The ancient science of Ayurveda (pronounced eye-yur-veda) is, in many ways, a preventative practice to enable our bodies and minds to function at their best. This is the science that I use when coaching others into healthier habits and happier lives. This science is about unwinding or preventing the breakdown of the body and mind by recognizing how we are living out of sync with our natural rhythm.
When you don’t make space to listen or time to feel, when you disregard your needs, you lose integrity with yourself. Ignore your body and lose its trust. Ignore negative feedback from your body, emotions, and thought patterns and you lose the opportunity to pivot.
Cate Stillman
What we do consistently day after day is influencing and essentially creating the mind and the body that we will live in next as we are in the continual process of cells dying and new cells being regenerated. That also means that we are currently living in the product of what our habits or actions have been. When we form patterns of living out of sync with our body’s natural rhythm for extended periods of time, it takes a toll on the entire mind-body system and dis-ease sets in. Living in a way that does not support how our mind and body can function best causes the reversal of ease in the body= disease. In Ayurveda, there are three major causes that build up and lead to disease. Let’s take a look at all three.
The first cause of disease is making careless choices. This means failing to learn from previous experience and repeatedly making the same choices again. This can show up in patterns of eating food that we cannot digest well, staying up too late at night even though we feel drained and cloudy the next morning, choosing not to move our bodies even though when we do, our joints and low back feel better, etc. These careless choices build up over time and prevent clarity in our thoughts and our cells. They are those choices that we make when we go against our own deeper wisdom, leading to a loss of integrity with ourselves.
The second cause of disease is disrespecting our senses. This can come in the form of misuse, overuse, or underuse of our sense organs. Everything that we percieve and take in comes in through our sense organs. What we see, hear, feel, taste, and smell informs us about the world around us. From this information, we form our beliefs and views about the world and our experience in it. However, when we overuse and/or neglect those senses, we not only begin to experience a clouded view of reality, but we can also damage our sense organs and burn out the nervous system. The remedy here is honoring when we need silence over constant input from the TV, music, or social interaction; recognizing when our eyes are too tired to read or work more and going to sleep; listening to what we have a “taste” for and what is not appealing to our body’s wisdom.
Finally, the third cause of disease is living out of sync with our body’s natural rhythm- our circadian rhythm. This is the cause that I see our culture fighting against in many ways. When we eat heavy meals late in the evening, stay up too late at night, live in sedentary bodies, and fuel the building blocks of our cells with processed foods, we are setting ourselves up for illness, difficulty, and disease over time. When we honor how our bodies were created to function, we can get into natural rhythm and alleviate many of of the issues that we may be living with.
Can you identify with any of these causes of dis-ease? Can you see patterns that are working against your feeling healthy and happy? In the coming week, I invite you to take some time to recognize how you may be practicing any of these causes of disease and to take one small step toward change. When we unwind these patterns, we can find more ease in our body and mind.
Our bodies are wise and they do not have the capacity to lie like our minds do. The body speaks in symptoms and when we don’t listen to it whisper, it begins to yell. What has your body been telling you? How can you bring yourself back into balance? If you aren’t sure where to start, reach out. I would love to chat with you about it all.
I will be working on my journey toward ease right along with you.
Chat again soon,
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