What is Ayurveda?

Ayurveda is the science of life and is the oldest known medical system dating back to over 5,000 years ago. It is believed that this knowledge was transmitted to a group of sages who meditated and communicated with Vedic gods in the Himalayas. These sages were given all the knowledge of everything from daily care to how to build a home to surgical procedures. I mean they learned how to do surgery 5000+ years ago while putting the patient in a meditative trance — how amazing is that? This knowledge was transmitted through an oral tradition and was later transcribed into 3 main texts.

Ayurveda is a healing system. If one understands their true unique nature - of body, mind, and spirit - and how all things in this universe also have their own true nature, from herbs to weather to locations - they can master their own health to live a fulfilled and happy life. Ayurveda works by creating a lifestyle of routines unique to a person’s nature (the microcosm) in balance with the nature around us (the macrocosm). As above, so below - meaning that everything happening in nature around us, from war to pandemics, to fires, to chaos, to love, to balance is all a reflection of what is happening within us. We are what we eat - meaning that everything we digest from food to thoughts will impact who we are, and what we don’t digest will manifest into toxins of the mind, body, and spirit. This makes a lot of sense when you think how not processing traumas will ultimately show up in the physical body.

Here are 8 points that I want you to know about Ayurveda:

1. You are a unique blend of the 5 elements of air + space (vata), fire + water (pitta) and water + earth (kapha). Vata, pitta and kapha are doshas. The unique combination of your doshas at the time of your birth is your baseline health - or your prakruti. Health is when you are at your baseline level.

2. When you move away from your baseline, dis-ease shows up. If you are in a state of dis- ease for a long time, the accumulated dosha will spread to other parts of your body, like an overfilled bucket will spill over into surrounding areas. Your present doshic state is your vikruti and the role of a practitioner is to get your vikrukti back to your prakruti state, or balance.

3. The 3 doshas (vata, pitta, kapha) show up in everything around us — body types, times of the day, seasons, times of your life, foods, etc. — like increases like and opposites balance. For example, if you are congested (heavy/wet/cold), drinking milk can increase mucous (like) where as eating bone broth with millet (opposite) can help to rid the cold with its opposite qualities (light/dry/heating). If your prakruti is vata (dry/cold) and it is the fall season (windy and dry), you will likely have a vata imbalance (could show up as constipation, anxiety, dry skin) unless you use the opposite qualities to balance it such as by eating cooked foods with warming spices or oiling your skin.

4. You are what you digest. This is so important. All disease stems from improper digestion. If you are not having good bowel movements and not properly digesting, any food you take in no matter how healthy it is, can turn into toxins or ama, blocking channels and creating doshic imbalance. Your digestive fire - agni - must be addressed. This goes for unprocessed or undigested emotions. As people start to do the work and change their lifestyle, they may also start to process past traumas and find that they shed many pounds as they process traumas. Another important point is hunger. If someone doesn’t have proper hunger - too little or too much - this is a sign of improper agni. If you’re stressed for prolonged periods, your body will move energy away from digestion and slow down hunger cues to move into fight or flight - flooding your system with hormones. Incorporating mindfulness is helpful for everyone because who isn’t in a state of some stress?

5. The 7 bodily tissues (plasma, blood, muscle, fat, bone, nervous tissue, reproductive tissue) are nourished successively, taking about 30 days. So, the food you eat today will nourish plasma, and plasma will nourish blood 3 days later, so on and so forth. If you have ama blocking certain channels or a doshic imbalance, tissues will be improperly nourished and therefore will not function properly. Think about it: Your reproductive tissues are at the end of the food chain and if you’re having trouble conceiving, have missed menses, premature ejaculation, low libido - you need to look at how the preceding tissues are doing and address the overall cause.

6. After the 7 tissues are nourished, a few drops of life force, or OJAS, is released bringing vitality and immunity to your body, mind, and spirit. We all want more OJAS.

7. The mind (manas) plays a huge part in making change — we must treat the mind to ensure that you will want to and can stick to your new routine.

8. Ayurveda is a lifestyle, not a diet. Once you understand and embody the principles, you won’t be able to look back. You got this.