What is Ayurveda?
BY Jasmine Hemsley
Ayurveda is a holistic health system and philosophy that originated in India some 5,000 years ago, and is still widely practised and passed down through generations in many Indian households as a way of cooking, eating and living that’s woven into everyday life, or at least as herbal preparations and remedies to boost health.
In Kerala, Southern India, Ayurveda is very well known as a form of medicine, treatments and retreats. In the West, our first encounter with Ayurveda is often through yoga, its sister science and an integral part of the Ayurvedic lifestyle. Ayurveda consists of a tried-and-tested set of principles drawn from our understanding that we are nature, helping us to find and maintain balance of mind, body and spirit no matter the environment we’re in.
This starts and ends with a healthy digestive fire (Agni), but also encompasses every other aspect of our lives. It is a gentle, nurturing system that doesn’t enforce rigid rules, but allows us to ebb and flow through our everyday, knowing we are guided.
Ayurveda is comprised of habits big and small, and can feel complex and confusing at first as we begin to see the world from this more holistic point of view rather than the more western linear approach that doesn’t tend to account for variables.
The more you learn about Ayurveda, the more it makes intuitive sense. It understands each of us as an individual, ever subtly changing as we go about our day-to-day in relation to the environment, the season, the time in our life, the time of day… The focus is on preventing dis-ease and addressing the root causes of a diagnosis rather than just addressing the symptoms in a linear way like we do in western medicine.
One of the most beautiful concepts of Ayurveda is understanding the world according to the 5 elements, space, air, fire, water and earth, which together make up everything in the universe in different ratios. And from this originate the three Doshas (mind-body energies): Vata, Pitta and Kapha. Each Dosha is associated with different qualities (for example, Vata is dry and airy, Pitta is hot and oily, Kapha is wet and heavy).
The Doshas are used to describe each person’s mind-body type — we are all made up of all three, but most of us have one or two dominant Doshas. This is our basic Doshic makeup, but it fluctuates according to our environment, so for example if someone is predominantly Vata, they will tend to feel colder than, say, Pitta types, but they will still feel too hot during a heat wave. The habits and environments that suit us best will depend on our Doshic makeup (Prakriti).
Food is recognised as an important part of Ayurveda — as the building blocks for our mind, body, spirit. It teaches us to privilege freshly made, well cooked foods, made with local, seasonal ingredients. Ideally, each meal should feature the six Tastes (salty, sweet, sour, bitter, pungent (e.g. spices), astringent (e.g as found in black tea) so that we feel satisfied.
We should eat mindfully and enjoy each mouthful, avoiding screens and other distractions, and eat our biggest meal at lunchtime, when our digestion is at its strongest. In fact, since each day moves through all three Doshas, Ayurveda tells us that there is an optimal time for everything — this also corresponds to our circadian rhythms.
For example, the best time to go to sleep is before 10 p.m. and the best time to wake up is before 6 a.m. This ancient system has influenced many of the “new” trends or even “wellbeing habits” that we see everywhere these days — from fermented foods to acupressure, from supplements to circadian rhythms with optimal times to eat, exercise and sleep to mindfulness.
Moving our bodies daily, practising yoga asanas and connecting with nature — even walking barefoot on grass, as well as practising meditation and breathwork, and many more are all beautiful habits worth integrating and which I talk about aplenty on my website.
East by West by Jasmine Hemsley is published by Bluebird, price £25