My boyfriend told me about oil pulling, an Ayurvedic technique for cleansing where you swish unrefined sesame oil between your teeth for 10 minutes a day. It’s supposed to clean out the lymph glands and have all sorts of great side effects.

But what I REALLY NEEDED was a music video to convince me! I have this on repeat now.

My sister and I were talking about the three body types (doshas) in Ayurveda, and I wrote a long response to her, so I thought I’d share it here. She said “I’m not quite sure how to balance the food suggestions. It seems like foods okay for Vata are not ok for Pitta. According to any of the surveys or tests I’ve taken, I’m under 10% Kapha. What does that mean? Is the goal 33:33:33?”

It’s kind of confusing at first. But let’s say you’re 60:30:10 Vata:Pitta:Kapha. Your goal is to stay 60:30:10. You would be considered a Vata-Pitta type, in modern Ayurveda they break it into 10 types not just three. V, P, K, VP, PV, VK, KV, PK, KP, and VPK. But everyone has a little of all three; 100% or 1/3 of each is very rare. So look for food recommendations for Vata-Pitta, not Vata and Pitta. Maya Tiwari’s book has detailed food charts.

Dosha means “thing which goes out of balance”, so they are always getting slightly unbalanced through food and lifestyle, and we bring them back in balance through the same. For example, Vata likes and does well with sweet flavors, they will keep Vata in balance. But if we overdo it, eat too much sweet, we get overly Vata (anxious and worried). If you took a dosha test at that point, you might think you’re 80% Vata, but really you just have a Vata imbalance. (Vata is the element which gets most frequently out of balance btw). Or if you have a job where you’re on the phone all the time, making deadlines, overachieving, that would push your Pitta. So part of it is figuring out what your natural, healthy state is. But even this “permanent” dosha blend can change over time, if you change environments or other major elements of your life.

It’s just a nice, kind of poetic way to see some more lifestyle causes and effects. For example, the parts of the day rotate through the doshas.

So you might notice your energy is different at different times of day.

Fall pushes Vatas out of balance, too (they don’t like the cold and wind cause they are that way already). So have a good autumn!

I was looking up Ayurvedic body type tests for my sister, and I found a great idea by New Age master (marketer) Deepak Chopra:

Ayurvedic Daily Routine for All Doshas:

Morning
•    Rise early, ideally by six o’clock.
•    Empty the bladder and bowels.
•    Clean teeth.
•    Massage with an ayurvedic oil.
•    Take a warm bath or shower.
•    Mediate for 20 minutes.
•    Exercise for your body type.
•    Eat a light breakfast.

Mid-day
•    Make a lunch the day’s major meal.
•    Sit quietly for 5 minutes after eating.
•    To aid digestion, walk for 15 minutes.

Evening
•    Meditate for 20 minutes in the late afternoon or before dinner.
•    Eat a light dinner.
•    Sit quietly for 5 minutes after eating.
•    Take a 15-minute walk to aid digestion.
•    Relax with light recreational activities.
•    Go to bed early, ideally by 10 pm.

It’s a simple variation on the early-to-bed routine that is kind of impossible for social New Yorkers, but what I did find to be genius was the idea of meditating before dinner! I sometimes meditate in the morning (if it’s a rare anxiety-free awakening; otherwise, a walk does me better), but I’ve been more fixated on fitting it into my evening routine (along with vitamins, reading, moisturizing, day-planning, bathing, and/or attaining enlightenment). But I frequently end up with a late dinner or glass of wine, and feel sad and guilty cause you can’t meditate for at least three hours after either of those. So, voila! Preprandial meditation! Mornings and before bed are so frequently lauded as the prime meditation times that it never occurred to me that they’re not workable for everyone e.g. me. The only difficulty here will be stopping all-important work to meditate… and I’ll probably need 30 minutes of asanas first, to clear my mind.

Slowly progressing towards a routine I can stick to…

In other news, the book is going well. Just the yoga section will be 200 pages, so it’s seeming like Everest right now, but I do like to hike…