Ayurveda is a five-thousand-year-old healing system from India and the oldest medical science in existence. Sanskrit for "the Science of Life," it is a set of self-care guidelines that will help any person stay healthy and feel good by understanding the needs of his or her own mind and body. Ayurveda is intended to help each person be her best self-healthy, happy, and radiant with beauty. Ayurvedic treatments include skin care, diet, massage, and exercise routines that are customized for every person to reflect their unique needs.
Ayurveda recognizes that we are all different-that each of us have unique minds and bodies. After all, we look and behave differently from one another, and we all have different reactions to everyday situations. Everything from the foods we eat to the emotions we experience affect us each in our own way. We all have our own personal definition of what it means to be happy, healthy, and in balance-that is, feeling full of energy and life. And because we are each unique, we will all require different treatments and remedies to help us be our best. Ayurveda as a system includes tools to help figure out what these customized treatments should be.
Ayurveda acknowledges that the mind and body are not two separate entities but are closely intertwined. We've all seen how our thinking affects our body (say, when we're worried or upset and then our skin breaks out) and how our body affects our mind (like the way our self-esteem plummets when we don't get regular exercise). Ayurveda has two special terms to convey this idea. The physical body is our skin, bones, muscles-everything you would find in a Western anatomy textbook. The energetic body is that with which we feel, sense, spiritualize, emote, and think. So happiness and joy, emotional pain, psyche, perceptions, hunches, and intuition are all considered to form part of our energetic anatomy. Ayurveda works on healing both the energetic and the physical bodies, because one can never reach its full potential if the other is not strong.
Ayurveda teaches us how to stay healthy and balanced. Ayurvedic treatments-from digestive herbs to heavy oil therapies and detox programs-are intended to be gentle habits that can last a lifetime, not extreme regimes or quick fixes. Ayurveda is unlike many other health systems, those which oversimplify the variety of factors that affect our health and how we feel, and only address the symptoms, not the causes, of imbalance. Because many of us experience so much stress these days, and because “feeling stressed is really just another way of saying life is out of balance, Ayurveda is more useful and important than ever before. It's the perfect antidote to stress because it addresses the whole person and how she is affected by her lifestyle.
The Origins of Ayurveda
Though its origins are lost to historians, Ayurveda is believed to have come from the Vedic gods over five thousand years ago, when a group of scholars and mystics met in the Himalayas to try to discover the secrets of longevity and the cures for illnesses of every kind. Through meditation and spiritual communion with the gods, the scholars and mystics arrived upon guidance for everything from everyday well-being to internal medicine and surgery. Ayurveda was an oral tradition in India for hundreds of years, until it was collected into three basic books called the Charak Samhita, the Sushrut Samhita, and the Ashtanga Hridayam, all three written in different time periods. Time periods are historical estimates not exact. The books are written in Sanskrit verse (Sanskrit is the ancient language of India, just as Latin is to the Western world). This vivid poetry articulates Ayurvedic philosophies and concepts. For this reason, it's hard to define whether Ayurveda is an art or a science. It might well in fact be both, as the Sanskrit verses reflect both on the theoretical aspects of Ayurveda-the art side, and the practical knowledge involved in incorporating it into human lives.
Traditionally, most Indian villages had their own Ayurvedic doctor, who would advise the community about self-care practices and gather medicinal plants from the surrounding forests. This doctor would explain the meanings of the Ayurvedic
Sutras, or teachings, to student apprentices, who then prepared and dispensed medicines according to his instruction. In the years, when India was a colony of the British Empire, the ruling powers tried to stop the practice of Ayurveda (amongst other traditional medicines) and it temporarily lost the cultural influence it once held. But after India became an independent nation in 1947, Ayurveda began to undergo a renaissance, and has since become popular all over the world.
Today, Ayurveda is a part of everyday life in many Indian households. For example, families drink water or water-based drinks that have been stored in a copper vessel, because Ayurveda recognizes that copper detoxifies the body and boosts the immune system. The sacred basil plant Tulsi, offered in prayer to the Indian god Lord Vishnu, is typically placed in the central area of Indian homes to clarify the mind from impure thoughts, and to rid the environment from microbes. Finally, herbal kitchen remedies form a natural part of every Indian housewife's repertoire: common culinary items like turmeric, ginger, and dairy cream are used for beauty treatments and to heal minor ailments.
