Monday, January 12, 2009

Day 2 - The Joys and Challenges of an Ayurvedic Diet

The second day of my journey I found myself waking up hungry. I decided not to wait until after yoga to eat something. I had my tea and a piece of Ezekiel bread with ghee. I noticed a little more sinus congestion today so after I brushed my teeth and did my tongue scraping I immediately did a nasal rinse. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the same relief as yesterday so I opted to do an inhalation with essential oil of eucalyptus which seemed to do the trick.

Ayurveda is all about self-healthcare so it’s important to have an awareness of your own body and its individual needs. Today I needed food right away and I was OK with that. I also felt complete only doing 30 minutes of yoga rather than an hour. I listened to my body and paid attention to what it was telling me.

Due to yesterday’s intake of herbal tea I found my urine wasn’t cloudy this morning. Still have some mild constipation though, as I noticed my stools are still sinking not swimming. I’ve got a colon cleanse scheduled in two days, we’ll see what happens after that lovely experience.

The amount of cooking I did yesterday had me slightly overwhelmed. My schedule was pretty easy yesterday but how am I going to handle it on days that are a little more hectic? I ordered an Ayurvedic cookbook called “Eat, Taste, Heal” on Amazon.com which boasts delicious Ayurvedic meals in a fraction of the time. The typical modern westerner doesn’t exactly have the time for hours of cooking everyday and the subsequent pile of dishes that follows. Microwaves are not something we like to utilize in Ayurveda because it has the waves have the ability to alter the food making it unhealthy for the body. So that means more prep time and usually more dishes that need to be washed.

Since I neglected to soak my oats overnite I chose a fresh juice over oatmeal. I decided to have some fun with it and juiced up carrots, celery, spinach, cilantro, a little parsley, a beet, apples and a sprinkle of cinnamon and allspice. It was a delicious treat. Raw vegetables aren’t preferred for Vata body types because they’re “cold” and uncooked veggies are more difficult to digest. Vatas body types need warm, well cooked foods. Juicing works because it’s easier for Vata’s to digest raw juiced vegetables especially if you add warming spices things like cilantro and parsley or even fresh ginger which act as digestive aids. I’ll be expecting reddish colored poo tomorrow because of my intake of beet juice. That’ll be fun.

Staying on my Ayurvedic regimine is a discipline, but I don’t have to be rigidly attached to certain things. It’s not realistic and it doesn’t promote balance to try to be perfect all the time. Case and point, I had my parents over today and my mother was kind enough to bring us dinner. It was a vegetarian meal of wild rice, veggie stir fry with peaches. There was broccoli and cauliflower involved which is something I was told to avoid during my Ayurvedic consultation.

Rather than opt out of dinner completely, I graciously accepted the lovely meal and did not beat myself up over the fact that I ate some veggies that are not on my plan. As we say in Ayurveda, it’s what you do most of the time that counts. A few broccoli and cauliflower aren’t going to send me into oblivion. The food was well cooked, blessed and made with love. And that my friends, is very Ayurvedic.

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1 comment:

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