UNDERSTANDING YOUR AILMENT – Your ailment is a result of excesses that you indulged in. Accumulation of toxins brings about an ailment in your body. The body has a natural healing mechanism. It detoxifies itself and heals itself. You need to respect your body with the right attitude to understand your sickness. And that is is in your hands.
Ailments do not happen all of a sudden. I have heard people telling me “ I was ok till yesterday. I do not know what went wrong today”. “I did nothing wrong”. “Everything has been the same as usual”.
Can it ever happen that your body suddenly got sick of you and decided to punish you with an ailment. You think so?
Consider this to start with. Many suffer from frequent attacks of colds and mucous congestion. Did you know that one of the main reasons for the formation of mucous in the morning is because of improper and incomplete digestion, and consumption of wrong food combinations.
The way you consume food also creates diseases. Emotional eating, gobbling up food, eating while working or driving, watching TV, and other such wrongs practices cause ill health. In most cases, medication is wrongly sought or prescribed where a simple change in the way you consume food with a simple ‘detox at home’ can help you heal well.
Faulty breathing because of stress and anxiety, fear and sadness also cause digestive and circulatory disorders. Insomnia, lack of physical strength and stamina, low libido are all caused due to a deranged mental and emotional condition.
It’s very important to know that an ailment or sickness is your body’s way of telling you that something is not right. When all the channels are blocked and the body cannot cleanse them, it calls for your attention to help it heal. It’s your own body way of reaching out to you for help. Listen to it. Do not medicate it.
The truth is, you need to live with your body till you take your last breathe. Till then, you need to maintain it well. Your body’s suffering is directly YOUR SUFFERING.
YOU ARE NOT SICK – Your body’s sickness is a sickness directly suffered by you. Therefore it makes sense that you immediately find out the things you did wrong which led to your body’s sickness. That’s how you begin the healing process.
If your sickness is because of your mental or emotional condition, you need a different type of healing because you will begin to identify with your sickness and you will only fall more sick.
Make a list of things you did wrong. Accept that you did go wrong. This is taking responsibility for your sickness. This is how you prevent falling sick again.
ACCURATE DIAGNOSIS IS THE KEY – What’s most important is an accurate diagnosis. Ayurvedic diagnosis starts with a Nadi Pariksha. Its a fool proof system of identifying the cause of your ailment. By getting the information of your primary cause of your ailment, healing is fast, accurate and effective.
It’s not a right practice to refer to patholocal reports to heal you while Ayurvedic medicines are being prescribed.
Any form of healing should only begin by identifying the primary cause or the origin of your ailment. What is important to know is WHAT TO HEAL and where to start from. Without this crucial step being taken, medication will create more harm than good.
Any medication that makes you feel comfortable as a result of findings in a pathological report only instils in you a comfort level by silencing your suffering momentarily. This is a very dangerous way of addressing your ailment. The feel good factor by medicating your symptoms is only cheating your mind. You will soon realise to your dismay that the ailment has spread its tentacles and you are taking more medicines now with the initial ailment still being active.
A faulty diagnosis can make the healing process go astray. Identifying the right cause is the first step to understand what to heal.
SELF HEALING IS HARMFUL – A lot of people practice self healing presuming we know what went wrong. Let me ask you – if you knew what went wrong, then why did you continue doing that wrong till sickness got to you?
It is therefore important for you to consult your Vaidya before you begin your healing process. This is very important.
DIET PRESCRIPTIONS – Many diet prescriptions are being dolled out by people to one another, by dieticians and by doctors. Not all are good for every constitution type. And practising random diet changes will do more harm than good as it will completely shock the body’s metabolic activity and destabilise the digestion process. Today, there is a trend about Alkaline foods.
Alkalising the body is not for every body type. Not every body can tolerate alkaline foods. Especially Vayu type constitutions will suffer with Alkaline foods. Gas and joint pains will erupt and cracking of joints will increase. Mood swings and falling of hair will happen.
And Kapha types will find more mucous accumulation in their channels accompanied with bouts of tiredness and l;ethargy. This will only create more ailments. Various foods react differently according to varied constitution type.
It’s important to note that “Healing yourself comes after you fall sick”. Not falling sick is the better choice.
GET COUNSELLED FOR A BETTER HEALTH – A Vaidya who can counsel you effectively about your ailment is the one leading you on the right path to healing. A Vaidya will, with care and concern, explain to you the cause of your ailment condition. You need to know what made you sick. You need to also participate consciously for your own benefit.
Sickness did not manifest from the outside. Therefore, simply writing a prescription is not the solution.
Consider any ailment whether it be because of a bacteria, virus, mosquito or any other reason. How many people bitten by a mosquito fall sick in a house or in a locality? Your sickness is happening from within because of the environment you have created. All the a mosquito does is to trigger an ailment that was waiting to erupt.
Most sicknesses originate at a subtle level, as a result of a restless and an unhappy mind, a weak mind. Any emotional weakness can leave a lasting impact on the metabolic activity of the body and lead to various sicknesses.
LIFESTYLE RELATED DISORDERS – Blaming your work or social life will not help beyond a point. Lifestyle disorders contribute in a big way in making your body sick. Sooner or later, you will be forced to follow a proper lifestyle desperately with stringent Dos’ and Donts’ and you will not enjoy living that way.
Bring a balance between your work and social life. And balance both of them with the way you would love to live life everyday.
WHAT CREATES A DISEASE – Every night, when we go to sleep late, the body still works to digest our food. But in this case, the digestion power is weak. The result is the undigested mucous we see on our tongue, in our mouth and also the phlegm that comes out of the throat.
If the food is not digested well, the undigested mucous (the result of an incomplete digestion) also has undigested acid and other undigested food particles. This blocks all channels and becomes the breeding ground for bacteria and viruses. As we allow this mucous to grow, it starts to block our channels from within.
We experience a foul smelling mouth, constipation, skin disorders, acne, eczema, loose stools, low grade fevers, oscillating body temperatures, unexplained mood swings, a distended abdomen with lots of gas, acidity, migraines, join pains, back pain, hair fall etc… the list can go on.
All these ailments are a result of a dysfunctional metabolic activity, a result of careless living. People today are frightened of not wanting Cancer, you think Cancer comes to you so easily, out of nowhere? If all these ailments go unchecked and ignored by you, it can also lead to Cancer one day.
And when one gets Cancer, one does everything to live. One consumes all kinds of medicines – Allopathy, Homeopathy, Ayurveda, Udani, and what not. But the patient will not change his or her faulty ways of living. It’s not their fault. Most people are not given the right information about the cause of their ailments. Others just want to consume medication.
DIETS THAT HELP MAKE MEDICINES WORK BETTER – Foods are considered as medication in Ayurveda. They nourish the cells and tissues. It is important to understand the nature of foods to consume to have the desired healing effect.
Foods are your first medicine. Foods need to be compatible to your constitution. And they need to be completely digested. Undigested food becomes a cause for ailments to manifest too. This is Ayurveda. All foods are not accepted harmoniously by every body type. The Vaidya will take into consideration your current constitution, the strength of the digestive juices, the current toxicity of the body and your current health before suggesting a diet.
It is also important to assess your current mental makeup and your emotional state as these speak of the food preferences you have been indulging in. Emotional eating is known to create disastrous effects on the body like Colitis, Gastritis, Obesity, Acid Reflux, Eczema, Constipation and so many other severe ailments. What you consume should become nutrition and enable the body to become healthier, not make you sick.
It will help you to know that Ayurvedic medicines are compared with the Fruits, Vegetables, Legumes and the Nuts that we consume.
Knowing all these details can only happen through a Nadi Pariksha. A thorough examination of your pulse can reveal all the above and more.
THE MEANING OF MEDICATION IN AYURVEDA – Digestive strength is a very important criteria before administering medicines in Ayurveda. Medicines need to get broken down and absorbed into the blood circulation. This helps their effect to reach the targeted organ.
Medication is not just consuming pills. Healing does not start with medication. Especially in Ayurveda and Siddha medicine, consuming medicine begins when they body has been put on a recovery path by adopting a lifestyle that corrects the inner bio-rhythm. By strengthening the bio-rhythm, the body is tuned to the natural healing forces present within to detoxify and rejuvenate itself.
The body’s inner intelligence takes over to heal from within. In this process, a couple of simple ailments are healed without medication. Medication only helps in healing as a catalyst.
HOW TO CONSUME MEDICINES – Medicines in Ayurveda are treated as a catalyst in healing. They empower the body to heal from within. Many factors need to be considered before administering medicines to a patient namely;
The bodily strength of the patient
The Digestive strength of the patient
The Disease condition, ie the stage of the disease infection in the body according to the Samprapti or Etiology
The nature of the medicine to be considered for administering
Ayurvedic medication is not considered separate from the food we consume. They also need to go through the process of digestion and assimilation before they reach the desired site of action. Therefore correcting your digestive system is of importance.
Medicines are consumed;
On empty stomach
Before food
In the food
In between meals
Immediately after food
Consumed at night at bedtime
Each of these types of administration have their own benefits on the body to treat diseases based on the derangement of the 5 Vayus, to tone digestion, to work on weight loss, to correct the digestive fire, to correct circulatory or respiratory disorders, to treat diseases connected to the heart, to correct reproductive disorders etc.
YOU ARE THE HEALER – From the above, it is clear that healing is possible only with an attitude to heal. Conscious participation in the correcting of lifestyle, responsible consumption of foods and food combinations contribute largely to the healing process. So seeking health through medication alone is just a partial understanding.
COUNSELLING YOU ABOUT HEALING – It’s important to understand how the healing process is going to take place. Each and every body is different, each and every constitution is different. So healing needs to be personalised.
Ayurvedic healing is not about prescribing medicines. It is a planned process and the process is tailor made to the individuals needs and on the type of disease one is suffering from, and the fundamental cause of the disease.