How many times do we feel blocked by fear, unable to take a decision? How many times do we feel anxious and struggle with panic? According to Ayurveda, anxious feelings are an expression of excess vata. When Vata is balanced we are positive and we are full of capacities like creativity, joy, intuition, expansiveness, clairvoyance and deep spiritual understanding. When Vata is aggravated, fearful and anxious feelings arrive.
Let’s see how to facilitate a balanced Vata and feel a deep sense of well-being phisically and emotionally. Ayurveda tells us that Vata dosha is light, cold, dry, rough, mobile, subtle, and clear.
So, if through our diets, lifestyle habits, relationships, or experience, we touch these qualities, the risk of an increased vata is high. But on the other hand, we can balance Vata with foods and experiences that are heavy, warm, nourishing, substantive, oily, stabilizing, and concrete.
Which lifestyle habit can we take to balance Vata? Small good habits often serve to quickly and efficiently pacify unbalanced Vata. A daily routine is the first important treatment according to Ayurveda. If we look around us, we can easily see how in nature everything is organized with a regular rhythm. The sun raise and set, the seasons have a cycle and animals have regular routine daily and seasonally. The human being went very far from this natural rhythm.
But at the most fundamental level, our physiology is very much adapted to and supported by a sense of regularity. And this is the reason why the daily routine (Dincharya) is such potent medicine, especially to reduce feelings of anxiousness.
Actually the routine has a very grounding and stabilizing effect on our system because it creates a number of familiar and comforting reference points that send a resounding affirmation to the deep tissues of the body that all is well, that we can be at ease. When our body get used to a daily routine like regular exercise, good rest, good food and soul nourishing activities, the nervous system naturally relax. Giving us a regula routine, means that we are offering ourselves act of self love and self care. Whtever it happens with a daily routine we give prioroty to ourselves.
We don’t need to do so many things. We can start from little acts: waking up at the same time, taking regular meals at the same day, sleeping the time we need. In addition a daily practice of yoga, exercice,meditation or prayer, can support us in the most challenging situations. A special place in calming fear and anxitety is given to Pranayama. Pranayama activates and balances many significant subtle channels influencing the mind, including mano vaha srotas (the channel of the mind), prana vaha srotas (the prana-carrying channel), ida nadi (the lunar, feminine channel), pingala nadi (the solar, masculine channel), and sushumna nadi (the central channel). Yoga practice works in the same way. Last but not least… a balance diet!
What blocks us in life is the vain attempt to control something we cannot control. Making choices, changing, always implies knowing how to let go of something, parts of us. We cannot remain immutable over time and under circumstances. To live is also to die a little, every day, from the day we are born. Immutability does not exist, not even in death. Everything is transformed. To accept it is to accept the flow and fullness of life.
If you wish to learn how to establish a positive daily routine, how to learn strategies to face challenging times, we are more than happy to suggest to you some yoga retreat or ayurveda retreat for a fulfilling and healing well-being holiday.
“I have often found myself with a goodbye to make, a suitcase to prepare, a radical change to deal with and a new dimension to find. Managing changes in work, life and prospects have led me to my most authentic metamorphosis: to make a profession of the travel experience.