A life of routine allows you to agree upon best practices, incorporate them, and then simply relax into anchoring aspects of daily life. Routine frees up some brain space, because after a while, you do it and don’t even think about it. It also grounds like nothing else and is an excellent way to balance the vata chaos of modern living.
How you begin and end your day are very important bookends to the story of your life. Routine’s gorgeous cousin Ritual interestingly, has the ability to transform commonplace, thoughtless activity by inviting presence of mind, love, and gratitude to daily practice.
What follows is my daily self-care ritual. It is an honoring of my presence, body and spirit, and is full of gratitude.
My Daily Ritual
Morning
Rise at about 7a. I sleep in past 530a and forsake spiritual hour to balance my vata.
Prayer/intention setting. I visualize grounding cables and channel divine consciousness through the top of my head into my heart and allow it to spread out around me, releasing anything that is not truly me down into the ground.
I do my Reiki letters and ask for the highest and purest energy to flow freely through me. Then I place one hand over my heart and the other over my abdomen and send myself healing. Then I send healing to whomever is in my thoughts or groups of people in general.
Eliminate yesterday’s waste. I’m sticking to this phrase. I say stool and bowel movement enough already as it is at work. Triphala, or a similar substitute, the night before is great for a gentle daily detox.
Scrape tongue with a horseshoe-shaped tongue cleaner. About 7-10 scrapes. This is a great way to track how much toxicity or undigested waste you accumulated the day before. The more of it, the more you need to modify how and what you eat today. After scraping, my mouth feels so clean that on occasion, I’ve forgotten to brush my teeth.
Brush hair. No real reason for this coming next in order, other than I like it. It massages my scalp and untangling my hair makes me feel alert and that I can move forward in the world with energy (hard to explain, unless you have long hair that easily tangles.) Then, I tie it up and push it back with a headband.
Wash face with special attention to the eyes, as this wakes me up further.
Brush teeth with a sonicare. That moment when you first ever brush with a sonicare is slightly life-changing.
Hydrate with about 2 cups of warm water (130 degrees on my electric/digital kettle I’ve found is my magic number) as I swallow my am supplements (about 2-3 depending on what I think I need, also heavily influenced by which holistic practitioner I’m working with at the time.)
Wash anywhere there are apocrine glands with a shea butter soap.
Breathe in half lotus (because only one knee bends that way.) Over a few months when I first started, I worked up to 2 sets of 500 kapalabhati, 2 sets of 20 anuloma viloma with 10 agni sara after each set, 7 utjayi, and 9 bhramari with bija sounds. Roughly a 20min practice.
Flow through at least one sun salutation to get things moving with cat/cow to stretch the spine.
Dress and adorn. It depends on my mood. Sometimes I feel like scrubs and other days a power dress with a necklace and a comfortable heel. I like to wear kajol and blush most days, but I also enjoy a couple days off where I keep it real with not a touch of make-up, relaxing into the fresh and innocent look.
Nourish with an almond milk/chocolate protein powder shake. (Xymogen pea/rice protein blend is literally the best protein powder you’ll taste – I’ve done my research.)
Supplement with vitamin C, trace minerals, and spirulina – all this in one difficult to swallow glass. I do this purposely on a non-empty stomach because zinc on an empty stomach makes me vomit.
This is the morning. It seems like a lot, but it only takes about an hour and twenty minutes.
Evening
Lay on my biomat for about 20-30 minutes when I get home to recharge from the day.
Exercise with some variety of running, yoga, dancing, or barre/pilates class. I try to do exercise where I sweat moderately at least 3x/wk. Sweat for many women is an underutilized method of eliminating waste.
Eat macrobiotic/vegan at Casa de Luz about 3 times per week, True Foods 1x/wk, home-cooked lentils/rice/veggies 2x/wk, and something fancy about 1x/wk.
Relax for about 1-2 hours with spiritual audiobooks (while I lay on my mat again), Netflix, writing, reflection, or conversation.
Supplements round 2. I try to punctuate the relaxation period with these as I aim to stop drinking water at least an hour before bed so that the urge to micturate (I’m just having some nerdy fun here – the medical term for urination) doesn’t disturb my sleep.
Massage with warm oil. Applied neck to toe. I go over grays on my head with Bhringraj oil on hair-wash-days.
Nasya when I remember or my nasal passages feel dry. Ideal would be at least 3x/wk.
Sirodhara every other night.
Shower only soaping in-betweens and leaving a thin layer of oil on the skin.
Oil-pull while I’m in the shower, when I remember.
Floss, brush, wash. I use a mild exfoliant or clarisonic on the face at night to remove make-up.
Repeat prayer and healing practice most nights, especially if I miss my sleepy window and am having trouble sleeping.
Sleep anywhere from 1030p to 1230a most nights with a loose eye-mask that usually makes its way off by the end of the night. (Ideal is to be in bed by 10p, but I usually, naughtily find a reason to stay up.)
Starting the clock with my massage, my nighttime ritual takes 30 min to an hour depending on whether I do sirodhara. I try to start my ritual before I get too sleepy otherwise it can wake me up. It’s really gratifying for me to do it a couple hours before I sleep, because then knowing it’s done, I can totally relax for a couple hours and roll into bed whenever I feel my eyes closing.
We all have our daily rituals, which we relish in, whether it’s a cup of coffee, the newspaper, or getting oily like me. I share mine, because another’s tried and true practice can sometimes be refreshing and enlightening.
This is how I love myself daily. This is how I take care of my instrument of consciousness expressing itself as love in all I do.
If you don’t enough already, I invite you to love yourself some more. After all, true love for others can only be as great as the love you have for yourself.
Love,
Nisha
This content is intended for education purposes only and does not constitute medical advice.