The Daily Plan

This is the rhythm of a day as Ayurveda describes it. Within twenty-four hours the three energies — Vata, Pitta and Kapha — each hold sway for four hours, twice over. "As the microcosm, so the macrocosm" is Ayurveda's saying. Our body is a mirror of the universe.

Before the clock came, people knew the time by looking at the sun and the moon. At the end of the nineteenth century the clock arrived and made that knowledge be forgotten. Wisdom handed down through generations was set aside as superstition. But the body still follows the old rhythm. The clock changed; the body did not.

There are six blocks of time in this chapter, four hours each. We will look at what to do in each, why to do it, and what happens if you break it.

Vata | 2 – 6 in the early morning

The hour the body clears its waste

• Rising before sunrise — the best window is 5:00 to 6:00 in the morning.
• A glass of warm water on waking.
• Brush the teeth, scrape the tongue.
• Clearing the waste — this hour exists for exactly that.
• Meditation, prayer, pranayama.
• Gentle yoga and stretching.

It is in these four hours that the body takes waste from the liver, from the cells and from the gut, and moves it towards the organs of elimination. The lymphatic system breaks down microbes, the waste of metabolism, and worn-out cells.

It is worth knowing how the body's waste leaves — about 70 per cent through the lungs, 20 per cent through the skin, 7 per cent through urine, 3 per cent through stool. Which is to say that breath and sweat are the main drains. That is why bathing in the morning and breathing practice matter so much.

Body temperature reaches its lowest at four in the morning, then slowly begins to climb. By about six, warmth and the stress hormones have risen enough for the day to begin.

One thing matters here: for the waste to clear completely the body has to be awake and upright. Lying down, it will not happen.

Waking to an alarm is not good — it cuts the stages of sleep off abruptly, before they have finished naturally. Irritability, headache and agitation can follow all day. The simple way to govern the hour you wake is to fix the hour you go to bed.

Kapha | 6 – 10 in the morning

Energy and movement

• Brisk exercise to break up the heaviness — this is the best hour of the day for it.
• A walk outdoors, in the sun.
• An oil rub and bath (abhyanga).
• A light, warm breakfast before eight — only if you want it.
• Beginning the day's important work.

At around six in the morning the adrenal glands release cortisol and adrenaline and lift the body — the way a battery starts an engine. The sex hormones are at their peak at this hour too.

When natural light falls on the eye the brain secretes more serotonin. It is serotonin that gives cheer and liveliness for the whole day. At night that same thing turns into melatonin and brings sleep. Which is to say, if you want to sleep well tonight you have to go outside this morning.

Kapha is the heavy energy of earth and water together. So in the morning the body will feel somewhat heavy. That is natural — exercise at this hour exists precisely to break that heaviness up.

The oil rub and bath (abhyanga) belongs to this hour. Sesame oil works through every layer of the skin, binds the toxins and carries them out. A third of the immune system sits in the skin.

Pitta | 10 in the morning – 2 in the afternoon

Digestion and attention at their peak

• The largest meal of the day — lunch — between 12 and 1.
• Only now is the digestive fire at its strongest.
• Do the hard intellectual work now.
• Important decisions and calls belong in this window.
• Sit for ten minutes after eating, then walk for fifteen.

When the sun is at its height, digestion is at its height too. Bile, stomach acid and the enzymes are all secreted at their greatest volume and strength. This is why the day's main meal should be eaten at this hour.

If sleep comes over you after a meal, that is a warning. It will be one of three things — the food was too heavy, or a mixture of things that do not agree; the night's sleep was not enough; or you ate later than one o'clock.

Food is meant to give you energy. If instead the body has to draw on its own stores merely to digest the food, nothing is left for the rest of the day.

On most days in the Nila Nalam plan the midday meal is the green blend drink (SM). This is the reason — giving something full of nourishment at the hour when the digestive fire is strong.

Vata | 2 – 6 in the afternoon

Creativity and absorption

• The right hours for work that calls for creativity.
• The best hours for learning, and for holding things in memory.
• Light tasks, letters, conversations.
• A short walk at about five in the evening.
• Avoid heavy food, and a large meal taken late.

Vata means movement. It is at this hour that food moves along the gut and nourishment is absorbed and carried to the tissues. But for that to happen, Pitta must have finished its work earlier.

Eating at two or three in the afternoon spoils Pitta. Without enough bile and digestive juice, absorption falls — and this is one of the chief reasons for nutrient deficiency.

Because the activity of the nerve cells rises, the brain works well at this hour. In a study at the University of Wales, students who attended afternoon classes did better in examinations than those in morning classes. The afternoon is the better time to visit the dentist too — pain is felt less.

A craving in the afternoon for sweets, tea, coffee, chocolate or a cigarette — these are signs of poor digestion and of nutrient deficiency. Most people with a drinking habit reach for the first drink at the close of this very window.

This is why, in the plan of this book, the day's solid meal (LN or SM) comes at five in the evening — the close of the Vata hour, the moment when digestion has not yet gone out altogether.

Kapha | 6 – 10 in the evening

Winding down and settling

• A light evening meal, between 6 and 7.
• A fifteen-minute walk.
• Rest, and time with the family; quiet things, such as music.
• Deep breathing before bed.
• Going to sleep before ten at night.

As darkness begins, the digestive fire falls away quickly — it follows the sun. By the studies, the important digestive enzymes are not secreted at all after eight at night. Food eaten after seven does not digest but rots in the stomach. The feeling of a stone in the belly, and acid rising to the throat, are the signs of it.

At around nine at night immunity begins to fall — the anti-inflammatory endorphins and corticosteroids drop away suddenly. The body begins to save energy, because it will need a great deal of it over the next four hours.

Between nine and ten, sleep comes to most people. The brain secretes a natural sleeping draught; by the account of Harvard researchers, a cluster of cells in the hypothalamus sends a chemical signal that "switches off" the brain cells.

If sleep does not come at half past nine or ten at night, it means the melatonin cycle is already disturbed. To put it right, you have to begin from the morning light.

This is why the plan in this book has only water (W) at six in the evening and fruit (FR) at seven. Food has to be finished three hours before bedtime.

Pitta | 10 at night – 2 in the early morning

Repair and cleaning — this is what sleep is for

• Deep sleep — you should neither stay awake nor eat.
• The body cleans itself and renews its cells.
• The liver and the metabolism are at their inside work.
• Staying awake at this hour unsettles the whole cycle.

The liver is a Pitta organ. At this hour much of the body's energy goes to it; it carries out more than five hundred distinct tasks — sending nourishment and energy to the whole body, breaking down toxins, keeping the blood clean, preparing the bile needed for the next day, assembling proteins.

The brain is a fiftieth of the body's weight; yet ordinarily more than a quarter of the body's blood is in it. In the night-time Pitta hour, most of the blood at the back of the brain goes to the liver for storage and for cleaning. If at this hour you are at work with body or mind, the liver will not get blood enough.

If toxins keep circulating in the blood, they settle in the fluid between the tissues of the organs, raise the acidity, and damage the organs themselves. Most heart disease is the result of a liver that cannot clear the toxins from the blood day by day.

Sleep can be divided in two — before midnight and after it. For adults the most important cleaning and renewal happen in the two hours before midnight. The single hour from eleven to twelve is called "beauty sleep" — a deep, dreamless state in which oxygen consumption falls by eight per cent. It is three times deeper than sleep taken after midnight.

It is in that one hour that the growth hormones are secreted most — cell growth, repair and renewal are all their work. Those who do not secrete enough of them age faster.

A very important truth: deep sleep never happens after midnight. For it to come you must have fallen asleep at least two hours before midnight. "I slept eight hours" is not enough; the question is when you slept.

What happens when you break the rhythm

Suppose you sleep until eight in the morning. That is two hours inside the Kapha window. Vata's waste-clearing movement should have finished by six; but it has not.

Because Vata's force is still strong, that movement changes direction — like a river stopped by a dam. Instead of leaving, part of the waste is pushed back inside the body. Part of the urine returns to the kidney; the body's water balance is upset and the face, the eyes and the belly swell. The waste the skin tried to expel mixes into the lymph and the blood.

A build-up of lymph presses on the heart. You can feel it around the navel as knotted lumps — sometimes as large as a fist. Lying on your back they show; touched, they hurt.

A German study puts it still more plainly: rising late in the morning is a significant risk factor for heart attack. More people die of heart attack at nine on a Monday morning than at any other hour of the week. In that study most of those affected were people who woke at half past seven — what Ayurveda calls the "hour of danger".

Think of a morning on a holiday when you got up late. You will have felt dazed; you will have been tired all day. That is not laziness — it is the result of the liver being unable to clear the toxins from the blood.

If the morning light does not reach the eye, serotonin falls away. Cheer and liveliness go; in time that can turn into long-running low mood. "I do not feel like getting up" is its first sign.

How to drink water

Dehydration is the most widespread, and the least recognised, problem of today's society. Alcohol, coffee, tea, cold drinks — these have become the first choice for quenching thirst. But their chief effect is to drive water out of the blood and out of the cells.

Do not drink much water along with food — it thins the digestive juices and spoils the digestion itself. Before the meal and after it, not during.

A very important warning:

A body that has gone a long time without water must not suddenly be given a great deal of it. In dehydration the cells make their membranes waterproof — drawing in fat and cholesterol to seal themselves. In that state, drinking litres of water all at once leaves it pooling outside the cells, bringing on lymphatic congestion and swelling, and sometimes a danger to life.

Do it gradually: add only one glass a day to what you usually drink. Watch whether the amount you pass increases. If it does, you may add another glass or two; if it does not, cut back by half a glass. Raise the amount only once the kidney has begun passing the water on.

Rules for eating

Sometimes how we eat matters more than what we eat. These are the rules Ayurveda gives that suit everyday life.

• Half a teaspoon of grated ginger with a pinch of salt before eating — the best way to light the digestive fire. Splashing cold water on the face, the neck and the hands does the same.
• Eat in quiet surroundings, with a quiet mind. While eating there should be no work, no music, no reading, no television.
• Always sit down to eat — even for a small snack. Only when you are seated do the digestive juices flow as they should.
• Eat at roughly the same hours every day.
• Not too fast and not too slow — about twenty minutes, without a break.
• Fill only three quarters of the stomach. That is as much as you can measure by cupping your two hands together. A third of it should be liquid.
• No meal before the one before it has been digested. Three to six hours between meals, depending on what was eaten.
• Cold food and cold drink weaken immunity, damp down the digestive fire, and bring on phlegm.
• Let at least one meal a day carry all six tastes — sweet, sour, salt, pungent, bitter and astringent.
• Honey must never be heated or cooked; heat turns it into a poison.
• Never eat just before going to bed. At least three hours between food and sleep.
• Chew well — digestion begins in the mouth.
• Do not eat while anger, worry or grief has hold of the mind. Wait until the mind settles.
• Sleeping after a meal brings sluggishness and weight. Ten minutes' rest, then a fifteen-minute walk.
• Food should always be tasty and pleasing to the eye; and cooked by someone who is happy.

The order of food

The stomach is not a washing machine. It holds food in layers, in the order it was eaten. So the order in which we eat affects the digestion directly.

If there is soup, at the beginning; if there is a green salad, the salad first, then the soup. The stomach begins digesting solid food only after it has passed the liquid on.

Do not put two dense foods together in one meal — rice and potato, rice and bread, pasta and cheese. But rice and dal together is fine.

No more than three to five items in a single meal. Salad, vegetable, rice — that is enough.

The ideal daily routine — day by day

You do not have to begin all of these on one day. Take the easy ones first. Once they have become an ordinary part of life, add a few more.

Exercise is needed every day, but half an hour before a meal, or two to three hours after one. The best times are the morning Kapha window (6–10), or the close of the afternoon Vata window (5–6).

From Nila Nalam — train the body, do not punish it.