What Does Ayurveda Say About Disease?

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Transcript below:
The reason why I wanted to start this is because we make decisions all day long, every day in relation to our health and well-being. And that's what Ayurveda's really all about.

Ayurveda says that the things that we do daily is what makes the difference in our health over the long-term.

And so that's what we're after. And earlier this week I asked for some suggestions from you, about what you want to know about Ayurveda diet and lifestyle.

You guys gave me lots of ideas! People had all kinds of different perspectives and different ideas, but there was one thing that I saw that was a common thread.

And it was so awesome, so I turned it into the topic. And so today, we are going to talk about...

What does Ayurveda say about disease?

And why am I bringing up disease? Because so many of you had all these topics, but then others of you had really specific disease type things you want to talk about.

Like, what does Ayurveda say about a fatty liver? What does Ayurveda say about Crohn's? What does Ayurveda say about IBS? What does Ayurveda say about Vertigo? Migraines? Food allergies? I looked at all those, and I was like, yeah, it's true, and Ayurveda would say, "it depends."

In Ayurveda, we don't look at the disease, we look at the person.

I want to talk about that today and why that works, to try to get your head around this a little bit. And to understand that why the Ayurveda that I'm choosing to teach is all based on diet and lifestyle. Because that's where we can make the biggest difference in our own health.

It's how we can cure and prevent health problems.

So let me tell you a little bit more about disease, like how does it happen anyway? Well it depends. But, in the Ashtanga Hridayam (ancient text) there are two types of diseases.

7 extrinsic reasons for disease. The extrinsic ones are the ones that come from the outside, so that could be our environment, it could be our occupation, it could be an infection, or something that comes in from the outside.

11 intrinsic reasons for disease. The intrinsic reasons could be like, your constitution/dsohas. It could be ama, which is the toxins or function of agni. It could be our gender, our age, genetics, our diet, our channels, our srotas (channels) that might not be working as well as they could be. 

So, do you see all of these different things come into play?

On top of it, we're unique individuals, so we do have a unique individual constitution of the doshas. We all know, vata, pitta, and kapha and we have a blend of those.

When those doshas go out of balance (dosha means "fault," by the way), they go around and cause problems. We have to be careful of the doshas and manage them closely because their nature is to cause problems.

Okay, so the doshas go around causing problems and they'll find vulnerable tissues in individual people. Your vulnerable tissues might be different from mine. Some people's tissues are vulnerable in the joints and then they get joint pain. Some people have tummy issues, digestion issues. That'll be their vulnerable spot. Some people's spots are on the skin, so they'll have skin problems.

It's why we have all of these different variety and array of different kinds of diseases, because the doshas are causing problems, which is unique to the person. Then they go to the tissues, the vulnerable tissues to cause the most problems in each of us individually. 

And so, if you could look at that as a big story, that's why it's really, really impossible for somebody to say, "I have this disease, how do I fix it with Ayurveda?" "Oh, that's easy, you need to do this, this, this." There are some simple little things that maybe you could try but as you notice, I really stray away from remedies — for this reason.

With all of these different stories that can happen to each one of us, it's not fair to put it in a little ball and call it a disease.

You can't just treat the dang thing, you have to treat the person! There are so many different areas of our life that have influence over our well being, including our daily routine, our mindset, our psychology, our diet, the seasons, our age, how we are using our five senses every day! 

So! I love that you started this off with these questions about disease. I didn't, honestly, I didn't know what I was going to talk about for our first topic. And you brilliantly brought it to my attention!

It sets a really good foundation of what we want to do each week and Fridays at 11:00 pacific. We're going to talk about diet and lifestyle of Ayurveda.

What does Ayurveda say about coffee? What does Ayurveda say about oil? What does Ayurveda say about winter? What does Ayurveda say about swimming? What does Ayurveda say about popcorn? See what I'm saying?

All these little things that we're doing every single day, matter!

What about tongue scraping? What about teeth brushing? What about super hot water on my head? What about an ice bath?

So on Fridays, we're going to talk about really simple, little things that we're going to be doing every single day. You like that idea? 

Our goal really is to bring Ayurveda to life. In Ayurveda, most diseases can be avoided with diet and lifestyle alone.

So that's really powerful. And you know what's powerful about that? We own it. We own our decisions and the things that we do every single day. 

If this serves you, share this with your friends.

Comment below and ask, "Monica, what does Ayurveda say about,________?"

What do you want to know? Let's start to focus on the little things that we do every single day, because as we know, disease's a complicated thing. Daily life is much more simple...and yet it's the foundation for good health.

Let's not wait until we are sick. Let's do right by your bodies, minds and spirits each day for the greater good of our LIFE!

I will see you Fridays at 11:00 PST on Facebook, as we keep bringing Ayurveda to life!

Love,
Monica B.