Ever find yourself swaying or dancing to the music you're hearing, even if it's just in your head?
We live in a universe of rhythms and like everything else within it, humans respond to the vibrations of the rhythms we feel around us. It's one of the reasons we love dancing. When we dance, we are connecting with something bigger than ourselves.
All the conspiring life forces of the universe have energy with rhythms moving to support the cycles of life. When we connect with those rhythms, it is healing and soothing for us. I know so many people that say they listen to music to de-stress or to lift their spirits.
Routines may not seem as creative as dancing but they can have the some effect as dancing in terms of creating a rhythm for us to live within. Just like when we listen and dance to music, there is a physiological balancing that happens when we create intentional consistent practices in our daily lives.
When we follow consistent daily and seasonal routines, we feel more stable and our thoughts are less erratic. Feeling stable and grounded means we have a solid platform for our creativity to flourish and take root.
Ayurveda encourages establishing daily and seasonal routines that align with the shifting natural forces around us. These daily and seasonal routines are called Dinacharya and Ritucharya (pronounced deenacharya and ritoocharya), respectively. They can be so simple yet profoundly helpful, such as, drinking a glass of hot water every morning as soon as you wake up to stimulate elimination and clearing of your body's channels to make way for the new day's inputs.
Dinacharya and Ritucharya, as they are prescribed in Ayurveda, are conscious pauses of self-care. When we do these life rituals with intention and attention, it gives us an opportunity to pay better attention to how we respond to the changes going on around us or to notice the impact when we stop doing something that we do on the daily. In this way, we can become more attuned to what we do and take in that nourishes us and what isn't helpful.
In Ayurveda, opposites balance and like increase like. Filling your whole life with routines isn't a good idea. Neither is making lots of change all at once. This can create even more imbalances rather than helping you to find more equanimity. I encourage you to try adding one routine that you think would be helpful for you and trying it for 30 days and watch what happens. Be compassionate with yourself. Most of us are never good at what we do the first few times. We have to find the rhythm within ourselves.
Just like dancing...
