Ayurvedic Morning Routine - Ayurveda Routine 9 of 18

Of all times of day, morning is the most important to have a good Ayurvedic routine. And that way your day starts off on the right foot. You'll have a little time to take care of yourself and make good plans that will carry you throughout the day. Hi, my name is John Emil and I'm the director of the Joyful Belly School of Ayurveda. Let's talk about a good Ayurvedic morning routine. First, let's start off with waking up. Wake with the sun. Humans are diurnal animals. That means we're meant to function in sunlight. So wake up with the sun. If you're a Vata person, you can stay in bed a little bit longer. If you're a Kapha person, you can get up a bit earlier. That'll be balancing for your body type. But generally, you want to have just a little, keep the blinds a little bit open so that you can wake with the sun. Not that you're totally blocking out all the light. Then consider your schedule for the day. When you, even before you get out of bed, often I will say a little prayer or do a little contemplative exercise, consider my schedule for the day. And one of the questions I like to ask myself is, when, where, and what will I eat for the day? If you'll remember in our bare bones morning routine that I discussed earlier in another video, the skeleton of a good routine is the time you get out of bed, the time you go to bed, and the time you eat meals. So I like to start by thinking about that. And that way I know that the bones of my routine are always good. Okay, so you get up, empty your bladder. Your body does a lot of detoxing during the night. So you wanna just, in general, you're gonna be eliminating toxins upon waking as a general rule of thumb. So what are some of the ways that you do that? Emptying the bladder, emptying the bowels, brushing your teeth, scraping your tongue, et cetera. Let's talk about that. So brushing your teeth. Your mouth is relatively dry during the night and that allows bacteria to accumulate on your teeth. So I was brought up brushing my teeth at night. That's great. I still do that, but what I've learned is that I also have to brush it in the morning. And that disinfects your teeth in the morning, protects your teeth. So brush your teeth in the morning as well as before bed. Also, that brushing starts to stimulate your body. The toothpaste usually has a stimulating taste as well. So brushing and the stimulating taste of toothpaste will start enlivening your body. Then you scrape your tongue. Before, by the way, you brush your teeth or scrape your tongue, you wanna look at your tongue. That's part of your health assessment every morning. Just start to notice how your health corresponds to, or how the coating on your tongue corresponds to different changes in your health. Cracks on your tongue, color of your tongue, et cetera. We have a whole video on tongue assessment. So clean your tongue with a tongue scraper next or even a spoon. And you're not just gonna scrape the skin off your tongue, right? You're not gonna, I've had clients that tried to do that where they were just so rough with a tongue scraper that they literally damaged their tongue. So be gentle. You don't need any pressure when scraping your tongue. Scrape two or three times and spit the contents out. Don't swallow it. Yeah, and so cleaning your tongue removes toxins and gives you a healthy sense of taste so that your taste buds are working really well. And one more thing about that. I said before, coating on your tongue corresponds to health. It especially corresponds to toxins and condition of your blood plasma as well as the strength of your metabolism and rukta. Rasa rukta are two words for the different ways that Ayurveda looks at the blood. Also, your tongue coating can show you how things are going in your digestive tract too. I get, as I said, more information about that in the tongue videos. Then oil pulling. And this is controversial. You know, I have not seen any evidence for this. I just wanna say that up front. But I do like the way it feels. So there's gotta be, if you like the way it feels, there's probably something it's doing for you. Some say that the toxins are attracted to the oil. I don't necessarily believe that. But, you know, I don't have proof it doesn't. Others say the oil nourishes gum tissue. Anyway, oil pulling, this is what you do. Is you take about a tablespoon of oil in your mouth and you swish it around your teeth. And sesame oil, coconut oil are antimicrobial. So that is going to, that's a pretty, you know, valid claim that it's gonna help with the antimicrobial action in the mouth. So, but it feels good too. Try it out. See what you think. Then after you've cleaned, cleansed out your whole mouth, you can drink some warm water. And you can also put a little squish, squish? Squeeze of fresh lemon or lime juice. And so that warm water is gonna stimulate your bowels so that you can evacuate the bowels. It's also going to stimulate your digestion, get your acne up. And the warmth is going to revitalize your blood, get your blood moving a little bit. So generally, your body's dehydrated after, when you wake up, after not drinking anything for six to eight hours. So drinking in the morning can also give your, as it hydrates you, it helps and aids your kidneys to pee out more toxins, right? That like any toxins that have accumulated in your blood, the extra fluids in your blood will give some material for your kidneys to flush out toxins. If you're Vata and you're prone to dehydration, add a pinch of salt. And then that little bit of lemon gently stimulates the liver to release bile. And that can help detox and also can help act as a mild laxative. So hopefully that stimulates a good BM and you get that stool that's been sitting in your intestines all night out of your body. And you wanna, again, do this at the same time every day so you establish a bio rhythm of getting rid of your toxins, your pee, your poop, coating on the tongue, et cetera. So great. Then you can stimulate your skin with some good Garshana, dry brushing or Abhyanga. So Garshana is when you rub your skin with this special silk glove and that's helpful to move lymph and it's good for Kapha. Dry brushing, also good for Kapha. You take a brush and literally just brush your skin. It's very stimulating, great for Kapha. Abhyanga is a full body self-massage with oil and that's best for Vata. And I'm gonna show you how to do that in another video. If you have very oily skin, Abhyanga's not right for you. But if you're dry Vata skin, Abhyanga's great. But if your skin is really dry, you don't wanna do Garshana or dry brushing. That may not be for you. Another thing I'll say too is this technique of full body massage with oil does take a lot of time and it's wonderful, it's great. It's one of my favorite things in Ayurveda. But it does take a lot of time. So some people can only do it a week only, whatever you do what you can. Take a nice shower, cleansing and refreshing your body. Make sure the water's warm, not hot. Hot, too much heat dries out Vata skin, it overheats Pitta, it's not good for your body. Also soap strips oils from your skin. So Vata people who tend to have dry skin should only use soap on areas that need special cleaning. The anus, armpits, et cetera. You might wanna clean those areas with soap. Or anything that's particularly dirty, maybe you'll need a little soap. But generally, really, water does a great job in cleaning your skin and you don't need to strip the oils from your skin with soap. It's okay to just simply rinse off in the shower. Then do some morning exercise. 20 minutes to an hour of gentle exercise every morning. You don't need to run a marathon. I have clients that really overdo it with exercise and they're really pushing their body and they're hurting themselves. Do some stretching and that will help your muscles wake up. Do some cardiovascular activity that gets your blood flowing and your heart pumping. Go for a nice walk in nature, reconnect to nature, that's really great. Wakes up your Agni, wakes up your metabolism, flushes stagnation from the blood, flushes out stagnation from the respiratory tract, mucus, et cetera, and really keeps you healthy. It's such a great thing to do. But don't overdo it and tear your body apart. So make sure when you're exercising that you can breathe through the nose, that you're just starting to sweat, not sweating buckets, because you're losing electrolytes and depleting your body. Vata people should be more gentle with exercise than Pitta. Pitta people should be more gentle with exercise than Kapha, and Kapha can exercise most vigorously. Pitta people should also be careful not to get overheated. You can also do breathing exercises, and these breath work opens up respiratory channels, clears stagnation. It can be used to stimulate or calm the mind, depending on your imbalances. But I'm also gonna exercise caution with breath work, that breath work can have a spiritual effect too, and making you too open, too disassociated. So just be careful with it. And then after you've cleansed out your toxins, had that nice little drink of water, you have exercised your body and woken yourself up, now it's time to start your contemplative practice, right? So morning prayers, morning meditation, morning intention setting, really important. Contemplation is extremely important in the morning so that you can plan your day right, right? You wanna start with the end in mind. What does this mean? That you wanna contemplate highest things in the beginning of the day, and then set your goals and plans for the day around that, right, so that you aim high. Aim high is a great way to live, right? And I'm gonna discuss more about a specific structure, just a suggested structure for your morning contemplative practice in another video. Then after your contemplative practice, can be 15, 20 minutes, right? 20 minutes to exercise, 20 minutes of contemplative practice, and 10 minutes for your detox early in the morning, and then you're gonna wrap things up with chewing some sesame seeds. You chew your sesame seeds and then swallow them. That also cleans your teeth, stimulates your bowels, a good source of calcium, and then have your breakfast. So wait for your Agni to wake up. You know, don't push breakfast on your body. If you don't get hungry at all for breakfast, just have a cup of stimulating tea, but basically have your light morning meal. Breakfast should have some protein in the morning that's good for your body, and will stick to your ribs, you know, will keep you satisfied. And Kapha people can wait a little bit later until breakfast or skip it altogether, depending on your constitution. All right, great. Now we're gonna talk a little about some more specifics about Abhyanga in your morning routine. And this has been a brief discussion on your morning routine, covering all the main elements. And so we'll meet again in the next video. Thank you so much.