The Everything Guide to Ayurveda

Improve your health, develop your inner energy, and find balance in your life

Heidi E Spear

• Publisher: Everything
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781440530456
• Topic: Sciences biologiques
• Subtopic: Sciences du sport et de l'exercice

Combining the Sanskrit words "ayur" (life) and "veda" (knowledge), Ayurveda is an ancient Indian practice for living that dates back thousands of years. Ayurveda promotes a mind-consciousness-body balance that, when in perfect alignment, results in improved health, outlook, and attitude. This is the optimal guide for families interested in Ayurveda, with information on:

• The history of Ayurvedic medicine in India
• Discovering individual "doshas, " or personality types
• Incorporating Ayurvedic foods into your everyday diet
• Yoga and exercise techniques for each "dosha"
• Meditation and relaxation tips for the whole family

Packed with information and guidance, plus more than twenty-five Ayurvedic recipes for meals and snacks that your whole family will love, this guide is the perfect resource for transitioning into a healthy, balanced way of living!

CHAPTER 1

What Is Ayurveda?

Ayurveda is a holistic, natural system of health, originating in India more than 5,000 years ago. Perhaps the oldest extant medical system in the world, Ayurveda’s teachings are timeless. Now, when looking for natural, holistic, and safe ways to create health for themselves and their families, people in the West are interested in Ayurveda for its vast knowledge and effective treatments. Ayurveda offers remedies for illness and is designed as a preventive medicine that supports consistent health and longevity.

A Complete Medical System

Ayurveda is a complete medical system. It treats the whole person as an integrated being: body, mind, and spirit. Ayurveda is a comprehensive medical system that includes: surgery, psychotherapy, pediatrics, gynecology, obstetrics, ophthalmology, geriatrics, ear/nose/throat, and general medicine. All of these branches are subsumed in the holistic practice of Ayurveda, which takes into consideration all aspects of your life, and employs a variety of healing modalities to support your health and thriving day by day, year by year.

Nonspecialized Treatment

Ayurveda doesn’t specialize, which means it doesn’t focus on healing just one organ or one symptom at a time. Your Ayurvedic practitioner will be interested in your history and all of your physical symptoms (headache, stomachache, sore back, etc.). She will ask you a variety of questions and perform a physical examination. Her examination helps her understand what is causing you to experience uncomfortable symptoms and disease.

Then, she will give you recommendations to treat the symptoms and bring you back into balance, primarily through lifestyle and diet. The recommendations will be nourishing for your body, mind, and spirit. As you eat the foods and herbs she recommends, savor the tastes, scents, and textures. Support the healing power of these herbs and foods with trust in their healing potential. Your thoughts, energy, and beliefs will help your healing process. In addition, the appropriate foods, herbs, and lifestyle changes give your body, mind, and spirit the support to heal.

Once you are feeling well again, your Ayurvedic practitioner will give you recommendations to maintain balance, which is the condition for optimal health. When in balance, you’ll notice what it feels like to be enjoying good health and immunity. Your symptoms will disappear, you’ll feel less irritable, you’ll think more clearly, you’ll catch fewer colds (if any), and you can even reduce or stop suffering from seasonal allergies. You’ll feel well and be able to enjoy your life more.

When you start to get sick, if you choose not to make changes in your diet and lifestyle and instead only take allopathic drugs for the symptoms, it’s likely that your symptoms will worsen and/or recur. In Ayurveda, the idea is to create harmony in your mind, body, and spirit so your body can support its own healing and become well enough to discourage recurring symptoms and the development of disease.

What is the benefit of Ayurveda as a holistic practice, one that doesn’t specialize?

As a holistic practice, Ayurveda creates overall health, recognizing that body, mind, and spirit are interrelated. So, its goal is twofold: to alleviate the discomfort of something such as a headache, stomachache, or cold, and to bring you into balance to prevent those symptoms from recurring and worsening.

Your body wants to be well, and it’s designed to function in harmony with the natural world. To create health, your body must be able to perform its vital functions, which include the absorption of vitamins and minerals, and the elimination of toxins. Rather than just suggesting a quick fix, Ayurveda gives you the tools to create a state of harmony in your body and mind so that your body can perform its required functions to keep you healthy.

Each Moment Counts

Ayurveda is a way of living. It’s about being healthy from moment to moment, day by day. As you wake up in the morning, as you eat your meals, as you schedule in time for exercise and play, Ayurveda teaches you to consider what nourishes your mind, body, and spirit.

What you eat, what you watch on TV, how much time you spend exchanging the energy of love with others—everything you do, say, think, and feel has an impact on your body, mind, and energy system. There isn’t one thing you do that doesn’t affect all of you, and you can make moment-to-moment choices for equilibrium.

Each moment gives you the opportunity to make a choice. In each moment you can choose to do something that helps create balance in you or that may bring you out of balance. Ayurveda gives you knowledge about yourself and your relationship to the external world so that you can make informed choices moment by moment, meal by meal, day by day, and season by season.

One Choice at a Time

Your health will improve as you make one choice at a time. You have choices—what to eat, what to think, what to wear, when to exercise, whom to hang out with, how to manage your reactions. If it seems as though you don’t have time or energy to make new choices, think about this: you can make one small change at a time. And, notice how it makes you feel. Then, decide if you’d like to incorporate another change. Go at your own pace. Keep remembering, you are the one who decides how to take care of yourself. It’s up to you. Ayurveda offers natural, simple guidelines to bring you into a life of balance for longevity, health, and vitality.

Will I have to follow a rigid and strict diet?

Ayurveda is about balance. You will learn which foods are best at which times of year. You can enjoy any food in moderation, and if you choose something that isn’t the best for your system, you will know how to re-create balance. Over time, you may actually want to avoid foods that right now you think you can’t live without.

As a whole medical system, a nonspecializing system, Ayurveda treats your entire being. The diet and lifestyle changes it suggests are simple and basic, and “one step at a time” is a great way to approach it if it feels like too much at once. As a science, Ayurveda actually makes sense, and you’ll be able to notice when you’re sliding out of balance. Then, you can turn to Ayurvedic guidance to keep yourself healthy year-round. You can also have fun with it—customizing recipes and enjoying its natural and life-affirming recommendations. You’ll see, it’s a whole new way to view health—in a positive way that supports the lifestyle your body, mind, and spirit desire.

The History of Ayurveda

Ayurveda is Sanskrit for “the science of life.” Ayur means “life,” and veda means “to know,” or “knowledge.” So, Ayurveda is the knowledge of what it is to be living, of how to live healthily and in harmony with this planet and all that is. More than 5,000 years ago, rishis, or seers of truth, passed down the knowledge of Ayurveda to only their students as an oral tradition. Now, Ayurveda has become a part of the consciousness of mainstream Western lifestyle.

The Beginnings of Ayurveda

In a way very different from many modern Western medical discoveries, Ayurveda didn’t originate in laboratories or research centers. More than 5,000 years ago, while in meditative states, rishis in India began to understand the nature of life, health, and longevity that has come to be what we call Ayurveda, the science of life. This, combined with more than 5,000 years of observing the systems inherent in the natural world, forms a study of the complex nature of our existence. One of the many gifts of Ayurveda is the vast knowledge of the plant world, which has helped create one of the most fine-tuned pharmacopoeias of natural medicines the world has known.

For millennia, in India they’ve known that meditation and present-moment awareness are vehicles for tapping in to the wisdom of the universe. When you meditate, becoming still and quiet, you open to knowledge and wisdom beyond your studies. Knowledge is of the mind; wisdom is of the heart. Combining learning through study and receiving through meditation reveals the wisdom of living.

More than 2,000 years ago much of Ayurveda’s wisdom was transcribed into Sanskrit. Many of those texts are still around today. Ayurvedic specialists learn from the wisdom of these texts and from the wisdom of practitioners who combine that knowledge with their proven experience in Ayurveda and allopathic, or traditional Western, medicine.

You Have the Same Elements as the Eternal Cosmos

One of the philosophers of this age, Kapila, is credited with the philosophy of creation known as Samkya from the roots sat, meaning “truth,” and kyah, meaning “to know.” This “knowledge of truth” is the foundation of Ayurveda. According to Samkya philosophy, before physical matter existed there were two eternal forces: consciousness that is pure awareness, called Purusha, and a force of creativity/action called Prakruti. Purusha, awareness, is considered the male energy of the universe. It is pure awareness. It is the universal intelligence and consciousness that just is. Prakruti is considered the female energy of the universe, which is awareness plus choice and the desire for creation. It is from the energy of Prakruti that the universe, and each human being, has come into existence.

Ayurveda’s nontheistic creation story is compatible with theistic beliefs. If you believe in a creator, it’s also possible to incorporate the realization that you are made of the same elements that you experience outside. Samkya philosophy explains that your physical and energetic bodies are composed of the same elements as the natural world.

Samkya explains that each human being is a microcosm of the macrocosm (the universe). Each person’s physical makeup is a combination of the five elements of the universe. Everyone is individual in his constitution, and he is always in relationship with the energy and elements outside of himself. So, Ayurveda looks at health in terms of the individual’s constitution and how to keep that in balance with the changing external elements.

Your Relationship to the Cosmos

Here is the story of creation according to the rishis who realized Samkya philosophy: Before the creation of life on earth, there existed two eternal cosmic forces: Purusha (pure awareness) and Prakruti (creative energy). Everything that is created comes from Prakruti, and Purusha is the eternal witness, with no participation in creation.

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