Ayurveda means Life Truths – Ayur = life / Veda = truth. It is ancient Wisdom from India that is some of the oldest wisdom we have (over 5000 years old in some cases.) Now science has reached a point where it is proving the mystical realities espoused by the ancient mystic masters of old.
I know some Christians reject anything from other traditions as Satanic. In my mind, this is the modern equivalent of the story of the fanatical Saracen who burnt the library of Alexandria in the Common Era as their armies swept over North Africa burning and converting the Christians and pagans of the area. This man, one of those who took over after Mohammed the Prophet, is reported to have said: “If it is in the Koran we do not need it, if it is not in the Koran we do not want it.” (This may be apocryphal propaganda, but it was reported thus at the time – see article below) Everyone who knows me makes fun that I still lament all of the knowledge we lost when the great Library of Alexandria (which held ancient manuscripts that were ancient even when Rome Caesar took over Alexandria,) was burned in some disturbance when the 10th Legion was securing the rule of Cleopatra over her brother in his war with Pompey. The Creative Force, who is everywhere and who is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow has communicated with his beloved children all over the world and at all times and places. While we shouldn’t blindly accept information just because it is ancient we also must not reject wisdom just because it doesn’t come from our preferred book. Why Wisdom is so important and relevant can be found here:
The Life-Truths that are Ayurveda fall into this category of Biblical and ancient knowledge classified as Wisdom. It is a category of religious teaching about Life-Truths that is not based upon revelation but on Wisdom (see my article on the same.) Bringing the body back into alignment with nature by living in sync with its circadian rhythms. Encouraging us to live in a way that promotes sense of self and wholeness, magnifies our bodies own healing abilities, and avoids unnecessary harm from a false philosophy that has gripped the world that treats the environment, humanity, and life itself as a machine rather than an organism.
Part of Ayurvedic truths have to do with Dosha and the five elements. The elements are fire, water, earth, air, and space and our bodies are made up of each. While the unimaginative may say “We know these aren’t elements today.” I have noticed that they coincide with the state of nature as energy, liquid, solid, gas, and density – so maybe they did know what they were talking about thousands of years ago.
Doshas are “the essential forces (or life energies)” they affect the rhythms of life, as well as the physical, mental, and emotional, make-up of human beings and animals. I mention these three categories but it is now clear that they are so interrelated that they cannot be easily separated. Truly we are body/mind/soul creatures and not creatures with a body, a mind, and a soul. In these seasons they recognize three, conflating fall into the end of summer and the beginning of winter. The three Doshas themselves are Vata (winter), Kapha (spring), and Pitta (Summer). These are important not only to understand the Life-Truths of the rhythms of life but also to an understanding of our own actions and reactions. While we all have different combinations within us we have one area that is stronger than others and our traits reflect those seasons.
Vata consists primarily of the elements of air and space and is described as cold, light, dry, and dispersed or open. People, where this predominates, are generally slim of build with energetic and creative minds that are always on the move and thinking of the future. If this Vata is out of balance we become stressed, anxious, forgetful, and can have trouble sleeping. Meditation and spiritual exercises such as yoga or martial arts that emphasize philosophy rather than sport can be used to regain balance.
Kapha is predominantly referred to as water and earth. These people gain weight easily and can be described as “big-boned.” They tend to be compassionate and are natural care-givers but need to be careful that in helping others they don’t forget to care for themselves. They tend to be easy going when they are in balance but when they are out of balance and rhythm they can feel “heavy” and fatigue easily. They may describe themselves as feeling stuck or stagnant. When out of balance Kapha people should resist the urge to give into oversleeping or napping, and should maintain a regular diet with regular exercise.
Pitta is formed by the elements of water and fire with fire being dominant. They tend to have medium builds and gain muscle easier than the other two types of people. They are usually ambitious, focused, and thrive on a set schedule. They demand high standards of themselves and others and can speak with authority. They can be perceived as aggressive if they aren’t careful in their relationships. Pittas are more sensitive to heat and need to maintain a cooler body temperature. When they are out of balance they may feel angry, impatient, or experience intestinal troubles. To regain balance they need to develop a good work/life balance and learn to manage stress.
There are many self-help “gurus” today who use Doshas to help people with eating and living in balance and try to fix imbalance and dis-ease through restoring the proper balance of an individual’s Dosha. But Doshas are much more than that. They are elements for understanding all manner of life, experiences, and patterns and we cannot do it justice here. Doshas are key to understanding the Life-Truths of Ayurveda and can help us learn about living in accordance with the seasons in our life. Those who live in nature or on farms live and work by the natural rhythms of nature but those who live in cities have a special challenge and can easily lose their natural balance and healing abilities because they are everywhere cut off from the rhythms of nature.
Recently, I found from a variety of different books and educational videos the same message that all tie into the rhythms of life and these ideas of Life-Truths so I wanted to share it with you. Although these ideas come at it from different angles they seem to be saying the same thing and it caught my attention. (From Intelligence we know that is a good indicator of something that is true. Ideas and reports are confirmed by different sources. Lies can be easily indicated, as in both news and online misinformation when you keep seeing the same thing over and over again verbatim repeated and derived from the same source. That is not truth but manipulation. You can understand more of that here if you are concerned: )
What we eat affects our health. The old adage “You are what you eat.” Is proving to be 100% true by research today and that is true at every level. We can use the Life-Truths of Ayurveda to help us eat for health and wellness. One example given really stood out to me. And that is that deer, eat leaves in the summer and bark to survive in the winter. This changes its health and changes the bacteria in its digestion system. If it eats bark in the summer it will actually die because it doesn’t have the good bacteria in its gut to digest the bark in summer that it does in winter. We are not deer but we are organisms who evolved to eat food in its season. And, in many ways, we are worse off in our food today. First, insecticides in some ways are like anti-biotics. They not only kill off insects but the bacteria in our food as well. Both good and bad bacteria. (Good bacteria are needed in our gut and internal systems for us to run properly. It is how we evolved. Today, however, the FDA and other alphabet agencies of Western countries have waged war on all bacteria in the name of what they call “health” in their mechanistic paradigm. These aging bureaucrats work very hard to remove bacteria from our food without fully understanding how our bodies work. And they remove all bacteria, not just the good bacteria. This may well be the reason that we have so many intestinal, gut, and diseases from inflammation that in generations before were rare. Could we fix many of our health problems today by restoring our natural rhythms and eating naturally? It appears so but time will tell.
Besides eating right and returning to our natural bio-rhythms we can meditate. The Bible is very concerned about both of these things. When I was a teen I noticed that the complex web of food laws that were “clean” and “unclean” appeared to me to coincide with foods that had to be heated to a specific temperature to safely remove harmful diseases from them. Of course, ancient tribal societies could not ensure their foods internal temperature was “safe” so it made sense that the Bible just banned such foods all together. Yet, in the New Testament, Peter who doesn’t want to eat “unclean” food when he is a guest in the house of a Roman family has a vision from the Divine to “not consider anything created by God as unclean.” Everywhere I look today I am seeing natural foods, vitamins, and herbs that are being demonstrated as having a marked affect on diseases, inflammation, and chronic illness. It amazes me that so much of our health issues today seem to be from being cut off from the natural world and natural foods grown in our own area but every week I find a new connection in this regard.
Meditation is a kind of “life hack” that has positive effects on both our health and our mental and emotional state. It quite literally changes the bio-chemical qualities of our body and brings us back into balance. Dr. John Douillard, author of “The 3 Season Diet” describes meditation as a bio-hack we need because we have so cut ourselves off from nature, natural food, and the natural rhythms of life. Through him, I learned 74 forests in Japan are certified to provide health benefits just by walking through them. Studies have shown that if a person spends 36 hours camping in the wild without their cell phone or electronics 67% can reset their bio-rhythms to a natural cycle while the rest of us can make that shift in a full weekend.
I know I have always felt better when I take walks and I used to love to walk with my father through the woods but maybe part of what I loved wasn’t just time with my father that made me feel better but that it was bio-chemically restoring my health and balance without my noticing. I don’t think we need to go to Japan to find healing forests. We have forests right here. We just need to get off the concrete paths and surround ourselves with nature, meditate, exercise, and be aware that we are what we eat.
By observing the Life-Truths given to us from the Wisdom tradition we can regain balance, defeat stress, and return fullness to our lives that is too often lacking in modern society. Tony Campolo, the famous sociologist and evangelist once said, “Instead of praying that common prayer we learned as children ‘If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.’ Maybe we should all pray, ‘If I should wake before I die.’ Because so many of us seem to go through life as if we are sleepwalking.”
i– (note) I am a winter person in Ayurvedic thinking. One of the things that surprise me is how much this coincides with many Western ideas that have developed even down to cosmetics. My mom was a Mary Kay consultant and when I was in High School she helped me with colors and understanding that I looked better in “winter” colors which were Jewel tones. She explained this was because of my skin tone but I find it interesting that both she and Ayurvedic science classified me as “winter” when she knew nothing about Eastern philosophies. Many will dismiss this as “coincidence” but I have the mind of an investigator and one of the first things you learn in investigating crimes is “there is no coincidence there are reasons and you must find out what and why they exist.” People at large would be deceived less if they paid attention to this principle.