Why Ayurvedic Remedies Work Best Alongside Lifestyle Change

If you take some of the recommended herbal formulas but allow unhealthy lifestyle habits to continue unabated, it’s not likely that you will experience lasting or significant improvement. That is why, for each condition, I have suggested not only medications but numerous other measures you can use for healing, such as specific yoga postures and breathing exercises, foods to favor or avoid, massage oils, teas, healing pastes, and many other ways to promote healing. In addition, Part II of the book provides suggestions for your diet and daily routine that can get you established in a healthy way of living in harmony with nature. Please make use of these recommendations as part of your own personal holistic program for creating and supporting health.

Your body’s innate healing mechanisms are always at work, striving to maintain or restore total health and balance. The recommendations offered here will support the body in its natural process of healing. Ayurvedic Disease Management (Chikitsa) The traditional Ayurvedic program of healing has eight essential components: 1. Find out the person’s prakruti (constitution).

Find out the vikruti (the present altered state of the doshas in the body). Find out the cause or causes of the illness, such as diet, lifestyle, emotional patterns, quality of relationships, genetic predisposition, and so on. As the first line of treatment, remove the cause. Provide the proper regimen (diet, exercise, pranayama, etc.), according to the person’s prakruti, vikruti, seasons, climate, age, and so on.

Provide a detoxification procedure: either palliation (shamana) or elimination (shodana, such as panchakarma). Provide rejuvenation (rasayana) for the body in general, to increase immunity and to strengthen specific organs and tissues. Provide therapies that are (a) antagonistic to the provoked dosha and (b) antagonistic to the disease, based on the principle that opposite qualities balance. The following points will help you to make best use of this encyclopedia of Ayurvedic healing.

Diagnosis and Treatment Ayurvedic first-aid treatments are effective if you first do a careful, discriminating diagnosis to determine whether the condition is vata, pitta, or kapha in nature. A specific treatment, for a specific type of condition, will be beneficial. On the other hand, if you do not take the time to diagnose carefully, the treatment may not be appropriate, and consequently you will not get the desired result. So before deciding on an Ayurvedic line of treatment, look carefully at the physical signs and symptoms that will help you determine whether it is a vata, pitta, or kapha illness or condition.