How to create mental and spiritual bolstering
Maybe you recognize the feeling of being energy depleted and unwell no matter how much you sleep. Or long periods where your immune system is on its knees, and you go from one infection to the next. When you bolster your OJAS, both your physical and mental resilience are strengthened.
According to the power of Ayurvedic wisdom, both your inner and outer balance are connected to your OJAS. When you build up and strengthen your OJAS, you stabilize and strengthen both your physical and mental resilience, and you will find that you have more physical and mental energy, too.
OJAS is an Ayurvedic term that can be translated as “satisfaction” or “stability.” It’s linked to your physical, mental and spiritual planes and, therefore, the strength of your OJAS is also expressed in your immune system, your life energy and your access to insight and creativity. When you strengthen your OJAS, you strengthen both your life energy and your immune system. Use the natural flow of the seasons to strengthen your OJAS If you want to strengthen the balance in your body and mind, then Ayurvedic wisdom encourages you to follow nature’s rhythm. This applies to both the changing of the seasons and the rhythm of the day. When you follow the flow and cycle of nature, you lean into its power, and it works for you. Ayurvedic life philosophy highlights spring as a particularly good time for working on bolstering your OJAS. Spring is the time of year when life emerges anew, and you can lean into that when you need to bolster your OJAS. You have just come out of a dark, wet and heavy winter and spring is an awakening and a time when you can more easily let go of that weight and what you have been dragging around. It’s also a time when you can rediscover yourself, get your juices flowing and raise your consciousness
You can work with OJAS on all three planes – physical, mental and spiritual – and you can start by building up where it makes the best sense for you. It may be where you feel your OJAS are low or where it’s easiest for you to get started. If your body is low on energy or you easily pick up infections or viruses, then start building up your physical OJAS. If you lack zest for life or inspiration, turn your awareness inward and focus on bolstering your mental and spiritual OJAS. You can also work on all three planes at once, thereby strengthening your balance all around.
On the physical plane, OJAS represent your immune system and, therefore, it is your body and what you expose it to that is in focus – diet, exercise, sleep and physical well-being. Here are some tips to help you bolster your physical OJAS: FOOD Eat foods that you can easily digest. This way, you minimize the accumulation of waste products and achieve optimal digestion. Make sure that as much as possible is homemade, based on fresh, and preferably local, ingredients. Eat according to the season and focus on your Dosha type. If you don’t know your Dosha type, you can take a test here!
Foods that bolster your OJAS:
– Dairy products, preferably fresh products, e.g., fresh milk from cows
– Ghee (clarified butter)
– Honey, as pure as possible, and preferably from a local honey producer
– Nuts, almonds. Soak them overnight and eat them as a snack (almonds are most easily digested without a shell), or in porridge or a smoothie.
– Use oils, preferably sesame oil, e.g., in the form of tahini
Different herbs also help to bolster your OJAS:
– Trifalla strengthens your digestion and Ashwagandha provides emotional and mental grounding.
Oil treatments are an effective way to strengthen your immune system:
– Nasya is a practice where oils that protect you from viruses, soothe your mind and moisturize and build your system are dripped into the nose. You can, for example, use sesame oil with a pump from Apoteket.
– (Self)abhyanga – body massage with long strokes. Use sesame oil or Ayurvedic oils with herbs, for example, from ByKorsholm. Warm the oil and apply it liberally. You can also get Abhyanga as part of the Signature Treatment Basic at AYA House
– Shirodhara is a special oil treatment where warm oil runs down over your forehead in a gentle stream. It calms the mind, so mental balance is achieved. You can also have this treatment at AYA House. Unfortunately, you cannot do it yourself.
Training that strengthens your OJAS:
When you need to build yourself up physically, think about training your body from the bottom up. Start with your foundation – your legs. It could be by running, walking or with yoga exercises that focus on the body’s foundation. Feel free to go out in nature, feel it and soak up the power of spring. When you are building up your OJAS, it’s important that you get enough sleep and have a regular sleep pattern. For Ayurveda, good and regular sleep is quite fundamental in relation to your well-being. When you get the right sleep, you don’t need unnecessary stimuli. It’s best to follow nature’s rhythm if you can. That means going to bed around 10-11 pm. and getting up around 6 am.
Your mental OJAS express your resilience and your ability to handle resistance, challenges and be positive about everything that comes your way. You strengthen your mental OJAS by looking inward. It could, for example, be with the help of meditation exercises and mindfulness. It’s about bolstering yourself from within and strengthening your relationships through positive thoughts; about letting go of what you don’t need and what drags you down. Here, you strengthen the ability to distinguish between the thoughts and beliefs you want to let go of and the ones you want to strengthen.
Working to bolster your spiritual OJAS is about finding the true part of you, creating awareness and establishing contact with your spiritual self. When you start working on the positive, you surrender yourself to what is and let go of achieving, performing and controlling. You give yourself to the world and to a deep inner core belief that EVERYTHING is as it should be – that the universe is fundamentally loving and wishes you well. Through the lens of Ayurveda, everything can be turned into something positive when you trust that you are being held and supported. You are filled with faith as opposed to fear and anxiety. Where do you go when you want to surrender to something bigger than yourself? For some, it’s meditation, for others yoga, art or being present in nature. Some people experience surrender when they are engrossed in their hobby, when they slip or sink into something. When building up your spiritual OJAS, go to where YOU find peace and feel surrender.
What is the purpose of my life?
Where am I heading?
Does what I am doing even make sense?
Most of us have times in our lives when feel down and ask ourselves those kinds of questions. By training the ability to feel yourself in the little choices of everyday life, you’re preparing yourself for the bigger decisions in life.
Every single day, we all make a variety of small choices that may seem insignificant. If you practice being more aware of your choices – even the little ones in everyday life – and feel what is good for YOU instead of doing what you usually do or what others do, then you’ll also come closer to yourself and can more easily find and follow what is YOUR life path.
According to Ayurvedic wisdom, your life is not random. There is a greater meaning to precisely your life. You are put on the Earth for a special reason. Dharma is Sanskrit and, in an Ayurvedic context, can be translated as “way of life”.
Dharma is about why you are here; about the path you take in life and the choices you make.
According to Ayurveda, life consists of countless choices, great and small, and together they are all important for your Dharma, your life’s path. Even in the small decisions, such as what to eat for breakfast or when to go to bed, you are making a dharmic choice. This shouldn’t be taken as pressure to choose what is ‘dharmically right’ in everything you do – quite the opposite. It’s important to emphasize that there’s no such thing as “right” or “wrong”. It’s about you, through your many little choices, learning how to feel what feels good for you, there where you are. In other words, it’s about your choices becoming more and more conscious.
Dharma isn’t a final destination, but rather a journey that lasts a lifetime.
The great gift of integrating Ayurvedic principles into your search for meaning in your life is that nothing is right or wrong. YOU are not right or wrong. You are who you are and when you embrace all of you – your whole being – then acceptance, that encompasses an enormous amount of freedom, follows. You’ll certainly experience that you have both strengths and more vulnerable aspects. According to Ayurveda, our vulnerable sides also bear a great gift for us, and that is precisely what is incredibly liberating in a time where the tendency is for criticism and self-criticism, and where we often feel that we have to change ourselves to be “right” and to fit in.
The very fundamental principles of Ayurvedic health wisdom revolve around balance, moderation and acceptance.
If you already know your Dosha type, then you also know that each Dosha has its strengths and vulnerabilities, and that Ayurveda is all about becoming aware of them and embracing all of them. When you do, you will also see your way of life, your path, more clearly, because YOUR constitution supports you in living out your Dharma.
If you don’t know your Dosha type already, you can take a test here.
BEING CONSCIOUSLY AWARE OF YOUR WAY OF LIFE, START SMALL
When you need to practice feeling what is good for you, and find your way of life, start where you feel joy and energy. Not with big changes that feel like a burden. Start wherever there is the least resistance and where it is easy to get started – your joy and energy are your guide.
The trick is to focus on what we are doing, instead of what we didn’t achieve.
It’s important to remember that we are all ordinary people who need our everyday lives to run smoothly in a modern reality. There has to be room for college or work, seeing to your home, your family and friends and maybe children. Therefore, an Ayurvedic lifestyle must also be seen as a process that is adapted to modern everyday life. Maybe you need to start with your bedtime or make a little tweak to your diet or maybe you need to be out in nature more or go for a walk every day. Some people experience a great change in their balance just by doing something as small as using a tongue scraper every morning or starting the day by drinking a glass of boiled water – your health and well-being are inextricably linked to following your life path.
From an Ayurvedic perspective, there is a close correlation between our physical and mental well-being. If you are mentally unbalanced, then it settles as a physical imbalance, too and vice versa. And so, our health and wellness are closely linked to us following our life path, our Dharma.
If we don’t follow our life path, it can manifest as mental or physical symptoms because we aren’t in contact with our soul.
When you use Ayurvedic principles – right down to the little everyday rituals – it helps you to tune in to what is the right choice for you; Every single choice – right down to what is the right thing for you to eat, to think about and to spend your time on. All of it – yes, all of it – guides you on your way. The more you learn about yourself, the easier it will be for you to find YOUR conscious way of life, which will give you deep inner satisfaction and a sense of meaning to your life. This is where we find our health and our balance in earnest.
Once you get to know the month’s cycle, you can use your knowledge and acceptance to bring about balance in your life.
A woman’s menstrual cycle – just like the moon – consists of three different phases and from an Ayurvedic perspective, each phase represents its own energy. Once you become aware of the three phases and their individual energies, you can gain strength by leaning into them.
Humans are closely connected to the changing of the seasons and the rhythm of the day and the more we follow nature’s own cycle, the closer we come to ourselves. The month – like the day and the year – has its own cycle and follows the rhythm from new moon to full moon and back again. And just like the moon, if you are menstruating, you have your own monthly cycle, too, which consists of three different phases, each with their own energy. Acceptance is the first positive step and this is the key to balance. When you become aware of the lunar cycle and/or your own menstrual cycle, you can move with the energy that each phase represents and use it to create more balance in your life. According to Ayurveda, each of the three phases is related to one of the three doshas, Pitta, Vata and Kapha, and the energy they represent.
When we talk about a woman’s monthly cycle, we calculate the start of her period from the first day of menstruation. The Pitta phase starts in the middle and is the period of ovulation. For example, if you have a 28-day cycle, then your Pitta phase starts in the days up to day no. 14. If you are not menstruating, then you follow the lunar cycle and here the Pitta period is in the middle of the month and starts at the new moon. During this phase, the energy is extroverted, dynamic, about getting things done, and full of optimism and energy. You will find that during this phase, you are sharp, can see the big picture and are good at taking the lead and throwing yourself into new challenges. Feel your extroverted and positive energy in this phase. This is a good time for doing activities that require a little extra of you. Biologically speaking, it is also the period when the woman is ready to be fertilized and this can easily be transferred to other things – in other words, this is the period when you are ready to be fertilized with new ideas and tasks.
From around day 21 until day 28, there is a gradual transition to the next period, which is Vata. Hormonally, it means a decrease in the production of progesterone and estrogen. You experience the feeling of stability decreasing a little, and the inner grounding being more easily shaken. You can compare it to the hour before dinner in a circadian rhythm. Your energy is declining, and you feel the urge to withdraw a little and perhaps even become a little more introverted, too. When you enter Vata, it’s the phase up to your period or if you follow the moon, it’s when the moon is close to being full. It can be a good idea to slow down a little here, to give yourself breathing space and peace and quiet. This sensitive phase is completely natural. Rather than fighting the sensitivity you’re experiencing, you can gain much more by accepting it, leaning into it and working WITH it instead of AGAINST it. The Vata phase is associated with the spiritual and you can choose to see being more sensitive as a gift because it enables you to better feel yourself. To find peace to reflect, look inward and take stock of the period you have just been through. It can feel anxiety-provoking when the protective layer between you and the world is pulled away, but it allows you, for example, to more easily feel if you are compromising yourself in different contexts because your emotional reactions are so brutally honest during this phase.
After a few days of cleansing menstruation or a few days after the full moon and toward the new moon, you are in the Kapha phase. It’s a time comparable to a detox. The first part of the phase can be draining, and you may feel weakened and fatigued. If you are menstruating, you may recognize the feeling of cleansing quite physically and you may find that your periods vary in strength from time to time. It can be a sign of how you have treated yourself during the cycle up to then. If you have been pushing yourself, you may feel that you’re menstruating more heavily than usual. Allow yourself to be slow and a little heavy. Give yourself time to rebuild and recharge – both physically and mentally. In the latter part of this phase, focus on rebuilding in the same way as after a detox or a long winter. You can benefit from supporting it with a nutritious and Ojas-full diet – read more here.
Depending on which dosha energy you are most influenced by and on how your balance is, the three phases will also be affected by that. The energy you most have may challenge you. For example, if you are a Pitta, then the Pitta phase can be “too” powerful or if you are a Vata, you may feel that it’s very easy to move out of balance up to and during your menstruation or the full moon. So, your own dosha can be strengthened when you hit the corresponding period and how much you are in balance – or not – will also be more expressed.
If you don’t know your Dosha type, you can take a test here.
Take yourself as your starting point and see how you can use your own cycle or the moon to live more in balance with yourself and where your energy is. When you become more aware of the energy and honor the cycle, you will experience all the periods as a gift to you – even those in which you are extra sensitive. You may benefit from marking your periods in your diary and trying to plan your activities according to the three phases where possible. By acknowledging your cycle and using your knowledge of the phases, you can come closer to yourself through nature’s rhythm.
An Ayurvedic cleansing is gentle on your system and can be performed on several different levels. It can be adapted to ordinary everyday life or run as a more in-depth course incorporating Ayurvedic health philosophy on several planes.
Detox covers many different ways to cleanse your system and is a concept encountered in connection with everything from ascetic fasting programs to juice diets. Essentially, detox covers a temporary dietary change that helps you excrete the waste products that have accumulated in your system over time. The disadvantage of very hard cleansings is that they can be difficult to carry out while simultaneously having to see to everyday life with work, family, etc. They can also be unusually harsh on your body and will often require you to have expert help too, to guide and monitor your system and its reactions along the way.
Even if you live a healthy life, it’s good to thoroughly clean your system a couple of times a year and get rid of the many waste products that have inevitably accumulated over time – yes, even if you live a healthy and balanced life.
Learn more about why cleansing is good for your system here.
Unlike many other cleansing procedures, an Ayurvedic detox is gentle on you and your body, and you can choose how deep of a cleanse you’d like. It could be a simple and accessible diet that you control over a period of 5-7 days or a more in-depth cleansing process that integrates several elements of Ayurvedic lifestyle.
When you remove yourself from nature, live in unnatural surroundings and fill yourself with artificial stimuli, you lose touch with your basic life energy, strength and health. An Ayurvedic cleansing brings you closer to your natural self.
A mild Ayurvedic detox lasts approx. one week. The first few days you reduce the stimuli and foods that aren’t part of the diet. Set aside plenty of time for your cleansing and feel free to create some space in your diary to take it easy, go for walks, meditate, strengthen a good sleep pattern, etc. You should also allow for a few additional days to slowly rebuild yourself after the detox. Here you can quietly reintroduce the foods and stimuli that you omitted during the diet.
When you return to your normal habits, your system will typically respond more clearly to unnecessary stimuli and processed foods.
In an Ayurvedic cleansing process, the diet is simple and consists of fresh and pure ingredients. That is, out with processed foods and stimuli, such as coffee, alcohol, nicotine and candy. Preferably, the food is spicy so as to ignite your Agni (inner fire) and whatever you consume should be warm or tepid. The same applies to what you drink.
Here is an overview of the food on which an Ayurvedic detox diet is based. It can be a very good idea to meal plan in advance. We tend to fall back into old habits if we lose track. So, a little preparation can help make your cleansing a great experience.
– Nourishing and pure ingredients
- Eat plenty of all kinds of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, seeds, nuts, lentils and beans: It’s an advantage if it can be cooked – boiled, fried or baked: An Ayurvedic detox recommends that the most of what you eat be warm or tepid and, preferably, close to your own body temperature.
– Warming spices:
During your detox, feel free to increase the warming spices as they help stimulate your cleansing. You can use ginger, turmeric, cinnamon, cardamom, cumin, coriander (cilantro), fennel, nutmeg, cloves, etc.
– Natural oils:
When cleansing, it’s important you get plenty of fats as they help to dissolve the accumulated waste products and push them out of your system. So, when you’re on a detox, you’re welcome to increase the fats – though they need to be good natural oils, such as coconut oil, olive oil, ghee, etc.
– Tepid drinks:
When on a cleanse, what you consume should preferably be warm or tepid. Drink plenty of herbal tea, lukewarm water with lemon and CCF tea, which is a special Ayurvedic drink that stimulates cleansing. CCF tea consists of cumin, coriander (cilantro) and fennel.
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When you are on a detox, you should avoid all kinds of processed foods, as they always contain additives or other things that block an optimal cleansing. If you can make everything you eat yourself and from scratch, then this is the absolutely safest way to get around additives.
– You should also avoid animal products during your detox – dairy products, eggs and meat. You can replace them with proteins from beans, lentils, etc.
– Also avoid all stimuli, such as coffee, sugar, nicotine and alcohol.
When we remove what overloads your body, an immediate and positive change occurs. The body’s ability to heal itself is powerful – we access it with Ayurvedic cleansing.
Side-effects of a detox
An Ayurvedic detox is so gentle that few people experience actual side effects. Especially not if time has been set aside to reduce the stimuli and foods that aren’t part of the diet. If not, then you may experience mild symptoms, such as mild headaches as well as a little restlessness in your stomach and digestive system, but it will often clear up within a day and most people experience an increase in their energy levels.
NB: If you’re taking medication, always consult your doctor before starting a detox or changing your diet.
When you put your detox in your diary, set aside some time around it so there’s room to feel how you’re doing. Make sure you’re not in a hurry, feel free to spend time on something that makes you feel good and makes you relax, e.g., a sauna, yoga, steam bath, walks, etc. And also feel free to take longer breaks from stimuli, like social media and your inbox. On the whole, and if possible, it can be a good idea to take a little time off from your usual rhythms.
If, for example, you train a lot on a daily basis, then feel free to reduce it a little so you can better feel your body.
After a cleansing, you need to get back to your everyday life. Here, it’s important that the re-building is gentle and occurs over a 3-day period. Your body and your senses will be sharpened, which means you will respond more clearly to stimuli. Use that opportunity to label what is good for you and what you may need to avoid in the future. If your body reacts very strongly to certain foods or stimuli, think about whether they should be reintroduced. After an Ayurvedic cleansing, you have a completely unique opportunity to feel your body’s signals. Listen to them. The process out of your detox is important for you, so as to get your body in balance.
Detox is an effective way to restore balance in your system if you have recurrent discomfort or chronic pain – this applies to both physical and mental symptoms of imbalance. But it also has a powerful preventative effect that strengthens your immune system and your mental well-being.
Even when you live a healthy life and your dosha is in balance, your system can benefit from cleansing a few times a year – it’s both strengthening and preventive, so you avoid little imbalances being overlooked and having room to grow.
The Ayurvedic approach to health rests on nature’s rhythm and the cycle of the year. Therefore, the transitional seasons of spring and fall are particularly good times for cleansing. In other words, if you live healthily and generally feel good, you’ll still experience more energy and a strengthening of your Agni (inner fire) from a few yearly cleansings.
Maybe you think cleansing isn’t necessary if you live and eat healthily, exercise, etc., in general. Despite being aware of living healthily and in balance, we are also affected by everything that surrounds us and it’s not always something we ourselves can control. We can never completely escape the chemicals and pollution in our environment, in the air we breathe, in what we touch, ingest, etc. Both external physiological influences as well as internal mental pressure accumulate over time in a buildup of waste products in your system no matter how healthy a life you live. The same applies to our senses, which are exposed to different kinds of stimuli every day that we can’t always control – the sounds, smells, moods and temperaments around us. Some people go through periods of light stress, but even the completely normal bustle of everyday life creates an accumulation of waste products over time – what Ayurvedic health philosophy calls Ama.
Ama is an Ayurvedic term for the accumulation of waste products in your system – that is, a generation of imbalance in your system. Signs of elevated Ama may, for example, be a yellow or whitish coating forming on your tongue – including in the morning, when sleep has otherwise carried out its cleansing effect. Other physical signs of too much Ama can be rashes, allergies, recurrent headaches, chronic fatigue, low energy levels, decreased concentration, failing memory, excessive craving for sweet and salty tastes, etc. Too much Ama in the system creates imbalance and will eventually manifest itself either as physical signs or mental discomfort. An excess of Ama can also be expressed as strong odors from the body, e.g., a strong sweat odor or bad breath from the throat. Even mental fluctuations, such as depression or anxiety, can be signs of Ama.
If your system is overloaded with too much Ama, then you will find that it affects your balance and weakens your Agni (inner fire). Agni is a collective Ayurvedic term that covers both our inner strength and power and our digestive fire. Your Agni is a unifying force that binds the physiological to the mental – and it’s where we get our energy, willpower and strength.
Ayurvedic health wisdom deals with Agni on several levels. You have your primary Agni (inner fire) but each of your seven body tissues also has their own Agni. If just one of these tissue areas – plasma, fat, muscle, blood, nerves, etc. – is weakened or blocked, it will affect your entire system and weaken your primary Agni. As Agni covers precisely the physiological and mental inner fire, a weakened Agni will also have consequences for both your physical and mental health. This is also where Ayurveda differs significantly from our Western understanding, which distinguishes much more sharply between the two parts of a human being.
The opposite to Ama is Ojas. It represents our inner immune system and is equal to vigor and joy and strong and healthy inner vital fluids. Ojas also have a mental component based on a positive outlook on life, where you always strive to see the good. Ayurveda operates with a balance between Ama and Ojas, where they are each other’s counterweight – if you have a lot of Ama, then you will be low on Ojas and vice versa. Therefore, it’s important to strengthen your Ojas and you do this by reducing Ama through cleansing.
One of the great benefits of an Ayurvedic detox is that it can be done at whatever level suits both you and where you are right now. It could be a 5-7 day mono-diet, which you control and adapt to your everyday life, or you can go a level deeper and incorporate the entire Ayurvedic lifestyle into the process, thereby working more in-depth with your cleansing.
1. Detoxing on your own
If you’re in a situation where a smaller detox course, that you control yourself, is best, then you can easily do an Ayurvedic cleansing as a simple diet over 5-7 days. You do this by removing processed foods, various types of stimuli and animal products from your diet and replacing them with fresh and pure ingredients, such as vegetables, fruits, grains, nuts, etc.
2. Guided detox
For those of you who would like to delve a little more deeply with your detox and take in more of the Ayurvedic lifestyle, we recommend that you participate in a guided course where several aspects of Ayurvedic wisdom come into play. As a participant on the online basic Ayurveda course, Foundation for Health, you gain access to a detox module that supports you more concretely through the detox course with specific recipes and procedures, as well as guided exercises, live sessions and much more. Here, you will also be accompanied by others, and you will get a more in-depth introduction to Ayurvedic health philosophy through six main modules, where you learn to live more healthily and naturally in harmony with yourself and your surroundings.
Happy cleansing!
