How to Combat Stress, Anxiety and Depression Symptoms and Other Health Issues During the Covid19 Pandemic – The Ayurvedic Way

While the whole world is trying to find a vaccine to cure this Covid19 pandemic, human race has been much affected by the various lockdown conditions preset by the individual country that you may live in.

Typical effects that have changed our daily lifestyles include the following:

• Loss of job thus affecting your financial burdens and commitments.
• Lack of financial support from the government.
• Creating an anti-social environment within family and friends and business associates too.
• Increase anxieties in each inner-self due to uncertainties.
• Travel ban to visit our loved ones – interstates and overseas.
• Lack of confidence to make changes and move forward.

Because of the vast uncertainties that may vary in each family, many health issues may arise such as insomnia, migraine, fatique, depression, anxiety, aggravated hypertension, weight increase due to non-motivation, physical abuses on family members, low self-esteem and helplessness. These are some of the common health issues that have crept up during this pandemic lockdown period.

Different individuals may take these derivative problems and blame others for them, thus turning them into a social/moral issues, most possibly caused by poor interactions and not understanding of their own mindset.

One of the very common diseases during this pandemic is high stress and anxiety leading to a lot of confusion in a person’s mind between understanding the right and the wrong, and getting lonelier into each deep thought of negative elements which is self-minded as an individual. All these inner unstable mindsets can lead to an early sign of depression.

An important aspect in treating early depression is to re-establish a harmonious relationship with the cycles of nature. Healthy routines include the following:

• Waking up in the morning at the same time as the sun.
• Avoid rushing as this creates anxieties and it disrupts the stability of the mind.
• Food consumed should be fresh, free of chemicals, well cooked and consumed mindfully.
• Adding more spices to the cooking of daily meals will increase the agni (fire) in your digestive guts and thus increasing food absorption, making you feel more energized to handle the day better.
• Regular exercising, yoga and meditation is encouraged.
• Bed time should be early at around 10pm to avoid any aggravation of the vata movement inside our body which causes anxiousness.

Despite some practise that is adhered by most people during the lockdown, insomnia seems to be an ongoing health issue amongst the many and how do we deal with this issue? Some will take the easy way out by asking your family doctor to prescribe you with sleeping pills.

Some natural remedies can be initiated and undertaken by each own self. Other than keeping a regular routine as suggested above, you can increase the effectiveness of the routine by adding some common calming essential oil e.g. vetiver or chamomile onto your vapouriser before your bed time. Plus you can also sip a cup of calming warm chamomile honey drink before you retire for the night. Another suggestion is to do a self foot massage with some organic oil such as warm sesame oil, which will make you feel more relaxed and then retire for the night.

Understandably, there are some of us who would be catching up watching our favourite tv dramas or movies during this lockdown period as part of self-entertainment. This should be done in the afternoon and not in the evening or night time. This is discouraged to prevent yourself from keeping awake and unable to retire peacefully. Reading a book is more encouraged than watching the television in the evening/night to reduce the radiation exposure from the television screen.

Lastly, I am sure that most of us will agree that at this lockdown period, family sharing togetherness in the same household is definitely happening more frequently as we are spending more time together with our loved ones including our aged parents. Some may find that it is stressful to be circled around with some internal frictions especially when we are not able to be free to perform our self-interest out of the home.  However, if you were to think this out deeper, isn’t this better than to be left alone suffering from the Covid19 infection and be left alone to be treated in the hospital with no visitors allowed and not knowing what to expect for the next day? The inner mind in us should be trained to control the outer negative mindfulness. If we were to remain calm and think over the issue presented mindfully, we can overcome our stress and anxiety.

One very good manner to keep ourselves positive and forward looking is definitely to perform some simple short fasting that I had written before to detoxify our body and to give our body a chance to reinstate positive energy and clarity and to discharge our negative emotions such as frustration, unhappiness, and anger.

I wish that everyone will stay safe and be blessed that we are going to be out of this bad period real soon.