To be honest I have never been into the sole searching, relaxation, mind-body type of exercise. I like to work hard, have my heart beating high and be exhausted once I have finished. However, when watching the Ellen Degeneres show this weekend, a interesting concept about medicine was presented by a yoga instructor who practices in Ayurveda medicine.
Ayurveda medicine can be traced back to as early as 2000-500BC during the Vedic periods in India. A period in which the “oldest sacred text of Indi-Iranians were being composed”. In our modern western world it is recognized as a “form of complementary and alternative medicine”
The word Ayurveda is a combination of the words life (ayus) and science (veda). The unique style of this medicine is its' belief in the “five great elements”, earth, fire, water, air and space which form the universe including the human body. The importance of the Indianan medicine is that it emphasizes balance and having balance in all areas will create a healthy mind and body. If one element is dominant, than those imbalances will cause illness.
In the language of the Ayurveda, doshas – is referred to as the body and gunas is referred to the mind. Other key terms used in this Indian medicine are pitta - fire, kapha – earth, veta – air, sattva – balance, rajas – over stimulates and tamas – lazy.
For example: Fiery energetic people have too much pitta (fire), earthly people are heavy and lazy in mind and body, and airy people move about a lot and find it hard to stay in one place. All these 5 elements change depending on your lifestyle.
On the Ellen Degeneres show, this ayurvedic doctor was able to examine people with his eyes and touch. He believed that your “inner life is written on you outer canvas.” He was able to look at a participant’s tongues, eyes and feel their pulse to determine what possible problems they could have. For example, a ladies tongue had white specks on her middle and back tongue which suggested that she would have digestion problems.
This traditional medicine also suggested that a disease starts as a mental thought first, and will continue to become physical if our thought pattern does not change. It suggests that all disease has a cause root to where it starts from and it can be cured if we treat the cause root – the mind.
Personally this was the biggest take away message from the show and my own research. I do believe that the mind is so powerful and if you think that you are becoming sick, then you will probably become sick. However, if you force you mind to think, that you are not becoming sick and take precautions, you will not get sick. I also enjoyed reading about how we are affected by the 5 different elements and certain imbalances are caused to one of the elements dominating.
Here is a You Tube video of the Ayurveda practitioner and yoga instructor on the Ellen Degeneres Show: http://yogicameron.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment