Basic Principles of Ayurveda

I know little about Ayurveda, but it's interesting, so I'm sharing these principles

Regular readers will know that I’m extremely interested in spirituality. I also care a lot about health. I discuss these topics a lot with my friends. Over the years, I’ve noticed that two of my insightful spiritual friends structure their diets using Ayurveda, which Wikipedia describes as “an alternative medicine system with historical roots in the Indian subcontinent.” They also refer often to general principles from Ayurveda; at one point, one of them used Ayurvedic medicine to address a case of long covid.¹

As I’ve learned about Ayurveda from my friends, I’ve found that its principles echo principles I’ve converged on through spiritual research and practice. For example: A notion that I’ve heard credited to Ayurveda is that anything consumable can be classified as food, poison, or medicine, depending on circumstances and dose. Some might find this idea boring or unhelpful, but for me, recently, it is a clear and simple distillation of principle that broadly interrelates with other simple principles I have distilled through my practice.

In the last couple years, while recovering from a PTSD diagnosis that I received in mid-2023 and creating a healthy home environment for myself and my toddler, I consulted with an Ayurveda practitioner named Michelle Warner. Some of Michelle’s insights helped me. During our sessions, Michelle gave me a write-up of baseline Ayurvedic principles, and, with her permission, I am sharing this write-up below. (If you’d like to work with Michelle, who’s based in the Bay Area, let me know and I can send you her contact information. She’s busy, but sometimes she has availability.)

To be clear, I am very far from an expert or advocate for Ayurveda and I do not adhere to its practices in an organized manner. In some cases I have reasons for this; for example, it is probably a good general principle to avoid emotionally intense conversation during meals, but it isn’t a principle that works well in my social context. In other cases I lack discipline; for instance, I think it would be great if I gave thanks and took several slow breaths before eating, but I have not been able to retain that habit, at least not yet.

One of the most interesting aspects of these guidelines is how little they have to do with the composition of the food and how much they have to do with the circumstances, behavior, attention, and intentions around the food. That’s probably the aspect I’ve reflected on most!

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Ayurvedic Guidelines for Healthy Eating

The Five Major Rules:

⧫ Begin meals by giving thanks or by simply taking 3-5 slow breaths with eyes closed. This calms the mind and body and prepares it to receive food. Do not eat while you are agitated or upset.

⧫ Chew your food until it is an even consistency. This requires your attention to be on the meal. Chewing thoroughly improves digestion and absorption of nutrients. It also starts the process of proper acid and alkaline balance in the digestive system.

⧫ Eat at a moderate pace until you are 75% full. Overeating is a major cause of digestive disturbance and ill health. At the end of a meal, we should not still feel hungry, nor should we feel heavy.

⧫ Eat in a calm environment with little distraction. Avoid watching television, being on the computer, and reading at mealtime. Also, minimize conversation and avoid all conversation that is emotionally intense. Always eat sitting down.

⧫ Following the meal allow the food to digest some (15-20 minutes) before going on to physically or mentally strenuous activity. However, you may go for a slow walk. If you do not have time, at least take 3-5 slow breaths to finish the meal.

Additional Tips:

⧫ Allow three hours between meals for food to digest. Snacking interrupts the digestive process of the previous meal and upsets metabolism. Try to have regular mealtimes. (Those with a Vata nature or imbalance may need to have 4 meals per day.)

⧫ Take all water and drinks at room temperature or warm. Cold drinks destroy the digestive fire and hampers digestion. This is especially true at mealtimes, but also throughout the day.

⧫ Drink ½ cup warm water, or fresh ginger tea, 15 minutes before food, to hydrate the stomach and optimize digestion. Do not drink too much liquid with the meal. Moist meals like soup require no additional liquid, while drier meals require a bit more.

⧫ Eat your largest meal at lunch when digestion is the strongest.

⧫ Eat a lighter dinner and try to finish at least 3 hours before bedtime. The body is more able to rejuvenate and detoxify during sleep if it is not busy digesting.

⧫ Eat food prepared with love.

⧫ Eat freshly prepared, home cooked meals as often as possible.

⧫ Eat seasonal, local, organic food, with an emphasis on your constitution.

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1. My friend worked with a doctor in Kerala and has provided further details about her treatment, which she said I can share with others:

“The doctor gave me a specific treatment for my long covid. I was having mental and physical fatigue and also started having foot neuropathy that was pretty painful (only in the hot climate in India).

“The treatment might be different for others with a different body constitution, different symptoms etc, but these are the specific Ayurvedic treatments I did together:

• “snehapana (drinking ghee with herbs in it)

• “abhyanga (oil massage, mainly to rub oil deep into layers of tissue) and swedana (sweating treatment with the oil still on the skin after abhayanga, kind of like a sauna) - these treatments were done together

• “virechana (purging) (this is done after having copious amounts of ghee for 3-7 days)

“For this, I stayed inpatient in the Ayurvedic hospital for this treatment for about 8 days. I'm happy to share more detail about any of the treatments, but I'm not sure exactly what info would be useful, so I'll leave it at this for now.

“Once I completed the treatment my long covid symptoms were totally gone and haven’t returned, which has been pretty amazing. I’m happy to chat more about my experience with anyone who would like to hear about it. I know the tension between unsolicited medical advice and wanting to share useful information with others - so I’m available to chat about this anytime if that’s ever of interest to people with long covid!”