How An Ayurvedic Lifestyle Can Improve Your Life
Do you know what an Ayurvedic lifestyle is? Or is Ayurveda simply a foreign-looking word that you can’t pronounce? If it is, we don’t blame you.
Whilst Ayurveda has been around for centuries in the East, the incredible, life-altering benefits of this ancient natural medicine system has only just begun to gain traction in the Western world. So, before we get into the benefits, let’s have a look at what exactly Ayurveda is.
What is Ayurveda?
The word Ayurveda has its roots in Sanskrit where it literally translates to the Knowledge or Science of Life, with ‘ayur’ meaning life and ‘veda’ meaning either knowledge or science.
Having originated in India, Ayurveda is the oldest known system of holistic medicine in the world.
This comprehensive modality of alternative medicine focuses on preventative and curative health maintenance. It empowers every being to strengthen their wellness and vitality by exploring if an imbalance is inducing dis-ease at the emotional, spiritual and physical level.
An Ayurvedic Lifestyle and Optimal Health
So, how exactly does the wisdom of Ayurveda help us attain optimal health?
Firstly, Ayurveda believes we can achieve an overall state of sattva (harmony), if we’ve balanced the Three Pillars of Life, which are:
- Proper Digestion
- Sound Sleep
- Management of Creative Force
The wisdom of Ayurveda also believes that each body is made up of three doshas. Now, this may seem to be getting confusing, but bear with us.
Ayurveda states that our bodies are composed of the five natural elements air, fire, water, earth and ether. The combination of these elements makes up our three doshas referred to as Vata, Kapha and Pitta. Essentially, each dosha is an energy source responsible for our different physical and psychological functions. For example, Vata is movement energy, Kapha is immunity energy and Pitta is digestive and metabolic energy.
Although our bodies have all three doshas, one is usually more dominant than the others which is known as your Individual Constitution. The determination of our dominant dosha is inherent, based on our personalities, characteristics and genetic makeup.
An Ayurveda practitioner will typically begin with determining your Individual Constitution (dosha). This is because when we understand which dosha is our dominant one, we have gained the power to make better-informed lifestyle, nutritional, and herbal remedy choices with purpose and intention to harmonise our internal and external health.
The 3 Life Changing Benefits of An Ayurvedic Lifestyle
1. Proactive Approach to Health
Ayurveda focuses on preventative health maintenance by advocating harmony of the physical, psychological and spiritual, so it’s proactive in its approach. This differs to the mainstream western medicine which focuses on the treatment of disease, rather than prevention. A lot of time, the treatment of disease involves harsh chemicals and may not always look at the root cause of the illness.
However, Ayurveda looks to truly understand how to harmonise our mind, body and spirit so we can remain at optimal health and stave off the potential for any dis-ease. Because as we all know, the best treatment to disease is not having the dis-ease in the first place.
2. Reducing Stress and Revitalising Energy
In the western world, it’s easy for us to feel stressed and lethargic given our stimulating environments that encourages constant deadlines, mindless eating, optional sleep and too much coffee. This can lead to anxiety, chronic stress, poor sleep hygiene, inability to relax and lethargy, all of which are symptoms of an imbalance.
The Ayurveda wisdom is a long-term approach that looks at our natural Individual Constitution to determine the best way to reintroduce sattva with all three doshas so we can revitalise our energy and reduce stress. This is achieved through the removal of built-up toxins from the body, practicing mindful and intuitive eating to aid digestion, ameliorating stresses via learning self-massage techniques, introducing natural herbal remedies and encouraging healthy sleeping habits.
3. Treatment with no Side Effects
Given Ayurveda approach is a holistic medicine system, it works only with natural herbal remedies that are typically derived from plants and minerals. This is a much safer alternative to chemical medicines and treatment that is offered by the mainstream health system. This is because medicines and medical techniques involving chemicals have a high probability of side effects adversely affecting the person under treatment.
In the case of a serious medical condition, it’s always important to consult a professional Ayurvedic practitioner before making any decisions to stop medications or switch to Ayurveda.
Why do a Ayurvedic Detox Program?
Now that you know what Ayurveda is and its life-changing benefits, it can be hard to know where to begin, as there’s so many different facets to adopting an Ayurvedic approach.
Luckily, there are Ayurvedic practitioners who have created Ayurvedic detox programs, to give you the opportunity to detoxify, receive individualised knowledge of your Individual Constitution and how to achieve sattva, in a supportive, peaceful and educative environment.
By completely immersing yourself in nature, with other like-minded individuals and professional practitioners, you’ll go through a natural detoxification process to reset your health and vitality. During these intuitive programs, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of yourself and learn the foundation of how to reach optimal health by adopting lifestyle changes that are tailored to your physical, psychological and spiritual needs.
Our most popular Ayurvedic retreats are the Ayurvedic Detox Retreat [1] run by respected practitioner Kimmana Nichols in Noosa, QLD and the Holistic Health & Ayurveda Retreat [2] in Uki, NSW.
So, if you’re someone who struggles with ongoing sluggishness, lethargy and stress, and you feel like it’s time to prioritise your health by gaining a deeper self-understanding of the root cause of these issues, then feel free to contact us [3] about our upcoming Ayurvedic retreats.
There will never be a better time than today to start taking charge of your life. And trust us when we say, it’s always better to prevent dis-ease through healthy living, than it is to try and cure it.
Written by Cindy Bernical