Within the science of Ayurveda, health and routine play an integral and important role. A wholly natural life is a lifestyle that is governed and regulated by one’s individual constitution. It is exceptionally beneficial to practice a daily regime that governs all your daily actions. This regimen should include all your daily actions, from the time you wake up in the morning, to the time you begin your body ablutions, purifications and meditation.
Early each morning, preferably before the sun rises, one should wake gently, perform your daily ablutions by excreting your body’s waste products, then clean your teeth and mouth. Following this one should wash your eyes, clear your nose and clean your throat by gargling with a little warm sesame oil. In order to clean your tongue, you should use a tongue scraper (ideally made from copper or silver). This process helps to remove any accumulated ama and also massages the tongue and stimulates all the internal organs that correspond to the various areas of the tongue.
Once this part of your daily routine is completed, you should then oil your entire body and take a bath or shower. Doing this will create a sensation of alertness, freshness and invigoration. Once bathed put on clothes that are comfortable enough for you to meditate and exercise in. Breathing exercises also form an important part of one’s daily routine, once you have completed your exercise or yoga asanas and your meditation, rest in a comfortable position on your back with your arms and legs outstretched and breathe diaphragmatically, as if breathing from your lower abdomen.
Breakfast should follow on from breathing exercises and you should have lunch before midday if possible. Your dinner should be eaten before sunset, while this seems a little constricting to the western world it is important to do so when practising an Ayurvedic routine.
When possible one should go to bed before ten o’clock, doing this allows the flow of energy within the body and in your external environment. Being aware of this flow of energy allows one to gain maximum benefits from your daily routine.
You can add other practices to your daily routine based on your individual constitution. For example, people who are predominantly of vata constitution should consider performing an oiled self-body massage in the evening. Cultivating certain sleeping habits are advisable. When taken into consideration that the left side of a person’s body contains female or lunar energy and the right side contains masculine or solar energy, the position in which one sleeps and breathes can have a significant impact and effect on the balance and the constitution of energies in the body.
For example, if you always sleep on your left-hand side, you suppress your body’s lunar energy and aggravate the body’s solar energy. This can lead to the creation of pitta in the body, so a predominantly pitta person should sleep on the right side.
When you sleep on your left-hand side, you suppressed the body’s lunar energy while the solar energy is opened. So sleeping in this position is recommended for predominantly vata and kappa types of people.
