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Winter, as you probably can feel, is the slow season. It’s a time to go inward, vision, replenish, and rest. Through the lens of Ayurveda, an ancient system of health and healing originating from India, winter is also a time when the earth and water elements are predominant.
In order to be healthy, we must understand our relationship to these elemental qualities and find balance. Ayurveda reminds us that everything is connected. According to Ayurveda, all living things contain a balance of earth, water, fire, air, and ether. These five elements are further categorized into three doshas, or constitutional influences: Kapha (earth and water), Pitta (water and fire), and Vata (air and ether).
Within this system, earth and water imply heaviness, calm, slowness, and sometimes lethargy or stagnation—think of snow falling or winter rain, damp, and darkness and our responses to each. Yet there can also be a dryness present, sometimes a sense of isolation, qualities present in the air and ether elements, which tend toward intellect and, physically, aridness.
Consider the seasons. How do you feel in the summer vesus the winter? Energized and open, ready to embrace the world, or cozy and cocooning, wanting to curl up with a book and a mug of warm tea? That’s your external environment directly impacting how you feel.
A simple tip to keep in mind is that like increases like while opposites balance. This can help you to understand why your reactions to a season might be different from someone else’s. For example, if I run cold and dry, I will have to work harder to stay warm during this cold season, versus someone who has a tendency toward a warm body and temper.
The tried and true way to manage our relationship to daily and seasonal ways of harmonizing our lives is offered up in the Ayurvedic prescription of activities known as Dinacharya (Dina means day in Sanskrit, while acharya implies mastery of), and Ritucharya, or seasonal actions (Ritu means season). These everyday actions can help you align with the season at hand.
The winter season can allow you to both embrace slow stillness and amplify your inner light. Following are some traditional winter Ayurvedic practices that support balance.
12 Winter Ayurvedic Practices to Boost Your Seasonal Mood
Your everyday decisions regarding when and what you eat and whether you prioritize rest can make all the difference in how you navigate winter.
Make Use of Your Mornings
1. Wake Before Sunrise
This is key to preventing lethargy, which tends to happen when we have late nights and sleep past a winter sunrise. If you’re able, strive to go to sleep before 10 p.m. The long nights and short days of winter are nature’s insistence that we rest more.
2. Scrape Your Tongue
Upon waking, use a tongue scraper to discard any residue buildup off the tongue’s surface. There are two main “whys” behind tongue scraping: to cleanse yesterday’s waste matter out of the body and to stimulate digestion. The act of scraping the tongue primes the salivary glands to secrete digestive enzymes so that we can optimally and properly digest the food from a new day. Use a stainless steel or copper tongue scraper gently from the back of your tongue to the front, rinsing your mouth well when finished.
3. Drink Warm Water
Drink a glass of warm water with the juice of 1/2 squeezed lemon. This will kickstart your body’s natural cleansing process.
Practice Self-Care
4. Give Yourself an Oil Massage
Oil massage, or abhyangya, is considered a practice of deep tissue healing in Ayurveda. The process is vital in improving circulation and lymphatic drainage and helps to calm the nervous system and reduce anxiety and stress. Use sesame oil if you tend to have poor circulation with cold hands and feet, use almond oil if you run hot and sunflower if you have cool, moist skin and tend towards sinus-y colds.
Warm the oil by placing the bottle in a bowl of warm water. Use a tablespoon of warmed oil in the palm of your hand and apply it over your body in short, gentle strokes. As you apply the oil, think of each stroke as imprinting a positive thought into your body. Leave the oil on your body for 15-20 minutes, then rinse off with a warm shower. Consider the rinse as a way to release yesterday’s stale emotions and worries.
5. Dry Brush Your Body
Invest in a dry brush for daily use. Brush in short brushstrokes from the extremities to your heart after your morning shower. This is essential for your lymphatic system and helps to counter stagnation.
6. Include Exercise
Exercise is an excellent way to balance our metabolism and boost our immunity during the colder time of year. Try to get outside if you can for even a short, brisk walk as often as possible to stay acclimatized to your local environment. If you tend toward Vata, be sure to protect your extremities while outside: wear gloves, a scarf, and hat, and to be sure the lower back (kidney area) is also well protected.
Warm Up With Winter Foods
7. Focus on Winter Foods
The digestive fires naturally accumulate in the core body in cold weather when our body’s furnace is at its optimal to digest and metabolize grounding winter foods. Eat warming, slightly oily foods to balance the wintry qualities of coldness and harshness (from drying winter winds). Focus on savory stews or soups with lots of vegetables.
8. Favor Root Vegetables
Consume starchy vegetables such as sweet potatoes and squashes as well as cold weather greens including sea vegetables, collards, kale, and Swiss chard. Balance these bitter greens with the inherent sweetness of grains or root vegetables.
9. Use Warming Spices
Warming and pungent spices help to balance the moist, sweet, denseness of many winter foods. Reach for cinnamon, ginger, thyme, rosemary, ajwaiin, cumin, salt, black pepper, and chiles.
Uplift Your Emotions
10. Seek Nourishment in All Forms
Initiate conversations with friends, dive into a book, or bathe with warming essential oils such as lavender, bergamot, pine, eucalyptus, and lemon.
11. Detox from Devices
Try getting rid of all tech devices from your bedroom. The golden glow of a beeswax candle or a fire log is soothing and warming for the psyche and counters the icy-blue light of winter (and screens).
12. Celebrate the Light
In almost every spiritual tradition, winter festivals call on you to draw in more light. Celebrate these or meditate and practice yoga with candles to remind yourself that when the outer light dims, your inner light brightens.
