Gute Vorsätze fürs neue Jahr? Wie es aus ayurvedischer Sicht möglich ist, sie umzusetzen.

How NOT TO FAIL in your new year's resolutions 

Vaidya Mishra's SVA Message & Guidance for New Beginnings... 

New beginnings inspire resolutions, a renewed promise to oneself to secure the happiness that seems to elude us day after day - perhaps it will come through losing a few pounds; quitting the caffeine addiction; allowing for (more) me-time; making time to help those less fortunate.... How come these heart-felt resolutions fail within the first few weeks of the new year? Why can't the best and strongest of intentions withstand the whirlwind of daily life?

It's because, in ayurvedic terms, whenever you take something away, or reduce something, you are creating vacuum that leaves you imbalanced. So when going for change, the key is to not create a vacuum. When you take away an old habit, replace it with a good one. If you are trying to stop your addiction to checking your phone every 5 minutes for updates and new posts, staying away from it will not do! Keep yourself busy doing something you enjoy even more so you don't even have time to think about missing your phone! If you want to kick your sugar/sweet addiction, start by replacing the consumption of processed flavored artificial sugar preparations with healthier alternatives - fruits, natural sugars etc. 

In SVA terms, when you create vacuum, you bring in more Marut. Marut is made of the air and space elements. In the body, an excess of marut expresses itself as vata dosha imbalance. And we know from our ayurvedic studies that Vata dosha is the king of all doshas, when it goes off, Pitta and Kapha can't be too far away. And this is the key. If you take away a habit that is harming you, without replacing it with a good habit, if you remove an ingredient, without filling its place with another, if you cut loose a toxic relationship, without finding TLC in your own self, you are doomed to fail your resolution and run to restore it, much to your distress. Let's say this in practical terms.

Staying away through sheer willpower is a proven formula for failure. Going back to the white sugar exampel, you may already know that white sugar is not good for you for so many reasons: it feeds cancerous cells; it creates inflammation; it tips off your hormonal balance by creating too much estrogen; it is highly addictive to your brain chemistry and desensitizes you to enjoy healthy sweets with long term use. But you can't quit the habit.  Why do we hold on to harmful habits in the first place? On some level, they address a want, a need. So what's the best way of not becoming the slave to your needs? To your desires? Is eliminating desires the answer? That would be fighting against your own nature - we all desire greater bliss and balance. It is not desire that is wrong! It is desiring the wrong things... How do you desire what is right for you? How do you "desire what you deserve"?  

The most important thing you will ever need to remember is NOT to fight things.

Don't fight your addictions, your self-deprecation, or anything. In order to stay on top of any and all your New Year's resolutions, don't fight it. If you want to change something, bring in something new and better to replace it. The new sprout naturally and innocently lets the old skin fall off even as it shoots up to become what it is. How do you stay on top of this? How do you maintain equanimity? To keep your core energies at their optimal, heed food and sleep, and then you can't make any errors in your actions. The sutra says:

Three subpillars of life support healthy happiness and longevity:

food, sleep, and proper action. And in that order: first proper food (ahar) in a timely manner, and then sufficient timely sleep (7-8 hours a night), and this will support ALL your actions, actions that are worthy of powerful Brahma consciousness, rooted in peace, life-supporting and evolutionary, bringing you balance and bliss. You'd be surprised to see how - when you are well fed and well rested - your mind operates optimally in sync with your heart and you can be the boss of your own life! 

This was the core teaching of Vaidya Mishra. He helped - and continues to help - countless seekers on their path to greater balance and bliss by sharing with us his great ayurvedic wisdom and unprecedented healing gifts. We miss him terribly. But in memory of this extraordinary ayurvedic guru and healer, we stick close to his teachings, following what he generously taught us, taking him along, in our hearts, into the new year that dawns upon us now, and all the new days that are to come. 
 

Visit Vaidya Mishra's blog www.svayurveda.com/blog to find

SVA recipes, tips and guidance for all areas of life,

to help you make 2018 the most blissful and most balanced year ever yet! 

Titelbild: fotolia.com © Floydine #184088858