Unlocking the Wisdom: Exploring the Basics of Ayurveda for Holistic Well-being
This is my humble attempt to lay out the fundamental principles of Ayurveda and briefly explain how Ayurveda can enhance your well-being through ancient wisdom and holistic practices.
Maybe you have heard the term Ayurveda before. I have encountered it countless times in the yoga world. Frankly, it felt like a science I just didn’t feel compelled to explore further. My tendency to take on too much, particularly in terms of learning and courses, lead me to overlook and ignore it. However, this changed over the past weekend when I took a required 50hr “Essential Ayurveda for Yoga Professionals” course. Through this experience, I came to realize that much of Ayurveda’s principles resonated with my own beliefs about health and well-being.
Quick side note: This is my understanding after very limited education on this subject. Ayurveda practitioners undergo extensive training at a doctorate level. Nevertheless, even as yoga practitioners, we can embrace these principles to enrich our practice and our lives by grasping the fundamental aspects of this system.
What exactly is Ayurveda?
Ayurveda is a natural system of medicine rooted in ancient Indian wisdom that originated over 3,000 years ago. At its core, it revolves around the idea of balance: between the mind, body, and spirit. It recognizes the interconnectedness of all aspects of our being and strives for equilibrium and harmony. And states that disease arises from the imbalances between mind, body, spirit and environment.
The term “Ayurveda” is made of of two words:
“Ayush,” which signifies life or longevity
“Veda,” representing wisdom–not intellectual wisdom, but a deeper, experiential knowing
Foundational Principles of Ayurveda
Doshas: Ayurveda categorizes individuals into three doshas - Vata, Pitta, and Kapha - each representing a blend of elements and qualities. Understanding your dominant dosha can guide you toward tailored lifestyle and dietary habits that support balance and harmony. Check out this Dosha Quiz if you’re interested in determining your dominant dosha.
Prakriti & Vikriti: This refers to your innate constitution, when the doshas are balanced (prakriti) and your current state of imbalance (vikriti).
The Elements: Ayurveda believes that everything in the universe is composed of five elements - Earth, Water, Fire, Air, and Ether. By understanding how the elements manifest in our bodies, we can work toward gaining and maintaining equilibrium.
When exploring the elements, Earth is not just Earth. Earth is any kind of solidity, groundedness or consolidation.
Water encompasses fluidity in all forms, including thoughts, or emotions, of experiences, all that embodies mobility and movement.
Fire is not just flame. It embodies heat, warmth, light, and transformation.
This concept can be applied on a grand scale or broken down to their most minute form-considering even the atom. For example, Interactions between protons, electrons, and nuclei generates kinetic energy (the wind element), leading to friction which creates heat (the fire element), orbital movement fostering a cohesive force (the water element), all occurring within a specific location (the ether element). (still with me?)
A cornerstone principle of Ayurveda is “Yatha pinde tatha brahmande”, which translates to:
“As is the microcosmic body (our body), so is the macrocosmic body.”
In essence, this implies that the inner workings of our being mirror the external environment, and vice versa.
Ayurveda recognizes and aligns with rhythms. Including internal rhythms like inhaling and exhaling, hunger and satiation, and sleep and wakefulness, as well as external rhythms such as the natural patterns: day and night, lunar phases, and seasonal cycles. This philosophy acknowledges the influence of external rhythms on our internal state.
What I found to be the most interesting (for me) is Ayurveda’s primary goal: prevention. As a healthcare practitioner, this diverges significantly from our current Western health system and the main reason I struggle with the current models of care.
The second aim is maintenance, with healing as the final goal. The choice of words is noteworthy. It is not about “treating”, but about healing. What sets the two apart?
Treating a condition isolates that specific aspect from the entirety of your being. It fosters dependency- on the tool, the procedure, or practitioner. Healing, on the other hand, encompasses your complete self: the physical, emotional, and spiritual aspects, along with your thoughts, emotions, feelings. It returns accountability and responsibility, it acknowledges the interconnectedness, and understanding that actions in one domain ripple through the others.
How to incorporate Ayurveda into your lifestyle?
This is where Ayurveda loses me a little bit. Those who study it in depth are able to provide very specific recommendations on how to bring balance to your whole being. For someone who knows very little about this, it is overwhelming to say the least and feels all consuming. However, if we can break down the purpose of each recommendation. That is, not to “check a box” but to connect to your body. To bring awareness and begin to identify root causes.
Some examples:
Mindful eating: Ayurveda provides specific dietary guidelines for each dosha, depending on if you are in Prakriti or Vikriti. But even more basic than that, can you use eating to cultivate a connection with your body through food?
Movement: taking a moment to identify the basic aspects of your personality/mood can help guide the type of movement you chose to participate in. Feeling anxious, restless, overwhelmed (Vata)? Choose a more calming activity can bring you into balance. Feeling sluggish, stagnant, lethargic, heavy (Kapha)? You may need to do an energizing practice. Even if you don’t know the words, you can start to connect with how you’re feeling and recognizing what will bring you back to balance.
Lifestyle Routines: Ayurveda provides a daily morning/evening routine that can help sync your body with natural rhythms. This is another aspect where the specifics can get a little overwhelming (for me anyway). However, we can use this principle to tune in and find self-care routines that support our connection to self and overall well-being.
A quick note on self-care. This does not mean #treatyoself to things that help to numb you (although I do think we all deserve that from time to time). Self-care in Ayurveda is living in balance with your true nature, taking care of your soul, and living by Yogic principles.
Conclusion
In a world that moves fast and doesn’t always encourage or foster this connection to self, to earth, to others, the principles of Ayurveda can be a guide to help you align with your true nature and find balance. I think it starts with incorporating these small changes to foster awareness and work toward equilibrium in both the macrocosmic and microcosmic world that can provide increased harmony, vitality and inner peace.
