Ayurveda is a system of medicine designed to remove the imbalance of the physical body, while providing the mental clarity needed to change unproductive mindsets.
Have you ever longed for a straightforward map illuminating the elusive path to vibrant health, meaningful purpose, and an enduring sense of peace, contentment, and joy? Look no further. Ayurveda literally means “knowledge of life” and its scope is truly no less encompassing. While the tradition is thought to be over five thousand years old, Ayurveda remains as relevant as ever—and it is enlivened every day as individuals around the world engage its timeless wisdom in their day-to-day lives.
Embracing the Individual
Ayurveda is a remarkably individualized system of medicine. The tradition is rooted in the idea that each of us is born with a completely personal blueprint for optimum health. From birth onward, it is this reference point—your constitution—that, in many ways, defines who you are. No two constitutions are exactly alike; therefore, no two human beings can have precisely the same expression of ideal health.
In Ayurveda, everything is medicine and everything is poison; what might be beneficial to you could harm someone else, and visa versa. It all depends on the context of who you are, and what patterns are currently at play in your particular system. Ayurveda is fundamentally opposed to one-size-fits-all remedies. While there are certainly some practices that are considered to be beneficial for most everyone, Ayurveda places the focus firmly on you, the individual concerned. This is why your Ayurvedic Profie—an assessment of your constitution, your current state of balance, and a set of personalized recommendations to support you in your journey towards optimal health—can be such an empowering resource.
Defining Health
Ayurveda is an unequivocally holistic tradition that reaches far beyond the realms of physical health, healing, and the prevention of disease. It has a remarkable capacity to help each of us sync up with our truest inner nature, honor and develop our strengths, hone in on our challenge areas, redirect detrimental tendencies, and offer real support wherever it is needed—so that we can better maintain balance in the face of adversity. At its root, Ayurveda is a way of life that can help each of us to claim and celebrate our capacity for a fully embodied sense of wellness.
The Sanskrit word for health, svastha, describes an authentically harmonious interaction of many parts within the whole—such that the mind, soul, and senses are infused with an abiding sense of Self, wellness, and even bliss. Achieving this quality of life may seem a lofty ambition, especially when human beings throughout the world are riddled with stress, anxiety, and chronic disease. But Ayurveda provides a treasure chest of elegant and insightful tools that can be used to assess the degree of discord (no matter how slight or severe), determine its root, and ultimately, begin reclaiming our health.
The Lenses of Ayurveda
The Five Elements
Ayurveda recognizes five elements as the fundamental building blocks of nature—earth, water, fire, air, and ether (space). Every substance, every cell, contains all five of these elements. That said, in a given substance, one or two elements are typically predominant over the others.
The Twenty Qualities
Ayurveda also identifies twenty qualities (the gunas) that can be used to describe every substance or experience. These qualities are organized into the following ten pairs of opposites:
| Heavy | Light |
| Slow (Dull) | Sharp (Penetrating) |
| Cold | Hot |
| Oily | Dry |
| Smooth | Rough |
| Dense | Liquid |
| Soft | Hard |
| Stable | Mobile |
| Gross | Subtle |
| Cloudy (Sticky) | Clear |
The gunas are essential to understanding the Ayurvedic principle that like increases like and that opposites balance. For example, a person who is particularly cold natured, living in a cold climate, in the middle of winter, is likely to be experiencing an aggravation of the cold quality. The remedy? Heat—in the form of warming foods, hot drinks, heating spices, soothing baths, snuggly warm clothes, and if possible, an abundance of heart-warming experiences.
Prevention is King
In Ayurvedic medicine, optimal health and even one’s spiritual growth starts with prevention. Prevention is based on a balanced lifestyle that is in harmony with the cycles of nature.
Ayurveda recognizes that all living creatures, whether human, plant or animal, must live in harmony with nature in order to survive. Like the owner’s manual of your car prescribes maintenance schedules for the long-term health of your car, Ayurveda speaks of daily and seasonal routines that ensure maximal health, mental clarity, and longevity.
For example, birds fly south in the winter. Their survival depends on it. In the fall, leaves turn red and fall off the trees. It’s a law of nature.
We tend to insulate ourselves away from much participation in the changes that take place from one season to the next. We don’t realize that, just like the birds, our survival depends on it, and that simply putting on or taking off a sweater and eating the same foods 365 days a year is not in keeping with the original human design.
Going to sleep and rising with the sun, eating seasonal foods for your region, and building your activities around the natural rhythms of the day are all simple and profound ways to stay in harmony with nature.
Ayurvedic Body Types
In Ayurvedic medicine, one’s individual nature is mirrored in their body type or dosha. The doshas reflect three main governing principles of nature, called vata (air), pitta (fire) and kapha (earth-water).
Each person is a unique combination of these three principles or doshas, with different proportions of each existing within us. These three basic Ayurvedic principles combine to make ten unique mind-body types.
Based on our Ayurvedic body type, what we eat, how we exercise, when we sleep, and even where we prefer to live, will have its own unique blueprint.
Once you know your body type, Ayurveda provides protocols to align your internal nature with the larger cycles of nature, such as the daily rhythms and seasonal cycles.
In Ayurveda, seasonal and daily routines include proper diet and a balanced lifestyleaccording to your type. Ayurveda then makes very specific recommendations for resetting digestion, restoring balance and function, and proper detoxification.
- Vata is the winter principle. Generally, vata types tend to be thin, hypermetabolic, and they think and move quickly. Vata types typically have dry skin and cold hands and feet. They do not like cold weather because they already have many of these winter or vata qualities inherent in their nature.
- Pitta is the summer principle. Much like summer, Pitta types are hot, fiery and competitive, with a medium frame. Pitta types prefer cool weather. When out of balance, they may get heartburn, skin rashes, inflammatory diseases, or just burn out.
- Kapha is the spring principle. Kapha types are easygoing and have a slow metabolism. Kapha types will hold on to more weight and water and tend to develop allergies and congestion. Kapha types have more spring-like qualities in the same way that vata and pitta types carry more winter and summer qualities.
Once you know your body type (vata, pitta or kapha), it’s like having a roadmap that points you in the right direction of becoming your best self, so that you can fulfill your potential and experience more joy.
Indian Holistics 