Excerpt from Chapter 3:
“Consider how inherently and intriguingly different we each are in so many fundamental ways. Each of us will react differently to any particular situation whether diet, weather, emotional stresses, aging, or disease and medicine. Both health and disease are highly individual phenomena. The course of our life continues for a finite period, and displays both compulsory and discretionary activities that respond to situations in characteristic and predictable ways.
From the Ayurvedic perspective, each one of our characteristic differences and similarities is an integrated manifestation of just three qualities or gunas of our perception. A preponderance of the three fundamental qualities make up our individuality. These same three qualities structure our individual perceptions of all of creation and are the basic tools we use to manage our health and illness, and organize our very existence.
The focus of Ayurvedic healing is to restore and maintain the body and mind’s own disease control and resistance capability. The source of true healing is understood as coming from within. Each individual has within them an inner guidance that directs them toward the appropriate choices and responses to life. The first question in Ayurvedic healing is not what is the nature of the disease, but rather who is it that has the disease. The basic problem with a disease is not so much the disease itself, but rather the tendencies of the individual who has the disease. Therefore, Ayurvedic health management begins with the individual constitution or prakriti, based on the three qualities of nature. The natural balance of these qualities that reflects one’s individuality also reflects one’s natural healthy condition. The Ayurvedic guidelines for prakriti offer an understanding of the natural tendencies, including the underlying metabolic faults or doshas that one inherently generates. With this foundation we can begin to develop an awareness of normal fluctuations of our natural tendencies. If an imbalance develops we can quickly recognize and correct it before it solidifies into mental or physical disease.
Our bodies and minds are naturally conditioned to accommodate a certain amount of stress, including stresses in diet and variations in the environment to which we are subjected, but there are limits. We can describe these as limits to our natural immunity and ability to resist disease. By relieving a stress before our limit to that stress is reached, a disease process can be avoided.
But when a stress exceeds our limits for natural immunity and disease resistance, our experience of nature is forced out of balance and a disease process begins. The Ayurvedic treatment protocol begins with identifying the weakness and removing the stressor that is causing the imbalance. This is directly followed by measures to relieve the body of its disease-borne toxic burden, and finally helping the body to restore and maintain itself in its own natural balancing process.”
10/31/23