BACK TO BASICS

Imagine everyone living until 100 years old. What would your lifestyle be like to live all those years and how would you feel every day?

Sarah Thatcher talks about Ayurveda

The fundamental aim of Ayurveda is to attain perfect health and wellbeing and according to ancient texts, your life span should be around 100 years, with all those years living in total health, physically and mentally.

Ayurveda is the oldest system of medicine on earth, however as western medicine was introduced to the world, Ayurveda became unfashionable and more or less lost. It is not the most obvious word to pronounce, pronounced (eye..oor..vay..duh) but it is a very ‘down to earth’ way to live and it is on its way back into everyday lives.

Completely understanding Ayurveda can be very complex but bringing a few key principles into your life is easy. Once you bring a few principles in, you will feel the benefits instantly and it will assist with your healthy lifestyle, which is what we are all now striving for.

The main concepts are that every person is made up of five elements, space, air, fire, water and earth. These combine and control how your body works, they are called doshas and there are 3 main doshas:

Vata dosha - space and air

Pitta dosha - fire and water

Kapha dosha - water and earth

Every person is unique and your human body has a mixture of these three doshas but generally, there is one dominant one. Your everyday life, health and feelings are all linked to the balance of your doshas and the aim is to keep all doshas balanced. An Ayurveda doctor can read your pulse to ascertain your most dominant dosha, and also a simple quiz can identify this, but here is a brief description of the typical characteristics of each of the three doshas. Which one can you relate to the most, what is your dominant dosha?

VATA

Do you have a family member who is very sensitive, slim, finds it difficult to make a decision but is creative?

These are Vata dominant qualities.

Vata characteristics

Slender, prefers warm, energy fluctuates and comes in bursts, cold hands and feet, a light sleeper, artistic, active and restless, quick learner but forgets easily, a tendency to feel anxious, nervous and insecure, always on the go, sensitive, has colourful dreams.

Pitta

We all have that friend who organises the get-togethers, is always busy until they fall asleep at night and can go from 0 to 100 in an instant with rage. These are pita dominant qualities.

Pitta characteristics

Medium size and weight, sharp mind, good concentration, assertive, confident, orderly, passionate, competitive, impatient, angry, strong metabolism, good digestion, body temperature slightly higher, sleep is moderate but interrupted, a tendency towards excessive perspiring.

KAPHA

Can you picture a little boy who's bigger than the little dainty girls around him?

He is the definition of Kapha - he is big with a strong build so takes longer than average to take his first steps, he is heavy, slow and eats as much as the adults. These are Kapha dominant qualities.

Kapha characteristics

Heavy, slow, strong, easy-going, relaxed, slower to learn but never forgets, slow to anger, self-sufficient, tendency to be overweight, regular appetite, slow digestion, prone to depression.

Now that you have identified your dominant dosha you can understand yourself a bit better - being more aware of this helps bring Ayurveda into your everyday life. To keep your doshas balanced, I have listed a few guidelines below. You will notice that you naturally carry out some of these points already and the ‘older generation’ seem to naturally live their lives this way.

Balancing Vata

• Have a daily routine

- eat, sleep, exercise at the same time every day

• Go to bed early

- before 10pm and wake up before 6am

• Recognise when you go into overdrive and slow down by meditating or doing yoga

• Avoid loud music, spend time relaxing

• Keep warm

• Learn to express your feelings

• Choose relaxing weekends away in the sun rather than the ‘five days in five cities’

Balancing Pitta

• Keep cool, avoid the hot sun but get in the open air

• After a warm shower cool off with a rinse

• Normally super organised so add a bit of spontaneity into your life

• Can easily take sport too seriously so try noncompetitive activities as well

• Watch your diet - avoid oily greasy foods, caffeine salt, red meat

Balancing Kapha

• Get your system moving, take up a new activity to stimulate you physically and mentally

• Increase variation and change into your life. Kapha’s love routine but take the odd chance to let your pulse rate accelerate.

• On holiday you will prefer to flop on a sunbed but try an active holiday.

• Keep warm

• Carry out a daily massage on yourself

There are also many other general guidelines that will keep your mind and body balanced, including the food you eat, the food you should avoid, various relaxation treatments such as Shirodhara or abhyanga, taking regular exercise, daily meditation (especially transcendental meditation), eating your main meal a day at lunchtime, drinking warm water through the day and these are just to name a few.

Ayurveda has an emphasis on prevention, rather than cure, so, if you are keeping yourself balanced on a daily basis then stress, illness and disease are more likely to be kept away.

There are some amazing Ayurveda doctors that visit Jersey regularly and offer practical advice, specific to you which will keep you balanced. Or, next time you are not feeling quite right, put a few of the balancing guidelines in place, adjust your lifestyle and then just see how you feel. 