, and because Veta’s constitution needs more sleep I should have a hot bath before bed.

I was curious to discover if someone like me could commit to finding the time and energy into putting these Ayurvedic principles into practice in daily life whilst still finding time to work full time, run a house and prioritise four episodes of Eastenders during the week.  I tried to keep an open mind so I  looked for the easy wins for me on this.  It turned out that there weren’t many, but to start with I  generally didn’t  have a problem with going to bed early or getting up early – so that was one positive!

The cup of hot water was going to be an issue because for 30 odd years the first thing that I drink in the morning is coffee!  That’s a hard habit to break. I don’t drink a massive amount during the day but if I don’t have coffee in the morning, I become a mardy bitch with a splitting headache and my husband suffers for it.  Caffeine is not recommended in Ayurveda but I wasn’t going to give it up – not yet.

Positive thinking

I also didn’t fancy the head massaging with oil EVERY morning.  I know from taking a short aromatherapy course at night school in my 20’s that oil sticks to hair like glue and in my experience it takes an endless amount of shampooing to get it out which I don’t have time for in a morning.  I might be prone to having dry, wiry hair which is annoying, but I also didn’t want to go to the extreme of having an overly greasy head either.  So that was out.

The hot lunch would be tricky, it’s convenient to just slap a bit of ham in some bread in the morning and scoff it at our desks whilst answering a million emails. There was no way I was going to be heating up smelly food in the filthy office microwave that had everyone else’s reheated leftovers pebbledashed to it.  And besides, according to the book –  reheated food is not recommended in any case!   When you are working every day, how are you supposed to prepare a hot lunch?  It’s not going to happen!

I also felt rather jaded at the amount of food on the list that I wasn’t supposed to eat – and I’m not talking about unhealthy stuff – things like tomatoes for crying out loud!  

Yoga?  Unfortunately this was not happening in a million years for me either (see my article about what happened when I tried Yoga). 

Breathing, positive thinking and affirmations?  Potential there if remembered to make it a priority so I put that on the list to work at.

 Wellbeing pick ‘n’ mix

I came to the conclusion that if I was going to put Ayurvedic principles in to practice and do this ‘by the book’ once again it was looking like I was going to fail at it, but I managed to convince myself to view it like a wellbeing pick ‘n’ mix – take what you want for now and leave the rest perhaps for another day!

So here is where I’m up to at the minute.   I did commit to the tongue scraping!  It’s fadulous!  I can’t say that I’ve ever really looked at my tongue in any great detail before, but now I’m scraping the fury crap off it twice a day after brushing my teeth.

Drinking a cup of hot water for me has turned out to be the perfect thing to have when you have the gripes.  I have a cupboard full of indigestion remedies that could stock Superdrug –  who knew that a simple cup of hot water would just do the trick!  Actually, I recall my nan used to do this all the time and I just thought she was being thrifty – it turns out that she knew what she was doing all along!

I don’t eat anything after 7pm to give my digestive system time to rest – apart from the odd biscuit – obviously!   When it comes to food, I haven’t stopped eating all the food on the list that was said to not suit me but I have become more conscious now that my body doesn’t like ‘cold or raw’ foods, particularly as the seasons change.

There is so much more to Ayurveda to discover and share but just these very simple small changes have made a significant difference for me and now I’m slowly starting to learn that you don’t have to do everything to the extreme to see some positive results.  

Now going back to those ‘marmas’ that were mentioned earlier.  I’ve now discovered that they are the 171 energy points on the human body which correspond to an organ in your body.  This is why Ayurveda incorporates massage into your daily routine to help the flow of energy and release stagnation.  So if you massage your temples, (which is one of those points located on the side of the head behind the eye between the forehead and the ear) six times in each direction for example,  it is said to relieve anxiety and stress.   I’ve started doing this before meetings and it’s brilliant, it literally takes less than a minute – so that just gives me time to grab another coffee!

Happy Ayurveda everyone!