“The Ancients” have so much to teach us about promoting health and wellness!
In India, the healing science of Ayurveda can be traced back over 5,000 years. It’s a holistic approach and looks at the totality of a person – not just the well-being of his or her physical body, but also the balance and integrity of a person’s life force.
Ayurveda sees people as energetic beings — with minds, emotions, spirituality and relationships that affect health and well-being. Ayurveda is an integrative approach that looks to create health and harmony through food and healthy lifestyle practices.
Diet and Ayurvedic Medicine
Western medicine views food as nourishment for the body in a biochemical way. Ayurveda also concurs that the food you eat is important to good health, but it is also essential to nourish the mind and the soul. Not only what you eat, but when how and why you eat are part of the whole picture.
Ayurvedic teachings say that each person has their own unique energy blueprint (prakruti). Three types of doshas make up this energy which govern physical, mental and spiritual health. Even though “we are who we are,” Ayurveda teaches that diet can be used to balance one’s doshic makeup, and be an integral part of good health.
General Principles of Ayurveda as it Relates to Food and Eating
- Accept the perfectness and goodness (including your body) of how you naturally are
- Embrace a mindset and compassion that there’s nothing to feel guilty about when you eat
- Accept that there are no good foods or bad foods
- Be present and mindful about food – while you are choosing food, while you are eating
- Create a peacefulness around your eating experience, without distractions, eating slowly and breathing naturally
- Express gratitude around meals
- Appreciate relationships that build around cooking and eating meals
- See food as nourishment and not a mood regulator
- Be mindful that food comes from the earth, is part of nature and the cyle of life; honor it by eating more whole foods and perhaps growing them
- Pay attention to daily natural rhythms and doing your best to live that way — getting up, going to bed and eating meals at approximately the same time each day
To learn about how to balance your dosha with specific foods I recommend:
Eat-Taste-Heal: An Ayurvedic Cookbook for Modern Living,
by Thomas Yarema, MD, Daniel Rhoda, and Johnny Brannigan.
