What is Āyurveda?
Updated: Aug 24
Āyurveda (pronounced, EYE-yur-veda) is a 5,000 year old system of natural medicine, originating in the Indus Valley in India. It's a complete medical system, with eight branches including surgery, family medicine, pediatrics, rejuvenation and healthy aging, mental illness and more. A holistic form of medicine, it treats all aspects of a human being: body, mind, emotions and spirit.
The word Āyurveda is made up of two sanskrit roots: ayuh: LIFE and veda: SCIENCE--literally the Science of Life, or Longevity. It describes both those things that create health and those things which destroy it. How do we live in a way that promotes our deep well being,? What will get in the way of that? Āyurveda offers us a road map back to our body, so we can hear and understand the messages it's always giving us.
Āyurveda is known primarily as preventative medicine. It supports the health of the individual through diet, lifestyle, detoxification, rejuvenation therapies and herbal medicines The underlying premise is that the body is capable of healing itself when given the right environment and support.
Described as an energy medicine because it rests on the assumption that all matter arises from energy or prāņa, in a top down, subtle to dense approach, Āyurveda is a perfect compliment to Western matter medicine , which excels at understanding how to treat deep pathology once it's manifested and taken root.
What makes us sick, according to Āyurveda, originates in our mind and emotions. Over time that subtle energy manifests in physical pathology. This is not a simplistic understanding that "your negative mind state caused your cancer;" it's far more complex than that. But it is a call for us to get real about the impact of hating our jobs, not dealing with our relational stress, or feeling down or anxious regularly, with no tools with which to cope and strengthen our resilience. We simply can't manifest health without attending to our emotional body, and mind.
Similar to Traditional Chinese Medicine, which has roots in Āyurveda, both Āyurveda and TCM view and treat disease in similar ways.
both treat energy pathways: meridians in chinese medicine and nadis in Āyurveda
both treat the individual with the pathology rather than the pathology:itself-- means one person's headache might be treated differently than anothers, rather than one pill for every headache
both work with elemental energies--space, air, fire, water, earth (though they have slight differences in elements and what the refer to)
both treat with diet lifestyle, energetic and physical manipulation and herbal medicines
both work well as preventative medicine, in early stages of pathology, but are also effective alongside allopathic approaches to strengthen the organism being treated for more serious illness.
Āyurveda teaches that health is not simply the absence of disease, but the presence of deep wellbeing in mind, body and spirit. The Āyurvedic definition of health goes like this:
"Balanced doshas (bodily humours), balanced digestion/metabolic fire, balanced bodily tissues, balanced wastes, balanced sense organs, and a mind, body, soul in which we feel established in ourSelf is health."
Āyurveda's focus is on building health and reversing early signs of disease. It views the disease process in 6 stages, and works to identify early signs of imbalance (stages 1 - 3) and reverse them to restore health to the individual. All of the “minor” issues we suffer from such as headaches, menstrual difficulties, sleep issues, acid-indigestion, constipation, lack of appetite, brain fog, forgetfulness, loose stools, fatigue, anxiety, depression, excess weight, hormonal imbalance, heart palpitations, the beginnings of joint pain....these are all early signs of disease, and it's at this stage that reversing them is easiest. When we ignore persistent symptoms, or treat by suppressing symptoms rather than understanding and removing cause, those pathologies will drive deeper into our system leading to serious pathology down the line.
Medicine, according to Āyurveda, is anything that supports the health of the individual, leaves the body through natural means, and doesn't create more problems. Gentle detoxification, Yoga, meditation, dietary shifts, herbal medicines for a time, rest and sleep support, aerobic exercise, resistance training, and a life-stage appropriate daily rhythm are all medicine that can prevent and correct minor problems so that they don’t go deeper into the organism and create more serious illness down the road.
Where allopathic medicine excels at managing disease once it manifests, it doesn't attempt to reverse the disease process or build health. It's treatments focus on managing or suppressing symptoms using pharmaceutical medications and surgery. As of this writing, allopathy is beginning to turn some attention to studying health. Modern longevity research and circadian medicine is bearing out what Āyurveda has known all along. Humans are designed to live in alignment with Nature's rhythms, and the small shifts in daily diet and lifestyle done NOW are what lead to our good health LATER. If we want to be able to get up and down from the couch, pick up our grandchild, or walk upright across a busy street before the light turns red, we need to attend to what will lead to those outcomes now.
And it's never too late.
Even if you've never felt you've had a good relationship with your body, or you're just beginning to tune in, an Āyurvedic approach can support you in conjunction with allopathic approaches, and in time, make those approaches more effective, with less harsh chemical medicine (potentially) needed. Āyurveda really is the. missing piece to a complete medical system in the west: that which builds health and prevents disease along side that which manages deep pathology if/when it arises.
Interested in finding out what an Āyurvedic approach might mean for your health? Let's talk. I offer a 30 minute discovery call to meet, find out what's going on with you, and let you know how Āyurveda can support you.
May you be well and happy.
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