What is Āyurveda?
- 6 days ago
- 5 min read
Āyurveda (pronounced, EYE-yur-veda) is a 5,000 year old system of natural medicine, originating in the Indus Valley in India. It is a complete medical system, with eight branches including surgery, family medicine, pediatrics, rejuvenation, healthy aging, toxicology, mental illness and diseases of the ears, nose and throat.
The word Āyurveda is made up of two sanskrit roots: ayuh: LIFE and veda: SCIENCE, so it is literally the Science of Life, or Longevity. It describes both those things that create health and those things which destroy it.
The original ancient teachings of Āyurveda were passed down in an oral tradition from teacher to student, until they were written down much later. Samkhya philosophy, Yoga, Vedanta and Buddhism, were all later influences on Āyurveda.
Āyurveda is known primarily as a holistic system of preventative medicine supporting health of the individual through diet, lifestyle, detoxification, rejuvenation therapies and herbal medicines as needed. The underlying premise is that the body is capable of healing itself when given the right conditions.
Āyurveda has been described as an energy medicine in contrast to our modern allopathic “matter medicine” (Thanks to my friend, Dr. Bill Dean for that statement). Āyurveda views all matter as arising from energy or prāņa, in a top down, subtle to dense approach. This is similar to Traditional Chinese Medicine, which has roots in Āyurveda, whose view of the body/mind organism and how to treat it share many similarities:
both treat energy pathways: meridians in chinese medicine and nadis in Āyurveda
both treat the individual with the pathology rather than the pathology: means one person's headache might be treated differently than anothers, rather than one pill for every headache
both work with elemental energies (though they have slight differences in elements and what they refer to)
both treat with dietary changes, lifestyle adjustements 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 and treated causative factors.
Where allopathic medicine (modern western 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 not on removing the root cause of the problem. Naturopathic medicine is a kind of green allopathic approach, substituting herbal medicines for pharmaceutical ones.
Āyurveda considers anything that supports the health of the individual, leaves the body through natural means, and doesn't create more problems MEDICINE. In this way, proper diet is medicine; a constitutionally supportive lifestyle is medicine; herbs for a time are medicine; time in Nature is medicine; sleep is medicine, positive relationships are medicine....
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.
Āyurveda teaches that health is not simply the absence of disease, but the presence of an embodied sense of unification and contentment.The Āyurvedic definition of health, given to us by one of it's sages, Sushruta, 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 centered and grounded is health; established in ourSelf."
Āyurveda recognizes 6 stages to the disease process. When we learn to respond to the first three stages, we can easily turn the disease process around. By stage 4, that disease has manifested (like a cold or flu). By stage 5 the disease has entered a deep tissue of the body; and by stage 6, the disease has merged with the tissue, creating a structural change, allowing us to merely manage the disease, not cure it.
Learning to recognize the small ways your organism goes out of balance and act to restore health are keys to Āyurvedic preventive care. All of the “minor” issues we suffer from such as headaches, menstrual difficulties, sleep issues, acid-indigestion, constipation, 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 is at this stage that reversing the process will be easiest. Often small issues will resolve themselves in a short time; but when they don't, and you're still dealing with them weeks later, some kind of intervention is needed. Your body is asking for your attention. 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.
Deeper disease like diabetes, heart disease and even some forms of dementia are also diseases that can be reversed through proper diet lifestyle and herbal medicines. However, once those diseases have damaged the organs of the pancreas or heart, they can only be managed, not reversed. Still, Āyurvedic support along with allopathic interventions will allow for better quality of life and likely extend lifespan.
Modern longevity research is bearing out what Āyurveda has known all along: that the small things we do 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 capacities now.
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 correct these minor problems so that they don’t go deeper into the organism and create more serious illness down the road.
Āyurveda is a holistic form of medicine that treats all aspects of a human being: body/mind/emotions/spirit. Health is more than the absence of a cold, but the presence of vitality and mental/spiritual well-being. Ayurveda describes how to live in a way that promotes those things—and also what will destroy our wellbeing. In this way, it offers us a road map back to our body, so we can once again listen and understand the messages it is always giving us.
Over time, we can become our own self-healer, as my teacher Dr. Vasant Lad taught me, and then reach out when we reach the limits of what we can treat ourselves. We all need help seeing our blind spots and taking an objective look.
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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