Self-care is sacred but it can be confusing with all the modalities out there. In this episode I break down the Ayurvedic tenants of self-care.

I discuss:
-How to have an Ayurvedic self-care practice
-The ins-and-outs of oil-pulling, tongue- scraping, dry-brushing and abhyanga -The benefits of each practice

Check out my Sacred Self-Care and Ayurvedic Nutrition E-Course on DailyOm.com (which is pay as you want!) www.dailyom.com/cgi-bin/courses/c…rview.cgi?cid=766

Let’s take the discussion further in the Mind-Body Balancers FB group: www.facebook.com/groups/1213662491998309/

Discover Your Dosha (Mind-Body Type) with my free quiz: iamsahararose.com

Connect with me for daily Ayurvedic and modern spiritual wisdom at Instagram: @iamsahararose Facebook.com/iamsahararose Twitter.com/iamsahararose

Intro + Outro Music: Silent Ganges by Maneesh de Moor

Pre-order my new book Eat Feel Fresh: A Contemporary Plant-Based Ayurvedic Cookbook: www.amazon.com/Eat-Feel-Fresh-Co…sed/dp/1465475621 and receive a signed book plate, inspirational card and 10 bonus recipes

Join my Awaken Your Powers Masterclass to become a leader in the new paradigm with Shaman Durek: www.iamsahararose.com/awaken-your-powers

 

Transcription

Episode 112 – Ayurvedic Sacred Self-Care with Sahara Rose

By Sahara Rose

Namaste. It’s Sahara Rose and welcome back to the “Highest Self” podcast. A place where we discuss what makes you your soul’s highest evolvement. I’m stoked to announce that my book, “Eat Feel Fresh,” a plant-based Ayurvedic cookbook is now available for preorder on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target, Wal-Mart, wherever books are sold. This is my book baby. I went to India to shoot all of the photography, it is alkaline, it is refreshing, it is global. I believe that Ayurveda takes many shapes and forms because it is a living science. And it’s time for Ayurveda to open its doors to different countries’ ways of eating, different ingredients, and of course making it plant-based so many vegans out there who have wanted to practice Ayurveda but have shied away because of the amount of ghee and dairy can now experience Ayurveda.

So I’m so excited for “Eat Feel Fresh” to be out. You can order it, Amazon, Barnes * Noble, wherever books are sold, and I will have some preorder bonuses, including signed bookplates, bookmarks, webinars, all sorts of stuff. So stay tuned for that, all you have to do is show me your receipt and I will be sharing with you all of the bonuses I have in store for you.

I am jumping for joy right now because my podcast, this podcast, “Highest Self Podcast,” hit number one in the entire religion and spirituality category on the freaking iTunes store. How insane, amazing, beautiful, crazy, out of this world is that? It’s insane because the religion and spirituality category is by far the most downloaded category on iTunes, and basically every other one in the top 10 chart is a church. As we know, churches make up a huge percentage of this population, people who are actively involved in their church. So church podcasts are obviously very popular in this country.

And the fact that “Highest Self” podcast, which is about Ayurveda, and past lives, and channeling your ancestors, has hit number one. And I just posted the image of the list on my Instagram, and you’ll see, it’s like all of these churches and then us. So I am just so happy, so honored, and just also so moved that a podcast like this can become number one. Because if I was sharing this type of wisdom, and channeling, and you know, the things that we talk about on this podcast, if I was doing that even just 200 years ago, I would be persecuted. If I was doing this today in my own homeland of Iran in the Middle East I would be persecuted. In fact, in many countries today I would still be persecuted for speaking these truths.

So the fact that this podcast became number one shows that consciousness is no longer something that is in the fringes, it is not longer something that is hidden in the yoga studio on the second floor, or in the new age bookstore that no one even in town knows is open. It’s hitting the mainstream and we have become tired. We are tired of the us versus them. We are tired of the fear tactics our government is playing on us. We are tired of spirituality equating religious beliefs, and we are craving something that is our own. We are itching to know about our soul expressions, and our archetypes, and our doshas, koshas, chakras, gunas, all of these incredible, ancient philosophies that are finally resurfacing.

So the fact that this podcast became number one has nothing to do with me, and it has nothing to do with you. But it has everything to do with us as a society, as a global movement, as the vibration of this planet increases where topics like consciousness, and soul purpose, and spirit can become mainstream.

So I thank you so much for listening to this. I thank you even more for leaving a review for this podcast. And I thank you ultimately for sharing it. Because by sharing this message we help more souls out there longing, itching, burning for something more. We help that single mom who knows there’s something more to life than working two jobs that burn her to pieces every single day. But she still does it anyway to pay the bills. We teach her there’s something more for her.

By sharing this podcast we teach that graduate who has no idea where to turn and thinks the only way to be taken seriously is to take that 9:00 to 5:00 that she can already feel is going to eat away her soul. We help her by sharing this. We help that father who is trying to understand his daughter and not knowing why, they just seem to not be speaking the same language. We heal that relationship and we heal the relationship with all of the ancestors, all of our mothers, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers who were never able to live lives of their own. Who were offsprings of their husbands, who never got to choose their way, forge their path, even ask themselves the freaking question: what do you want to do with your life?So by sharing this podcast we elevate, we change the vibration, we change the global compass.

So as a gift for reviewing this podcast I would love to send you the first half of my unreleased book, it’s called “Eat Right For Your Mind Body Type.” It infuses ancient Ayurvedic wisdom with modern nutritional science, and this is not my book “Eat Feel Fresh,” which is coming out in October. This is a totally different book, one that has no plans to be published because it is now part of my “Eat Right For Your Mind Body Type” program. So the only way to get your hands on this book is to just leave a review in the iTunes store and I’ll send you the first half for free.

So to do that just head over to the iTunes store, hit “Podcasts” on your phone, go on your desktop iTunes store, search “Highest Self” podcast. If you’re on your phone, scroll to the bottom, you’ll see it says “Write a review,” on desktop it’ll bee right on top. Write your review—something nice, of course—and then take a screenshot before you hit submit and e-mail it over to me. Sahara, S-A-H-A-R-A, @eatfeelfresh.com.Again, [email protected]. And within hours I will send you back the first half of my unreleased, never to be released—well, I can’t say never, maybe one day, but not any time this year—book, “Eat Right For Your Mind Body Type.”

Now with that I asked you guys on my Instagram, we just made it big time y’all, so what do you want to hear about? And a lot of you said more in-depth Ayurvedic topics, so I’m like, “Okay, I’ll give you that,” cause it is kind of my forte. So what I wanted to talk about was Ayurvedic self-care. And I have a new e-course that came out on Daily Om, dailyom.com, and it’s called “Ayurvedic Sacred Self-Care and Nutrition.” And it’s an eight-week program, it’s pay as you want, so the average rate is $25.

You can pay more if you would like to contribute more. The money is split between me and Daily Om, so I’m very grateful if you would like to pay more, if you don’t have the means to. I would still love for you to get the information and you can pay less. It’s pay as you want, which I think is an amazing model because it’s the trust system, it’s the honor system, and whatever you feel like giving you can give to the program.

And it’s an eight-week program, each week is about a ten-minute long video, and I go through topics of Ayurvedic self-care, as well as the basics of Ayurvedic nutrition. I go very in-depth on my “Eat Right For Your Mind Body Type” program on Ayurvedic nutrition, but this program with Daily Om, the “Sacred Self-Care and Ayurvedic Nutrition.” I give you the basics of breakfast, lunch, dinner, what does that look like for all three doshas, recipes for all three doshas for all of the meals, and then all about the sacred self-care.

So you can look head over to dailyom.com or just search “Daily Om Sahara Rose” and you’ll find it right there. And again, it’s pay as you want, so enjoy. But I want to talk a little bit about sacred self-care just so you’re aware of what that even means first. So sacred self-care, why did I throw the word sacred onto self-care? Why didn’t I throw on Sunday, because that’s what everyone calls it. Well, it is sacred because when you take care of your body you take care of your soul. And as I just discussed, the world, the global climate is going through some major shifts. And the inflammation that is happening within us is attributing to inflammation as a global society. And what that looks like is war, violence, chaos, school shootings, people honking at each other on the highway, irritation. All of these issues are pitta imbalances and they are caused from major pitta imbalances going on internally.

So in Ayurveda they say, “As is the microcosm so is the macrocosm.” And what that means in broken down English is whatever is going on internally is happening externally. What is happening to the individual is happening to the greater global climate. So when we are out of balance, when we are not taking care of ourselves, when we have any sort of imbalance—whether it’s pitta, vata, kapha—the world is going to show up and reflect that exact imbalance.

So why self-care is actually sacred is by taking care of our bodies and basically taking care of her own shit we do a massive service to the world. You know, think about the kid who’s hungry. The kid who’s hungry is just screaming, and crying, and making no sense. Why? Because they’re hungry, but because they’re internally hungry they are making everyone around them suffer. And it could have easily been solved by just feeding the kid, but you know, the kid doesn’t know it’s hungry and that’s why.

Well, this is actually what’s happening in society. We don’t know that we are so deeply out of balance as individuals that we’re like, “Why is war happening? Why are there shootings? Why is this happening?” And as I discussed in the episode “How to End Gun Violence,” gun violence ends with the individual being healed. We can’t heal any issue globally without fixing it individually on a one-on-one scale.

So when you put oil on your skin, when you dry brush, when you tongue scrape, when you oil pull, when you do these things, you are actually changing the planet. And you are creating the catalyst, the domino effect of loving people. You know when like you’re on the highway, and you’re driving, and someone just honks at you for no reason, and it really just throws you off, and then you’re almost like mad at that person like, “Why did you just honk at me for no reason? You’re so stupid.”

And then you’re just irritated from picking up on their energy so then you get out of the car and during that meeting you’re kind of tense and that other person feels it, and then maybe they’re like, “Oh, why is this person so tense? Are they mad at me or are they just rude?” And then they pick it up, and then they go meet with their boyfriend for dinner, and they’re in a bad mood because their meeting just went bad, and the boyfriend’s like, “What did I do wrong? Why is she so moody?” So then the boyfriend’s in a bad mood, and he goes to work, and he takes it out on all of his officemates, and his officemates are like, “What’s wrong with this guy? He’s such an asshole.” And then they’re all mad at each other, and then they go home and… you get the cycle.

So one person’s bad mood, one person not taking care of themselves creates a ripple effect globally. But the same thing happens when we take care of ourselves too, guys. So you know when you just come across one person who’s just so kind, so loving, they just do something that is so above and beyond just to make you feel good, just to take care of you, just for no other reason but to support you. And you are just so floored by their generosity that you so deeply desire to just do something nice to someone else. You want to just pay it forward.

So maybe you go volunteer at a soup kitchen, or maybe you give that homeless guy $20, or maybe you call your mom and your grandma and you normally don’t have time to. And maybe you’re just extra cuddly and lovey with your husband that night. And then that person’s like, “Oh, my wife was so nice tonight,” and they’re in a good mood at work the next day, and everyone’s like, “Oh, my boss is amazing,” so they’re all doing great work. And then all of their clients are like, “I love this place.” So they’re all happy and then again the ripple effect.

So when you take care of yourself, when you practice self-care, you are changing the fabric of society. Because as humans, we are vibrational beings, we have koshas, which I talked about on the podcast. Koshas are kind of like our radio frequencies that we emit outside of our bodies, and that’s how we pick up on people’s vibes, people’s auras, people’s energetic frequency. Those are called their kosha in Sanskrit, which I explain. I have a whole chapter on koshas in my book, “Idiot’s Guide to Ayurveda.” So we are vibrational beings, we have koshas, so we pick up on things sacred, beautiful, loving, kind, honest, and we pick up on aggressive, rude, shitty, bossy, whatever the shadow side is.

I’d like to take a break from our deep dive into Ayurvedic sacred self-care and share with you an incredible place where you can buy many of the Ayurvedic self-care products for a massive discount, and that is Thrive Market. Thrive Market is an incredible revolutionary online marketplace that makes healthy living easy and affordable. Everything is non-GMO and natural with 25% to 50% off discount off traditional prices.

So I love going on there to get my tongue scraper, my oils for oil pulling for abhyanga, I buy Ayurvedic snacks from there, I buy everything that I use—you know, all the things that you get in bulk. Let’s say you get gluten-free crackers, or you can even get your seafood if you eat seafood or anything like that from Thrive. And it’s a highly curated marketplace, they’re safe, all-natural, they have tons of non-toxic beauty products, kitchen staples, home goods. I get Chubby’s dog food from there, eco-friendly cleaning supplies. Everything you need to start your Ayurvedic and non-toxic lifestyle for a massive discount.

So as a special gift, we are offering “Highest Self” podcast listeners an additional 25% off your first order, plus a free 30-day trial. So you can try it out, deliver all your groceries to your door. So let’s say you normally spend $100 at the grocery store since you’re already getting about 50% off of being at Thrive, plus 25% off from my discount. You’re saving an average of $50 to $75 off of your $100, which is an amazing discount.

So many of you guys are going to be doing your grocery runs, you’re going to be buying your tongue scrapers and your oils for all of these amazing Ayurvedic practices. So make it easier on yourself and get it from Thrive. Again, head over to thrivemarket.com, use the code “sahara” and you will get your free 30-day trial plus 25% off your first order. Now let’s get back into Ayurvedic sacred self-care.

So when we take care of ourselves we heal the planet. So never, ever, ever think self-care is selfish. You know, this is such an old paradigm thing of, “Oh my god, what are you doing just taking care of yourself all day? Don’t you have things to do? Don’t you have kids to take care of? Don’t you have a job to work?” No, this is the job. Because no other jobs are gonna happen if you don’t care of yourself.

Now this doesn’t mean all you do is just sit in the bath, and now you oil yourself for three hours, and now you meditate, and now you this, and all you’re doing is taking care of yourself. No, because then you’re not fulfilling your dharma, and I see some people—especially here in L.A.—they go down that rabbit hole, and it’s like, “Girl, you have so much to offer, what are you doing?” But it’s important to have that healthy balance that you’re taking care of yourself enough to fill up your cup, to make you radiate with white shining light that you can spread to others and raise consciousness.

So let’s talk a little bit about ways to practice sacred self-care. So the four ones that I highlight in my Daily Om e-course are tongue scraping, oil pulling, dry brushing, and abhyanga. So I’ll give you a quick recap of what each of them are, what their benefits are, and the basics on how to do it. I explain it much more in-depth and give you really the how-to and the Daily Om e-course. Again, you can just search Daily Om, O-M, Sahara Rose and you’ll find it. It’s pay as you want.

So let’s first talk about tongue scraping. So tongue scraping is one of those practices that is super trendy right now, but it’s existed for 5,000 years in Ayurveda. Why is tongue scraping popular? Well, tongue scraping has a lot more to do with clearing your mouth from bacteria. But actually, it has to do with digestion, and that’s why it’s so important to Ayurveda. And Ayurveda again, it’s not you are what you eat, but you are what you digest. So every single process will have a digestive element to it because digestion is really the cornerstone to health.

And to learn more about Ayurvedic digestion I have a whole chapter of that also in my book, “The Idiot’s Guide to Ayurveda,” which is the number one best-selling Ayurveda book globally. You can get it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, wherever books are sold. So tongue scraping, you pick up a little U-shaped device called a tongue scraper. You can get stainless steel or copper. Traditional Ayurveda is copper, I use stainless steel because some say that the copper can lead to heavy metal toxicity because copper is a heavy metal and it can leech. Though traditionally in Ayurveda they do use copper, so again, choose for yourself, I choose stainless steel.

So you get a tongue scraper and you basically scrape our tongue from back to front ten times. Some people just do it three times but you really want to do it at least ten times because the pores on your tongue are very, very deep. So when you only go like three times you’re only really hitting the surface level of the mucus, which in Ayurveda is called ama, A-MA, ama. And this white mucus is a reflection of the white mucus that’s going on in your gastrointestinal tract.So your tongue is essentially a reflection of your digestion. And if your tongue is coated in white stuff then that means your gastrointestinal tract is also coated in white stuff.

Now what does this white stuff come from? It comes from improper digestion. So I like to think of a banana peel sitting in a car. That’s how you can think of undigested food. So you know we’ve all done this, you had a banana peel and you forgot about it and you left it in your car on a hot summer day and you come back after an hour and how does your car smell? It smells like absolute shit, okay? Now let’s say you left that banana peel in the car, doors closed, hot summer’s day for eight hours. How’s that car going to smell? Horrendous, horrific, you’re not gonna wanna drive home, you’re gonna call an Uber.

Now how is that car gonna smell if you leave the banana peel in there, you go on vacation for a week? That car’s gonna smell so bad that you may as well just sell it because no matter how much you try to clean that car, the smell is like penetrated in the car seats and months later you’re still gonna smell the old banana peel and be kicking yourself.

So we can think of our digestion the same way. So with our digestion we eat foods that we are unable to digest, and this can be something even like a banana. Because if you don’t have the digestive capabilities to digest anything, then anything can become toxic. And in Ayurveda especially raw food, if you don’t have a strong enough agni, digestive fire can become tamasic, toxic and create ama, the mucus. So that banana peel putrefies, it rots, it ferments, and it ends up moving through your gastrointestinal tract. So that rotten whatever it is, the salad you couldn’t digest, the chicken wings, the yogurt, whatever you ate that your body couldn’t digest rots, putrefies, ferments, moves up your gastrointestinal tract, creates this mucus, which is the white coating, which ends up showing up on your tongue.

So I always say look at the Miley Cyrus tongue. You know, we all know her VMA performance when she was dancing on stage and she stuck her tongue out. You know, I was going crazy about her tongue cause it was so white. I was like, “Girl, Miley, I need to send you some triphala, I need to send you some ginger, some cumin, some warming spices, your agni is very, very low. But she didn’t reply to my DM, so if anyone knows Miley, tell her, I need her.

So if like right now you can even pause this podcast or keep the podcast on and look at your tongue. And if it’s just coated in white mucusy sticky stuff, you are not digesting food properly my friend. So start tongue scraping, and again, back to why it helps with digestion. So if the ama, the white stuff, is coating your tongue, your tongue has taste receptors that are basically telling your body everything that you are consuming. So when you put food in your mouth digestion starts the moment that the food enters your mouth, it starts with your saliva.

And your saliva basically has the digestive enzymes that begin the breakdown of the food and your tongue has the taste receptors that tells your inner gastrointestinal tract what the macro nutritional and micro nutritional properties are of that food, okay? I also studied sports nutrition, which is why I’m like super technical about this, but I think it’s important for you guys to know. So your tongue basically has these taste receptors, it’s telling your body what enzymes are in the food so your body can create the proper digestive environment for digestive absorption, assimilation, and elimination, which is moving through the pitta dosha.

So when your tongue is coated in white Miley Cyrus stuff, your tongue is like, “Girl, I have no idea what you’re eating. I can’t figure out is that a carbohydrate, is it a protein, is it a fat, omega-3, what’s going on? There’s white stuff. I can’t hear you.” And your body is like, “Girl, I don’t know tongue, help me out.” And then your inner organs have no idea what’s going on, it’s just a huge shit show. But basically what happens—I mean no pun intended, it will become a shit show—is you don’t end up digesting the food properly because your stomach has not created the correct digestive environment for that nutrient assimilation to happen.

So it kind of just throws out whatever it can, doesn’t know how much stomach acid doesn’t know what enzyme. So when you digest the food it’s not in the proper condition whereas if you didn’t have the white stuff on your tongue, your tongue would’ve known what’s up, would have said, “Hey, yo, we got some carbs coming in.” Your stomach would have been ready with those enzymes and you would have digested perfectly. So this is why we tongue scrape. We don’t want the Miley Cyrus situation, we want the mind-body connection happening and we really want our tongues to talk to our gastrointestinal tracts. And I get deeper into this in the course.

So now let’s move to oil pulling. So oil pulling is the what happens next. So you scrape that tongue, brushed your teeth, now oil pulling is what I call Ayurvedic mouthwash. Basically it’s washing your mouth with oil. You know, it’s the perfect word for it: oil pulling. But you’re not like pulling it around, you’re more just swishing it through your teeth. The reason why we do this in Ayurveda is one: mouthwash didn’t exist 5,000 years ago, that’s a big reason. But also mouthwash is actually really bad for you.

So have you ever been addicted to Listerine? You can be honest. Or have you ever had a boyfriend who’s kind of addicted to Listerine or should have been? You can be even more honest about that. So when we start using an antibacterial mouthwash, whatever brand it is, our mouths end up being coated, washed away from the good and bad bacteria. Because antibacterial just kills all bacteria—good and bad, it doesn’t differentiate. It’s the same thing when you take an antibiotic it kills the good and bad bacteria in your gut. Doesn’t differentiate, which is why you have to rebuild your gut flora after.

So your mouth also has a unique flora, as does your skin, guys. Now when we put antibacterial mouthwash in our mouths, yes, right after we’re lie, “Ooh, I feel so clean, I feel so brand new, I want to kiss you.” But what ends up happening is the next morning our breath smells like shit. And we’re like, “Oh my god, I need more Listerine, don’t kiss me, ah1” And we become addicted and that’s how that Listerine cycle starts. And we feel like if we’re not using antibacterial mouthwash our breaths just smell so bad.

Well the reason why is because the bad bacteria has now greatly out-populated the good bacteria. So when you’re not using the antibacterial mouthwash your flora has basically been thrown off so off balance that you’re only experiencing the bad bacteria, not the good bacteria. So what do you do? Just because you’re addicted doesn’t mean it’s too late. There is going to be a little bit of that curve of shifting into oil-based solutions.

So oil—and I explain this more deeply in the course—but oil basically only strips the bad bacteria without the good. It’s a lot more gentle than antibacterial mouthwash. After oil pulling you do feel like your teeth are really shiny, but it’s not this like super minty breath, obviously. And again, in terms of what oils to use, vata, kaphas, people with cold constitutions should use sesame oil, which is consider the mother oil in Ayurveda. Pittas can use coconut oil. Again, if you hate sesame oil, you don’t want to use it, use coconut oil, it’s not the end of the day Ayurveda gods are not gonna come kill you, you’ll be okay.

But if you want to go the traditional way, sesame oil was used, but you can also use coconut oil, you can use coconut oil in the summertime especially. It’s just more cooling, sesame oil is more warming. So you put a spoon in your mouth, swish it around your mouth, there is this massive misconception that oil pulling needs to be for 20 minutes. And I asked my Ayurveda teachers in India, I asked many Ayurvedic doctors: is this the case? And they’re like, “No. You can do it for 20 minutes. Charaka Samhita said that would be the ideal amount, but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t work if it’s not for 20 minutes.”

So I found that so many people, including myself, were not oil pulling because they felt like it’s gonna be this like 20-minute long ordeal, and they don’t have time for it, and it sounds really hard so they just don’t do it. You can oil pull for 30 seconds and that is way better than not oil pulling. You can oil pull for one minute, you can oil pull for two minutes, you can oil pull for 7.7 minutes. Whatever you feel like doing, don’t feel like this is the hardest task in the world, and don’t become this like perfectionist over it because then you’re missing the plot and the plot is to raise your vibration, not to become an obsessed freak.

So oil pull for however long you want. I remember the first time I did it, it was super weird for me to put oil in my mouth. It felt really unnatural and strange, and I was a raw vegan, and I wasn’t eating oil, so I was like, “Uh, get this out of my mouth. I’m gonna gain weight from this.” But then eventually I got used to it, I actually do like coconut oil, but as you can hear in my voice I got a lot of pitta going on. But you can use sesame oil too, it doesn’t matter, whatever is gonna work for you.

So you swish it around your mouth, and why it works is it removes the bad bacteria gently without removing the good. So I like to think of if you’re cleaning wood, if you use something that’s water-based it’s not gonna clean the pores of the wood. If you use something oil-based it’s gonna get deep and penetrate into those pores. So I talk more about that in the book and in the e-course.

Now let’s get into dry brushing. Dry brushing is so great because we lose so much dead skin every single day and we don’t do anything about it. And it’s really important because our skin is our largest organ, and for us to really be able to absorb all of our nutrients and all the benefits from the oils we’re using we have to have our pores open. So dry brushing is basically taking a dry loofa brush. You can just get it from Whole Foods, you can get it from Amazon, you can get it from wherever you want, it’s literally just a dry loofa brush. And you’re gonna scrape your body and you always want to be moving upwards towards your heart.

So I recommend doing long strokes and then you wanna go circle-wise on your elbows, knees, anywhere that’s round, circular. For example, up your legs, circle around your knees, up your thighs. Your stomach you want to be moving counterclockwise, which is the direction towards your digestion cause you want to be moving with your digestion, and again on your chest and on your stomach go really, really gentle.

If you have a really like firm coarse dry brush I wouldn’t even do it there because the skin there is very gentle. But places like your arms, especially the back of the arms where there’s a lot of the bumps, the KP bumps. You can go a little bit firmer on there and it’s really good for circulation, lymphatic drainage, for moving your blood around, for re-stimulation, rejuvenation, so many incredible benefits.And I have some articles about all of these on my blog also if you just head on iamsahararose.com on the top it says “Blog,” talk about them, talk about them extensively in the book, and then again in the e-course.

So dry brushing, amazing practice, and we follow that up with abhyanga. So abhyanga is self oil massage, and we follow abhyanga after dry brushing because with dry brushing imagine you have all this dead skin, you remove it, your pores are open, and now they’re like, “I’m thirsty,” and that’s when you feed it the oil. So with abhyanga traditionally in Ayurveda it was sesame oil and it was always heated. And how you can heat oil is you just put it in a glass pot, boil some water on a pot, and you immerse that glass pot into the water, keep it in the glass, don’t throw your oil in your water cause then you’re not gonna have oil.

So imagine submersing the glass pot or jar or bottle into a pot of boiling water just so the water heats up. You don’t want to be using your microwave because microwaves are super radioactive and horrible. And you want to heat it up, that’s again the traditional Ayurveda way. I most of the time don’t even do that, I just put the oil in between my palms and I just rub it around my palms and make it warm like that, way easier.

And you put that on your skin and when you do that this is called abhyanga. The word abhyanga means self oil massage. And the word for oil in Ayurveda is sneha, and the word sneha is also the word for love. So when you oil yourself, when you sneha yourself you actually also love yourself. So how cool is that, guys? I’m gonna name my daughter sneha.So follow abhyanga with the dry brushing because the pores are open, it penetrates deeper, and a lot of times we are always addicted to more cream, more lotions. Why? Because they’re water soluble, they’re not getting deep within our pores. Whereas with the oil when we’ve opened it up with dry brushing it can immerse deeper into our pores.

And again, you don’t want to put anything on your skin that you wouldn’t eat. So in almost every cream and every lotion out there unless it’s like very home made it’s gonna have some chemicals in there. And if you wouldn’t, you know, stick a spoon in your body bath, you know, cream and eat it—as delicious as they smell—if you wouldn’t do that, then I wouldn’t put it on your skin because your skin is going straight into your bloodstream, and in fact, it’s actually more dangerous to put it on your skin because your skin doesn’t have blockages against toxins whereas your digestive system does. Your digestion has multiple blockages to protect yourself from pathogens such as toxic food, salmonella, all of these things.

Because, you know, historically we’ve eaten a lot of dangerous things and we’ve survived. But our skin, everything goes straight into our bloodstream. So that’s why you don’t want to be putting toxic stuff, and you can Google, you know, things to look out for in the skin. I’ll write a blog post about that also, but basically any chemical, anything that sounds shady, you don’t want that. Whereas oil you could totally eat the oil.

And someone asked me this question, which I actually found to be really interesting, and she said, “Well, if I put oil on my skin it goes to my bloodstream am I going to gain weight from it?” That’s a really good and interesting question. And the question is no you won’t gain weight from it because you’re not digesting it calorically, whereas when you put something in your mouth that turns into energy. The stuff that you put on your skin doesn’t turn into energy. You know the oil that you put on your skin it’s not like you’re eating it, it never makes it to your gastrointestinal tract. The only way that things can get into your gastrointestinal tract where they can be stored as calories is if you ingest them through your mouth.

So you don’t need to worry about like, “Oh my god, is it gonna be like I’m eating a cup of oil a day if I do abhyanga?” No, it won’t. In fact, it actually helps with weight loss because again, you’re doing lymphatic drainage, you’re stimulating your body, it helps decrease kapha, it’s very stimulating, very soothing, very self-care. A lot of the times when you’re craving a chocolate you’re craving, you know, wine, whatever it is that you like. It’s oftentimes because you’re exhausted and you just need some self-care.

So if you just ask yourself in that moment when you’re craving the chocolate you’re craving the wine, you’re like, “Okay, what is it that I really want?” It’s comfort, you just want comfort at that moment. And what’s gonna give you more comfort: temporarily eating some chocolate, which you’re gonna finish the whole bar, and then you feel like shit, or you drink the wine, then you feel drunk, you text your ex, you feel like shit. Or doing this super amazing Ayurvedic self-care practice where you’re dry brushing, you’re doing abhyanga, you got some mantras on, you’re writing in your journal, you’re manifesting. I’m pretty sure that’s gonna make you feel way more comfortable; long term especially.

So now if we want to extra go the extra mile, what we want to do is after the abhyanga, when the oil is on our skin, that’s when we pop into the shower or a sauna. And if you can let yourself just sit in the vapor of the water, what it’s gonna do is it’s gonna allow the oil to penetrate deeper into your pore, then it’s gonna hydrate you at a cellular level. Which is why it’s a really good idea to put on oil if you ever go to a sauna, steam bath, whatever, put oil on before, or you can just make your own. Just turn on the shower hot, turn it off, and then just sit in there with the oil on your skin and it’s gonna absorb so much deeper.

Because another question a lot of people have for me is, you know, when I put oil on my skin, then I sit on the couch, I stay in the couch, I wear my white dress, I’ve ruined my white dress. So what can I do? Well the reason why you’re staining everything is because the oil’s not being absorbed by your skin. If the oil’s being absorbed by your skin it should only be a very, very light filmy layer. But if it’s just sitting on the top of your skin, yeah, it’s gonna come off everywhere.

So the way to make sure it’s absorbed is to dry brush, to put the oil on, let it absorb into your skin in the hot shower, and then afterwards you probably won’t need much oil because your body’s gonna be so moisturized from the cellular level. But you can put on some more oil in particularly dry areas, let’s say it’s like the back of your arms, the back of your legs or your feet and just put them there.

So this is essentially what an Ayurvedic self-care practice can look like. These are super easy things, they are very affordable, everyone can get a tongue scraper, you can go on Dr. Tongue, you can use the code “eatfeelfresh,” it’s like a 20% off, 25% off. You can get coconut oil, sesame oil in bulk on Amazon, at your grocery store. You can get a dry brush basically anywhere. And these things are really easy, they’re lifelong practices, they don’t need to take a long time, they don’t need to be complicated, and they’re really gonna change the fabric of your life. They’re gonna change your relationships, they’re gonna change the way that you treat yourself, you know.

When you don’t love yourself, you’re not going to ever come up with your best content. You’re not gonna come up with your best ideas. Because creativity comes when you really feel rejuvenated, and rested, and nourished. And when you’ve entered deep into that kapha state, which is the state of re-evaluation and contemplation. That’s when the vata springs, that’s when the creativity springs. And you know, it’s like you have your best idea when you’re sitting in the bath, or when you’re on the walk, or when you’re just enjoying yourself, having fun. The best idea never comes when you’re super pushing yourself and you’re trying to get things done, you’re super stressed out, that’s not when it comes.

So when we sit into this kapha we rest, we renourish, we let ourselves be in the sanctuary of indulgence, which our society has so put down. When we sink into the kapha we re-emerge the idea naturally flows through the vata, and that’s how we get the idea, which we then channel through the chakras, and we move them into the pitta, which is the action, and again, comes into the kapha. And which my next book is all about this process.

So I’m so looking forward to you guys checking out my Daily Om e-course, “Sacred Self-care and Ayurvedic Nutrition.” And if you want to learn more about Ayurvedic nutrition specifically, check out my “Eat Right For Your Mind Body Type” program. And again, if you want the first half of my “Eat Right For Your Mind Body Type” book for free, all you gotta do is head over to the iTunes store, just do it right now. Write a review, take a screenshot before hitting submit, and e-mail it over to me at [email protected]. I will be forever grateful, and you will love this book.

If you enjoyed this episode, let me know, let me know your other requests on my Instagram comments. My Instagram is @iamsahararose, and I am so looking forward to having you guys on the program, and just having you part of the tribe. Love you guys. Thank you so much to our incredible sponsor Thrive Market. Again, be sure to head over there and use the code “sahara” to receive 25% off your first order plus a free 30-day trial where you can receive all of your Ayurvedic self-care products for a massive discount, as well as your grocery self-care products and so much more.

And if you loved this episode, I would love to offer you a free gift, and that is the first half of my unreleased book, “Eat Right For Your Mind Body Type,” which is different from my book “Eat Feel Fresh,” the plant-based Ayurvedic cookbook, which is going to be available October 2nd and is available for pre-order right now. But to get “Rat Right For Your Mind Body Type,” all you gotta do is leave a review for me in the iTunes store, take a screenshot before you hit “submit,” and send it to me on e-mail to [email protected], and I will send you back the first half of my unreleased book “Eat Right For Your Mind Body Type.”

And to pre-order your copy of “Eat Feel Fresh,” head over to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target, Wal-Mart, wherever you buy your books, order the book, it’s going to arrive to you October 2nd. But as a special bonus for pre-ordering it, I’m going to send you a signed bookplate, tend bonus recipes, as well as some other free gifts that I’m going to be sharing with you on the “Eat Feel Fresh” website, so stay tuned for that. You can find the link in my show notes. You’ll be able to submit your receipt there and I’m so excited to share this cookbook with you. Namaste.

Episode 112 – Ayurvedic Sacred Self-Care with Sahara Rose