aggravated pitta

Ayurveda clearly diagnoses the craving for sex as a state of aggravated pitta. Especially when the person is craving the act and not the person with whom to engage, Ayurvda advises that we are isolating the action from its purpose, driving the car without knowing where we are going. 

~ EveryDay Ayurveda, 2015, Chapter 37 - Real Sex: Intimacy

the enigma of privacy vs. education around real sex

This enigma of privacy around the sexual act prevents proper education about the development of intimacy.  Add to this mix a kitchari of complicated cultural norms around marriage, love, and sexual practices, and one has no instruction on how to behave unless successful family and friends can teach. And even there lies a complication: family and friends cannot instruct a person how to behave intimately with a lover, how to allure, where to touch, where to kiss, how to press.

Kautilya and Vatsayana solved this problem by creating a user’s manual at a time when Buddhism had swept the land and more men were finding God than finding a partner.... 

~ EveryDay Ayurveda, 2015, Chapter 37 - Real Sex: Intimacy

the indriyas

Jnana-indriyas (Sanskrit, jnana=wisdom) are the five sensory organs; karma-indriyas (Sanskrit, karma=action) are the five motor organs; and manas is the organ for sensing the soul and connecting it to the language of the senses. Together, these eleven organs act to help the soul journey around in the material world on its path of discovery and healing.
~ EveryDay Ayurveda, 2015, Part II. Opening the Five Senses

the inner radiance of Ojas

Ayurveda tells us that the purpose of our daily routine is to keep us healthy, to build our fire and give us the energy, the power, and the focus to do what we are here in this life to do. When the transformative properties of the body are balanced and transmuting matter and energy back and forth as needed, there exudes an inner radiance, a subtle energy of fire, primal vigor, radiance of vitality, and unfoldment of all higher perceptual capacities, called Ojas. The person shows courage, perception and insight.

~ EveryDay Ayurveda, 2015, Chapter 41, Rasayana: Vitality and the Raising of Agni

unmasking benefits of squatting vs. sitting

Modern biomedical researchers have not bothered to spend funding and the complications of a randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled clinical trial (RCT) on the vast potential benefits of squatting vs. sitting as we empty our bowels.  The methodology would be difficult to blind, and to find a placebo would be comical.
Anything that would be proven, like most non-drug interventions, would be easily questioned for the true conclusion of the study. In fact, RCTs bias all science toward drugs that can be masked, not lifestyle interventions. But without an RCT, how is any medical conclusion credible or reputable? Without NIH funding, does anyone who is trained in Science believe the research?

~ EveryDay Ayurveda, 2015, Chapter 3, Morning Ablutions

kindling the fire

…When your fire is low, all the routines of the day should focus on nurturing the fire, kindling it and helping it to grow. Rest, light food, fasting, exercise, sex, cold baths, and certain herbs will kindle the fire.  When the fire is high, all the routines of the day should focus on keeping the fire centered in the gut …

~ EveryDay Ayurveda, 2015, Chapter 41, Rasayana: Vitality and the Raising of Agni

brahma-charya

Discriminative and selective practices, and engagement with conscious intimacy, are believed to be the best path to hita, best translated as a harmonious and good life.  Often mistranslated in English as celibacy, brahmacharya does not mean the absence of sexual contact. This translation was probably propagated by the Christian, puritanical influences on Sanskrit translations since the 1750s. 

Brahma-charya is the charana, or walk, toward Brahma, the Creator, signalling an attitude toward oneness and mental purity.

As taught by the masters, brahmacharya is the purposeful engagement into relationships with other humans using choice. There is a choice to engage others on different levels: either only mentally and emotionally, as we do with family members and friends; or in physical proximity, as in housemates and family with which we live; or in both emotional, physical and spiritual intimacy, as with our sexual-emotional partner.

True brahmacharya involves conscious work to understand people who may harm our development by not supporting our mind’s growth. 

~ EveryDay Ayurveda, 2015, Chapter 37 - Real Sex: Intimacy 

a brass bowl filled with mustard oil and turmeric

As tiny tots, my sister and I would spend some of almost every sunny winter afternoon on the patio naked.  At the time of our bath, we would start in the kitchen. Someone would get us completely unclothed, then sit us on the marble floor next to a brass bowl filled with mustard oil and turmeric.

The first step to a bath was to get oiled up.  This oil would first be massaged onto the top of my head, then my face, ears, hair, neck and slowly work its way down my limbs, under my feet, then my trunk and back, inspecting each part as it was oiled. We would then be sent out to the verandah with its high walls and marble floor to bake in the sun, especially in the winter to ward off the phlegmy, mucousy ails of the winter kapha season.

After our skin was hot, by which time coincidentally there were lots of tiny oily yellow handprints and footprints along the floor and walls of the verandah, we would be taken inside.

If there was any place where we were itching, it would be rubbed with a dry herbal powder, usually sharp in odor and smell, made of neem or babul. On Sundays, my aunt would inspect our nails, clipping as needed with a tiny pair of scissors.

~ EveryDay Ayurveda, 2015, Chapter 17, Oil Massage

judicious choices

… rituals end the day with contemplation, gratitude, awareness and preparation, giving us tasks to adjust ourselves if traveling, making us aware of the environment for the hours of night, when our visual sense is less strong. Ayurveda counsels on judicious choices when we are tired or unable to see: the use of alcohol, the engagement in sex, the evening meditation practice, conscious conclusion of the day with recall and review; and then the rasayana of sleep, or nidra yoga.

~ EveryDay Ayurveda, 2015, Chapter 40, Getting to Bed on Time

soap, sandalwood and sodium lauryl sulfate

Since a very young age, I watched my mother, aunts, and elders wash their morning face with clean cold water. No soap, no scrubs, brushes, washcloths, or other tools. Just a series of rinses. That is how I began.
During the adolescent years, I was introduced to unperfumed clean soap only for the oily spots, and never the neck or eyes; oily dirt was removed only with oil, ghee, or water. A few years later I rediscovered sandalwood soap for summer and olive oil soap for winter. These soap bars were kept away from handwashing during the day, and from bathing. Liquid soap had extra chemicals, including sodium lauryl sulfate for foaming, so I avoided it.
If something traumatic like a pimple happened, we immediately rushed to the kitchen, applied turmeric, or lemon, or yogurt for five minutes, then applied fresh sandalwood paste at night.  If the skin turned red from sun, heat, trauma, a scratch, or tired late nights, cucumber or the cold cream from fresh raw milk would be applied, then ghee at night for nourishment and inner cooling.

~ EveryDay Ayurveda, 2015, Chapter 5, Washing the Face and its Orifices

morning ablution

Yoga practices specify that one should evacuate natural urges in the morning gazing toward the north, sitting in a proper private place, not gazing toward auspicious objects, …

One should tighten the abdominal muscles and do a brief muladhara contraction before release.  To aid this, ancient urinals were designed to have men bend on one knee to urinate. The closer we are to squatting, the more easy we will release fluids and solids from our bladder and bowels. 

~ EveryDay Ayurveda, 2015, Chapter 3, Morning Ablutions

altering imbalances

Ayurveda does not specify a particular time of the day for the daily bath. It specifies a checklist and an order for things to be done. The optimal time of day varies on the individual and depends on weather, work, availability of warm water, activities planned after the bath, meals, travel, puja, visitors, and distance from the bathing water.  

While Ayurveda seems unwieldy with its many options, it follows several constants that allow universal application of its principles in every situation.  The consistency of Ayurveda is in its prescriptions aligning a person with the laws of Nature as summarized by the principles of vata, pitta, kapha, ama and agni. 

Every prescription is designed to alter imbalances by first analyzing their nature, then by reducing vata, pitta, and kapha based on the gunas of the substances, activities, or natures being added to the body.

 ~ EveryDay Ayurveda, 2015, Part III.  The Bath

 

recalling the day

As often as she could, my mother would come into my room late at night, after all the guests had left or been put to bed, and all the rooms were clean and closed. 

On special days, such as holidays or birthdays, she would recount an earlier year, showering me with blessings for the coming future and reciting spontaneous Sanskrit mantras for invoking the gods. She could make any day special, by remembering anniversaries of our multitude of family members, ancestors, her various journeys through many countries, or my father’s colorful career. She would begin with a sigh, then recount her father or her mother who had died when she was nineteen, and a story would emerge from the ethers and land in my bedroom, transporting us to Calcutta or Kashi or Jessore of an earlier decade.  

~ EveryDay Ayurveda, 2015, Chapter 38 - Recalling the Day

31 billion rolls

It is unlikely that a scientific study would be done exploring the benefits of using water vs. toilet paper to clean after a bowel movement. How would they blind that study…?  It is also unlikely that the environmental impact of toilet paper vs. water will soon undergo a cost-benefit analysis.
We know that the paper lobby representing 5000 bathroom tissue companies profits from the 31 billion rolls used annually on the planet.  But it seems obvious that the convenience of using paper and dryness has won compared to the reality of the cold and wetness of water residues.  

~ EveryDay Ayurveda, 2015, Chapter 3, Morning Ablutions

the self as a laboratory

The best way to prove Ayurveda's worth is to use it in one’s own life. For if one does not trust the methods and practices of Ayurveda when one falls unwell, what is the value of science trying to validate it?   I offer this book as my testament that Ayurveda works. 

During the writing of this book, I used my body as a laboratory, experimenting with each of the 42 prescriptions and trying to understand the śastras more fully. Perfecting my own daily routine, as I read and studied the śastras, my body began to lose weight. From the time I started actively writing until the completion of this book, I have lost 26 kg of weight without dieting and without much effort, keeping one main principle at the center of all: how to balance the agni.  Every decision was centered around that calculation, forcing me to learn what Ayurveda would recommend, then adapting that to the modern day as needed, and obeying that prescription. 

~ EveryDay Ayurveda, 2015, Epilogue

brahma muhurta

Āyurveda, the science of life and longevity, teaches that the morning hours from 4-6am, have a lightness of being. They should be spent in that space between mind and body, where our spirit attunes us most easily to our life purpose. It is the start of the day in ancient traditions, when the air and environment are most light, subtle and clear. It is the most fresh and pure time of day, and provides the cleanest oxygen for exercise and for breathwork connecting with the purest part of our selves. Should we exercise or should we sit still? Those who want to ride the wave of lightness, clarity and subtle energies may meditate or go for a euphoric morning run. Follow your instinct and watch your body’s reaction; adjust according to how it worked for you. This self-adjustment through trial and error and observation is called upasaya, advised by Āyurveda as one of the best ways of tailoring what you need for your body.

~ EveryDay Ayurveda, 2015, Chapter 1 - Rise and Shine