Shaping Self-Care

The following lifestyle recommendations can assist you to shape an evolving self-care practice for enhancing your health and wellness. Pandit Rajmani Tigunait PhD suggests the five lifestyle recommendations to create a proper environment for experiencing a balanced life. Please note, the word properly is important for context. “Properly” is also “balanced” and acknowledges each individual as unique. That which allows us to reconnect with our inner-self best defines properly and balanced. We learn to work skillfully to eliminate a large range of obstacles that disrupt our practice of self-care. They must be applied in our own personal context, and personalized to our specific needs and capacity.

The 5 yogic lifestyle components support a balanced life. These components include:

1. Eating properly – eating simple, fresh whole foods not over or undercooked. Eating the right amount of food, neither too much nor too little. Eat at the right times with regularity and routine. Eat with the right attitude.
2. Exercising properly – Exercise helps to create the physical and mental conditions conducive to meditation. It enhances the body’s natural strength, flexibility, and stamina, while positively influencing the nervous system. Incorporate breath-aligned asana with particular focus on energizing the abdominal region.
3. Engaging with the world properly- Having a “philosophy of life” where we understand what the world means to us, and what we mean to the world. Discovering how our inner world breathes unique meaning and purpose into our external world, as well as all the relationships and identities we hold.
4. Sleeping properly- The sleeping and dreaming states as a profound opportunity to help us rest, relax, and rejuvenate our body and mind. Seeing to return our sleep to a balanced state, where its innate capacity to nourish and heal is restored. Breathing and relaxation techniques as a key practice to restoring sound sleep. Device-free time before going to bed. Boing to bed on time.
5. Starting our day properly-The first 30-60 minutes after we arise has a powerful impact on the remainder of our day. Daily morning routine is to wake up on time, tongue scraping, neti wash, bathing freshen up to release the inertia of sleep. The importance of a regular bowel movement to start our day by drinking warm liquids with awareness to support cleansing; honey lemon water. Device-free time to start and end our day. Starting with gratitude to set the tone for our day.

Because focus on improvement of one component will positively influence the others, it is essential to keep it simple and focused one at a time. For instance, through the learning of physical relaxation your breathing may improve followed by better sleeping and more conscious choices in foods. Simply keep it focused on daily physical relaxation practice for 10 minutes and you will gain the gifts that grow from that. Look over the list and pick one and get started! You’ve got this.

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