But I thought that was good for me...
Beyond Ayurveda; the Principles
Is butter good or bad? Milk or soy, meat or veggie…. how about the benefits (or harms) of sun exposure? Brown rice or white? copper water containers? Raw? Is fish good or bad for joint health? Ice pack or heating pad? Naps? The controversies are many & fluctuate depending on trends in the health world & what authority you put your faith in. “Science” rarely puts these disagreements to rest. It is confusing.
Growing up in the melange’ of the alternative health world confronted me with ideas ranging from fruititanianism to macrobiotics to iridology to my grandfather’s insistence on potatoes at every meal (aka if there is a potato involved it is a healthy meal). None of these theories agree & few have a big picture in mind. Conflicting advice underlined for me the fact that none of these ‘theories’ of healing had a large enough approach, or principal set, to meaningfully support healing in a broad group of people over a long, perhaps inter-generational, period of time. This is what led me to study Ayurveda. Ayurveda’s high-level, principle-based approach eases a lot of the disjointedness & confusion of ‘alternative healing’ & the controversies that arise.
Don’t eat tomatoes.
Additionally one of the most brilliant things about Ayurveda is that within the principles (which fyi are never really laid out in anything like a list but rather inferred from the texts) is an openness that allows for both focusing in on minutia where important & using a wide angle lens for guidance when particularities of condition & location are not being met by the issue at hand. This means that 3000 years after the writing of the texts we can still use them for guidance despite the fact that contemporary life is not at all like the lives of the people that Ayurveda was designed to serve. The expansiveness of the principles includes ideas like focusing on regional foods & culture & using those for medicine. The opportunity to update Ayurveda to suit the realities of modern diasporatic living is a great example of how the reishis (or the gods depending on who you think came up with Ayurveda) were far greater thinkers that most of the people who call themselves vaidyas & ayurvedic practitioners today.
Still the application of ayurvedic principles are not always easy to understand & I find myself repeatedly explaining certain ones, especially those that go against commonly held, modern beliefs. Sometimes clients react with complete incredulity. But sometimes I am met with a sense of relief & comfort, as if something that a client felt for a long time has been validated. Regardless, being open-minded & remembering that this is information that has come from another paradigm of healing with it’s own internal logic will help when considering how to apply the principles.
Partially because of this challenge I love to discuss in ayurvedic terms some of the more hotly contested players in the drama of Good versus Evil on the health front. I have & plan to discuss some of the more contentious & confusing issues including: milk, wheat, honey, meat, fermented foods, yogurt, ghee and butter, raw foods (and juice!), sprouts, oils & fats, tomatoes, soy, potatoes, cheese, kale (kale & more kale), fiber, eating local vs. eating ancestral foods vs. tribal eating, supplements & micro-nutrients, grazing vs. 2 meal days (how and when to eat), nuts and seeds, coffee, white rice vs. brown rice, sweet things, sleep schedule, exercise, colonics, powdered supplements, super-foods, cleansing & fasting & detoxing, allergies & whatever else might come up as fads change.
The cool thing about this is that Ayurveda’s universalizing qualities mean that I can pronounce on almost any issue related to health & the body & by using the principles of Ayurved add something useful to the conversation.
There is much ground to cover!
With each article I will focus on one debated subject & discuss the scope of it’s effects on your body, how negative effects can be balanced & when a particular thing may be good for you, but not good for someone else. I will review the qualities, elements, short term & long term effects so that you can learn to apply these valuable tools in your own life.