It’s no wonder everyone from glowingly healthy hippies to just-recovered-from-heart-surgery corporate executives are braving the long flight to India. The jam-packed country is the birthplace of not just yoga, but one of the most comprehensive, effective healing systems on the planet (full disclosure: that’s my opinion).

What is Ayur Veda?

Ayur Veda is a holistic health system that incorporates every part of life—from diet and digestion to exercise and everyone you spend time with. Customized healing programs, including herbal supplements, certain foods, yoga postures, and meditation, are prescribed based on a client’s particular concerns. The best part is that you don’t have to get sick before you see an Ayur Vedic doctor. It’s intended as a preventative health system (but it’s also great if your immune system’s kicked the bucket).

Ayur Veda is ancient (origins are traced back to when humans first walked the earth), but, because of its power to prevent illness and stress, it’s especially relevant to today’s nutso lifestyle.

Why I Love It (and why you might too)

Years ago, I was out of control. Not in the “I’m anal and I’m super stressed because things are happening I can’t do anything about” kind of way, but in the “I can’t sleep because my mind won’t let me relax, I can’t eat because my stomach won’t digest anything properly, and I can’t get my job done because I’m too stressed to focus on anything” kind of way. I felt like my body had become my enemy. I battled it every day, beseeched it every night, and lost every time. I’d tried stress counseling, seeing a nutritionist, a dietitian, my family doctor. Nothing worked.

Finally I called the number of an Ayur Vedic doctor. He set me up with a custom tailored health plan that included dietary, exercise, and stress relief recommendations. Two months later, I was healthier than I’d ever been. Everything changed: my sleep, my digestion, my work. By taking control of my health, fully and holistically, and making it a priority, my entire world improved. Everything was easier, better, happier.

Ayur Veda for Stress Relief: It’s All About the Nervous System

Recently, I sat in on a workshop with Ayur Vedic doctor Sivakumar Varma, director of Vancouver’s Pacific Centre for Wholistic Living. He told us that to reduce stress we need to strengthen our nervous system, and he gave us some helpful how-tos.

Top 5 Tips for Strengthening Your Nervous System

1. Open Your Energy Centres. You’ve probably heard the term chakras. Did the response “silly hippy-dippy stuff” come to mind? If it did, you’re not alone. But chakras can be understood simply as energy centres: areas of the body where major processes occur. Your chakras correspond to areas of the body that eliminate and process food, reproduce, pump blood through your entire body, maintain thyroid functioning, and connect to your intuition and the greater good and wonder-full. Open these helpful hubs, and you’ve got the good stuff—your innate energy and life force—zipping through the space, bringing good health with it.
   HOW TO: place a hand on whichever organ comes to mind as needing a bit of help. Racing heart? Place a palm there. Indigestion? Rub your belly. Then just bring your attention to that area. What do you feel? Simply giving the area some of your time will begin opening the area and the chakra it’s associated with.
2. Lube up Your Nerves. Get your essential fatty acids. These help lubricate the nerve channels.
3. Eat Alkaline. Acidic foods increase the light, airy qualities in our system, including a busy, stressed mind and quick-moving, rushing body. Alkaline foods reduce these qualities and help ground our system, calming our mind and our body.
4. Get your B12. When digested, good, pure, organic milk releases Vitamin B12.
5. Find Something to Love. When we love, we are the most open. And when we’re open, all that health-boosting energy streams through every area that needs it. But Dr. V was adamant that this tip was about a “someTHING” not a “someONE”. Loving your work, or your hobby, gives you the power to boost your health without dependence on anyone except your own self.

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Resources
More details on alkaline and acidic eating habits.