Dinacharya

Dinacharya comprises the Ayurvedic advices for daily routine. This includes regular times to get up and eat your meals, incorporating breaks, nurturing the senses and create some space for yoga, breathing exercises and meditation.

Curious how these daily habits can influence the different aspects of your health? I will briefly illustrate them all..

Regularity and rhythm – balanced doshas, agni and malas

Your daily habits are a powerful tool to bring regularity and rhythm in your life. Like introducing a fixed time to get up and go to bed, or to have lunch. In this way you help your biological clock to operate optimally. Which allows the body to prepare for the upcoming job and perform its task well. To enable your digestive fire to digest the meals properly and to make sure that waste materials are timely excreted from the body, to name a few advantages.

When you incorporate a routine you can take the course of the Doshas during the day into consideration. For instance by choosing the morning for physical labor or intense sporting, as at that time Kapha is peaking. Not only is this the Dosha that provides most energy, endurance and strength, exercising at this time also enables you to keep excessive Kapha in balance. Or by consuming the largest meal at noon, when Pitta is most active, what creates a strong digestive power and prevents this Dosha from getting upset.

a break for nerve and other tissues

Regularity also helps your brain and nerve tissue to calm down and relax. Due to daily repetition your body learns to depend on fixed moments of peace and rest. So it can stop being in a constant hyper alert state, as is the case most of the time. Because it never knows when it has to come into action again. Will the alarm set at 7 or at 10 am tomorrow? Will there be breakfast to digest or not? Such an irregular daily schedule is confusing and stress-inducing for your system.

The predictability of fixed rhythm and moments of rest allows your senses, nerve system and brain to truly relax at the times you set up for doing so. When the sympathetic nerve system (the ‘action-mode’ of the nerves) calms down, you create space for replenishing the tissues. Enabling the body to recover from all the hard work it has been doing!

Daily nurturing – happy senses

Nose, ears, eyes, tongue and skin also get the attention they deserve. For instance by applying a nourishing oil massage or some oil drops in the nose. All five senses receive their daily portion of suitable maintenance, so they can operate well a life time long.

Another way to support them is to not continuously burden the senses with all kinds of (improper) sensory input. Did you ever think about how hard your eyes have to work if they are faced with a bright lighted screen every 2 minutes when checking your whatsapp? Continuously checking your messages also has an impact on your brain and the rest of your body by the way. As it are the senses, via the nerve system, that provide the stimuli and information that you digest mentally. And it is upon this input that your mind conducts the body. What in this particular example probably leads to increasing your heart rate, instead of, let’s say, enhancing your digestion. Stress-inducing app-messages may therefore not be what you want to expose your system to whole day long..

Creating stillness – happy mind and soul

Yogis among us will be happy to hear: Ayurveda also advices the daily practice of asanas (physical exercises), pranayama (breathing exercises) and meditation (controlling your mind).  Creating some stillness daily allows your mind to properly digest and clear all retained old emotions and thoughts. This gives you the chance to start every day new and fresh with an empty mind. Enabling you to fully live in the moment instead of being distracted by a vortex of thoughts.

Not really into twisting your body like that nor into sitting down on a yoga mat? You can also choose some other types of physical activity; take walks, go swimming or select exercises that are a little more active, adjusted to your constitution. As long as you can fully focus on this activity, be completely in the moment. Which kind of makes it a sort of yoga after all ;). Or calm down your mind through painting, dancing or enjoying nature with full attention. Be creative and pick something that sincerely makes you happy.