Take bath when you are ready. Don’t use water collected in a bucket on the previous day. When there is water scarcity or calamity you may do that. But that is exception and not rule.
Water which is neither cold nor hot (lukewarm) is the best. But if you feel so happy in cold water, then you trust your sense organs.
Instead of soaps, use powdered green gram or chana. My experience is that green gram is better but very costly, especially if you buy powder. What I do is, buy 5 kg. Chana and give to flour mill and get it powdered. That way it is very cheap and trustworthy too.
All kinds of soaps are bad for skin. This is not because the soap contains chemicals. It is neither good because they claim it as ayurvedic. The reason is very simple. When you get some oil stuck on your hand, what do you do? Use soap to remove the oil. You would have seen europeans basking with some oil applied (I think it is olive oil. Poor things don’t know coconut oil is the best even after coming to Kerala!) on their body, especially near swimming pools and beaches. That is to make the skin oily and smooth. When you apply soap, all the oil on your skin gets washed away and it becomes dry, exposing to all kinds of infections. It is even not necessary that you use soap everyday for bathing. It is sufficient to rub water with your hand on your body. Sure, if you get sweated very much then you may want to use something to clean the sweat. But that is not applicable to all of you who read this, who sit in an ac room the whole day and travel in an ac car.
It is good to apply coconut oil on your hair and body. It should be pure. If it is impossible to get pure coconut oil (don’t trust the labels ‘100% pure’ etc.) then don’t apply anything or consult an ayurveda vaidya to find which is the best oil for you.
On the body anyone can apply dhānvantaram tailam. You need to slightly warm the tailam before applying on body. Warm a small steel bowl. Not too hot. Pour 3 tablespoon of the tailam into it. The idea is not to heat the tailam in direct fire. This is called പാത്രപാകം in Malayalam. Those of you who have taken at least one treatment in an Ayurvedic resort or hospital may wonder how you do this tailam-application throughout body everyday. Well how much effort you spent to apply the coconut oil (or whatever venomous thing you had been using till date ;-)) on hair. Similarly don’t try to pretend you are a therapist at an Ayurvedic clinic. Just take the warm oil in your right palm (not left) and smear throughout the body. If you don’t have time to do even that, then just apply it on all joints like knee, ankle etc. If you don’t have time to do that too, well… then forget it.
After bath apply 3 pinches of rāsnādi cūrṇam on the pericarp (sahasrAra / crown / top of head) and inhale a little into nose too. kacūrādi cūrṇam is even better.
Now you are ready to do your daily yogāsana practice.
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