Author: Navya Juneja

How to drink water? The right way

Did you know that upto 60% of our body is made of water. Every single cell in our body needs water to survive whether it’s our digestion our lungs our heart everything needs water. Many times if we’re feeling tired, lethargic if we have a headache or when our muscles feel tight. A lot of time it’s actually simply because we are dehydrated. It’s actually a key component when it comes to our immunity. We have to keep our body hydrated and water and water only is the thing that’s going to do that.

1. Drink it hot. Or at least at room temperature. According to Ayurveda the boiling water actually enriches it with energy and it gains a quality of sukshma which means penetrating. Hot water is easily absorbed into your circulatory system and helps to flow throughout the body. This means nutrition is delivered more effectively to your cell and your body is removing the waste products from your cell more efficiently too.

2. Sitting down to drink. Standing and drinking water is actually not recommended at all in ayurveda. It says that water can accumulate in different parts of your body and cause swelling. When you drink water too fast it actually just gushes through your body and it doesn’t allow time for your water to go through all the organs. Water is supposed to move through your organ to also remove out some of the toxins or impurities. So if it doesn’t reach the kidney then those toxin will actually build up in our organ and that can lead to bad health. Drinking water standing can also increase the amount of fluids that gets to the joints and so sometimes people will have pain in their joints or swelling in their knees or hands.

3. Drink slowly. Taking small sips throughout the day is most beneficial to you. You can start your day having a good few glasses but as you go through the day, drink it slowly, drink it every hour. But most important when you get to the end of the day try not to drink to much it will disrupt your sleep and it also put too much pressure on your bladder when it’s supposed to be resting and rejuvenating.

4. Drink it first thing in the morning. First thing that goes into your body is so important because of the toxins that accumulate in our body overnight. This actually help flush them all out before we start all over again the next day. Starting your morning with having hot water can really help to cleanse out your system before you get ready for the day.

5.Don’t drink water with your meals. We leave atleast 45 minutes gap between drinking large amount of water and having our meals. The reason is because drinking water releases large amount of water before we’re about to eat dilutes our digestive enzymes in our stomach and then it makes harder for our stomach to digest our food.

6.Add Flavor to your water. I wouldn’t recommend adding sugar because our body actually ends up not recognizing the water to be water it ends up taking it as food so it hydrates your water differently. I recommend you using herbs or spices like cardamom or black pepper. You can also add fruits like grapefruit or oranges anything you like but as natural as possible. Keep it fresh.

Ten ways to naturally detox your body

According to ayurveda there are many different types of toxins in our body. But the most common one is called Ama. Ama is actually the waste product of digestion that often builds up in our digestive tract when our digestion is either weak or unable to process the food that we are eating and often those are foods that are heavy to digest or are very highly processed. If ama is not cleared from the body and continues to build up it can actually leave our digestive tract and circulate around our body which means these toxins are traveling around our body too. There are five main signs of toxins in our body and it’s really just a way of your body telling you that you may need to pay a little bit more attention to it.

1.A thick white or yellow coating on your tongue in the morning.

2.Bad breath.

3. Strong body odor.

4.Feeling sluggish or lethargic throughout the day. And

5. Painful joints all over the body.

Detox ways=

1. Garshana also know as dry brushing. So when it comes to dry brushing you usually use brush that looks like this.

The trick is to use long strokes for your arms and your legs and do circular motion on your belly. Dry brushing actually help to stimulate your lymphatic system. The lymphatic system is basically the system in your body that carries around the liquid called lymph. Lymph carries all the toxins in your body and so when you use this brush all over your body it helps to get them moving and out of your system.

2. Toungue Scraper. There is lot of ayurvedic research that suggest that there is a strong link between your tongue and the state of your health. So use your tongue scraper every morning and start it from back of your tongue to the front. Do it around 10 times

3. Hot water. Really hot water can make such a difference to your body. Having cold water dampens your digestive fire. Boiling water actually helps lighten it and so it actually ends up penetrating deeper into your tissues to hydrate you even more. It helps to digest lot of ama that has built up that’s blocking a lot of channels in your body and helps to wash it away. Drinking water between your meals can dilute your digestive fluids which means that your food is not digested properly.

4. Spices. Spices in Ayurveda is the medicine box. It helps you to absorb your food better and makes your food tasty. Spices like black pepper, turmeric, cumin, cardamom the list is endless. They are helpful in daily detoxification of your body. Queen of detox coriander, cumin, fennel in hot water is best. Avoid fennel seeds during pregnancy because it stimulates menstrual cycle.

5.Abhyanga. Massaging your body with warm oil helps to loosen the toxins from the soft tissues of your body.

6. Epsom salt bath. It is made up of magnesium and sulfate and they are very useful in the detoxification process of our body.

7. Eat your largest meal in the afternoon andRegular meal times. Our body is in tune with nature and so when the sun is at its peak that is also when our digestion is at its strongest. Afternoon is the best time to eat your largest meal which means you have greater amount of time to digest it before you go to bed. Having regular meal time is because our body that gets used to knowing when we are going to eating our meal so our digestive juices start flowing just before we eat which means our tummy is ready to receive whatever we put in. According to Ayurveda it says that we actually need at least a three hour gap between our meals

8. Sleeping by 10 PM. just as our body has a sleep cycle it also has detox and digestive cycle and in ayurveda it says that, that time is 10pm to 2am so ideally if we are resting during this time it allow the process to happens more efficiently.

Those are my favourite tips on how to detox daily. These tips really helped me and I hope that it can help you too. Start slow and be kind to yourself. If you have any health conditions or any serious issue with your body I definitely recommend to going to see a doctor or a specialist.