Healthy daily routine – a cornerstone of health
Studies show that people with the best self-control are people who have built in structure and healthy habits into their daily routines. Instead of wearing down their willpower and creating decision fatigue, they rely on their daily routine to direct many of their actions and save their decision-making energy for the important things. They prefer to avoid crises, rather than manage it. They give themselves reasonable deadlines. They schedule important meetings in the morning and don’t allow them to be scheduled back to back. They try to make important decisions in the morning and won’t make them when they are tired or on an empty stomach (decision making is an energy, like many, that requires glucose to function well). It seems we have the ability to adhere to a daily routine without taxing our decision-making muscles.
Ayurveda teaches us that dinacharya—a healthy daily routine—is a cornerstone of health. Ayurveda suggests that it is ideal to wake, eat and retire at the same time each day; have a diet, self oil massage, and exercise—that are all appropriate to our constitutions, that we meditate at the same time every day. Ideal dinacharya also includes prescribed ethical behavior that runs along the same lines as the yamas and niyamas. It corals our daily activities and behavior onto a track that we have previously decided upon. Read full article from Dr. Claudia Welch here