Alignment with Nature: Ayurvedic practices help restore connection with the earth

by Monica Yearwood

Ayurveda teaches that by living in alignment with observable cycles in nature, we enhance all aspects of our health. It emphasizes lifestyle practices, called sādhanās, which help to awaken our cellular memory to this alignment.

Although our body is constantly recreating itself with new cells, there is an element of permanence that ayurveda terms “cellular memory.” Cellular memories are the cumulative experiences of our ancestral lineage. While some cellular memories are negative, we also have positive ones, such as living in alignment with nature. Our body has the “memory” of these practices inside of us, essentially “dormant” for most of us. Like a thumbprint embedded into our soul, cellular memories are interwoven into our DNA and tell the stories of when we as a people lived rhythmically with nature’s cycles.

The sādhanās, or practices, align our individual biorhythm with nature’s cycles. For example, the sun dictates daily practices such as rising with the sun, meditating twice each day with sunrise and sunset, eating the largest meal at midday when the sun is the strongest and going to bed when the sun sets. Eating what is in season allows us to acquire foods with a higher nutritional content. Lunar practices, such as introspection and rest during the new moon, regulate menses and cultivate intuition. Sitting under the light of the moon enhances vitality and is an aphrodisiac.

Ayurveda teaches that when we implement the sādhanās we enhance our immunity, regulate our hormonal system and significantly increase contentment. And yet, many city dwellers are up against a very real physical separation from many of nature’s expressions. In the effort to follow a prescribed ayurvedic lifestyle, we are continuously confronted with the very things that detract us from our ability to connect.

We want to eat seasonally, but when we go to the grocery store we see imported items from all over the world. We want to maintain mental contentment, but the noise of sirens, traffic jams and trains disturb us at all hours of the day and night. We want proper rest, but artificial lighting inhibits the secretion of melatonin, a hormone that instigates the desire for sleep.

Ayurveda teaches that making direct contact with the earth fosters alignment with nature. In the city, that means interacting with earth’s byproducts (food) intentionally through the year. How we handle and obtain our food is an opportunity to interact with the earth. City environments offer weekly markets that distribute food from local farmers grown just 20 miles away. To awaken a deeper connection with your food, try cooking a meal without measuring cups. Use your hands, eyes and sense of smell to do your measuring. This will awaken the intuitive connection with the foods you consume and rouse the primal part of you that remembers putting his or her hands in the earth.

The sadhanas restore our connection with nature as if urging us awake from a dream. The change of seasons and the solar and lunar cycles are aspects of an interdependent system. Each one of us is inextricably connected to this system, but our lives are largely out of sync with it, and the desire to restore our relationship with nature is marred by doubt. It is important that we have access to teachings and practices that help restore our cellular memory. Further still, we must intentionally utilize these practices, though they may require a different, more persistent type of effort from us than from someone who lives on a farm.

We live during a time when our modern conveniences contribute to the collective forgetting of our rhythmic cycles, where it is easy to believe that we are isolated from nature’s bedrock. However, ayurveda teaches that the disconnection from nature, as pervasive as it may be, is an illusion. How can we be disconnected from what we innately are? We are all part of nature, and not something distinct from it, and if we want to change our external environmental reality, we must begin within.