5 Ayurvedic Ways to Enhance Your Mental Health
In Ayurveda, mental health isn’t a separate category of your well-being. Your mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual health are so interwoven that you can’t untangle them. Ayurveda teaches us that optimal health, in all these areas, occurs when you live in harmony with nature.
Releasing anxiety is essential to maintaining our mental health. May is Mental Health Awareness Month, making it the perfect time to explore Ayurvedic ways to keep our minds and spirits strong.
Mental health and the three doshas.
Doshas are mind-body constitutions in Ayurveda that specify your specific balance of the five elements. There are three main types–Vata, Pitta, and Kapha–but everyone has a unique blend.
You don’t need to know your dosha to create effective Ayurvedic remedies for your mental health. I find that Westerners fixate too much on doshas, missing out on basic principles anyone can apply to create personalized remedies. To create remedies for yourself, you just need to observe your symptoms and their qualities, or gunas.
For example, anxiety has qualities of the air element–light, dry, cool, and mobile. Imagine anxiety as a balloon, bouncing and spinning in the air just like your anxious thoughts. Because anxiety comes from an excess of air, we literally ground anxiety by using opposing qualities from the earth element. I call this the Golden Principle, which says like increases like and opposites reduce.
No matter your dosha, the grounding remedies below will help reduce symptoms of anxiety and increase feelings of calm.
5 ways to enhance your mental health with Ayurveda.
Here are five Ayurvedic ways to enhance your mental health. Feel free to read them all or skip to the one that interests you most. You can always bookmark this blog post to read through the rest later if you start to feel too overwhelmed:
Breathe
Ground Your Body
Abhyanga (self-massage with oil)
Use Food as Medicine
Stay Connected
#1: Breathe Deeply
Breathing is one of the most important and often overlooked tools of yoga. We call it pranayama. Breath is accessible to everyone, anywhere, at any time. Ayurveda has known this for a long time, and Western medicine is finally catching up.
You can change your physiology just by changing your breath. You can activate the power of your breath by focusing on each of its four parts:
Inhale to increase your energy, focus, and attention
Pause after inhalation
Exhale to reduce pain, anger, anxiety, and irritability
Pause after exhalation
Exhalation has a calming effect on our bodies, dropping us out of our stress responses. To increase calm with your breath, simply extend your exhale by a few seconds. This is a simple practice you can do for yourself no matter where you are.
#2: Ground Your Body
It’s easy to get trapped in your own head, especially if you’re the creative type. We live in a world full of distractions, meant to keep our attention away from ourselves. When you’re feeling anxious, it’s important to connect to your body and experience the present moment.
You can ground your body through dance, yoga, and getting outside. Personally, I love to go on a meditative walk, feel the sun on my skin, and breathe fresh air.
To practice a simple walking meditation, begin walking and breathing naturally at a steady and comfortable pace. Place your gentle focus on the rhythm of your steps—right foot, left foot, right foot, left foot. Become aware of each step you take to bring you to the present moment. Continue for 3-5 minutes and build from there.
To deepen this practice, turn your time outside into a daily routine. Ayurveda recommends getting outside for at least 10 minutes before 10 am to help your circadian rhythm reset for the day. Get bored of routine easily? Add some variety with these simple adaptations to your walking meditation.
#3: Practice Abhyanga
Abhyanga is a self-massage with oil, a very powerful practice in Ayurveda which calms the nervous system. This practice is traditionally done in the morning, starting at the head and going all the way down to the feet and toes. But in modern life, that's not always practical, so do it when you can.
I often suggest a shorter version for your bedtime routine, which is to massage the feet with some warm oil. Take three to five minutes to give your soles some love and attention. Your feet carry you throughout the world all day, every day, and your feet connect you to the earth. When you're doing any self-massage with oil, do it with gratitude and compassion for your body. This drops you down into your body and out of your head.
When you find that you're spinning in your head and need to break the glass box because it's an emergency, to prevent a downward spiral, to heal your mind and shift your mindset, use remedies that help you get out of your head and into your body.
#4: Eat to Improve Your Mood
Treating illness with food isn’t new to Ayurveda. Western science is catching up, and there’s more evidence than ever that what we eat impacts our mental health. If you have dietary restrictions due to a diagnosis, check with your doctor before making any major changes.
Here are three ways to boost your mood through your diet:
1) Increase the nutrient density of your meals.
Get your vitamins by eating vegetables of every color and adding omega-3 fatty acids. Start small by adding what Dr. Drew Ramsey calls a “special sprinkle” to every meal, like adding chia seeds to your oatmeal or leafy greens to your favorite pasta dish.
2) Keep your gut microbiome healthy.
The bacteria in your gut is responsible for creating the chemicals that regulate your mood and those happy hormones like serotonin, dopamine, and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA). Opt for gut-healthy foods like vegetables, whole grains, and legumes.
Spices are critical ingredients in Ayurvedic remedies. You’ve probably heard about turmeric, which is taking off in the West for its anti-inflammatory effects. Other spices like fennel stimulate digestion and boost your immunity.
#5: Connect with Others
Even before COVID-19, loneliness plagued the United States. The pandemic only deepened the problem. Ayurveda recognizes that our relationships are an important source of our health and well-being.
If you’re feeling anxious and want to withdraw, challenge yourself to connect with people. Building and maintaining strong connections supports your mental and emotional health and promotes longevity.
Here are some ways to connect when you’re feeling alone:
Schedule a coffee date with a friend
Send a handwritten note to a loved one
Call someone you haven’t talked to in a while
Find somewhere to volunteer your time
Join an online community
You can also join me on Instagram to encounter like-minded people on self-healing journeys. I always answer direct messages, and I love hearing from you.
I hope you find these remedies helpful!
Be well,
Avanti Kumar-Singh, MD
