My Ultimate Ayurvedic Travel Tips
Every morning when I’m at home, I wake up to the sound of roosters crowing and begin my morning routine. I roll to my right side, sit up and say my prayers, get out of bed, do all the bathroom dinacharya (self care), have some warm water, then matcha, then breakfast, check my phone, and then hit the beach for a morning surf. I come home, have a snack, lunch at noon, dinner at six, and bed at nine.
I’m a rhythmic pitta machine. And I love it that way, mostly because when I follow a routine, my body feels fabulous.
Whether you like it or not, your body needs a routine, too.
If you don’t give your body a routine, how can you expect your body to give you a routine—to poop on time, digest well, fall asleep with ease, and have regular periods? You can’t!
If you’ve learned about Ayurveda or if you’ve taken Learn Your Body with me, you know how important a daily routine is.
But what happens when you travel??? How are you supposed to follow your amazing Ayurvedic routine and be a rhythmic pitta machine when you’re totally out of your normal flow?
Here’s when you’ll need to loosen up a little. Let that pitta perfection go and welcome a bit of vata chaos.
Because that’s the potential nature of travel. Vata chaos.
You will not be able to follow everything you do as you do it at home: your diet changes, you can’t do all the lovely oily Ayurvedic practices that you love, your sleep will get disturbed, you can’t eat on time…everything will be a little off!
So my first Ultimate Ayurvedic Travel Tip for you is to soften.
If you’re tightly wound around your routine, your mind is going to experience all the more cravings and aversions (it constantly fluctuates between the two). If you can’t let go of control, you’ll crave what you don’t have or can’t get (your own bed, healthy food…) and have aversions to what is unexpectedly thrown your way (travel delays, bad weather)…and this will inexorably imbalance you.
Let go a little. Accept that things will be different while you travel, and that’s ok.
That said, my second Ultimate Ayurvedic Travel Tip is to actually keep up with your daily routine as you let go a little.
As much as possible, eat at your regular mealtimes and sleep at your regular bedtime while you’re traveling. These two factors alone will help stabilize your vata, protect your digestion despite your change in diet (less gas, bloat, and aama), and rejuvenate you after your active days. It’s when your bedtime and mealtimes drastically change and vary that digestion and vata are likely to be negatively affected.
Due to the nature of travel this is not always so easy to do, especially when you’re traveling with others or on someone else’s schedule. Here’s where you’ll have to layer in Travel Tip number one and soften. Do your best and let go of the rest.
My third Ultimate Ayurvedic Travel Tip is to bring a small bottle of coconut or sesame oil on your trip.
Oil balances vata, and vata is the dosha that gets imbalanced with travel.
Use it to swish in the morning after brushing your teeth, in place of lotion after the shower, and most importantly, use it for abhyanga: self oil massage. Run it under hot tap water to warm it up a bit and then generously massage your whole body with gentle, downward moving strokes.
It’s so helpful for your body to do abhyanga the day before and the day after travel (as long as you’re not sick or on your period). I like to do it the day before I leave for a trip and the day I after I return home, and depending on the towel and shower situation, I’ll sneak in an abhyanga or two during my trip.
If for whatever reason that’s not possible, I have an abhyanga substitution that targets vata in all the right places. Warm a little oil between your hands and then massage it onto your ears, the soles of your feet, and put a drop or two on the very top point of your head (the bregma). Leave the oil on and go about your day.
Now for my Ultimate Ayurvedic Travel Tip for preventing jet lag, practice sun gazing to speed up the adaptation process to your new time zone.
Do take rest when you arrive to your destination. Have a little lie down or a nap if you’ve lost sleep during travel. And then try to hop on the new schedule as soon as possible.
Sun gazing will help a lot, as it signals to your body’s internal clock what time of day it is.
In the first hour after sunrise and before sunset, when the sun is low in the sky (this is the only time this is safe and appropriate), stand outside and face the sun. Close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. Then open your eyes, gaze directly at the sun for 10-20 seconds (or gaze near the sun it if that feels more comfortable), and then close your eyes and continue to gaze at the internal sun until it disappears. Repeat one or two more times.
I swear by this trick. I do it for the first several days when I arrive to my new destination and it even prevents me from getting jet lag when I go to India, which has an 11.5 hour time difference from my home in Mexico!
And for my final Ultimate Ayurvedic Travel Tip: when you eat out, eat a little less than usual.
Restaurant food will inevitably be heavier than whatever you would typically eat at home. Restaurants use more oil, salt, sugar, and generally speaking, low quality ingredients.
But don’t think about it too much, you gotta eat, and again you’ll need to soften here if you’re typically rigid about your diet (and best to learn to soften at home, too!)
Because we can eat more quantity of light foods and less quantity of heavy foods and still digest well (think about how you can eat a big bowl of popcorn and feel nothing or a tiny burger and feel quite full), eat just a little less than usual when you’re eating out. Being heavy by nature, restaurant food will better digest if the stomach isn’t super full.
I’m sure you’re going to feel much better on your next trip if you follow these guidelines. Just remember:
Soften and let go a little
Follow your regular meal and bed times as best you can
Bring a small bottle of oil with you
Practice sun gazing if you change time zones
Eat a little less than usual in restaurants
Wishing you wonderful travels with calm vata and easygoing pitta!