Holistic Wellness Tips

Be in bed by 10pm:
Our bodies do the heavy maintenance and detox work from around 10pm to 2am. When we’re sleeping at this time, our body is free to focus on maintenance. When we’re having midnight snacks or partying, that’s where our energy goes and our body can’t do its best work to maintain optimum health and prevent unwellness. The time can vary to slightly later in the summer time and earlier in the winter months. Ideally, the last meal of the day will be had by 7pm, to also help the body with digestion.

Scrape your tongue:
Using a tongue scraper can easily become part of a regular oral care routine. Tongue scraping helps you pay attention to your body. If there is toxic build up in the body, it will show up in a coating on the tongue. Paying attention to the coating on and quality of the tongue gives information about how well digestion is working. Tongue scraping helps remove the coating and stimulates digestion. The tongue is pink and clear/without coating when there is no toxic build up. (Very basically – a brown coating=vata toxins; white coating=kapha toxins; yellow, red, or green coating=pitta toxins.)

Eat all 6 tastes:
The perfect plate, or day of eating, in Ayurveda would consist of all 6 tastes, in varying portions depending on your dosha and current elemental needs or imbalances. The six tastes are sweet, sour, salty, pungent, bitter, astringent. Each taste has a different effect on the body and is connected with nourishing different bodily tissues. Note that sweet means naturally sweet like rice, oats, or dates-not processed sugar.

Avoid ice water around meal times:
Cold beverages like ice water lessen digestive ability. Drinking ice water before, after, and during meal times makes it harder for the body to digest food. Undigested food results in toxic build up and toxic build up can lead to imbalance or dis-ease.

Love your nervous system:
The nervous system controls or influences just about every single bodily function. It controls the fight, flight, freeze, and also rest and digest responses. It is important to have a balanced nervous system to experience optimum wellness. Here are some ways to love your nervous system: mindful breathing techniques, humming, massage your ears or do an excercise for the vagus nerve, rest your hand on your heart and breathe, drink herbal nervine or adaptogenic tea, eat whole and natural foods, avoid caffeine and sugar, have regular and supportive routines.

Move your body daily:
Daily movement doesn’t have to be intense or strenuous. Daily movement can also be gentle and fun. Consider your current energy needs when choosing what type of movement to engage in. Kapha energy has more stamina and can handle more intense or longer duration work outs. Pitta energy may benefit from being mindful not to overdo it -especially in the heat- and depending on the mood can enjoy play or competition. Vata types can enjoy more gentle, yin, or slow rythmic workouts and would do well not to deplete their body or mind.

Make spices part of your everyday eating:
Spices help with digestion, which is vital to optimum health and wellness. Different spices have different effects, so be mindful of your needs, especially if you identify as pitta. 3 wonderful digestive spices are cumin, coriander, and fennel. These spices can be combined to make CCF tea which is a savory tea that helps with digestion for all 3 doshas (dosha=body/mind personality). Spices can also be sprinkled over your meals and of course cooked into meals.

This information is for educational and inspirational purposes. Always consult your own intuition and trusted health care provider regarding your health.