Top 9 Ancient Indian Habits To Follow

Almost every civilization has a specific set of traditions they lived by, which if you really study closely speaks volumes about how powerful those habits were because until modernisation, these people lived a happy and healthy life. Now we have comfort and technology, which is great, but it has also slowly started ruling and dictating us, and supressing our rational mind. We slowly started to forget the ancient wisdom our own tradition carries and started to look for evidence-based science and medicine. While this maybe required, its also blinding people to use common sense.

I bet most of us must be knowing so many of these practices already or must have seen their grandparents following it, but here are some top ancient Indian habits that we must now start reviving within our families as a culture and why.

1. Keep your homes a footwear free zone

Its not cool to be sleeping or working on the bed with shoes on, as most television serials might portray. The easiest way to carry dirt, viruses, bacteria and germs into our homes is via footwear. You could have a shoe rack placed outside your home and a spare pair of slippers to wear at home, but make sure you keep the muck outside. It not very difficult for a harmful bacteria or germ to reach your intestine from the footwear you bring into your living space and create a havoc. Imagine all the dirt we walk over with our shoes on – spit, garbage, poop and what not.

2. Bless your food

This is an act of gratitude and has nothing to do with religion. Blessing the food and offering a gratitude prayer before and after a meal helps change the energy of food. Food is energy. It is life-giving. Start your meal by blessing it to be – nourishing, healing, recharging, healthy and once done, give thanks and be grateful for the food that you just ate.

3. Eating with your hands.

There is nothing demeaning about eating with hands. This practice allows us to connect with food through all our 5 senses – smell, touch, taste, sound and sight, and not just the taste. It increases mindfulness and makes the entire experience of eating more wholesome, satisfying and pleasurable, thereby benefitting our health, weight and digestion. It helps increase satiety factor of a meal, thereby reducing chances of overeating.

4. Sit down and eat your meal and drink your water

Sit down and feel relaxed when you start to eat your meal. Standing and a state of stress can affect your digestion, absorption and assimilation negatively. Standing redirects the blood flow towards your extremities instead of your digestive system. Take it a step further and at least eat one meal sitting on the floor. Sitting on the floor grounds you, brings in a feeling of safety, gently massages your pancreas and stimulates the digestive system and insulin release. If sitting on the floor is uncomfortable for you, eat your meal on your dining table by either sitting crossed legged on a chair or as usual, and try getting into a vajrasana position, right after a meal to enable better digestion for 5 mins.

5. No distractions while eating

Eating is a sacred act and our bodies cannot digest a meal when our mind is distracted. No television, mobile phones and disturbing conversations while eating a meal and parents need to follow this and lead as an example for their kids. Its not impossible to dedicate 15-20 mins to only your meal, which is going to nourish you, keep you healthy and possibly prevent the onset of diseases.

6. Early dinners

Your body doesn’t care about your late-night party or a late working hour at office. It is pretty much going to work the way nature has designed it to work. Late night meals are a burden for our bodies to digest and assimilate nutrients. Our pancreas is not designed to secrete digestive enzymes late in the night and this fact can be understood by noticing how we wake up feeling after a late dinner – puffy, bloated, heavy and acidic, because the body was unable to finish the process of digestion.

This doesn’t mean giving up your social life, but try aligning and respecting your body and its needs first.  Go back to your traditions. Late meals were never encouraged in any civilisation.

7. Sunlight is medicine

How many of us actually expose ourselves to natural sunlight out of our own will? Every single cell of our body requires sunlight. Colder countries where sunlight is next to nil manage it naturally as they are on high fat diet and the body absorbs even the little vitamin D they are exposed to. However, here fat has got a bad reputation because we think that fat makes us fat. So, we end up being deficient in fat as well as Vitamin D – which ultimately may give rise to bone problems, falling hair, unbalanced hormones, falling hair and dull skin. Go out and soak up some sun – both you and kids. Even a 15 min exposure is a great habit.

8. Clean up yourself first

Remember how your parents and grandparents were so particular about you bathing and freshening up first dinner once back home from work?  Turns out there was a lot of wisdom behind that. We tend to carry a lot of germs and dirt throughout the day and not cleaning ourselves up before a meal will only create an unhygienic environment.

9. Cooking in earthenware

The raw and rustic earthenware has so many health benefits. It makes the food alkaline, retains all nutrients, distributes heats evenly. This may mean that you have to stop using fancy and coated ceramic wares and non-stick utensils, but isn’t ancient India lived on this tradition?

These and many more such traditions were followed by our ancestors for a particular reason. It carried so much of wisdom. We have become arrogant beings in today’s times questioning every habit – but look at us right now! We are locked down, cooking our own food, eating simple food, cleaning and mopping floors on our own, etc. and everyone’s doing it, even the ones who said they would never do it. Life teaches us and knows how to set our arrogant and egoistic minds in place.

Advancement and technology are good and required, but it shouldn’t define us. We still need to stick to roots. Use this experience from your ancestors to change your life and health.