Ayurveda is living with nature

Ayurveda is a holistic science of well being and medication based on the correct food, herbs, formulations, therapies and life style. It is about living with nature, of nature and for nature. The system is about understanding and following laws of nature.

The system has developed methods to say natural from the unnatural, healthy from the unhealthy and wrong from the right in all facets of life. For ayurveda evolved through research and practice over millennia.

A simple facet of life sums up the spirit of ayurveda, as my teacher often mentions. Ayurveda starts as soon as you get set to go to bed. Every animal has a sleeping posture according to its frame and size. So do we have. There are certain ways to lie down as prescribed under ayurveda.

Every animal has a definite food – it’s a myth of the modern medical science that the nutrients must come from different food sources to make for a complete diet.

Ayurveda and other living creatures establish that food has to be definite. It’s the medicines which are sourced from different plant species – hence the food sourced thus is what an ayurvedic medicine is all about. We humans too can live in perfect health while on a restrictive but balanced diet.

Our body, just like that of animals, is equipped to make its own micro and macro nutrients which need not be sourced from outside. This is ayurveda extended to yoga. The practice of yoga restores body’s capacity to manufacture its own stock of nutrients from very frugal and restrictive food diet; even ayurvedic medicines are not needed in most of the cases.

But before food, it is the time when you leave your bed which, according to ayurveda, is very important. So my teacher would say - a donkey does not get up after the sun is up.

We do not find a dog sleeping after twilight breaks. The birds have no choice but to get up before the dawn. They do not eat normally anything other than what is their staple or comes closest to the natural. Thus a cow will not touch chocolate or monkey will not have coffee. See a tiger smoke a cigarette and it will make a headline news worldwide!

The natural discipline, and it is very important, gives the animals the capacity to self-heal when they are sick. Ayurveda recognizes the potential in its elaborate treatise of Pashu Ayurveda.

We humans lose the power to self-heal as we fiddle with our biological clocks about sleeping, eating, getting up and going about different aspects of life. We go against the tenets of nature. With the pattern of modern development, we have gone completely unnatural in our lifestyle.

No wonder we have so many problems.

Ayurveda and yoga have the power to save us, if we choose.

Add comment June 18th, 2006 Written By: lalitgambhir