Navigating the Holiday Season with Ayurveda: Finding Equilibrium in Food, Lifestyle, and Mindfulness

🤔 Are the decisions you're making serving your well-being or are they setting you up for imbalance and discomfort?

As we jingle-bell-rock our way through the holiday season, it's tempting to throw caution to the wind and dive headfirst into a sea of treats and festive cheer. But, as your friendly guide, I invite you on an enlightening journey into Ayurveda philosophy, where we explore 'crimes against wisdom'. We'll examine how our choices, especially those related to food pairing and overindulgence, can negatively impact our health, and how we can avoid these pitfalls. As we enter late Fall and the year draws to a close, we continue to discuss the importance of letting go, releasing, and reflecting on our actions.

Ayurveda teaches us to embrace the beauty and wisdom inherent in each season. As we huddle around the fire and sip our hot cocoa, let's explore how we can live in harmony with the season, and how this can positively affect our diet, lifestyle, and mental health.

From personalized meditation programs to self-exploration, we'll discuss how we can use these colder months as a time of introspection and growth. So, pull on your warmest socks, grab a hot drink, and let's delve into this journey together. After all, the key to a balanced life isn't about resisting temptation but finding equilibrium in all we do. Discover how to navigate this holiday season with wisdom, balance, and a dash of Ayurvedic insight. And make sure to leave your own wisdom or comments on the session before you sign off!

• Review Food Pairing and take a screenshot so you can go to it quickly as you prepare your holiday menus or make your plate!
• Check out our latest blog on this season's seasonal guidelines' here: Late Fall
• And in case you missed the hyperlink in the show's description, browse our meditation and mindfulness training options here!

Chapters

• 0:00 Crimes Against Wisdom and Holistic Health
• 10:16 Seasonal Awareness and Balance

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello world and greetings to the journey souls that have found their way to this podcast. I am your host and guide to Shiremoni aka shy, aka blue lotus, the mind healer. Welcome to From Within, where we travel to the depths of ourselves to uncover, discover, learn and heal, addressing root causes of health issues and mental afflictions from the depths of within. So let's jump right into it, because I don't want to make this one long, I'm saying 15 minutes tops. Today I want to talk about it's an are you ready? Topic, of course, but it applies everywhere, just like most are you ready philosophy does. It's a holistic system, so it can apply to the whole. Even if we're talking about food and digestion, they can apply to the whole. So just keep that in mind. But there is this concept in our UVeta that there are a few things that our UVeta identifies as the main causes of dis-ease, and today I'm going to talk about one of them, and that's crimes against wisdom. It sounds like exactly what it is, but we're going to talk about it because, as much as we all do it, they say when you know better, you do better. And we're not doing it, so let's talk about it. It's basically the same as karma, even though people don't really heed to it. But karma is just that with every action is a reaction. You know people love to say you go have good karma, bad karma. But it's just that with every action is a reaction, and included in that it's not just the physical action but the mental attitude behind it, which is why we see some people who should have bad karma but don't, because mentally their attitude is everything is fine. It's everyone else who sees what I'm doing as a problem. But if you feel guilty about it, you feel bad about it, then your mental attitude is oh, this is wrong and so there's a reaction. But that's a whole other topic. Today let's talk about this because we've got Thanksgiving coming up and this is the time that literally most of us have a hard time sticking with our health regimens and routines, more so when it comes to eating. So crimes against wisdom it's like choosing those foods that you know are going to cause uncomfortable bodily reactions, but you choose it anyways. It's like you've got acid reflux, but you just got to have that spicy, so you eat it, knowing the consequences and basically saying I'll deal with it. That's what we're talking about. Crimes against wisdom Suppressing urges is also under the umbrella of crimes against wisdom.

Speaker 1: 3:01

Treating urges like natural urges bring imbalance to the body. They cause imbalanced bodily reactions, for example, when you need to cry and you hold it in After a while. We all know what that does to someone mentally. And on an even further note, the more that you hold in. There are beliefs, and I am one of the ones who believe that this holding of baggage and holding grudges and not letting go and not surrendering and just holding in all that tension and stress does introduce cancer into the body. Another example would be holding the bathroom. When you have to go to the bathroom and you're holding it after a while, what happens, guys? Can we say UTI? Another example sex.

Speaker 1: 3:48

If you are abstaining and you're doing it for spiritual reasons, because you've reached there in your journey, so it's not forced, so to say, not that it's easy, but it's not being forced. Some people try to do abstinence and wait and abstain forcefully because they know it's a good thing to do, but they haven't necessarily gotten to that point spiritually yet. So if that's not the case, then don't do it. You're suppressing a natural urge, you're forcing it Over time. Suppression will bring about imbalance physically and mentally Not one or the other, but both. So crimes against wisdom is knowing the right thing to do and doing the opposite. Anyways, it's like choosing harm instead of heal seems to be a tendency of human nature, like when we choose ice cream over fruit or go back for seconds when we're full.

Speaker 1: 4:44

Staying up late when we're tired I even do that. I don't know how many times I'll fall asleep in front of the TV and I'll be watching something and I really want to watch it, but I'm so tired so I'll just keep. I'll get up and rewind what I missed. Fall asleep again, get up, rewind. It takes like four times before I just get the point like just go to bed, turn it off and just go to bed. So we got the holidays coming up and I just want to remind you guys of two things to remember during the holidays. I'm not here to take away your holiday fun, so don't worry, but remember all things in moderation, and food pairing is so important. I recently this year released a blog post about food pairing. I'm going to post the link to that in the show notes. This is a really good time to review that. You guys Take a screenshot or put it in your phone as your notes.

Speaker 1: 5:41

I often refer to this chart when I'm putting my plates together because it's very helpful. As a matter of fact, it's the one change that has made the biggest impact in my diet and my GI food pairing. When I realized that, I was like, oh so it's not necessarily about me having to avoid all this and that and this and that, but more so what not to put together what does not pair well together in your gut, what does not pair well together and shouldn't be eaten together because of the digestion process and of the phases and of the order of things. So food pairing review it link is in the show notes. So we're still in fall and we're at the tail end of fall. So this is late fall, going to be coming into early winter soon. So we're still in the phase of releasing and letting go. This is the first part of releasing.

Speaker 1: 6:34

It's noticing where your decisions or actions are creating this imbalance, whether it's physical or mental, where it's creating the discomfort and the suffering. But as you notice these things about yourself, I invite you to notice with compassion, kind of like as if you're noticing it in someone else instead of yourself, because we tend to give way more compassion to others than ourselves. So imagine that you're looking upon yourself as another person, like you would be looking at a loved one and see where your decisions and actions invite this imbalance and, with compassion, just notice, be nice to yourself, be understanding and very grateful that you notice that part marks a catalyzing moment. That's when the real mind training and changing begins is when you notice. When you notice, take a moment, pause, be grateful, pat yourself on the back for that realization, because without it you wouldn't be able to make the change. How are you going to make the change if you don't notice? So that part of our journey and kicking habits and evolving. We tend to leave that part out and I feel like it deserves way more attention than it gets. So, noticing, having that catalyzing moment and deciding not to perform those actions anymore, and even if you slip and do, no matter how many times you slip stay compassionate, stay loving to yourself, don't scold and criticize. Just keep coming back and deciding to come back every single time.

Speaker 1: 8:16

It's part of your mental training. This is the kind of mental training that we practice in meditation. So in the meditation programs, when I'm working one-on-one with others, this is what we're working towards. We're training the mind via different meditation styles. We pay very close attention to every moment noticed. When the mind wanders during meditation. We do the pat on the back you just had a mini epiphany. Be grateful for it. Return back to meditation, no matter how many times you have to do that. That's part of the mental training and that goes off the meditation cushion outside the house and into real life with every single thing. And the more you practice that kind of meditating, the more you can implement this in your day to day, moment to moment. And so, with that being said, if any of you guys are interested in a one-on-one meditation and mindfulness coaching session or program, I'll leave the link in the show notes. You know you can schedule a single session or you can enroll into a program where you have weekly sessions. There's a few options, so I'll just leave the link for you guys to browse if you are interested.

Speaker 1: 9:30

Also, following seasonal guidelines the second most important and impactful practice that has helped me since I've been on this journey with Ayurvedic Living. First is the food pairing. Second is following seasonal guidelines. It's almost too easy to even be something that works when you look at all these types of like ways to eat and diet. People are like doing the most. There are so many fads and all this confusion and I'm just flitting over here in the corner, like you know, not me. It's not that hard. You guys are putting way too much into it and there is no one way for everyone. So Ayurveda honors the individual and it's holistic. You can't go wrong.

Speaker 1: 10:16

The easiest path I have found to invite this awareness and make these changes in my life and cultivate balance has been following seasonal guidelines, from the way I eat, to my lifestyle activities, to my mental health and my mental activities to I mean everything. How I choose certain paths based on the time of the year, how I make my decisions. I mean it gets deep, but it's simple. So before I let you guys go off and have all of your holiday fun, just remember that moderation, moderation, moderation and just review the food pairing so that when you make in that plate you know all right, let me not eat the seafood with that dairy, because that's like the worst thing you could do for your good. That's just one example. So check it out, check out the show, note links. Also, look at the meditation programs if you feel like you might be interested or want to explore that path.

Speaker 1: 11:25

Maybe you've never meditated before You're intimidated. Maybe you have and you are struggling and need some assistance. That's personalized. That's what that's for. It's personalized assistance. It comes with some lifestyle coaching and a lot of other bonuses. I'll let you guys do the browsing. So go ahead, do what you got to do, read up and be safe out there and remember the only way out of this suffering or whatever it is that you're wanting to get out of, is in. See y'all on the other side.