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In the West, stress has become a major contributor to disease, with some authorities attributing up to 80 percent of illness to it. As a result, activities meant to reduce stress such as yoga, meditation and exercise have been added to our to-do lists. Time becomes our enemy when we try to fight this battle against accumulated stress, as we never seem to have enough time for exercise and yoga.
Instead of stress reduction, Ayurveda, which means “the science of life,” prescribes a series of stress-prevention techniques. While stress reduction assumes that we must first incur the stress and then figure out a way to reduce it, stress prevention is a way of life that doesn’t require a huge time commitment and aims not to allow stress to affect us in the first place.
We all see birds fly south and the leaves change color in the fall — sure signs that winter is approaching. There are powerful cycles in nature that dictate survival. If a bird didn’t fly south, how long would it survive during the colder months?
Our modern world has done a good job of disconnecting us from these natural cycles. Ayurveda, on the other hand, suggests a lifestyle in harmony with them. Once you experience what it is like to live with the cycles, it becomes a way of life. Unlike most diets or stress-reduction techniques, stress prevention is a way a life that you will look forward to.
1. Eat foods that are in season
Each season offers the human body an opportunity for stress relief and rejuvenation. The spring, which is the beginning of nature’s annual cycle, is a wet and rainy season, with accumulating qualities of heaviness and congestion. In Ayurveda this is called kapha season, and the word’s derivation is the same as the word “cough,” with earth and water properties predominating.
Nature provides the springtime antidote to these kapha qualities with leafy greens, sprouts, berries and grapefruits, all of which are fat-emulsifying. This is the season when the body is naturally letting go of its toxic fat stores. If your diet stays seasonal (green and alkaline) and the stressors are minimal, the body will enter into a naturally occurring fat-burning, detox, de-stress process.
During the summer or pitta (fire) season, the days are long and the nights are short. Nature provides high-energy fruits and vegetables to help the body maintain the vigor needed to perform during these longer days. Summer foods are naturally cooling and thus prevent the body from accumulating pitta, or heat, which can begin to dry out and inflame the tissues toward the end of the summer, when heat is building up. In late summer, bitter roots and cooling fruits that have a natural cleansing effect are harvested to detox excess heat, toxic blood or waste out of the body.
The winter or vata (air) season, which is predominately cold and dry, is mitigated by nature’s harvest of heavy, warm, oily and sweet foods. (Squirrels eat nuts in the winter because they are nature’s high-protein, high-fat antidote to the cold.) These are the rebuilding and rejuvenating foods that insulate the body while nourishing the mind and body, as the shorter days provide for deep rest and rejuvenation.
Start with this spring grocery list. Get other seasonal foods lists in my book The 3 Season Diet and try to eat more of the foods on the list that are in season.
2. Eat three meals a day, emphasis on lunch
Nature has daily cycles as well as seasonal cycles that we must follow to prevent stress. The most critical time of day with regard to fat metabolism and stress relief is between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. This is the vata time of day, when the nervous system is demanding a significant amount of blood sugar to satisfy the needs of the mind (it’s the same time that many of us are craving dark chocolate, soft drinks and coffee).
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