The Ayurveda Lifestyle

Ayurveda is a traditional, and personalised medicine using entirely natural methods. It offers us a holistic definition of health encompassing the whole individual – body, mind and spirit – over an entire lifespan. Modern medicine, in contrast, has a much narrower focus on disease, targeting the eradication of the symptoms of specific conditions fast. 

It is the choice of lifestyle which has the power to lead to either health or disease. There are specific health routines and personalised choices according to Ayurveda which constitute a healthy lifestyle. The mechanism by which this works is a better body bio-energy balance, the elimination of toxins and an optimised function of natural processes. Optimised natural processes will mean you sleep better naturally, your stresslevels are reduced, your digestion is improved, and you can improve performanceand increase energy.

The benefit of a healthy lifestyle is not only disease prevention; it also makes a contribution to personal development. To flourish and achieve positive growth as a human being and acquire a functional balance, you need to purposely design your lifestyle to support this positive growth. Some people I speak to remember a distinct point in their lives where they needed to make a choice which path to take in life. 

The components of a lifestyle are: choices, routines and habits. Ayurveda helps with personalised choices and offers routines for a healthy lifestyle to prevent disease and maximise health,energy and performance. There are daily routines and there are seasonal routines you can choose from. 

Choices

A choice involves decision-making. It can include judging the merits of multiple options and selecting one or more of them. We go to the market and buy food; we have to make choices which foods we are going to buy. We travel and eat on the go, so we have to make fresh choices. We cannot apply a routine because we have to discriminate and make a new choice in this moment. Ayurveda helps with this decision-making, by matching your body type to the best choices for your body type.

Routines

A routine can take place once we have made a choice at least once. A routine is performed as part of a regular procedure and a sequence of actions is regularly followed. A routine springs into action once we have made the decision and stick to it. We are not reviewing each component of this routine every single time we perform it. We make the decision once, and then we follow the sequence. 

Habits

Habits are those recurrent patterns of behaviour acquired through frequent repetition. It takes 40 days of repetition to make a dent in an old habit, so you can have a fair chance of cracking it.  A habit is a behavioural pattern, settled and regular, and one that is hard to give up. What we want to eliminate and reduce are those habits which are unhelpful and were unconsciously created, and maximise those based on choice which are beneficial for our well-being. 

Addictions 

Addiction is a condition in which a person engages in behaviour for which the rewarding effects provide a compelling incentive to repeatedly pursue the behaviour. So, there is a short-term gain. But there are detrimental consequences in the long run. Addictions share many of the same brain mechanisms of compulsivity.

My work as a health coach and Ayurvedic practitioner is to guide you, and accompany you through the continuous changes you will be able to make so that you can design a lifestyle which is personalised, based on choice and which will prioritise your well-being. This will be a lifestyle with the power to live yourself happy.

About:

Sonja Breuer (MSc. ayur. med.) is tapping into a niche solution for improving sleep by combining the eastern medicine of Ayurveda and yoga. The products available are online courses and individual coaching. She encourages people to embrace lifestyle changes to bring about better sleep, leading to greater levels of well-being, energy and performance. 

Sonja is qualified with a postgraduate degree in Ayurvedic medicine and has more than 1000 yoga-teaching hours. She holds coaching and mentoring diplomas and has energy healing abilities. She has devised online programmes for better sleep: “7 Steps to Better Sleep” and “Yoga for Better Sleep”, so you can get started immediately, either before or whilst working with her in person, with four individual coaching sessions “Seasonal Coaching” or her 40-day intensive programme “Live Yourself Happy in 40 days”.