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Holiday Self-Care For Your Mind

How has your self-care practice been? Ayurveda practitioner Sachi Doctor is back to share more sustainable self-care tips. Today she recommends three sustainable practices for taking care of your mind.


Sustainable Self-Care Tips for Your Mind:

  1. Take a time out. Spend 20-30 minutes just being. No phones, screens, speakers or other “noise”. Rest your eyes… open a window and listen to the sounds outside… stare at a wall… Give your mind time to catch up, integrate—and rest.
  2. Light a candle. As night falls, light a stick of incense or a cozy smelling candle. From an Ayurvedic perspective, scents like vanilla, lavender & sandalwood have a calming and grounding effect. Interesting fact: As our brains begin to associate these aromas with relaxation, a link is created so that the next time we breathe in that aroma our neurophysiology remembers and we feel a similar effect.
  3. Get a head start. A lot of work happens when we are asleep, including the digestion and assimilation of experiences and ideas from the day. Give yourself a helping hand by mentally going backwards through your day as you lie in bed, preparing to drift off to sleep. Try to register what was happening and what you were experiencing without judgment, and with a childlike curiosity. Notice your feelings and use deep belly breaths to relax and let go of the mental pictures as they emerge and dissolve. End with the image of you waking up that morning. Likely, you’ve already fallen asleep before you do!

 

Sachi Doctor is the founder of Elemental Alchemy, an Ayurvedic lifestyle company that offers handcrafted products and personalized holistic health services. She is also an Ayurvedic practitioner, yoga teacher and tea maker from a lineage of Indian healers and doctors and has been imbued in both Eastern tradition and Western medicine since childhood. After years of feeling like she needed to switch back and forth between these two systems, Sachi strive’s to marry the wisdom of both, blending Ayurvedic principles and yogic philosophy with physiology and functional nutrition to help individuals understand their mind-body composition, and ultimately, to empower them to reclaim agency for their own health. www.elemental-alchemy.com / @elemental_alchemy