AYURVEDA

Ayurveda - it's interesting.

It's a complicated system of holistic healing described in the Vedas (the holy books of Hinduism) at least 3500 years ago, and at the same time it's a living system which is very popular in modern India, and increasingly popular in other parts of the world.

At first I found all the rules and correspondences off-putting. There are certainly a lot of facts, from complicated systems for classifying the patient's fundamental type, specific ailment, and situation, to treatments that vary according to everything from the individual to the season, and even the astrological situation.

I'm not, as I've mentioned, a big fan of astrology (hey, you have to draw the wonk line somewhere), so this last in particular is hard for me to swallow. Plus, a casual overview of the system might suggest that it's more about annoying rules than anything else (my first encounter with Ayurveda was in a yoga instruction book, which told all yogis to eat a vegetarian diet consisting mostly of beans and rice with no garlic, onions, or spices. I certainly wasn't feeling it at the time, and am still pretty unexcited about the prospect).

And yet, there's something about the system that's so fundamentally appealing to me. A new book that I'm reading on the subject (it's a very good book, so far), helped me pin it down:

Today Ayurveda, in yet another stage of development, is reaching out to the Western world and addressing modern conditions. Ayurveda is part of a new movement towards a global medicine that includes the best in the medicines of all lands. A new natural planetary medicine is emerging, largely through an examination of traditional medicines of native peoples throughout the world.

Ayurveda is probably the best place of synthesis for such a global medicine. It contains perhaps the broadest number of healing modalities. It retains much of the language of alchemy, which was a global medical and spiritual tradition in ancient times. The medicine of India has much in common with older Chinese and European traditions, and can serve as a point of integration between them. The medicine necessary to heal the planet and usher in a new age of world unity is already contained in this, perhaps the oldest of all healing systems.

Well, that's definitely a lot of it, anyway. The Ayurvedic system is a vast storehouse of knowledge and techniques. For example, according to another interesting book on alternative medicine, Ayurvedic practitioners have been aware of the concept of germs and antibiotics for centuries, but do not believe that fighting germs without restoring balance in the system is sustainable, a viewpoint that conventional medicine is just starting to come around to. The range of therapies used within Ayurveda is also incredibly broad, including diet, yoga poses, meditation, lifestyle changes, breathing exercises, spiritual counseling, chanting, ritual, herbal medicines, homeopathy, aromatherapy, massage, sweating, fasting, and in the past, even accupuncture, accupressure, surgery and bloodletting. This wealth of knowledge really excites me because it seems that the more methods of treatment we understand and have at our disposal, the more appropriate choices we have in any given situation. Even better, these treatments tend to be appropriate technologies, unlike most conventional medicines. (I should mention, as a sort of side-note, that Chinese medicine and certain Central American traditions also seem to be extremely deep, ancient, and effective, but neither is currently as accessible to an American audience, i.e. me).

Also, the more I've learned about Ayurveda, the more it has actually seemed like a very compassionate system. Sure, there are lots of rules and guidelines, but I get the impression that a lot of it comes down in the end to the intuition of the practitioner, just like any other system. The actual teachers of Ayurveda that I've encountered have been some of the most compassionate Hindu teachers I've come accross, advocating, for example, the values of love and sensual enjoyment within a healthy life (unlike our yoga teacher training leader, who tried to tell us that loving somebody means you hate somebody else!). It also seems that there are some great living masters doing good Ayurvedic work in the Western world today, for example Maya Tiwari's Mother Om Mission, which works to bring Ayurvedic healing to disenfranchised communities.

Still, the Indian context is my biggest ongoing qualm with my own involvement in Ayurveda. I'm deeply fascinated by world religions, but I've generally found the Hindu gods, stories, and symbols too alien to my own context to have much emotional and, I suspect, spiritual impact for me. Plus, the tastes and smells of the plants are unfamiliar, and they're not native to my environment. Ideally I would love to work in a system as deep and rich as Ayurveda, but one where I could chant to Freya and work with garden weeds if I want (I'm curious about this book, which seems to include Western herbs from an Ayurvedic perspective) instead of trying to wrap my brain further around Saraswati, Ashwaganda, and so on. I'm not sure if this is possible, but I'm definitely curious enough to learn more.