With each breath, we exchange our personal energy with the energy of the universe, as we constantly absorb sensory input through our five sensory organs: the ear, eyes, nose, tongue, and skin. The senses are our inner pharmacy, and by using them consciously, we can have greater physical and emotional well-being and balance and heal ourselves.
Focusing on the senses of touch and taste can help to balance the body, while we primarily use the other senses – sight, hearing, and smell, to balance the mind.
In an age where everything moves at an infinite speed and is very ethereal and digital, balancing ourselves bodily so we are grounded is more important than ever. The feeling of touch is fundamental to our health and well-being, because, as mammals, we are born with a need to touch and be touched.
Our skin is our largest organ and the portal to so many of our experiences. When our skin is stimulated by loving touch or massage, it releases many healing chemicals that improve our immune function, circulation, promote restful sleep and many other healing benefits. In short, touch is one of the best ways to create balance in our body.
There are many forms of healing touch, including hugging, cuddling a beloved pet, and massage therapy. You can also enjoy the classic Ayurvedic Abhyanga massage with hot oils from a professional therapist, as well as give yourself the gift of a daily self-massage, which also bestows several healing benefits.
Abhyanga – either self or from a therapist – helps remove waste products from the tissues in your body, soothe your mind, and improve your immune system. It is a wonderful way to land in your body again, and experience sensual well-being.
Nordic Ayurveda’s exclusive signature Abhyanga and Shirodhara treatments have just been granted the title “Treatment of the Year” by the Danish Beauty Awards and can be booked at: nordicayurveda.com.
For more than 15 years, my mother struggled with chronic pain in her abdomen and digestive system. In early 2021, at the age of only 67, she finally gained peace after a long and painful battle with bowel cancer and the side effects that the treatment had left her with. My mother’s long illness occupied much of my life, and it wasn’t always easy. Today, I can see what a gift it has been to my life.
Ever since I was a teenager, my mother struggled with her digestion. As far back as I can remember, she had problems with her stomach and wrestled alternately with diarrhea, pain, constipation and general discomfort in her gastrointestinal system. Over time, the symptoms became both chronic and paralyzing for her work and social life. My childhood home was full of love, but it was also full of my mother’s condition and chronic pain.
When my mother was diagnosed with bowel cancer, what she had feared for years and years was confirmed for her. There was something wrong! Despite the doctors not being able to find an explanation for her many years of pain and digestive problems until then. Fear and negative thinking had long since become constant companions in her life and it was a downward spiral that drained her and my childhood home of positive energy for many years.
At first, the diagnosis was a relief, but after so many years of negative and fear-based thinking, neither the diagnosis nor the successful treatment was the resolution we had hoped for.
Even when she was declared healthy, fear helped to control the many questions. “Will it return? How did I get sick? Could I have done anything different?” The many surgeries also turned out to have a downside in the form of scar tissue and subsequent repeated hospitalizations with intestinal malrotation, which is both dangerous and very painful.
The operations brought hope every time, but that hope was always replaced by new fear-based questions.
In the end, the operations were meaningless because the consequences of the interventions only led to further complications. Hope faded and surgery was replaced with more painkillers and relieving medication. The ever-increasing painkillers led to an open stomach ulcer that never really managed to heal. By this point, I had long begun to question the entire process, and also the approach that had characterized it.
Even when I was a teenager, I started looking for an approach to life that was optimistic and full of energy. When I came across Ayurveda, life began to make sense to me – as did the adversity I encountered in life, including my mother’s long illness.
Ayurveda is the world’s oldest health science and has a holistic approach that takes the whole, and the connection between the body, the mental and the spiritual into account.
With the Ayurvedic perspective, you will always have the entire spectrum with you when you need to find the cause of an imbalance. It will never be just a physical explanation and a physical treatment, such as an operation or a pill. With Ayurveda, you will also always include the mental and the emotional – both in diagnosis and treatment. This means that when you experience discomfort, pain or adversity, then with Ayurveda you will relate to both the physical and the mental because they are connected. With Ayurveda, it doesn’t make sense to heal only the physiological.
If I transfer the approach to my mother’s illness, which unfortunately is reminiscent of something many others can recognize, it is my belief that a more holistic approach to my mother’s stomach pain, from the very beginning, could have helped her. I don’t think it would necessarily have prevented the bowel cancer, but involving the mental, focusing on the whole and viewing the pain and adversity as something positive rather than something negative, could have helped her mentally. I am convinced that it could have given her more zest for life despite the chronic pain and I also believe that even if would not have healed her, it would have provided her with relief.
In that way, my mother’s illness became what ignited my Agni (inner fire), and through that helped to bring me to where I am in my life – and I am eternally grateful to her for that.
The quest that started in my youth, and which later led me to Ayurveda, was, in many ways, a counter-reaction to the fear-based and one-sided physiological approach that drained my mother. Ayurveda taught me to turn adversity into something positive, but it also opened up a dimension of life that extends beyond the physical and that is greater than myself.
We humans are not just physical, there is something greater and more. Another dimension and that is why today, I can still feel my mother’s presence. It is with great love for my mother and with great respect for her story, and with respect for you and your relatives, that I share my own and my mother’s story. Perhaps it can be an inspiration for you and help you ask yourself these three questions and find your own Agni through the adversity you have encountered in your life.
“I see doing a detox is like falling in love with yourself again. Our body feels great, and we are filled with energy, well-being, and a feeling of ‘come on world!’ But returning to our everyday lives and maintaining this state requires taking little steps and being careful not to awaken the amygdala.”
Every spring and fall, we do a joint cleansing in Nordic Ayurveda – a physical and mental detox to let go of the old and get the new season off to a good start. Different types of detox and fasting have been popular for years because the effects are often very visible, both mentally and physically. But what happens afterwards? What happens once we have stepped up, have re-introduced the foods we have omitted, and it all becomes everyday routine again? How do we make sure we keep the good habits so we can continue with the high energy level and our healthy journey?
We spoke to Kasper Cetti, body therapist, breathing coach and Ayurvedic health and lifestyle consultant about exactly what we can do to not “fall behind.” His experience has shown that we need to be careful about believing that we can maintain a detoxed life with many limitations, and make sure we get started again with little steps.
“When you have that wonderful, clean feeling after a detox, it’s hard to believe that you can fall back into your old lifestyle. However, we have many patterns and old habits and are typically part of a community in the form of family or colleagues that means that we don’t want to end up on the outside or get comments on our new lifestyle.”
According to Kasper, it’s about not “awakening the amygdala”; The little part of our “emotional” brain that can hijack our attention and focus, and greatly diminish our ability to think and act sensibly.
“If we change too much at once, the amygdala will react and go into “fight or flight” mode because it all becomes too black and white. So, it’s important that you allow yourself to do some of “forbidden” things, like having a glass of wine on the weekend and not knocking yourself if you didn’t get up at six in the morning to get your routines done. It’s better to think about what made you stay in bed – there is most likely a legitimate reason: Perhaps you just needed more sleep after a few hard days, or you needed a day off.
For Kasper, it’s also important to look at the individual, and become more aware of what works for you as a person.
“We often take on many things during a detox, and then we try to stick to all the new habits afterwards. But maybe you didn’t like everything about the detox? Maybe drinking water with lemon first thing in the morning was something you liked, or going to bed earlier? You don’t have to stick to everything, so it becomes an “either-or” situation that means we drop everything and fall back into old patterns.”
When we detox, we often find that omitting a lot of stimulants (processed food, alcohol, exercise, sex, TV, and media) provides peace and well-being and this has a double effect, as we get to feel ourselves, and all while we tread new paths in our brain. So, we need to use that opportunity, during the detox, to feel for what is right for us. But it’s not always easy, as Kasper Cetti admits:
“We are creatures of habit and don’t like to be outside the herd and alone, as suddenly we are the only ones within our circle of friends or family who is making lifestyle changes, so it can be easier to step back into the old habits. The crucial step is to find safety in the choices we make, and that these feel right for us, so the surrounding environment doesn’t affect us to the same extent. We can this with meditation and breathing exercises, and with little steps that keep our amygdala in hibernation, as we find our personal path to inner balance.”
Kasper is a qualified Body SDS therapist and has for worked with treatments at his own clinic in Amager for years. He has treated people at various retreats all around the world. He is also a trained breathing coach and Ayurvedic health and lifestyle consultant from Nordic Ayurveda. Kasper and his family featured in the TV2 program “Min sindssygt sunde familie.”
We are slowly but surely heading out of spring and into summer. But while spring is still in the air, we can take advantage of the perfect time to clean, get rid of winter waste products – Ama as they are called in Sanskrit – and come better into our body and clean out undigested feelings/thoughts.
Ayurvedic detox is a huge help here, but it can also pay off to look at our surroundings, now that we are in the process of a physical and mental “spring clean.”
Ayurvedic lifestyle and health consultant, Mathilde Moyell* has given several lectures on “decluttering” at home and living more minimalistically. She believes there are five areas where we can clean up our lives: Home, diary/time, digital, relationships, and mental.
Fewer things give more space to think and do things. Choose what is most manageable for you, but which will give a visible result. Take one room at a time or start with a wardrobe or cupboard in the bathroom.
There are many ways to tackle it, but one effective method is the “5 boxes method,” where you either box or pile your belongings according to these categories: Keep, sell, donate, recycle or rubbish.
Decluttering time is a good idea to get rid of overwhelm and stress. You will have more time and less “brain clutter.”
For example, look at:
– Creating systems: Categorize your calendar in colors – work, family, friends, etc.
This method has five steps:
Look back over the last week and write down the three most important appointments, whether it was work or leisure
What are your favorites?
Every month ask yourself – every time you put something in your diary: Is this the most important thing I can spend my time on right now?
Set boundaries e.g., Sunday morning is family, Wednesday yoga, etc.
Now see if you can delete some things from your diary. Do things for you and not to please others, respect your own time – everything has become more efficient with zoom – can your network coffee be done over zoom?
This can be a manageable and good place to start for some and completely unmanageable for others who have never made a system on their computer, or who are very dependent on digital communication. However, it is very concrete, and so can be a good place to start.
For example, look at:
– Cleaning your desktop: Systematize files and folders, unsubscribe from spam emails, remove notifications on your phone, carve out blocks in your time where you don’t have emails/texts/notifications ticking in, use the “screen time” function to see which apps you spend your time on. Delete apps that are not useful (but tempting) and maybe take a one-week or one-month detox from social media.
For many, cleaning up in relationships can be very beneficial, but also the most difficult of them all. Look at whether there are any people in your circle of friends that you find draining to be with and consider whether there are some people who give or take energy from you.
For instance:
Make a list of family, friends, and acquaintances
Draw a circle around those who you are unsure whether they add to your life or not
Imagine having to have coffee with them tomorrow, how are you feeling in your stomach? Happy, excited, nervous?
What if they cancel, would you feel relieved or annoyed?
Consider whether you need to clean up your relationships a little and cultivate others – this can be done in more or less drastic ways, depending on the situation (“breaking up” or letting it dwindle out)
We all probably all have a myriad of thoughts and know what an obstacle it can be in many situations in everyday life. The best way to get more clarity in your mind is meditation. Another good thing can be to do is journaling where you write down:
the 3 most important things you would like to achieve today
(in the evening) the 3 best things about your day.
The two complement each other, as you quickly learn what is most important, but at the same time, you empty your brain, so you are ready for the day or night.
* In addition to being an Ayurvedic health and lifestyle consultant from Nordic Ayurveda, Mathilde Moyell is also a neuro coach and mental trainer, a yoga teacher and she also has certificates in nutrition, sustainability, and natural skin care. See more on her website orgayana, where you can also find more articles on decluttering.
When I think back on my own life and how I met Ayurvedic health wisdom, it is a story of going from being trapped in the three causes of suffering to attaining a level of consciousness that enabled me to break the vicious cycle and create more balance in my life.
According to Ayurveda, there are three fundamental causes of disease and suffering. By understanding these three causes and becoming aware of where they are present in your own life, you gain the opportunity to break with them and achieve balance in your life. According to Ayurvedic wisdom, a life in balance not only strengthens your quality of life, it’s also the path to a longer life with fewer ailments.
In the time leading up to when I met Ayurveda, I lived a successful life in the fast lane, and I was convinced that this was precisely the life I wanted. There was speed, I was good at what I was doing and got lots of praise and recognition from those around me. I was socially outgoing, had a full diary and any free moments were quickly filled up with spontaneous plans. The problem was that I wasn’t doing well. At one point, it became very clear that something was wrong – my health put its foot down. I could no longer put off finding the cause. And my search for a solution led me to yoga and Ayurveda.
Ayurveda helped me get rid of the unhealthy burdens and strains my body had been exposed to for years.
When I started working with myself Ayurvedically, it suddenly became very clear to me that the life I was living was in direct conflict with what I was deeply longing for and needed to come into balance. At that time – even after meeting Ayurveda – I had a prestigious job in the restaurant industry with long, late shifts, little or no breaks and weird mealtimes. All in all, I was living a life at full throttle with very little time to feel.
Meeting Ayurveda made me aware that I really needed, and longed for, a fixed framework and sleep routines, time for taking breaks and peace for reflection, as well as a healthy and nutritious diet.
When I started living according to Ayurvedic principles, it really hit me how much the busy life I had been living and my pursuit of recognition weren’t at all what I wanted deep down. When I told myself that I had a good life, it was a lie. How could I have pulled my life in a completely different direction to the one I really wanted for so many years and even succeed in convincing myself that I was happy?
You probably know the feeling of doing something that feels good in the situation and that satisfies a need in you or soothes a symptom well – but that you know isn’t good for you in the long run. For example, the desire to recharge your batteries with candy or coffee. You know they aren’t healthy, but they are easy and satisfy the need for more energy in the moment – but does it deal with the reason for your lack of energy? No, it doesn’t, does it.
You can also transfer those dynamics to other areas of your life. These were the dynamics of my situation and the reason my life got out of balance. Right up until I couldn’t stand it anymore and my whole system collapsed.
When we are not fully conscious and aware, we have an unfortunate tendency to treat the symptoms instead of the cause.
Ayurveda is about creating balance in ourselves and in our lives by being conscious and aware of the three causes of disease and suffering. When we remove them, we dive into the very cause of our disorders instead of just treating the symptoms.
In Ayurveda, the three causes of suffering and disease are:
We know it well, yet we don’t act based on what we actually know. Why, for example, do many people smoke when it is scientifically proven that it is unhealthy? Why do we eat so much candy, fast food or drink alcohol when we know it is the path to an old age with ailments? The explanation is that we are being “dishonest or inauthentic” toward ourselves. We manage to convince ourselves that it’s what we need. That candy is an innocent indulgence, and that alcohol creates a lovely, relaxed atmosphere.
Try to transfer that mindset to your own life. When do you say to yourself that something is legitimate in a situation, even though you know very well that it’s not good for you in the long run? Start small and then try to transfer it to the bigger parts of your life and move step-by-step toward a greater degree of integrity and more holistic health.
We seek stimuli and our senses are often overloaded with the wrong sensory input.
Most people recognize the candy and coffee scenario. Our wisdom betrays us and causes us to soothe ourselves with stimuli in order to gain more energy, but in fact, it means that we also disturb our senses and overload them when we have a high consumption of stimuli. This also applies to social stimuli, which was definitely the case in my life. I had a hard time being on my own and so I filled up my diary.
Try to become aware of your senses and take note of how you feel when you consume certain types of sensory input, even though you know you really need something else. It could be something you eat, but also external influences, such as over-consuming social media, where you may also find that you’re seeking the opposite of what is good for you.
We can influence our biological age by living in balance and, thereby, pave the way for a longer life with less disease and fewer ailments. We are undoubtedly living in an age of time optimism that dictates that we must constantly achieve and do more in less time. When we are stressed, busy and living in imbalance, our body ages faster. We measure chronological age in months and years – we can’t change that. But our biological age is about our health, and we can change that by living a life in balance, where we consciously seek breaks and peace of mind through, for instance, meditation. When we find peace and calm on a daily basis, we help slow down the aging process.
The three reasons or causes are intertwined and so we have to be consciously aware of and work with all three to come into balance. We chase success and stress, our wisdom betrays us, we soothe our senses – a vicious cycle in progress. You can break it by starting to become aware of and recognizing the dynamics of the little things and then you can start working on taking it to the next level.
I wish you all the best on your journey
Do you know what the four greatest goals of human life are, and do you live according to them? If your health or life energy are ailing, read on!
Regardless of our imbalance, Ayurveda guides us lovingly to begin by looking at our inner feelings and thoughts. All well-being and health start in the mind. Conversely, all disease on the physical level begins with an imbalance in the mind and emotions – it could be negative beliefs, streams of thought, relationships, or simply living in a way that is out of integrity with who we really are … Having a happy and peaceful mind requires living according to our inner values and using ourselves for the higher benefit of the world. It may sound lofty, but it is a day-to-day practice. Parenting is a great example. When we take on the role of parent, we accept duties and activities that benefit more than ourselves. We help to create a safe and loving foundation for our children, so that one day they can go out into the world and be something for other people.
According to Ayurveda, we can only achieve a deeper happiness and sense of meaning with our lives if we live according to the 4 greatest goals for human life, called Purushartha. The most important place to start is with what is called Dharma, which I most often translate as life path. When we live a dharmic life, we live in deep inner harmony with who we are and what we have been put here on Earth for. Again, it’s not some lofty goal in the future, but something that happens in every single decision we make:
Should I eat x or y today?
Should I say yes to x or stay home and go to bed early?
Should I stay at work or resign even though that would be financially uncertain?
Should I stay with x even though we keep falling out?
When through self-reflection, meditation and time in silence, we get to know ourselves better and can begin to distinguish the insignificant from the essential, we live a dharmic life that involves applying our energy and extending beyond ourselves and our own immediate needs. It is the first goal that automatically leads on to both Artha and Kama.
Artha is about our goals in life. If our goals are superficial, such as quickly gaining a nice title, making a lot of money or living somewhere exclusive, it only brings short-lived happiness. If, however, the goals are an extension of our life path, so we can, for example, reach even further with our offerings, messages and love, then inner success and satisfaction follow automatically. This ALSO brings financial and worldly success, but it is a side effect.
In India, we have Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity, success and abundance. It is said that if you chase her, she will run away from you. But – she will be pulled toward and follow a person if they turn their back to her and use their awareness where it makes the greatest difference. When we reach our goal based on our Dharma, we can begin to enjoy life here on Earth in earnest, and that is what Kama is about.
Kama is about enjoying the fruits of life and living with optimal quality of life during our time on Earth. As children, we naturally get lost in play, happiness and enjoyment. But it is not the childish lack of responsibility we should hold on to, but rather the ability to celebrate and enjoy life and what we create in everyday life. The human mind is programmed to always seek the next challenge, the next goal, the next thing we want to buy, etc. But the third life goal is about enjoying the here and now!
Moksha is the ultimate goal in life that most of us only reach when we get older and death approaches. Moksha is spiritual liberation in which we recognize that what we fundamentally are can never die. For us to connect with our soul and achieve liberation from the fear of death, we need to be unconnected to all that is physical here on Earth including our body and close relationships.
Finish by sitting still and asking yourself the following questions. Write your answers in your journal:
Which of the 4 greatest goals for life is my awareness focused on now?
Which goal might need my awareness so that I can become more whole and happier from the inside out?
Chronic pain, disease, adversity in life. We all experience them sooner or later. Why do some people come out stronger after illness and adversity while others break? Ayurveda takes a holistic approach to life that is based on a fundamental belief that we can turn pain and adversity into something positive.
At Nordic Ayurveda, we want to debunk three untrue beliefs that we believe reduce the life quality of many people, and that unfortunately are often embedded in the modern approach to health and disease prevention measures. With our Ayurvedic approach, we replace the three life-reducing approaches with three life-supporting and positive core beliefs, which help to raise our conscious awareness and set a positive and life-affirming course for life.
1. We lose life energy and become sicker as we age
It’s expected that with age we will develop various defects and diseases and that it’s only natural that we lose life energy. This claim deprives us of hope but also of the value of an old age full of the wisdom and joy we can gain as we get older because we know ourselves much better and know what is good for us.
2. We are primarily a product of our genes and our upbringing
Disease and adversity are often genetically determined or a result of the environment we grew up in. This claim deprives us of taking responsibility but also of the opportunity to change something. It can keep us locked in inappropriate patterns because we think we are primarily a product of external influences.
3. We are physical by nature, and we must die
We are only present and have a meaning when we have a body and are in the physical world. When we focus narrow-mindedly on the physical dimension and only seek answers in the physiological world, we limit ourselves and our consciousness. This applies both in relation to the course of a disease, but also to our overall approach to life, where accepting dimensions beyond the physical gives mental freedom.
If these three beliefs characterize you and your life to a great extent, then we would like to invite you to look at them and try to challenge them with three core beliefs that open up a different approach.
1. Accept the conditions of your life
When you accept the conditions of your life and go with them instead of against them, this positive approach brings about life energy that you can use to create something positive in and with your life. If you are chronically ill, then accept the terms and give yourself the opportunity to turn it into something powerful in your life.
2. Pain and discomfort are a good thing
If you meet pain, discomfort and symptoms with a positive approach, then they can show you the way to a life in balance. And when it comes to chronic pain and adversity in life, they can become a gift that opens up a greater conscious awareness in you.
3. You can change your behavior and, thereby, your destiny
When you take responsibility for your own life and your behavior, you also give yourself the opportunity to define your own path in life. Taking yourself seriously and taking back your authority over yourself will enable you to take control of your destiny.
Now is the time we need to take good care of ourselves – In the transition from summer to autumn, as, unfortunately, many people get sick here because they forget or are too busy to change course… We are connected to nature, that is the essential idea in Ayurveda, when the temperatures, humidity, wind and sunlight change, we change too and have completely new needs. We feel it intuitively, but perhaps you have been too busy to stop and notice?
Our culture is also full of habits that don’t necessarily support what we need in the fall. Now is the time to say no thank you to ice cubes in drinks, cold salads and ice cream desserts. Now what we need is to nourish ourselves much more with warm clothing, several restful breaks, and sleeping from ten o’clock in the evening as well as delicious hot food and drink.
It doesn’t have to be hard. When I have to make a quick lunch or dinner, I have two basic recipes that I choose from, in which I use what I have of vegetables, herbs, spices and vegetable proteins. And no, I’m not a vegetarian, but I have cut down on the amount of meat in my diet, so I only eat chicken and fish and typically only when I eat with other people who eat or want it (or when my body calls for it, for example, during menstruation). In Ayurveda, it’s not about what is not allowed because we are all different – some people thrive on a little meat to stabilize the organism, others do best on a 100% vegetarian diet. These recipes are for everyone, and you can improvise to your heart’s content! It’s intentional that there are no measurements. I don’t use them myself. I cook intuitively and would like to inspire you to do the same. You can’t wrong with these simple recipes.
Red lentils and a little oil are the only must-haves for making this dish. Ingredients like onions/leeks, carrots, cauliflower, sweet potatoes, fennel, chopped tomatoes, coconut milk and spices, such as curry, turmeric and ginger can be good to use, too.
1: Sauté the spices and the onions/leeks in a little olive or coconut oil.
2: Add the lentils and stir – about 100 ml per person.
3: Add vegetables that need to cook for a long time, such as root vegetables.
4. Pour in water, stock, broth or perhaps chopped tomatoes. Simmer for 10 mins.
5. Add vegetables that just need a few minutes to cook, so they still have a bite, such as cauliflower or broccoli, and you can also add coconut milk. Cook for a maximum of 5 minutes, season with herbs and spices. You can also adjust the soup here to your preferred thickness.
6: Garnish with cilantro, parsley, pumpkin seeds or anything else you have on hand (optional).
Quinoa and olive oil are the only must-haves for this dish. Though arugula/baby spinach, squash/eggplant, peppers, cherry tomatoes, mushrooms, and proteins, such as tofu/edamame/chickpeas are good to have, too.
1: Boil the quinoa according to the instructions – about 100ml per person.
2: Heat the oven and cut all the vegetables except the salad into smaller pieces. Mix the chopped veg and the proteins with the oil and any delicious herbs/spices you like – I like to use garam masala or curry. Bake the vegetables and proteins in the oven for 5-10 min.
3: Mix the quinoa and vegetables together with the fresh vegetables you’re using for the salad/spinach.
Above are some pictures from the last time I made this quinoa salad.
In addition to the quinoa, I used: A yellow squash, a red bell pepper, arugula, tofu and Vata mixed spice. A piece of cake, no?
Enjoy!
When we know ourselves and can feel the needs of our innermost souls, then we are also able to show the world who we are and what is within us.
At some point in life, many of us experience ending up at a dead end – we’re stuck in college, a relationship or a job that we aren’t thriving in. Sometimes, we end up there because it was what was expected of us or perhaps we didn’t realize what we really wanted. By training your ability to feel yourself and your innermost needs, you can find your Dharma, your life path.
If you get stuck in something for too long that isn’t good for you, you can lose your connection to yourself, and it can eventually lead to both physical and mental imbalance.
Sometimes, it can be difficult to distinguish between what we want and what is good for us – it’s not always the same. And when we’re young, it can be especially difficult to tell the difference between the two. As we get older and get to know ourselves better, we can often distinguish between superficial and impulse-driven needs and our innermost needs more easily – as well as what is good for our balance, too.
A life in balance is about practicing listening to yourself and feeling yourself.
It’s also at this stage that we typically experience that two different needs can meet and unite and become a joint need and that what we want is the same as what is good for us, our health and even those around us. When that happens, we are living out our Dharma, which in an Ayurvedic context can be translated into “life path.”
Both meditation and yoga are great ways into yourself. Here, you train your ability to feel yourself and practice finding your way into your deeper needs and desires. They enable you to meet your innermost longings and you will find it easier to distinguish them from impulse-driven needs and stimuli. Another way to train your ability to get to your deepest needs and insights is reflection exercises.
Let yourself be guided by your Dharma and what is good for you.
I myself am very fond of this particular exercise. It’s one I return to often. It consists of four different questions, and you can easily ask yourself the same question several times in life. You will find that the answers and the reflections change depending on where you are on your life path. Feel free to write down your answers and thoughts in, for example, a journal. It can help you to focus, but it is also instructive to take a step back and look at the different answers to and the reflections on the same questions. You can advantageously repeat the exercise every few weeks. It helps to keep your reflections going and you will probably find that you get deeper each time you do the exercise.
The answer itself isn’t what is important – it’s the thought process from question to answer that contains the insight.
Gifts can be your special natural abilities, e.g., related to your Dosha type. It can also be something specific that feels and comes easily to you. For instance, certain types of tasks or situations that you are particularly good at handling. It could also be special gifts or abilities you bring with you from your childhood, your education, or your working life. Maybe you are really good at listening to other people, starting new projects or something entirely different?
Think of experiences in your life and where you have felt like you have learned something – even if it was difficult. It could be experiences or relationships where you learned something from the path you walked and the experiences that came with it. It could be, for example, a divorce, a loss or an illness. Try to think about what gifts accompanied the experience, what was difficult and what taught you something new about yourself.
This question invites you to reflect on what parts of you, you can pass on to others. For example, you may be able to comfort someone because you yourself have experienced grief or you are good at embracing others because you yourself have felt lonely.
Here, you are very welcome to think beyond your job. It’s also about what brings you joy when you have time off. What are some activities that make you happy in life? It could be anything from gardening, a good book, a cultural experience or time and chats with your children or people who inspire you.
Feel free to do this exercise on a regular basis. You’ll train your ability to feel yourself and your Dharma. You will also train your ability to see your life path through the little Dharmic choices you make every single day.
Let your whole life be a meditation.
Nordic Ayurveda
Pain or discomfort that reappears over and over again is a sad reality for many people. It could be migraines, digestive problems, neck and back pain or other symptoms of imbalance in the system. With an Ayurvedic approach, you can prevent and avoid transient discomfort from developing into chronic conditions.
Seen through Ayurveda, your body will always signal an imbalance at a fairly early stage. Often it starts with mild discomfort or pain. If only the symptoms are treated, the cause does not change, so the pain returns and, unfortunately, often with increasing strength.
These are signals that there is an imbalance somewhere in the body and if they are ignored, they can develop into a chronic condition. That is why it’s so important that you listen to your body and react as soon as it starts showing signs of imbalance.
When you hear histories of illness from people living with chronic diseases, the symptoms often crept up on them and developed into a chronic condition over time. Therefore, you should react as soon as you notice an imbalance. This is where you have the opportunity to prevent pain or discomfort from becoming a regular part of your life.
When we are in great imbalance, we tend to seek out what isn’t good for us and reject what is good for us. It becomes a way to soothe and drown out the real cause of the imbalance.
The Ayurvedic approach to disease operates with a six-step process in which we go from healthy to chronically ill. It’s a process in which we become more and more unbalanced, both physically and mentally, if we don’t change what is creating the imbalance. In the early stages, we can still make corrections on our own, and stage four is characterized by getting a real diagnosis, perhaps from the doctor.
An imbalance may be due to many different things – diet, stress, unresolved relationships or other tiggering issues. Causes that we, for various reasons, ignore or have difficulty facing and which we, therefore, instead try to soothe and drown out with various forms of stimuli, such as food, alcohol, sex and entertainment.
When you need to change something, it’s always easier to start small and preferably with one step at a time. That way, it’s more manageable and you can also get a better feel for what works and why it works. If you have an experience that something in your life is pulling in the wrong direction, try to feel it. The answer is inside you, and you know well what it is that you need to change – often your intuition is shrouded.
Here are some concrete tools you can use to open your intuition again.
When you meditate, it’s a way to raise your consciousness and inner state. It gives you the opportunity to feel yourself, and you can literally raise yourself out of the state of consciousness that created your challenge.
A problem cannot be solved on the same level of thinking, the same level of consciousness [that created it] (Einstein)
If you need help getting started with meditation, you are welcome to start with this body scan exercise. You can use it over and over again and it can act as an anchor that brings you back to yourself when discomfort, doubt or fear arises.
Write down your thoughts for a period of time. It could be stray thoughts from the day or conscious reflections on your emotional patterns – when do those feelings and thoughts arise and what does it show you? Often, this inner exploration will help you figure out where the imbalance is coming from. Perhaps you can identify recurring themes in your journal, which, in turn, makes it easier for you to decode your body’s signals?
If you feel that something in your life is out of balance, it can help to talk to someone who knows you well and who is close to you. A conversation about something that is just a feeling or sensation can help you concretize it and those close to you may also have some ideas for how you can change it and create more zest and health in your life.
When you make room to feel, the answers often arise naturally. Start with little adjustments. That way, you can feel if you are heading in the right direction – perhaps your diet or your daily routines need adjusting. It could also be a general balance in your life that is tipping to one side and that is about what and how you prioritize.
Often we don’t prioritize ourselves, as we always put the needs of others first. If we are to be something for other people, then we must be something for ourselves first.
When you do something good for yourself, you also do something good for those around you. The more good you do for yourself, the more you can give to others. Allow yourself to turn your awareness inward and feel.
Ayurveda helps you to feel yourself
With Ayurvedic health science and its approach, you gain access to many different tools that can help you raise your awareness so you become better at feeling and following your intuition. That way, you will feel any imbalance as soon as it creeps in, and you will be able to more easily adjust and prevent it from dwelling and developing into chronic pain. Ayurveda is an approach that provides inspiration to practice living a life closer to yourself using daily rituals, yoga, meditation, diet, sleep and more. All measures that can be practiced in a normal everyday life and that help you to feel yourself and be in touch with your consciousness.
With love
Nordic Ayurveda
