Ayurveda
A System to Heal Yourself – Naturally
What Is Ayurveda?
Fondly referred to as “The Mother of Medicine,” Ayurveda (EYE yur VAY duh) has been around a very long time–over 5,000 years to be exact. It is a “time-tested,” natural health approach that originated in the Vedic civilization of ancient India, and has been in continuous use ever since.
The modern restoration of Ayurveda in the West called Maharishi Ayurveda,* acknowledges and draws its source of wisdom from the tradition of yogis, rishis or “seers,” whom Ayurvedic texts say cognized or intuited the entire knowledge of Ayurveda in seed form at it’s inception, thousands of years ago.
Maharishi Ayurveda is based on the premise that consciousness is the basis of health, and of life itself. Maharishi Ayurveda is “consciousness-based Ayurveda” and provides the basis for the Ayurvedic approaches of the Radiant You™ program and those presented on this website.
What Can Ayurveda Do for You?
Ayurveda is sometimes referred to as the “missing manual” for the mind-body system. It gives us a new angle on understanding ourselves that is very comprehensive, simple, natural and powerful–and easily translated into a highly personalized approach to our health.
Despite its foreign-sounding name, Ayurveda is as simple and intuitive as knowing your own self. Most people quickly find that the concepts and guidelines of Ayurveda “make sense” and that Ayurveda starts to explain their symptoms and tendencies–how and why certain foods, habits, stressors, personalities, environments, seasons and weather make them feel either better or worse.
Nature’s Own “Personalized Medicine”—Healing According to Your Mind-Body Type
Based on your own unique symptoms and tendencies, you will be guided in choosing foods, herbs, exercise, and lifestyle choices specifically for your needs, to help heal chronic imbalances and to optimize your health so you feel at the “top of your game” every day.
Ayurveda is fun, easy to use, deeply nurturing and soothing, rejuvenating and beautifying. It’s safe, effective, and scientifically validated by a growing body of research.
What is Ayurveda About?
Ayurveda is about YOU and your health! Literally meaning “Knowledge of Health,” Ayurveda drills down to the origins of our mind-body functioning–the “software program” that governs all our physiological functions and lies beyond the physical material of the body. Ayurveda describes that the software program runs via three doshas (DOE-shuz)–or aspects of the body’s intelligence–that are charged with keeping everything in the body integrated and functioning healthily.
How Is Ayurvedic Healing Different?
First let’s briefly consider how health and healing are usually approached today. Conventional medicine looks at the body as a kind of sophisticated machine with a number of systems that operate basically autonomously–the nervous system, the digestive system, the musculoskeletal system, the cardiovascular system, etc. Conventional medicine assigns a different type of doctor for each system.
Our chronic health problems get treated by several doctors, each diagnosing and prescribing medications for our various symptoms, all too often leaving us feeling worse, not better, as drugs interact to create new symptoms, which are treated with even more drugs…in a vicious, downward cycle.
This fragmented approach can be life saving in emergencies, but for chronic, non-life-threatening problems, our bodies tend to get a lot of treatment, but not a lot of healing.
How Does Ayurvedic Healing Work?
Rather than look at the body as a collection of systems and treating each one separately, Ayurveda looks at what is common to all of the systems, and identifies three basic functions common to every system, organ, tissue and cell. And these three basic functions are those that are essential for life at any level: 1) movement and flow, 2) digestion and metabolism and 3) physical structure and substance.
Each of these three functions of movement, metabolism, and structure are governed by an inner program–or intelligence–that guides their normal functioning. These three “body-guides”–traditionally called or vata (VAH-tuh), pitta (PIH-tuh), and kapha (KAH-fuh)–are not only the functions themselves and their activity, but also the inner intelligence or “software program” of the body that guides them.
The Three Doshas and Your Health
When the three basic functions, or doshas, are doing their job perfectly, then we have good health. If not, the body starts to go out of balance, and eventually symptoms appear that can develop to outright disease if not corrected.
Rather than wait for disease to start, Ayurveda teaches us how to keep our bodies in balance through proper diet and lifestyle suited to our individual nature, and how to correct imbalances early – before they develop into disease.
Creating Health Right Where You Are, Whoever You Are
While Ayurveda offers preventative health care, it is relevant and useful to everyone. If you already have a significant health problem, Ayurveda will help you identify the imbalances underlying your disorder, and help correct them to promote true healing. When you learn about Ayurveda, you will learn what specific aspects of your diet and lifestyle are contributing to your imbalances, and what adjustments to make to help your body heal.
The Radiant You™ Program
In my 25 years of medical practice, while helping over 20,000 patients, I have verified an eternal truth of Ayurveda–that creating the foundation of radiant health depends on handling two very important areas of your life: digestion and stress. You can’t get this foundation of health from a cream, a pill, a shot, or even a surgical knife. In the Radiant You™ program, you will learn about these two foundational areas of your life, and how to optimize them to create radiant health:
- Digestion: Critical for maintaining your body in a healthy state, through absorbing and assimilating the nutrition your food.
- Your Nervous System: Governs the functioning of your hormones and every cell of your body, and allows you to tolerate stress.
By following the Radiant You™ program, you will learn how to correct imbalances in both systems–through diet, herbs and lifestyle approaches.
STEP ONE –
Take the Digestion Quiz to identify which of your three doshas is causing the symptoms you may be having. Then, you’ll receive personalized tips, along with diet, herbal and lifestyle guidelines to help you digest better, cleanse and nourish your system, and begin to look health and radiant! Whatever your dosha imbalance, applying even one or two of the tips you’ll receive should bring noticeable results within as little as a few days.
TO FIND OUT YOUR DIGESTIVE TYPE AND GET THE DIET, HERBAL AND LIFESTYLE APPROACHES THAT ARE BEST FOR YOU,
Take the Quiz now (5 minutes or less!) >
* The body of knowledge and therapeutics called Maharishi Ayurveda was developed in the mid-1980’s by Ayurvedic scholars and physicians working under the direction of Maharishi Mahesh yogi, the founder of the Transcendental Meditation Program. The following service marks and trademarks are licensed to Maharishi Vedic Foundation: Maharishi Ayurveda, Transcendental Meditation, TM.
