Dina Charya – Ayurveda Part II

20 Jul

Dina Charya in Ayurveda Part II

Continued from Dina Charya/Ayurveda – Part I

The first eight suggestions for a daily routine were enumerated in part one of this article. Here are the remaining five Dina Charya/Ayurveda recommendations plus some other points to consider.

9. Sipping water during a meal is recommended in Ayurveda as it helps in moistening the otherwise dry digestive tract and helps the food to move down smoothly to the stomach. Avoid soft drinks and alcohol during meals.

10. If you do not want to end up with erratic and irritable appetite, stop snacking between the meals. You must know that any meal takes normally four hours to get digested; if your constitution is Kapha type, then you must be on guard because Kapha people are known to have sluggish digestion and putting on weight unnecessarily.

11. After you return from work, go for a swim or carry out some yoga that would help you relax. Then, after about half an hour, take a bath.

12. Eat dinner early to give the food at least an hour to be digested properly. Ideally, you can take a light walk after dinner; if you have work and cannot go out, then do the work but sit straight on a chair. Do not do much running around after dinner as it will affect the digestive process.

13. Going to bed should be ideally maintained around 9:45 or 10 pm. No light should be on in the room as it works as an irritant to the eyes and to the brain. Make sure never to sleep on your stomach; instead, sleep on your sides with your knees slightly bent. Also, avoid sleeping straight on your back.

Some points to keep in mind

a. By ‘taking bath’ it means full bath – from head to toe. Many people take bath without wetting their hair. This should not be so because hair also needs to be cleaned and nourished. What is better than water? So, no matter how long or how short your hair is, you have to wet it daily (barring very cold weather) and after bath, rinse the hair of excess water with the help of a good towel.

b. Where drinking tea or coffee is concerned, limit it to two cups per day, no matter what comes. Every time you get the urge for tea or coffee, try to restrain yourself and instead, have a glass of plain water or lemon water (in one glass of water, squeeze the juice of one lime. Add a very small pinch of salt, mix well and drink it).

c. Drink plenty of water; why Ayurveda, even conventional medicine says so. Water helps to remove dangerous toxins from the body through urine and sweat. If these toxins get accumulated, then various diseases crop up, and you end up leading the rest of your life on pills and tablets. Remember that your life is not supposed to be on pills and tablets; you have other work to do and you need to keep yourself fit for accomplishing them.

d. If you are a smoker, give up the commercial cigarettes and start with the therapeutic ones (if you cannot give up smoking and think doing so is a sacrilege!). The positive point in therapeutic smoking is that the herbs contained in the therapeutic cigarettes actually stimulate the brain. They also help in reducing or alleviating headaches, cough, sinus, nasal problems sleeplessness, hiccups, sore throats, other lungs-related diseases, and amnesia. Therapeutic cigarettes also help in increasing your concentration. Anyway, why smoke if there are so many dangers involved.

e. Where alcohol is concerned, best would be to have a small peg diluted with water (no soda, no on-the-rocks) just before going to bed. It is similar to having a teaspoon of syrup when you have bad cough. Alcohol taken and limited to such quantity will help your heart and digestion to some extent. Make sure to stick to one small peg, no matter what your compulsions are. Anyway, why drink if in the long run, it affects your digestive organs?

If the above Dina Charya can be followed in earnest in such a fast world, mental and physical fitness are best guaranteed.

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