Dinacharya, Early to Rise

Dinacharya, Early to Rise

Dinacharya (Sanskrit: दिनचर्या "daily-routine") is a concept in Ayurvedic medicine that looks at the cycles of nature and bases daily activities around these cycles. Ayurveda tells us that routines help establish balance and that understanding daily cycles are useful for promoting health. This is a series of articles that cover these routines.

Dinacharya says that each day two cycles of change occur, that correlate with the Ayurvedic concept of dosha.

Routines covered by dinacharya include: waking time, elimination, hygiene, massage, exercise, bathing, meditation and prayer, meals, study, work, relaxation and sleeping

Waking Time

If you’ve always been skeptical about that “early bird gets the worm” theory, what you will read now should lay any doubts to rest. Waking up early in the morning doesn’t just mean getting more out of your day, but could also reflect well on your health! In Ayurveda perspective, being early to rise has a lot of benefits on our doshas.

Brahma muhurta

One should wake up about one and a half hour before sunrise so that you can synchronize with the rhythm of the sun. Ayurveda recommends an auspicious time - Brahma-muhurta which means ‘the time of Brahma…the pure consciousnesses - for rising up in morning.

Energetic Shift

About an hour and a half before the sunrise, a great shift in energy fills space. Then, about half an hour before sunrise, the second boom of energy dawns in the atmosphere. Hope, inspiration and peace manifest at this time. This time is considered best for attaining Brahm Gyan (meditation and self-analysis), supreme knowledge and eternal happiness.

Pure Environment

At this time, the environment is pure and calm and soothing and the mind is fresh after sleep. Meditation at this time improves mental performance thus helps in increasing sattva guna, therefore, subduing mental irritation or hyperactivity and lethargy which is contributed by rajas and tamas guna.

Beautiful Sanksrit Meditation

There is no need to understand the words they contain seed sounds for bringing a sense of peace by simply listening.

Basically saying, the benefits of waking up early are as follows:

1. Experience a greater degree of proactiveness.
2. Feel more satisfaction, happiness, and positivity.
3. Lead a less sedentary life.
4. Maintain a healthy weight and be healthier.
5. Face a lower chance of depression and psychological ailments.
6. “Feel” healthier!
7. Beat sluggishness and heaviness.

These are wonderful benefits.

But how can you get those if it’s really hard to rise early?

Here are some tips on how through Ayurveda way. Your objective, if you want to begin waking early, is to reprogram your body back to its natural biorhythm of harnessing the energy of the rising sun.

To do this, follow these few steps each night:

1. Eat an early dinner.
Finish by around 6 p.m. or as early as possible so you don’t go to sleep with a full belly. Sleeping on a full stomach means waking up with a bunch of undigested food in the digestive tract—a heavy, toxic sludge that serves to weigh you down. If your belly is still actively digesting when you go to sleep, you’re also less likely to sleep well, so getting out of bed the next morning will, of course, be more difficult.

2. Go to bed early.
Aim to be asleep before 10 p.m. so you’ll reap the benefits of the most rejuvenative hours of sleep of the night (first half of the night) and sleep enough hours that you don’t feel like you need to stay in bed late.

3. Set your alarm before or at 6 a.m.

4. Know that the first few (or many) mornings will be tough.
Mentally prepare for that. If you wake up feeling tired because your body is so accustomed to snoozing later, DON’T STAY IN BED. Instead, commit to going to bed earlier that night. Because you’re working WITH the forces of nature when you wake early, once your body is reprogrammed to its natural biorhythm, waking up DOES get easier (even for the sleepiest late sleepers).

5. Garner support!
Lack of support is one of the biggest reasons people don’t stick to their health goals. There’s no need to go it alone. You can enlist support by asking a “morning person” family member or friend to call you a few minutes after your alarm clock is set to go off. If you live in a household with others, also enlist them; if they don’t want to wake early, you can simply ask for their moral support. We are also here to support you.

Getting up early in the morning has its own perks, at a point of time it may feel like the toughest thing to do, but if go on counting the health benefits it has to offer, it no longer feels that bad. There are many reasons those have made early risers healthy, so next time you hit the snooze button on the alarm clock, try to remember all the benefits you are signing up to lose.