Is it the snotty people?

Elk najaar verkouden na je reis? Vanuit de Ayurveda ontdek je waarom niet de mensen om je heen, maar je eigen reserves de oorzaak zijn.

Preventing a cold is more work then you might think

At the end of September, I’ll be boarding a plane back to the Netherlands. My parents’ birthdays are in October, and I’d love to celebrate them together. It’s also a chance to see my lovely friends and family in person again.

Going from a hot, dry summer in Spain to the more humid, colder Dutch climate takes more effort than you might think to avoid catching a cold.

I used to think, ‘Well, I travel on public transport in both Spain and the Netherlands, and I fly – no wonder I catch something’. I used to travel by train for two hours every day, so I always thought my body was quite used to it back then, but not anymore. But that’s not how it works at all.

From an Ayurvedic perspective, what happens is that after a hot summer, my body is already quite dehydrated and has built up a lot of heat – we call this Pitta. And then Vata comes on top of that: cold, dryness and movement, in the form of travelling and the weather I encounter in the Netherlands. These are precisely the qualities that dehydrate me even further and reduce my resilience, with the cold on top of that.

Ayurveda calls this Ojas

My cold is therefore not just down to all those sniffling people I come into contact with, but mainly down to how much reserve I have to cope with it.

Ayurveda calls this ojas: your reserves, your resilience. If this are already low by the end of summer (due to lack of sleep, exhaustion from the heat, or a disrupted routine) or because you’re already chronically ill, it doesn’t take much more to push your body over the edge and leave you with a cold, feeling ill or completely knocked out.

You can build your resilience

And that makes a difference. Because if it’s down to the air in the plane and the people with runny noses, there’s little I can do about it. But if it’s down to my own reserves and the choices I make before and during my journey, then there is.

This is exactly what we’ll be exploring in the Ayurveda’s Autumn Kitchen workshop. What sort of food and routines actually work during the transition to autumn, so you don’t find yourself playing catch-up as winter approaches.

What happens in your body as autumn approaches?

much love,
Rianne