Ayurveda

What do Santa Claus, Dan Rather and Diana Ross have in common?

Each typifies one of the three doshas, which are Ayurveda’s guide to human nature and health. Santa Claus, a jolly, generous, round-bellied soul, is a good example of the earthy kapha dosha. Hard-driving journalist Dan Rather makes his living asking piercing questions, a perfect profession for the incisive pitta dosha. And with her creative gifts and exotic demeanor, Diana Ross is the epitome of the vata dosha’s airy exuberance.

To understand doshas, the cornerstone of Ayurvedic diagnosis and treatment, think first of the more familiar Western body types: ectomorph (light and slim), endomorph (heavy and soft) and mesomorph (husky and muscular). The definitions of the doshas begin with similar physical descriptions, then add layers of information about emotional tendencies, intellectual styles and spiritual inclinations, creating a detailed portrait of each type of individual.

Learning about your dosha is like getting a medical exam and a psychological test at the same time. When you understand your dosha, say Ayurvedic practitioners, you can make diet and lifestyle changes that will help you live a healthier, longer and happier life—and maybe even achieve spiritual illumination.

“The most important thing to know about Ayurveda is that it treats the whole person, not just the person’s health problems,” says Robert E. Svoboda, B.A.M.S., an American who graduated from the Tilak Ayurveda Mahavi dyalaya, an Ayurvedic school in Pune, India, and who now works with the Ayurvedic Institute, a training center in Albuquerque, New Mexico. “It isn’t just about clearing up symptoms or even curing disease. It’s also about restructuring the content of a person’s consciousness so that he can be aware of the essential nature and meaning of life.”

Ayurveda experts trace the beginning of this unique approach to physical health, mental clarity and spiritual fulfillment to the sages of ancient India, the rishis. They say the rishis discovered the principles of Ayurveda while in deep meditation. The principles were then codified in the Vedas (which means “knowledge”), the essential religious texts of Hinduism, which scholars say are more than 5,000 years old. There are the Rig Veda, the Sama Veda, the Yajur Veda and the Atharva Veda, which is the origin of Ayurveda.

Imagine one of the books of the Old Testament being a treatise on every practical detail of achieving physical, mental and emotional balance in order to perfect the individual’s relationship with the Divine Power, and you’ll have a sense of the breadth and depth of Ayurveda.

Dying Machine or Living Light?

What’s the difference between the Ayurvedic approach to health and the typical approach found in America and other countries of the Western world? According to proponents of Ayurveda, their discipline sees the body as a material expression of divine intelligence, while Western medicine sees the body as a kind of machine with parts. The arteries to the heart are clogged? Take some arteries out of the leg and attach them to the heart. Or replace the heart with a new one. Or put a part-specific substance, a drug, in the machine to keep the machine running in spite of its being broken. But no matter how the machine is fixed, it eventually wears out and stops.

Philosophically, the ideas at the foundation of Western medicine are called deterministic and materialistic, and they’re based on nineteenth-century Newtonian physics, which said that reality is composed of pieces of matter that bounce into each other like balls on a billiard table.

But the physics of the twentieth century—the physics of Einstein known as quantum physics—paints a very different picture of reality. You know its central formula: E = mc². What this formula means is that all matter is nothing but a dense version of energy or light. And this energy or light is an eternal substance that never dies but that constantly changes into many forms. Surprisingly, this is the same point of view of those sages from India who discovered Ayurveda. But, say twentieth-century Ayurveda experts, these sages went one step further. They also said that this energy or light is alive and intelligent—in fact, that it is the Divine Life Force and Creative Intelligence. And then they went a final step: They said that the Divine Life Force and Creative Intelligence are also the essential nature of the individual—and that realizing this essential nature is the purpose of life.

Realizing the essential nature of reality allows one to make any change in the forms of reality, such as increasing the health of the body or the emotional and mental well-being of the mind, says Deepak Chopra, M.D., author of the best-sellers Quantum Healing and Ageless Body, Timeless Mind and many other books on Ayurveda.

“Because the intelligence of the universe and the intelligence of the self are the same, the new physics turns out to be a great support for (the idea).......that reality can be changed once you reach the level of the self,” says Dr. Chopra in Creating Health, another of his books on Ayurveda. “The universe and the human organism are united at the level of intelligence.”

One of those changes, for example, is the ability to prolong life—to make it more like energy or light, more immortal and less mortal. “I’ve seen yogis in India who have lived to be 300 and 400 years old,” says Vasant Lad, B.A.M.S., M.A.Sc., director of the Ayurvedic Institute, a native of India and one of the few classically trained Ayurvedic practitioners teaching in the United States. (Dr. Lad’s B.A.M.S. degree from the prestigious University of Pune in India is equivalent to an M.D. in the United States. In India, a classically trained Ayurvedic practitioner spends five years in medical school and then a year or more in internship, which is equivalent to a Western residency.)

Aging is “a mistake of the intellect,” says Dr. Chopra in his book Perfect Health. “This mistake consists of identifying oneself solely with the physical body.”

Doshas and Individual Constitution

One of the core ideas of Ayurveda is that the fundamental energy of life expresses itself through the three doshas we discussed earlier—vata, pitta and kapha. (For a description of each one, see “All about Vata, Pitta and Kapha” on page 28.) Every person has a different mixture of doshas; usually, one dosha is predominant, and another is secondary. According to Ayurveda, your doshas are determined at the moment of conception, when the vata, pitta and kapha from your parents’ bodies unite to create your constitution, which Ayurveda calls prakruti. Of course, the constitution you were born with is affected by day-to-day factors such as your work, the people you spend time with and the foods you eat. That daily constitution is called vikruti. The way to have a healthy vikruti is to keep your doshas balanced, so no single one of them becomes too active or too inactive.

There are many Ayurvedic remedies in this book. But Ayurveda says that one of the main ways to keep your doshas balanced is through diet. Vatas, for instance, fare best on a diet that includes what in Ayurveda are considered “sweet” foods such as rice, breads and pasta, “sour” foods such as yogurt, grapefruit and aged cheese and salty foods such as . . . well, anything salty. Pittas need to eat sweet foods as well as “bitter” foods such as leafy greens and “astringent” foods such as beans and peas. Kaphas, say Ayurveda, feel best when they emphasize bitter, astringent and “pungent” foods, which means anything hot and spicy such as jalapeño peppers and dry mustard.

If you don’t eat according to your dosha, says Ayurveda, you create imbalances. Kaphas who eat lots of sweet foods may develop diabetes. Pittas who eat too many spicy foods may develop heartburn. Vatas eating astringent foods may develop gas, constipation or insomnia.

But Ayurveda says there are many signs and symptoms of an imbalanced state of the doshas. When vata is out of balance, for instance, it may lead to dry skin, joint pain, constipation, insomnia, fear, anxiety and insecurity. An aggravated kapha can produce a cold, congestion, a cough, poor appetite, water retention, greed and possessiveness. Too much pitta can cause heartburn, nausea, diarrhea, hives, rash, anger, hate and envy.

How to Find an Ayurvedic Practitioner

In the United States, there are very few properly trained Ayurvedic practitioners, says Dr. Lad. But there has been growing interest in both the philosophy of Ayurveda and in the practical details of Ayurvedic self-care. Dr. Lad says that Westerners are attracted to the integration of body, mind and spirit that Ayurveda teaches, to the peace its meditative practices offer and to the elegant mystery of its ancient wisdom.

In America, interest in Ayurveda has also been sparked by the work of Dr. Chopra, who has popularized Ayurvedic teachings through his books, television appearances, audiotapes and seminars.

There are, however, no licensing procedure and no accrediting board for Ayurvedic practitioners in the United States. Courses in Ayurveda are offered at various centers here and in Canada and Europe, but in the United States, graduates can only consult with clients, not practice medicine.

If you’re interested in exploring Ayurvedic therapies, choose a practitioner who combines Western medical training with Ayurvedic training or coordinate Ayurvedic consultations with your regular M.D., suggests Scott Gerson, M.D., an internist in New York City who has studied Ayurveda in India and is an Ayurvedic consultant.

“Modern Western medicine works best when surgery or some other acute intervention is necessary,” says Dr. Gerson. “Ayurveda may serve better for the treatment of some chronic conditions and as preventive medicine.”

That’s because Ayurveda treats the causes of health problems, not the symptoms. Dr. Lad says that Westerners who try Ayurveda are usually pleased with the attention that this health care system pays to what mainstream doctors might consider to be insignificant minor symptoms or psychosomatic complaints, such as flatulence or sensitivity to cold foods.

Ayurveda can provide simple, effective treatment for chronic problems such as dizziness, fatigue, digestive complaints and tension headaches—problems that tend to frustrate Western medicine.

The Daily Routine of Ayurveda

If you’re not in the care of an Ayurvedic practitioner but would like to try out Ayurveda’s health care philosophy, you can begin with some simple lifestyle changes that are part of the optimal Ayurvedic routine.

• Rise early—by 6:00 a.m., if possible.
• Meditate for at least 20 minutes once or twice each day.
• Keep your diet simple. A vegetarian or modified vegetarian diet is best. Make lunch the major meal of the day and eat a light dinner early in the evening, preferably between 5:00 and 6:00.
• Take short walks after meals to aid digestion.
• Get to bed early—ideally, by 10:00 p.m. Ayurvedic treatments are usually simple, involving lifestyle changes that can be made at once or gradually. One of the hardest things for Westerners when they first try Ayurveda is “the necessity to take personal responsibility for changing a lifestyle that causes disease,” says Dr. Svoboda.

  Eating foods because they are good for you rather than because they taste good is one such adjustment, he says. Rising early and going to bed early is another, as is learning to meditate.

  “People spend so much time on crutch activities,” Dr. Svoboda says, “doing things that help them avoid their feelings.” He says Ayurveda urges you to face your feelings, to look at your life and make constructive changes, so you may journey farther along the road to optimal physical, emotional and spiritual health.