Ayurveda can be defined as a system that uses the inherent principles of nature to help maintain health in a person by keeping the individual’s body, mind and spirit in perfect equilibrium with nature. Ayurveda is a Sanskrit term, made up of the words “ayu” and “veda”. Ayus means life and veda means knowledge, or science. The term Ayurveda thus means the “the knowledge of life” or “the science of life”. According to the ancient ayurvedic scholar charaka, “ayu” compromises the mind, body, senses and soul.
BASIC PRINCIPLES: Ayurveda is based on the premise that the universe is made up of five elements: air, fire, water, earth and ether. These elements are represented in humans by three “doshas “, or energies: vata, pitta and kapha. When any of these doshas accumulate in the body beyond the desirable limit, the body loses its balance. Every individual has a distinct balance, and our health and well-being depend on getting a right balance of the three doshas. Ayurveda suggests specific lifestyle and nutritional guidelines to help individuals reduce the excess dosha.
Ayurvedic practitioners use a well-balanced healthy diet, lifestyle changes, stress relief and various herbal remedies to heal all sorts of conditions by helping to bring the body back into balance. The overall belief is that disease and suffering results from an imbalance in the three doshas. Each of these doshas have physical and emotional characteristics, so ayurvedic practitioners use the three doshas to describe common traits of someone’s body type and personality.
Yoga and Ayurveda are said to influence each other, both are benefited by each other. Yoga to some extent pervades all the six vedic systems and represents their practical side, outlining the prime principles and methods for developing the meditative mind that is the basis of all vedic knowledge. In this classical vedic scheme, Ayurveda is the vedic system developed specifically for healing purposes. There is no other vedic system of healing apart from Ayurveda. Yoga is the vedic system of spiritual practice of sadhana. All vedic sadhana or spiritual practice involves some form of yoga practice.
This means yoga is not originally or inherently a medical system. It does not address either physical or psychological disease or their treatment in a primary manner. If our aim is to turn yoga into a medical system, in the vedic scheme this requires turning yoga in the direction of Ayurveda as we do not find any discussion of disease, pathology, diagnosis or treatment strategies in yogic texts apart from the approach of Ayurveda. There is no yoga system of medicine in terms of diagnosis, pathology and treatment apart from Ayurveda.
Bringing Ayurveda into yoga provides a yogic and vedic system of medicine to allow for the full healing application of all aspects of yoga. It provides a diagnosis and treatment in harmony with yogic philosophy, as well as a diet and herbal treatment that follows the spiritual approach of yoga.
Ayurveda provides the appropriate life-style recommendations for yoga practice, as well as the background to unfold the full healing potential of all aspects of yoga. Yoga provides the spiritual and psychological basis for Ayurveda and its higher applications.
The ayurvedic rejuvenation techniques: There are techniques that can nourish and revitalize the body so that we can develop a productive yoga practice. With the help of these techniques, the body becomes healthier, stronger, less toxic, more flexible and more energetic; the mind clears and is free from sloth and inertia. Such a body and mind are necessary to practice yoga in its truest sense. According to the ayurvedic scriptures, the ultimate goal of a rejuvenation program is longevity and the unfold of extraordinary abilities of body and mind so that the practitioner is able to stay in the state of Samadhi for a long time.
An authentic rejuvenation program involves both cleansing and nourishing. According to Ayurveda, ama [any undigested food and unassimilated food in the body, as well as undigested words and thoughts in the mind] floats into the system as waste matter, blocking our shrotas [arteries, veins, capillaries, nerves, etc] and our nadis [energy channels]. The forces of nourishment can rejuvenate the body [and even reverse the aging process], but only if they are not counteracted by waste matter contaminating the system.
COMBINATION: The combination of these cleansing processes can be more productive than either alone, but it is very crucial that a proper assessment be made of how best to combine the two therapies. The combination of pancha karmas and shat kriyas lead us to a physical level of cleansing along with mental and spiritual purification which makes a total refining process. An expert yogi with the help of an ayurvedic doctor make and excellent team by making an initial evaluation of personality type, energy level, and previous medical history and design and appropriate detoxification program. This may involve pancha karmas and shat kriyas, or a combination of both.
Thus we can come to a conclusion that the science of Ayurveda and its practices are meant to have a plenty of benefits when combined with the yogic practices. A practitioner of yoga will have complete physical, mental and spiritual benefits along when combined with ayurvedic methods, which lays the foundation of a pure physical body, without which an individual cannot progress mentally as well as spiritually in the process towards attainment of moksha.