Winter Wellness Inspiration – Holistic, Ayurvedic

Mid-winter wellness inspiration for you:

Use cloves for warmth + antiviral. You can keep a clove in your mouth throughout the day or when you sleep for added warmth and continuous antiviral activity. Add cloves to season your food or make baked goodies and tea. Sesame oil is also warming – inside + out. Cook with sesame oil for added internal warmth. Rub sesame oil on your body for added external warmth and circulation.

Eat warm, moist, spiced foods. Limit cold and raw foods. Warm, moist, spiced foods provide easier to digest nourishment and a sense of grounding. Cold and raw foods can be difficult to digest, cause gas and bloating, and increase feelings of cold and spaciness in mind and body. Give your mind and body a warm hug by enjoying warm, moist, spiced foods like soups, stews, dahls, curries. What other yummy warm, moist, spiced foods can you think of?

Prioritise rest + relaxation more than resolutions. Allow yourself rest + a mini hibernation if you can. This is especially so after the busy holiday season. Nature asks us to rest and slow down during winter, not create more and push forward or run around with busy activity. Find areas and moments in your life where you can slow down or let rest happen. Even if you must continue with busy daily activities and more, take a moment to slow down and soften in your mind and heart before making plans, acting, or deciding in order to bring a more peaceful and centered quality and awareness to your activity.

Keep your lymphatic system moving – jump and shake, dance, oil your body, sweat, sauna, dry brush if your skin isn’t dry or irritated. Your lymphatic system is part of your immune system and needs help to flow well, so activity and movement are needed for good flow and to prevent stagnation, toxins, and build up. When you wake up in the morning, or any time you need a lymphatic drainage boost or boost of energy, massage your scalp and face. Let the massage be intuitive and be sure to get behind and maybe inside your ears. Massage your neck. Massage or gently tap or slap your collar bone and armpits, then your belly, then your groin/ inner thighs, followed by the backs of your knees. These areas are major lymph sites and activating these areas with touch and movement helps keep your entire lymphatic and immune system in good working order. If you would like a visual of these areas search “big 6 lymph”.

Watch sunrise and sunset. With a later sunrise and an earlier sunset it can feel more attainable to watch both sunrise and sunset. With limited daylight hours, we can really benefit from the special quality of light that happens during sunrise and sunset. This is true anytime of year, we can always benefit from connecting with sunrise and sunset. Why? The light spectrum differs throughout the day and at sunrise and sunset infrared light is stronger. Seeing the sunrise and sunset helps regulate your circadian rhythms and regulate your sleep and wake times, which can lead to more nourishing sleep. If you need any other reason, sunrise and sunset is a beautiful sight for the eyes and beautiful energy for your spirit. Take it in and feel to experience and understand rather than seek to intellectualize why you can benefit from witnessing the golden or colorful light of a sunrise or sunset. From a spiritual and Ayurvedic perspective, winter has qualities of heaviness, cold, inertia. Sunrise and sunset are sattvic, peaceful, inspiring, calmly energizing. They are also periods of transition, which can help bring movement and inspiration into your spirit. Allow yourself to witness this transition to cultivate balance, awareness, and harmony. Balance the heavier energies of winter with the lightness of light.