About Ayurveda

The Ayurvedic system traces its roots to the Himalayan Mountains of India over five thousand years ago. Ayurveda is from two Sanskrit words, Ayus, or "life," and Veda, or "knowledge." Ayurveda has been suggested that a more appropriate translation would be "the knowledge of life span."

Ayurvedic knowledge was passed orally from generation to generation for over a thousand years, continuously growing as each Ayurvedic added his insights and experiences. It was finally written down in the first century A.D. by the Ayurvedic physician, Charaka.

By that time, and hundreds of years before the birth of European medicine, Ayurveda had specialists in psychiatry, pediatrics, gynecology, ear nose and throat, ophthalmology, toxicology, virility, and fertility.

Ayurvedic medicine probably predates any other healing tradition in existence today - even Chinese medicine. Even before the Ayurvedic conference, knowledge of the medicinal plants of India has spread to the other continents. Seeds from plants indigenous to India have been found in the tombs of the Egyptian pharaohs. Travelers had carried information about Indian plants through Tibet into China, and Arabs and traded for Indian herbs before the birth of Islam. According to Ayurvedic philosophy, health is dependent upon one’s ability to live in harmony with one’s self and with the external universe. As much attention was given to illnesses of the mind as to illnesses of the body. The Ayurvedic physician taught that in order to avoid illness and pain, the patient must control the destructive ( and self-destructive) nature. Living in harmony with the environment was recognized as essential to one’s mental, physical, and spiritual well-being.

Ayurvedic physicians taught was more desirable than a cure. Their ideal was to develop an individual’s natural resistance to disease to the point where one’s immune system could function as one’s best medicine. Their goal was to maintain an individual in his or her individual health throughout life, so that the ultimate goal of life- the awareness of his or her connection with the life principle- could be pursued.

Today’s Ayurvedic physicians, like their predecessors, recognize their major body (or physiology) types which they refer to as the three DOSHAS: VATA, PITTA, and KAPHA. One’s body type is also referred to as one’s PRAKRITI, and is determined by heredity. Most people are a combination of types: a VATA/PITTA type for example. Ayurvedic physicians evaluate their patients using such techniques as observation, interview, and pulse diagnosis to determine the patient’s body (or physiology) type. They then determine the imbalances that are present in the body and make recommendations according to the patient’s body type. Dietary and herbal recommendations make up a large part of their treatment, and music therapy is also employed.

Thanks to the Ayurvedic tradition, many herbal combinations based on centuries of accumulated knowledge are available to today’s eclectic herbalists and natural health enthusiasts.