Ayurveda: ‘The Science of Life’ (Pt. 1)

In Sanskrit, ‘Ayu’ means life and ‘veda’ means knowledge, so Ayurveda quite literally means the knowledge of life.

Ayurveda is all about enjoying the state of freedom from disease or illness. It is unlike other therapies and has many unique features, which are listed below:

Ayurveda treats the whole person, body, mind and soul.
The treatments are natural and come from nature, therefore no side effects.
Ayurveda is connected to the universe and the world around us.
It is preventative.
It gets to the root cause of the disease.
The same treatment can be done for both the healthy and the diseased.
It’s less expensive.
It supports other systems of medicine.
It’s psychosomatic and treats the body as an extension of our mind.

According to Ayurveda we are all healthy bodies until there becomes an imbalance within us, and when we don’t tackle an imbalance early on, then later down the line it will become a disease.
Therefore, Ayurveda works on preventing diseases and imbalances from occurring in the first place, but also gets to the root cause of a disease if you are suffering.

Ayurveda is such a broad, deep practice and basically a way of life, and it really is all encompassing, so it is difficult to put into a blog post exactly what it’s all about.
There are so many areas to Ayurveda, everything is linked and connected, so one part doesn’t exist without the other!

But without confusing you too much to start with, let’s look at the real basics.

The basis of all Ayurveda is that it works with the ‘Panchamahabhutas’, which is sanskrit for the five big elements of the universe.
Below are the five elements, starting with their Sanskrit name and what they represent:

Aakash – Space (non-resistance)
Vayu – Air (movement and direction)
Agni – Fire (transformation, light and heat)
Jala – Water (fluid, liquid and cohesion)
Prithvi – Earth (solid and stable)

The elements are in order of light to heaviest, more subtle to dense.
The elements are all happening at the same time, and one can’t work without the other. They are inter-dependent.

This is the outside universe as we know it. But now we have to link it to our inside universe, the human body.