Episode 223 - Ayurveda : The 3 nervous system mistakes you make in the morning

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Welcome to the Ayurveda and Psychology podcast. I am Charlotte Scogsberg, psychologist, Ayurveda practitioner, and yoga teacher. This is a space where we explore the path of self-realization through the physical, mental, and spiritual spectrums. In each episode, I share practical tools from the ancient wisdom of Yoga and Ayurveda, as well as the modern approach to the human mind of clinical psychology. In order to help you reconnect with yourself, understand your nature, and live with more awareness. In this episode that focuses on Ayurveda, I want to continue on our journey around how our brain functions, how stress impacts us, and how anxiety is born from that. And I want to give you the chance to heal whatever needs to be healed, maybe, without going for the pharmaceutics, but to offer you the perspective from the Ayurvedic healing based on the law of nature. And so today I'm going to speak more specifically about three extremely common mistakes we make for our nervous system as soon as we wake up in the morning. Before we get into the episode, if you are new to the podcast, let me welcome you to this worldwide community and to also remind you that you can connect with us as well through the newsletter. And you find the link for that in the show notes. If you are coming back to the podcast, here is what I know about you. You're committed to a life worth living. And you are certain that this is achieved from knowing yourself because this anchors you and creates self-empowerment. Anyone who comes from an anchored and self-empowered place will go out into the world and create meaningful relationships. From the very first one, that is the one with themselves, and then extend that to the relationship with others. If you are here because someone in your life shared this episode with you, I would like to congratulate you because you are someone who people care about. Actually, cortisol released in the body, and that is going to then affect all the other hormones. And this is also super important to know not only for everyone, but for women after a certain age, so depending on very much, but let's say somewhere after 35, there is a sensitivity towards cortisol or towards stressors that is heightened, which means that we are more easily affected in the other hormones if stress has been affected after 35 and on. And I would want to point out that women who started to notice that they have some changes in how they function might want to be extra attentive to what I'm about to tell you today. So first and foremost, know that the first hour after waking up in the morning is really crucial in order to set your day. There's an Ayurvedic saying which is very wise and very beautiful, and that many of us completely ignore. And that is a good night's sleep starts the morning before. What does that mean? Right? A lot of people are experiencing problems with sleep. And it is very common for us to focus on a whole lot of things in order to deal with that, but not necessarily how we start our day. It can be to focus around reducing caffeine, let's say, to not have coffee or anything caffeinated after a certain time of the day. It is often as well advised to have a specific routine in the evening in order to calm yourself down for sleep. And there are plenty of advices on how you set your scene, let's say, in the bedroom in order to sleep well. But not as often do we hear about what to do in the morning in order to help our sleep. Now, this expression from Ayurveda becomes even more relatable or true when we integrate the simple understanding of the cortisol rhythm. So our hormones have rhythms. They function according to the sun. And progressively it rises so that somewhere after wake up, so somewhere actually between six in the morning and eight in the morning, it should be at the highest, which is quite logical, right? Because cortisol, even though many of us believe that it's something very negative, is a very good hormone to have because it's the hormone that stimulates us to move, to be motivated, to do things. And so it makes sense that after sleeping, a couple of hours there in the morning, cortisol rises so that we get going, right? And then it fluctuates a little bit actually during the day, and there can be some dips or heightens in the afternoon. So many have experienced kind of the dip of cortisol when they maybe push their cortisol too high in the morning, so that the dip in the afternoon is even stronger, which makes them very tired and sluggish around 3-4 perhaps. In any case, it goes a little bit, it fluctuates a little bit, and then at the same time, but in the evening, so somewhere around eight in the evening, so let's say somewhere between six and eight as well. There, it starts to slow down and lower. So that may be somewhere around eight, it is around the lowest point. This is, of course, why many people, if they would really listen to their bodies, they would experience kind of this dip, feeling tired, somewhere around eight, eight, nine in the evening. If they would truly listen to that, it would be the perfect moment, therefore, to go to bed or to at least prepare for bed, to allow for that dip in the cortisol to bring them also further down and make them feel more tired and more easily fall asleep. What often happens is that we ignore it, and maybe even that creates that craving idea that, oh, maybe I want something sweet, which is common in the evening anyway. I speak about that more specifically in another episode. In episode 218, I speak about why we eat emotionally when, well, nothing seems to be wrong. And one of those reasons is what happens in the evening, right? And that that tendency to reach for something sweet happens more in the evening. There is a direct link with the cortisol rhythm as well. Uh, I also speak about how to deal with those uh kind of cravings and the anxiety around it in episode 220. So if you haven't listened to those two, you might want to deepen that knowledge after this episode. Anyway, if we reach for something sweet, it's the evening, and then we continue with whatever we're doing, we usually tend to experience what is called a second wind somewhere around 10. So this means the body is reading the environment as a threat. We are not sleeping, even though the sun has been down for hours. It must mean that something is going on. And so we experience this alertness that happens, which then makes it even harder to go to sleep. By taking care of this rhythm, this release of cortisol, and helping it to regulate when it's not regulated, we will regulate our nervous system, which means that in the long run, we will also help our sleep to come back to a good quality. It is very common to therefore have a lot of dysregulation when it comes to cortisol. Very much because during those first hours of the day, when cortisol is going to be high, naturally, we tend to these days do a lot of things that is going to spike that height of cortisol even more. And so, as a way to start healing yourself, to reduce your anxiety, your levels of stress, to increase your sleep quality, to help your digestive system, because all of these things are directly affected by a dysregulated nervous system, or as we would call it in Ayurveda, vata out of balance. Because this is really what it's all about. Vata is out of balance, and for that reason, we want to align with the natural rhythm of the doshas in the atmosphere and therefore in us as a way to regulate and to bring balance back in. So, for that reason, we want to actually focus quite a bit on what happens in the morning and what we do as a way to help our nervous system to reduce the cortisol spike and therefore to balance vata. One very common thing that happens for a lot of people as soon as they wake up in the morning is that they take a look at their phone. Now I understand, because this is even my situation, that it is very convenient to have your phone not too far away so that you are capable of, for instance, seeing what time it is, or to have an alarm on your phone. There are ways around not having your phone there, right? First and foremost. And there's also ways around having it there without it being too devastating for your nervous system. I'll get to that in a second. But it is important to understand that when you wake up in the morning, you are naturally heightened in your stress levels a little bit. Now, if you're also someone who's suffering from nervous system dysregulation and maybe difficulties with sleep and so on, there's a good chance that it's even higher so that you're on high alert. This is very much what happens when we wake up and even though we didn't sleep much, we're kind of ready to go straight away, kind of rolling out of bed. And we might even feel this urge to get moving. It's a very big difference between waking up, feeling relaxed, in a good mood, and not feeling stressed at all of getting out of bed. So a really good way of noting this and noticing as well what your stress levels are like is to just begin kind of noting for yourself, maybe even in a little notebook would be good, how you feel, what's the quality that's going on inside of you when you wake up in the morning. If you therefore reach for your phone, there's the increase of stress that happens through the blue light that is just shining straight into your eyes, a very artificial kind of urgency feeling. There's especially if you start to scroll, or just switching your phone on, and maybe there's all these like notifications that come in, right? With emails and WhatsApp and whatever it might be. And if you also then start to scroll, you might even have news as notifications, right? A lot of people do that. There's just an overload of information that is absolutely not natural for the human and for our brain, and especially not good at that time of the day. And so there's really this trigger in the brain of the chemicals, such as dopamine, that starts to happen because with all these like flashing lights and the red dots of notifications and so on, I've spoken about dopamine in the past as well. You can go and check out the episode 121 on dopamine and how to reset those levels. But in any case, to come back to what we are talking about, there's a lot of stimulation that happens that is not good for our stress levels, that are much easier to deal with when we are in a much more relaxed state. So when we reach for our phone first thing in the morning, especially if we are dysregulated in our nervous system, like a lot of people actually are, this is one of the first mistakes that we make. So here's the thing: Ayurvedically, the early hours of the day is actually what we would call the vata time of the day. I have a whole episode on the morning routine and also how the doshas are in dominance in various times of the day. I'm not going to go into that now. You can go and check that episode out. However, the early hours of the day is when vata is dominant in the atmosphere. This is the reason that that lightness exists inside of us. And if we would allow for it to be, so instead of reaching for the phone, for instance, or anything that will make us more stressed, it is a perfect time for clarity, for clear seeing and clear thinking. And so, for that reason, we have this lightness naturally inside of us, which is going to make us more, let's say, volatile. So the stress is going to increase more easily. We want to use that instead to make it into something good for ourselves. Because this is a time of the day when our cortisol is heightened, when vata is out of balance or active, I should say, more easily. It is 100% preferable to do various things that are going to calm vata, that is going to pacify it, that is going to reduce stress levels inside of us. This is the whole reason that in most spiritual practices, and for sure the yogic philosophy and Ayurveda, there's a whole kind of list of things that you can do in the morning that is going to calm the nervous system, that is going to balance Vata. Things like journaling, things like meditation, doing specifically certain things from the Ayurvedic perspective, such as starting your day drinking warm water. It has other benefits, but actually, warm water is one of the first actions to take when vata is high. Vata, the wind, cold, light, and dry. Warm water, kind of the opposite of all of that. So drinking, hydrating after have been dehydrated for many hours, actually. We wake up, we are dehydrated, right? And so it is really important for our health and for our nervous system to regulate that. This is why it is so important to find what would be good for you. Just a few things that works to regulate your nervous system as the first thing you do in the morning. Now, what can we do about this mistake of the reaching for the phone? Well, there's several things. Number one, of course, would be to just not have your phone in your bedroom, right? Find the old-fashioned way of having time and an alarm through a clock, right? A wake-up clock. And I would say if you could have one of the old-fashioned ones that doesn't have those digits on them, that's even better because that way you don't have like that lighting. But anyway, that's a detail and it might not be working for everyone. But I would say that if you have the possibility to not have your phone with you, that's really great. Now, what you can do, of course, as well, like maybe some of you already know, is that you can change the color filters on your phone so that you don't have that blue light straight away, and you can put on a red light, a red filter instead. Um, I actually do that on my phone from sunset already, so that I don't have that uh light in my eyes even in the evening. And then, of course, turning the phone off so that. Well, potentially you could have the time if you need it, and even an alarm, because of course the alarm works even if the phone is turned off. So that would be potentially what you could do if you still need to have the phone there. Then, no matter what, whether it's there or not, what you want to do is that you want to have the first 30 to 60 minutes phone less. You're awake, you know what time it is, you know how much time you have in front of you in order to be ready for work or whatever it might be, right? You don't need to be on the phone after that. So if you can then put together a routine that you have that will last between 30 and 60 minutes, where you do other things that are ideally there for regulating the nervous system, you have the potential of not looking at your phone during that time. This sounds really simple, and it is, but it's so effective. So there's the drinking of the warm water, there's the abianga, the self-massage that you can do, the lymphatic flow massage, right? Going to the bathroom, sit down for meditation for a few minutes, maybe journal a little bit, right? All of those things you can do. You can start, you can roll out your mat, maybe even you do some stretches, whatever it is. All of that within the next 30 to 60 minutes after waking up is going to regulate your nervous system and it's going to help you to not be on your phone during that time. So that's a really good thing to do. I would definitely recommend to look into the episode I have on the morning routine in order to get some good ideas from there. Now, that actually brings me automatically on to the second mistake because I'm going to go a little bit more into what it is that I do specifically after during that first hour or even a little bit longer. So the second mistake is to start your day without anything grounding for Vata, balancing Vata, without focusing on balancing the Vata energy or without grounding your nervous system. As I mentioned, because it's already volatile at that time, it is really good to have as your morning routine several things that helps to balance vata. This is going to help you to have a decision by yourself in which mindset you want to face the day. As opposed to, which is very common, kind of this rolling out of bed, feeling already stressed because it feels as if you're late, and rushing through the morning and then getting to work or whatever it is that you're doing, and you're already agitated, and the mindset is not a choice by you, it's not intentional, it's recreational, reactive, I want to say. It's reactive instead. So there are the specific Ayurvedic routines of the morning that have other reasons to be. Okay, so I've spoken about many of these things before with different perspectives when it comes to reducing inflammation, when it comes to um cleaning ourselves and starting afresh, and so on. But they also have a nervous system reset. Scraping your tongue actually has a direct link to your vagus nerve, really brings safety and presence into our body. Oil pulling, wonderful way to release tensions, even in the jaw. That tends to be something that people with a lot of stress have and during the night and grinding our teeth and things like that. So oil pulling is a really good way to reduce those tensions, to relax the neck, and even just to have this like kind of meditative thing that you do for several minutes while you swish that oil around in your mouth. I mentioned already the warm water that you drink. This is going to have a really beneficial effect on your digestive system and help to flush out and to hydrate and help the lymphatic system. But it is also grounding. Drinking that warm water is going to balance the dryness and the cold and the lightness of the vata dosha. Having a moment to massage your body is essential for calming the nerves, to stimulate your vagus nerve, and therefore to relax. But also, on top of that, I've spoken about it in the lymphatic episode. If you're interested in knowing more on how Ayurveda helps for your lymphatic health, you can go and check out episode 128 about that. So there's a whole lot of reasons why having a self-massage in the morning is super healthy. And it is also to regulate vata, to regulate the nervous system. Now, it doesn't have to be a super complicated procedure with lots of oil and going to take an hour and so on and so forth, so it feels super impractical. No, you can actually do this even without any kind of oil. And it can be this kind of lymphatic activation. I have a specific one that I do that I use actually in my program, Nourish Balance Thrive, with the participants there that they get quite early on as a practice to do in the morning. So it doesn't have to be super long. It can be if you know the points. There's only like six or eight points, for instance, that I personally do, and it's a huge difference. It brings so much grounding into the system. And of course, not to forget the spiritual practices of breath work, pranayama, and meditation. They're going to ground you, to relax you. And anyone who's tried this can confirm it. I mean, it's not as if it's unknown, right? So anyone who has started having a meditative practice in the morning, even five minutes, are going to tell you that they notice the difference straight away. Even if it feels as if I meditation is difficult and they can't get into it and so on, they do five minutes, even if it's easier. So I have as well with the people I work with in general, it means that they might not have done so much meditation before. I have my guided meditations that I give them. And that might be easier as a way to start. And when it comes to regulating your nervous system, that's what you want to aim for. You're not aiming for being the enlightened Buddha on the mountain. You're aiming for health. And so you don't have to do a vipassana meditation for an hour. You can sit down with a recording of a voice that you like for 10 minutes, and that is perfect for you. You don't have to do all of these things, right? I gave you here a list of things that work and that are beneficial. You can choose one of them. And then maybe later on, when you feel that this has helped you, you might add in a second one, right? It doesn't have to be all of it. And then the third mistake in this one, I see a lot and I experienced in my past a lot. And this is something that is even just normal, quote unquote. And that is to have various times when we wake up. Big difference between weekdays and um weekends, for instance. And actually, so this is for several reasons, it's not great for our nervous system. And very much it's the circadian rhythm. And it has even been given a name, which is called social jet lagging. So why do we call it social jet lagging? Well, of course, because it is very much a question of our social life. To have one wake-up time in Monday to Friday, and then all of a sudden it's hours later on the weekends. And this is actually jet lagging us. And jet lag is something that is, it costs a lot to the system. And when we do it there for regularly over months and years, it is going to affect our nervous system and our overall health. Those of you who have experienced travel from between several time zones have experienced probably as well just how much it can take to get back to normal when you've traveled, let's say, to a place that's like six, seven hours different from where you live. It might take you a week, and that's perfectly normal, actually, because it's as if your body is completely in havoc, like you have no idea what's going on. Vata is so out of balance. You might have noticed it with being constipated for days, or that you're not sleeping at the right times, or you wake up super hungry in the middle of the night, and then when it's lunchtime, you don't want to eat and so on, right? And so jet lag is absolutely very taxing to the body. And when we have this social jet lagging, it is just bit by bit affecting us all the time. So that's not great, especially if you're someone who has some issues with your nervous system. This will absolutely affect in the long run your metabolism and your stress levels. This doesn't necessarily mean that you have to wake up at the exact time every single day. But if there's a difference between, for instance, waking up at 6, 6.30 and then all of a sudden getting up more as like 9.10, then we are talking about maybe four hours difference. That's already quite the jet lag, that's quite the travel. If we're talking about getting, you know, the 6.30 and then it might be 7.30 instead on the weekend, then we're still kind of in the same time span. Now, ideally, Ayurvedically, we want to wake up in what is called the Brahma Mutra. That is about an hour before sunrise. Now, you don't have to do this, and especially if you're someone who's like, how is that even possible? But the reason Ayurveda recommends this is because in that time there's something very special happening in the atmosphere. Hey there! Are you listening to these episodes because you're interested in Ayurveda andor psychology? Have you signed up already for my newsletter? Did you know that there's a whole community behind Ayurveda and Psychology? If you sign up for the newsletter today, you will get a free gift from me. I have an Ayurvedic Lifestyle cookbook, and if you sign up right now, you will get a free recipe sent to you from that cookbook. You find the details in the show note. Those of you who have experienced this, you probably know what I mean. There is this moment before the world wakes up, it feels, right? And I remember when I lived in Bali, this was an incredible time of the day because, of course, this was there for the time that the Balinese would do their offerings, the morning offerings. And so you would have this quietness just before the sun was rising. There was still dark and there was a little bit of gent. No one moved too much. You don't have to move a lot there because there's this lightness, so you move slowly, it's just waking up slowly, and you started to smell the incense sticks from each and every house where they started to prepare the offerings for the morning. And then as the sun began to rise, you could smell it more and more, and that's when like the day is waking up. And so what's really good is if you have the chance to wake up quite early so that you're experiencing a little bit of that stillness. That is a wonderful way to also see things clearly for you, to set the order of the day personally, right? And therefore start with a nervous system that feels grounded and that feels regulated. Now, it doesn't necessarily mean that after years of doing the opposite of these three typical mistakes, you are going to experience the benefits of it. It might take a little bit of time because, well, the karmic, let's say, action of having the result of a dysregulated nervous system in your body is also going to take quite some time to come back. The body needs to understand what is going on, it needs to get used to what is going on, and it needs to therefore stabilize. So you need to also have patience with yourself when you start doing these things. And it's why it can be really beneficial, for instance, to work with someone, someone who guides you to do this. And when it comes to the Ayurvedic guidance, what I love about it is that Ayurveda is an holistic practice. So it addresses what your needs are, let's say, for your physical body and for these chemicals in your brain, the hormones and the cortisol, but it is also the very first psychology there ever was, which means that you're also addressing maybe the psychological reasons that you've put behind why your nervous system is dysregulated. And so that's also why it's so interesting to have someone who mirrors what's going on for you and who can help you to question, maybe to ask yourself the right questions. The reason I'm saying this is because I was recently having this conversation with a client of mine where we are working on the circadian rhythm and the mealtimes, for instance. But behind there, there's also an aspect that's psychological, which is well, where we speak about the gunas, right? So these very subtle energies of rajas, maybe, the heat that wants to make us move forward because there is a need to feel that you are productive, that you're getting things done, so that you know that you can provide for yourself. Me personally, one of the reasons that I for many years would struggle with sleep was linked to this rajasic tendency inside of me of needing to get up early in the morning and to do my ashtanga practice. And the hidden reason behind there was actually not so righteous as to just wanting to do my spiritual practice, but the need and the desire to control my body. And so when you start to look into the intentions and the drives behind what we do, you're going to find that you have the course of something that might be much deeper than the surface-level belief about it. And when you therefore find the cure for the course, it's going to be much easier, once solved, to change the behavior, to change the tendency and the pattern. Thank you for joining me in this episode of Ayurveda and Psychology Podcast. If this content resonated with you and you feel ready to go deeper in your healing journey, you can book a personal live session with me or explore my programs at the website. You can also follow me on Instagram at iurveda.psychology where I share rituals, tips, and weekly reflections. If you enjoy this episode, share it with someone who might need it or leave a review. It helps this community to grow. I'll see you next Friday with a new episode. Take care and stay grounded.