STrengthen your OJAS
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.
WHAT ARE OJAS?
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
HOW TO BOLSTER YOUR OJAS
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.
BOLSTERING PHYSICAL OJAS
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.
BOLSTER YOUR MENTAL OJAS
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.
BOLSTERING YOUR SPIRITUAL OJAS
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.
