The wellness sense

Om purnamadaḥ purnamidam purṇātpurṇamudacyate, Pürnasya purnamadaya pūrṇamevävaśisyate.

That is complete. This is complete. From complete has emerged complete. After taking complete away from complete, what remains is also complete.

(Peace chant, Ishavasya Upanishad.)

We, who have emerged from nature, from God, are complete in every sense of the word.

THE WELLNESS SENSE 

Ch.1 

Introduction

The more you are in harmony with nature, the more peaceful and healthy you will be.

This is what is remarkable about Ayurveda and yoga: You do not have to live in the woods or in the Himalayas to be in touch with nature. An entire cosmos exists within you. You do not have to be flexible like a rubber doll either, because I won't be asking you to assume any complicated postures. You just need the willingness to understand health in its entirety, and the discipline to take control of your physical and emotional well-being.

      Our body is the finest, in fact the only, medium of experiencing all pleasures and sorrows. In Ayurveda, as in yoga and tantra, the health of an individual is not just the state of his physical body but an aggregate of the body, senses, mind and soul. Your immune system is directly impacted by your state of mind. The more positive and happy you are, the stronger your immunity.

      According to Ayurveda, health and disease have the same source. When various entities (covered later in this book) are in harmony, it translates into health. And when they are in disequilibrium, they cause disorders. Your body is merely the seat of your consciousness. If your consciousness is afflicted, it will surely -- without exception -- result in physical disorders too. Mental afflictions create diseases in the physical body and physical diseases, in turn, disturb the state of mind.

      More often than not, an unhealthy mental state is the cause of illness particularly with adults. You can treat the disease in the physical body, but that's merely treating the symptom. Such a disease will recur. For example, you can take anti-allergy medication to avoid hay fever, but it will come back every year. To remain disease-free, it is important to have a healthy mind and a healthy body; they complement each other. And attaining a healthy body and healthy mind is the core philosophy of Ayurveda.

      The modern system of medicine is mostly symptom -- driven. If I have a headache, it'll tell me to take a painkiller. Ayurveda does not believe in treating symptoms. Further, just focussing on your physical health by way of better diet and exercise is only a fraction of the solution. The important part is taking care of your mental and emotional health. How you respond to what life throws at you affects your health in the most significant manner.

      The way you look at anything and the manner in which you accept or react are the two most important - if not the only - factors that determine your overall well-being. If you can either change your perspective or your response towards what you find disturbing, ninety per cent of the job is done. The remaining ten per cent is simply about body fitness. Yogic wisdom helps you gain mental equilibrium and Ayurveda, physical well-being.

      Yogic texts believe that as bliss is the natural state of your mind, health is the natural state of your body. When your mind is in its natural state, you feel peaceful naturally. Similarly, when your body is in its natural state- when the various constituents of your body, like humours (dosha), tissues (dhatu), digestive fire (agni), and energy flow (vayu) are in equilibrium - you are disease-free; you are healthy. Any thought that disturbs your mental balance is a negative thought even if it is about God. Conversely, any thought that gives you peace is a positive thought. The more you fill your mind with positive thoughts, the better your state of mind will be. And that naturally results in better physical health. Ayurveda aims to restore your natural state, your balance, so you may be free of mental and physical afflictions.

Ch.2

MOTHER NATURE AND YOUR BODY 

The only real difference between the specialist's and my thinking was in our perspectives. He had been trained to see physical diseases as the originator of all infections and ailments. I, on the other hand, belonged to the old school. I don't see diseases in the physical body as the cause; I see them as a manifestation of an anomaly in the consciousness. Most physical ailments have a deep-rooted cause that is not in the physical body. In Jay's case, it was his sense of betrayal and anger towards his former partner. Further in this book, in the chapter 'Mental Afflictions', I touch upon how emotions like anger harm our health.

Your physical health is almost entirely dependent on how your body accepts and processes food, which in turn is affected by your mental and emotional state. The body is not just a mechanical machine, for if it were, all stomachs would process food exactly the same way. The truth is that everyone's body is unique. Even if two people eat identical meals, their bodies respond to them differently. What is that factor, that element, that thing in their bodies that determines how they are going to process food?

      Einstein used to say, 'It's not that I'm smarter, it's just that I stay with problems longer.' Yogis in ancient India gained remarkable insights into the nature of human existence based on the same principle -- they meditated on it for long periods. Gradually, their insights were refined and evolved into a concrete system, complete with ant underlying theory and a set of practices, most of which are scientifically verifiable even today.

      They divided the primary aspects of our wellness into the physical and mental. Ayurveda covered the physical aspects and yogic scriptures expounded the mental aspects. The four key physical ones are: pancha-bhoota (the five elements), sapta-dhatu (the seven tissues), tri-dosha (the three humours), and chatush-agni (the four fires). The four key mental aspects are: pancha-kosha (the five sheaths), tri- guna (the three mental states), tri-kaya (the three bodies). and dasa-vayu (the ten energies). Information on the five sheaths, three bodies and ten vital energies can be found in the appendix of this book. The remaining aspects are covered in appropriate sections.

THE FIVE GREAT ELEMENT 

Harmony means balance; it means equilibrium. It is impossible to fall sick if you are in equilibrium. Everything in nature, including our body, is made up of five elements. They are called pancha maha-bhoota in Sanskrit. It means the five great elements. They are called earth, water, fire, air and ether. The more you are in touch with your elements, the more you are in harmony with Mother Nature. The closer you are to nature, the healthier you remain and the quicker you recover from any disorders.

      Everything outside your body is a part of the macrocosm. You are an exact replica of that macrocosm. Just like there's a universe outside, there's a universe inside. Only the quantity varies; the quality doesn't. Vedic texts refer to the human body as the microcosm. Macrocosm is called brahmanda. It means an egg of the primordial force. And the microcosm is called pindanda. It means an egg of a part of the whole. Each entity in nature is complete in its own right. A drop of water and an ocean have exactly the same properties. Qualitatively speaking, they are identical. An ocean may have infinite number of drops, but each drop is complete in its own right. An ocean too is one giant drop of water. Similarly, when we get in touch with nature, our tiny existence taps into the enormous and infinite forces of nature, and we automatically gain health and bliss.

      There is, therefore, a close and intricately correlating relationship between our well-being and our universe. Around seventy per cent of the earth's surface is water- covered: your body is approximately seventy per cent water. There are infinite stars in the sky; there are countless pores on your body. There is the milky way; you have the lymphatic system. There are rivers, small and large, merging into the oceans that further represent one giant waterbody: there are arteries and veins in your body ending in your heart. Air is the fundamental life ingredient on this planet; it is the basic need of your body. There is space around you; there is space in each of the nine orifices - or ten orifices in the case of females in your body. Whatever you can find in the macrocosm, you can find inside your body.

The five elements don't just correspond to the five shry objects. They are not just about the physical composition of your body: they are more than that. For example, purification of each element positively affects its corresponding consciousness, organ and perception.

      Beyond just the sensory organs and resultant perception, tantric texts link the five elements to various aspects of our health and body. Hair, skin, nails, flesh and bones are made from the earth element. People born with a dominant earth element tend to be stout or have a heavy skeletal structure. They are more stable-minded than the other four types. An impure earth element can cause diseases of the skin, flesh or bones. It can lead to great restlessness.

      Urine, stools, marrow, blood and semen are governed by the water element. An impure water element often leads to diseases of the reproductive organs. When both water and fire are impure, it causes hypertension (high blood pressure), and when both water and air are impure, it causes hypotension (low blood pressure), for example.

      Laziness, fatigue, thirst, hunger and sleep are the characteristics of the fire element. Purification of the fire element has a direct and immediate bearing on one's hunger and laziness. When I was in the woods for months at a stretch, I required only two hours of sleep and one meal each day. For the rest of the time, I meditated with awareness and alertness. There were times when I felt tired due to extreme physical and mental exertion, but never did I feel fatigued, hungry or sleepy. This was particularly on account of purification of the fire element, as part of my meditational and tantric routine.

      Expansion, contraction, release, movement and holding are governed by the air element. Therefore, strength and agility of the limbic system is greatly influenced by the dominance and purity of the air element. Further, impurity of the air element is responsible for most neurological disorders in our bodies. Purification of this element strengthens the central nervous system, and lends strength and suppleness to the limbs.

      Greed, fear, attachment, anger and desire are the characteristics of the ether element. It is mostly on account of these five that we bring suffering upon ourselves. When any of these is present, there is no contentment; there is no peace. Impurity or dominance of the ether element creates most emotional disorders.

      Purification of the elements is a remarkable tantric practice called bhoota shuddhi. It is a powerful visualization to purify your elemental body for better physical and mental health. By purifying each element, the practitioner can eliminate the diseases linked to that element. This practice is passed in disciplic succession from a tantrik guru to the initiated disciple. I can tell you from my personal experience that purification of the elements takes your wellness to a whole new level.

THE SEVEN TISSUES 

Your physical body is made up of seven key constituents. These constituents are different forms of body tissues, called sapta-dhatu: the seven tissues or secretions. The word dhatu in Sanskrit also means the primary element. The food you eat is made up of the five great elements. Once food is processed by your body. it is broken down to form the seven dhatus. These are the bodily elements, primary constituents that are the building blocks of the physical body. From the Sanskrit root dha, dhatu also means to possess, to accept, to bestow. How your body accepts the food you consume, directly determines the quality of your health. Additionally, dhatu means secretion. 

     An embryo is formed because the parents secrete an egg and a sperm. The fetus survives because the mother secretes through the umbilical cord. Once out in the world, the infant survives because his mother's breasts are secreting milk. As he grows, he can chew food because certain glands are secreting saliva. The food is digested because the intestinal glands are secreting. The human body is made up of secretions. These are the body's primary constituents. Ayurveda has put them in the following order, because it was believed that each subsequent secretion is harder for the body to manufacture and maintain.

RASA 

The English word for rasa is chyle. As with any language, however, there are certain words in Sanskrit that have no equivalent in English. Rasa is one such word. The taste in food is rasa; the fluid in anything is rasa; the melody in music is rasa; visual beauty is rasa; the feeling of success is rasa and the emotion in an orgasm is rasa. It also means juice or sap. Further, rasa refers to a body tissue, and most notably, blood plasma.

      Rasa is the first stage of any food consumed by the body. Before it converts into nutrients usable by the body, it must first become liquid in the intestine.

BLOOD 

Blood, the second dhatu, is called rakta in Sanskrit. Rakta refers to the red blood cells, the haemoglobin and the blood platelets. Although the science of Ayurveda did not categorize blood into cells, platelets and haemoglobin, it did indeed understand that blood had certain constituents that allowed it to flow, to nourish and to clot. The word rakta, if split as ra akta, means that which is characteristic + of heat. Akta also means oil. Rakta is the substance that is living as long as it has the constituents that retain its innate heat and fluidity. Ra also means love. The desire and act of lovemaking causes a rush of blood in the blood vessels; it raises the body temperature (heat is blood's innate property). Like all the other dhatus, blood is absolutely essential to human existence.

MUSCLE 

Mamsa is the third dhatu. It means muscle or flesh. It is interesting to note that Ayurveda specifically differentiated between muscle and fat (the next dhatu). Even five thousand years ago, its practitioners well understood the difference between the two. The basic building block of muscle is protein.

FAT 

Meda is the fourth dhatu. It means fat - in particular, the adipose tissue in your body. The joints in the body are lubricated by a synovial fluid. It is a viscid lubricating fluid in the joints, tendon sheaths and capsular ligaments surrounding the joints. But in Ayurveda, meda not only refers to the adipose tissue but also to the synovial fluid. Meda allows your body to retain its warmth. Its primary seat is the torso.

BONES 

The fifth dhatu is referred to as asthi, meaning bones. This is the supporting structure of your body. Ayurvedic texts consider teeth as bones too.

MARROW 

Majja is the sixth dhatu. It means marrow. It is the network of tissues that fills the cavities of a bone. The word medha (not to be confused with meda which means fat, the fourth dhatu) is a synonym of majja. Interestingly, the word for mental vigour is medhaa. Do you see the connection? Even though the brain is a muscle, it is enclosed in bone - the skull -- just like bone marrow. Therefore, according to Ayurveda, anything that nourishes your bone marrow will also nourish your brain.

SHUKRA 

Like the word rasa, shukra connotes more than its literal meaning. Hence, I've chosen to use the Sanskrit term.. Generally, shukra means semen. In Ayurveda, it is used to mean the reproductive fluids of both men and women. The female sexual fluids are also called artava (lit: menstrual blood) or shonita (lit: blood). Ayurveda didn't have the sophisticated testing methods available today to ascertain that it was not the blood, but hormones like oestrogen and progesterone, that are the true sexual fluids. Nevertheless, it understood that a woman's sexual fluids were quite different from a man's.

      Further and somewhat surprisingly - Vedic texts state that a sperm joins with an egg to form a fetus - a statement perfectly in line with the modern view. Shukra has been put last on the list of the dhatus. Yogic texts do not consider shukra to be a mere reproductive fluid. They call it the creative fluid; it is virility in men and fertility in women.

      One's mental (intelligence), physical (body growth) and biological (procreation) creativity depends on the well-being of the first six dhatus. Ayurvedic texts consider the male sexual fluid to have thermolytic properties (soma- guna), whereas the female sexual fluid is considered to have thermogenic characteristics (agni-guna). Soma means soothing, cool, and agni means fire, thermal. Therefore, after the act of sexual intercourse, a man loses body heat and is ready to rest or fall asleep, but a woman generally becomes more active, or hungry. She feels relaxed too, but her reproductive fluid is of a different nature it rouses her sensory perception and tends to make her more aware and alert.

      Shukra also means light, bright and pure. Light is a synonym of wisdom in Sanskrit. It directly means that a life of purity, lived with discerning wisdom, ensures the complete well-being of a person.

Ch 3

THE THREE PHYSICAL HUMOURS 

One of the most outstanding aspects of Ayurveda is its teaching that nothing is absolute. The utility, value and effect of anything is relative. Hence, the efficacy of its healing is dependent on the receiver, the time and the environment. It is this profound understanding that makes Ayurveda a complete science.

      Food that may be good for you could be catastrophic for another person. You may feel healthiest during the spring season, whereas another person may have the most allergies during the same period. Your medicine could well be the poison for another person.

      Charaka, and other sage-physicians of his time. understood that the unique constitution of an individual was the decisive factor in how he responded to the consumption of food and medicine. One's constitution determined how one would respond to the external environment. They classified elements of the constitution with three humours: vata, pitta and kapha. The basis of Ayurveda is the understanding and application of the three humours. The sage-physicians also labelled the constitution of each individual based on the dominance of a humour or humours in his body. So, a person could be vata, pitta or kapha, or a combination of these.

The three humours are called dosha in Sanskrit. Literally, the word dosha means fault or inconvenience. The sage-physicians carefully chose the word dosha for the three humours, because when the humours are in equilibrium, your body is healthy and normal. When one or more of the humours go out of balance, the body loses its equilibrium. The same humours become the originators of ailments. Hence the word dosha: the fault, the culprit. It is impossible for a body to be diseased when the doshas are balanced. It is only when any one of these is vitiated does a disease sprout in the body.

      Equilibrium or imbalance between the doshas dictates your physical health or lack of it. Irrespective of whether a patient has a common cold or colon cancer, the cause and the cure lies in the balancing of the three humours. Complete healing, however, is not just about the three humours. The three physical humours operate in conjunction with the three mental humours. In the English language, no matter how long, complicated or difficult a word may be, it cannot exist outside the alphabet; it must consist of its vowels and consonants. Similarly, regardless of the stage, gravity and nature of a disease, it can only relate to the three causative humours.

      Dominance of a dosha can lead to a physical disorder corresponding to its own nature. There are seven core properties of each dosha. See the table below;

An interesting question is: 'What do these properties mean?' More to the point, 'What do they mean to you?" In fact, in the ancient Ayurvedic text - Charaka Sambita, Charaka did not define these properties in isolation. In each of the verses specifying the characteristics of the doshas, the subsequent line says if you were to consume substances that are opposite to the properties of the dosha, it will immediately bring relief to the disorder caused by the dosha. For example, vitiated pitta can cause indigestion. If you look at the properties of pitta, it is hot, acidic, pungent and so on. Now, if you consume something that is cold and alkaline, you will get almost instant relief from indigestion. The doshas are entirely dependent on the five great elements. As long as you have a body, the five elements will be operative and active.

VATA

Vata is made up of the elements of air and ether. It is the force behind all motion in your body. It flows in the form of the ten energies controlling all kinetic aspects of your body. When vata is balanced, your speech, your gait, your glances and the movements of your limbs are all composed, minimal and graceful. When it is vitiated, it leads to erratic or excessive movements. Do you know people who move their hands too much while talking? One of the reasons for this could be imbalanced vata in their bodies.

      There are six flows in your body. They are air flow, blood flow, lymph flow, gastrointestinal flow, urine flow and energy flow. Mental and physical exertion directly impact your energy flow. Further, other people's energy and the external environment can also impact your energy flow. When vata gets vitiated, diseases that are linked to the six flows manifest themselves in the human body. The patient thinks he has a gas problem, or flatulence, so he may take a pill to curb this. That is not the problem, though. It is merely the symptom. In this case vata is vitiated, so it is vata that needs to be treated.

      Imagine a very large piece of barren land; a few million hectares. You are in the middle of that land. There is no water, there are no trees and no cattle. Now visualize a breeze blowing. But wait -- what is your mind to see and feel? If you think of a sunny day, that breeze will feel hot and arid. On a rainy day, it'll feel colder and moist. In the same manner -- and as Sharangadhara Sambita, a classical Ayurvedic text, states most brilliantly- ''Inert is pitta, inert is kapha, inert are the mala (residue) and dhatus. Like clouds, they go wherever they are carried by the vayu (vata or wind)."

      Therefore, unless pitta or kapha is already vitiated, an imbalanced vata does no damage. If pitta is disturbed and vata gets vitiated, it will lead to gas. If vata does not get vitiated, imbalance of pitta will simply lead to indigestion or acidity. A range of symptoms, from simple twitching of the eye to permanent instability of the mind, are attributable to vata. Vata can manifest strongly and quickly. It may easily turn a small ailment into a fatal threat, just like a gust of wind can transform a small flame into a bushfire. Vata is called rogaraja, the king of all diseases.

PITTA

It is chiefly made up of the fire element; its secondary element is water. Pitta is hot, acidic and pungent. It is responsible for the production of enzymes and hormones. All glands in the body secrete on account of pitta. In modern medical science, pitta represents metabolism in its entirety. The two chief aspects of metabolism -- anabolism (synthesis of complex substances and storage of energy) and catabolism (breakdown of complex substances and release of energy) are directly -- governed by the force of pitta. pitta is easily the most significant of the three, for it is the metabolic force. One's very life depends on the quality of their metabolism.

      Pitta is the energy that creates and controls digestion. Along with vata, it is responsible for maintaining the body temperature. Heat in the human body exists in the form of fluids. Pitta generates the heat and vata transports it to the rest of the body. In that transportation, due to friction, vata also generates body heat.

      Given time, a cut or a wound dries up: it seems to heal on its own. This healing is predominantly due to pitta. Sometimes shiver when you urinate, especially if it's you cold. That's because your body was maintaining a certain temperature prior to urination. Hot urine in the bladder contributed to the maintenance of this temperature. And now, with urination emptying the bladder, you lose heat;

      Any transformation occurring in your body or mind is due to pitta. Such transformation could be the breaking down of food into various nutrients ready for processing by your body, or it could be thoughts transforming into actions and goals. Without pitta, none of this is possible. When pitta is vitiated, it makes the person angry and aggressive. If vata is the kinetic energy, pitta is magnetism. It works closely with both vata and kapha for the efficient and smooth working of the complex machinery called the body.

      Digestion, appetite, skin, vision, lustre and physical strength are greatly affected by pitta. Balanced pitta gives a person smooth and glowing complexion, clarity of thought, sharp intellect, perfect digestion and good vision. When imbalanced, it affects all of the above. Inflammation, swelling, discharge, itching, and perspiration are signs of vitiated pitta. Abnormal functioning of the brain and many mental disorders are also attributed to imbalanced pitta.

KAPHA

Kapha is made up from the earth and water elements. It is what holds your body together. kapha represents potential energy. It is the framework, if you will. Like the other two doshas, when it is vitiated, it leaves a residue behind. In the case of kapha, such residue could be mucous, excess saliva, plaque, certain infections, stupor and lassitude.

      It governs the overall structure of the body. your body frame, the strength of your joints, the type of your skin, your immune system, your mental stability, your basic nature, your complexion and many other permanent attributes of your body, are governed by kapha. Heaviness is the chief feature of kapha. When you feel heaviness in the body or mind. almost certainly it means kapha is vitiated. When you can't get up in the morning, even after a good night's sleep, it could be due to an imbalance between your kapha and vata.

      Snoring is attributed to kapha. Those who snore are likely to have other disorders caused by kapha. It helps you to go to sleep: its properties can pacify physical, mental and emotional aggression, bringing you to a state of calm and equilibrium. It is with kapha's cooperation that your body cells are repaired and healed when you rest and sleep.

Ch:4

YOUR PHYSICAL CONSTITUTION 

Have you ever wondered why a diet programme can work splendidly for some and not at all for others? Why do some people get sick during certain seasons while others don't? Why do some get tipsy after just one drink while others can guzzle down bottles of hard liquor and still remain relatively sober? Why do some feel motion sickness even during a short trip, whereas others can travel for hours at a stretch and not feel a thing? Why do some get tired after half an hour of physical work, whereas others seem to be endowed with an inexhaustible store of energy?

      Every one of us is born with a certain constitution. It determines how we accept, process and absorb the food we eat. It influences how we respond to the environment around us. The term used in Ayurveda to describe an individual's constitution is called prakriti. It means our genetic disposition, our inherent nature. This is most interesting, because the term for nature is also prakriti.

      We are a part of nature. Our nature is an extract of nature itself. This is not a metaphorical statement but the firm truth. For the foods we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe - all these were outside us once; they were in nature. Once we consume them, they are within us. They become us. We are made from them. It is, therefore, important to understand your own prakriti, constitution, so that you may know what will suit you from prakriti, nature.

      The basis of all remedies and treatments in Ayurveda is your constitution. Once you understand whether you are a vata, pitta, or kapha, or a specific combination of these, you will know what foods are good for you and which ones cause you the most damage. You will know during which seasons your immune system is the best and when it is the weakest. 

There are many determinant factors that make you who you are. Your own prakriti is dependent on the constitution of the sperm and the egg, meaning your parents' constitution. The time and season during the conception play a big part in affecting your prakriti. Vedic and tantric texts lay out elaborate methods to ensure a healthy conception. The physical, mental and emotional health of the parents at the time of conception will have a telling impact on the health and temperament of the child. Further, Vedic texts strictly prohibit having sexual intercourse during the day. Both vata and pitta are aggravated from sunrise till sunset. A child conceived during the day is likely to be more aggressive and impulsive. An excess of vata leads to indecisiveness.

There are seven possible constitutions. They are: vata, pitta, kapha, vata-pitta, pitta-kapha, vata-kapha and vata-pitta- kapha. There are specific physical and mental traits for each dosha. Simply see the ones that fit you, contemplate over it and you will know your prakriti. As I mentioned earlier, it is perfectly normal that your attributes are, for instance, vata in some and pitta or kapha in others. Very few people are absolute vatas, pittas or kaphas. Most of us are a combination of these. (See your constitution -- prakriti, at the end)

Ch: 5

YOUR MENTAL CONSTITUTION 

Just like the three physical humours, there's a certain genetic mental disposition everyone is born with. This relates to the mental or the psychical humours. They are

Purity (sattva)

Passion (rajas)

Aggression (tamas).

      Our mental humours are the primary driving force behind our habits. Whether they are eating, sleeping, sexual or social habits, behind all our reactive and impulsive actions, the subtle forces of nature are working. These are called the modes of material nature. They have the same name as the mental humours. In fact, the scriptures make no distinction between individual dispositions and the modes of material nature. They are identical because we are nature.

      Ayurveda specifically documents the correlation and interdependence between one's mental and physical states. Your state of mind affects your physical health and your physical health impacts your mental state. Just as your physical body is governed by the three humours, your mind is governed by the three mental humours. The physical humours are called dosha; literally, fault, principally because they require a most careful balance. An excess in any dosha is never good for the body. Doshas must be balanced and moderated. The mental humours, on the other hand, are not called dosha but guna. Guna means quality.

      The health of your nervous system, vitals and digestion -- and the strength of your immune system have a direct -- and definitive correlation with the three mental humours. Unlike the physical humours, these three humours are not permanent. They are forever fluctuating in every individual. Sometimes rajas will win over tamas, other times tamas will win over rajas, and sometimes sattva will win over both. This constant struggle between the humours is the cause of varying moods and mental states in people. Anyone in a physical body is affected by the mental humours. With mindful and righteous living, it is possible to tame the fluctuations to a great degree, directly improving your physical and mental health. Let me elucidate the three humours for you.

IGNORANCE 

This is called tamas in Sanskrit. Tamas also means darkness, illusion, error and gloom. It primarily refers to a state of aggression. Anything comprising the five elements must eventually decay. This is the fate of any material entity. These entities may be living or non-living, moving or still, natural or artificial, organic or inorganic. Upon decomposition, they merge back into the five elements. 

      No matter how dearly or intelligently you hold on to whatever matters to you, eventually it will meet destruction: it will separate from you. The fundamental law of nature is that everything must go back to its original state. If you boil water and leave it aside, it will go back to a normal temperature. It can't remain hot forever. This is the law of nature. So, not only is tamas not bad, it is necessary, because it is simply the stage before restoration and rejuvenation. The destruction in tamas is illusory, because nothing is really getting destroyed. Only the forms are changing; it is merely a change of appearance -- a sort of transformation.

      Tamas in the human mind is the seed of aggression, negativity, hatred, depression, delusion, fear and anger. In the darkness of tamas, in that illusion, one no longer sees right from wrong. In fact, its rising and gripping ignorance justifies all wrong acts as right. Whether it's partners lying to each other, people killing each other, governments fooling their people, or countries going on a spree of territorial aggression, tamas makes it all look like a normal part of our contemporary world.

Additionally, tamas means inertia, dullness and lethargy. Ego is tamas.

PASSION 

Passion is called rajas in Sanskrit. Rajas also means blood. Interestingly, rajas also means a vaporous cloud or a sphere of mist. It is this description that gives us the real insight into the nature of passions: they are impermanent and fugacious. Like a cloud of mist, they disappear as soon as they appear. This is the essence of human life. 

      Throughout our lives we work hard to feel good, to feel happy. But pleasures are never like the gentle stream - they come in squirts and spurts, as if happiness is teasing us. All pleasures spring from the pursuit of passion. The writer at his desk, the athlete on the field, the scientist in her lab, and the artist with her painting -- they all derive a certain pleasure in pursuing their passion. Every time a passion is fulfilled, it gives us a glimpse of happiness. A neurotransmitter is fired in the brain. It feels good. This tiny experience of happiness and euphoria subsides after a while, and then we begin pursuing the passion again.

      Think of someone overcome with passion and engaging in the sexual act. It disappears completely as soon as they are done. The passion is gone. Fast-moving currents in a river of urges flow into a gentle sea of calmness and equipoise. Till they come back, that is. This is the nature of passion: it's transient, it's short lived, it's temporary.

      Rajas sits in the middle of the modes of ignorance and goodness, because during the arousal of passion, one may lean towards either ignorance or goodness. When one's passion is dominated by ignorance, one could easily harm. the other person or even take someone's life. But when goodness dominates passion, one may even jump into the sea, risking one's life to save another person. Passion, when tamed and harnessed, brings out the extraordinary in an individual. Such a person may become an inventor, a scientist, a mathematician, a preacher, an artist, a musician, a peace worker or an administrative officer. When it is channelled, this energy bestows exceptional absorption, concentration and persistence on a person.

PURITY

Purity is called sattva in Sanskrit. Sattva also means" goodness, light and knowledge. But most importantly, it means your innate nature; your basic fabric. Your inherent nature is pure bliss and light. Imagine you are hiding a small lamp in your hands and you walk into a dark room. As soon as you open your hands, the whole room will light up. But what if you walk into a lit room, hiding a bit of darkness in closed hands? The room will not become dark when your you open your hands. There'll be light all around. Because light is the dharma of nature; it is the way of nature. Similarly, our own true nature is light and bliss. If we become aware of our passions and ignorance, they automatically become feeble, because sattva is boosted with awareness.

      In fact, yogic and Ayurvedic texts mention knowledge (Gnana), scientific knowledge (vijnana), restraint (samyam). mindfulness (smriti) and concentration (ekagrata) as the antidote and treatment for mental afflictions caused by imbalanced mental humours. Each of these five strengthens sattva.

      Sattva can never be harmful - no matter what. Sattva represents the quintessential mental, psychical and emotional balance. Nature sustains with sattva. If nature goes out of balance, the world will cease to exist. If rajas is pleasure and joy. then sattva is happiness and bliss.

      The constant play and competition between sattva, rajas and tamas triggers changes in mood, emotion and the flow of thoughts. Tamas causes a disease, rajas treats it and sattva heals the sufferer. Sattva represents steadiness, peace, clarity and balance.

      Imagine someone shouts at you aggressively, with an intent to upset you. If, then, you contemplate physically abusing or harming this person, it means tamas is strong; it is governing you. In the same situation, if you feel your aggressive emotions well up, but you do not yell at the other person, rajas has won over tamas. If, however, you don't feel any negativity or aggression; you don't feel like giving it back to the person, nor do you have to curb your reaction in simple terms, you remain unaffected it means that your mode of goodness, sattva, has won over both tamas and rajas.

FOUR DIGESTIVE FIRES 

Our mental and physical humours have an intricate relationship with the energy flow and the digestive fire in our bodies. There are thirteen fires in the human body controlling various metabolic functions in the organs and tissues and at a cellular and molecular level. Of these, the four digestive fires are dominant; they govern the others.

1. Balanced fire.

2. Wicked fire: The food either gets digested too quickly or too slowly.

3. Sharp fire: Regardless of the type of food consumed, it digests rather quickly.

4. Slow fire: A patient with manda-agni eats much less than the average person, and even then is unable to digest the smallest quantity of food.

Every natural food has a living energy in it. This is the mystical aspect of our food. It is why the fermentation of grapes and the fermentation of wheat are not the same. Even if two foods have identical tastes throughout the four stages of digestion, it doesn't mean that they'll have the same effect on your mind. In the short term, they may appear to have the same effect on your body. But ultimately, it's their effect on your mind that will determine the outcome for your body. Foods invigorate or aggravate your genetic disposition. The food you eat and the manner in which you eat it makes a great difference to your physical and mental health.

Ch: 6

WE ARE WHAT WE EAT 

Vedic scriptures state that across all the animate and inanimate living entities, there are 8.4 million species on our beautiful planet. These are spread across the numerous plants, mammals, worms, birds, sea life and other species. We are one of the 8.4 million species. Every living entity is born with a certain natural tendency. It's called svabhava. Sva means natural or normal, and bhava means sentiment or tendency.

      The natural tendencies of a creature compel it to behave in a certain way. A tiger may pounce, a deer may be frightened easily, a bull may charge, a cow may tolerate, a snake may rattle and a scorpion may sting. They are born with a set of natural traits. This energy of tendencies never really dies but gets transferred from one entity to another. Even plants have it. It is indestructible -- every cell of your body is infused with this energy.

      Whatever we eat, by digesting it we reclaim its energy and it becomes a part of our system. The energy of the food affects our energy. It has a significant influence on our physical, emotional and mental well-being. Everything we eat is one of the 8.4 million species and as such has certain tendencies. Those tendencies are divided into three categories, namely, purity (sattvic), passion (rajasic) and ignorance (tamasic). Yes they are named after our three mental humours of sattva, rajas and tamas.

Rajasic food fuels our passions, and tamasic food creates aggression and restlessness. They are named after the three mental humours, because food has a direct impact on your state of mind. For example, alcohol, coffee and tea can have an almost immediate effect on your mental state.

      The ancient yogis spent a majority of their time in meditation and related practices. But they long realized two fundamental truths of our existence. First, there is little joy in living or even in meditating in the absence of good physical health, and second, the foods we consume can trigger thoughts, emotions and feelings. We are about to become the food we've just consumed.

SATTVIC 

Created from the word sattva, food full of goodness is called sattvic. it strengthens the body, boosts our physical health and calms the mind. Sattvic food, being inherently pure, arouses emotions of love and compassion. Above all, sattvic food promotes mental stability and quiescence. Think of some of the vegetarian mammals in our world -- cows, camels, elephants, goats, sheep, deer and giraffes. What comes to your mind when you visualize them? They all have big, compassionate eyes. They are all docile(obedient) creatures. Their sight immediately arouses compassion and love in the viewer.

      Most wholesome food items like fresh vegetables and fruits fall into the sattvic category. The alkaline foods of our present world are synonymous with the sattvic foods of olden times. The only exception is dairy food - Ayurveda treats milk, butter and clarified butter as sattvic, whereas contemporary medical science considers it acidic. We will get to more of that in the sub-chapter 'Acidic and Alkaline Foods'.

RAJASIC 

Foods that arouse passion and desires are called rajasic. These foods make a person restless or too active, and have a negative effect on memory, disposition, calmness and physical health. In particular, if they are consumed even somewhat excessively or carelessly, it vitiates the three doshas. Foods that are too bitter, too hot, too spicy, too pungent, too salty, too dry or too acrid are rajasic foods. These foods are the source of suffering, the yogis say.

      According to them, it is better to have a calm mind free of desires than to have a restless mind full of unfulfilled ones, because non-fulfilment of desires leads to depression and sadness.

      the ability to drop a thought or focus your attention elsewhere is dependent on your state of mind. A restless mind can't drop a thought; only a stable and calm mind can. Rajasic foods make you more active - they make you more

restless and fuel the thoughts and consequently the desires. Almost all seafood, spices, and most grains, beans and lentils fall in the category of rajasic food. All soft drinks and junk foods are rajasic foods.

TAMASIC 

There are certain foods that wreak havoc on your physical and mental health. These are called tamasic foods. The next time you take frozen cooked food and heat it to eat, pay attention to your state of mind. I guarantee that it will leave you feeling lethargic. Cooking frozen ingredients and cooking fresh food won't give you the same feeling. The frozen food will at best be nearly as good as fresh food. But reheating food that has already been cooked turns it into tamasic food.

      Foods that are not freshly prepared, ill-cooked, insipid, putrid and burnt are tamasic. Foods that are stale, impure and unnatural are also tamasic. These foods make us lethargic and ultimately create aggression in our minds. They confuse the digestive forces of the physical body, as our body does not know how to break down unnatural foods. They also tend to take much longer to digest, causing acidity, heartburn, reflux, stomach ulcers and irregular bowel movements. Further, they generate excessive heat in the body. As a result, tamasic foods cause imbalance in the body.

      Acidic foods are mostly tamasic. All canned and processed foods these days are tamasic. All meats are tamasic, and all red meets are highly tamasic.

      During certain yogic practices of mental, physical and emotional detoxification, the aspirant is asked to observe a strict diet. It is called havishya-anna. The rationale behind the diet is brilliant and ingenious. Havishya-anna means food that is fit for the gods. Literally, it means food that is fit for oblations. Your body is the temple, the altar, and deserves your utmost respect; the living god in your body is your mind. Your food is one of the greatest offerings to this god-it affects both your body and your mind.

      For a certain stretch of time - generally forty days, but sometimes many months - the yogis would go on the havishya diet. The rules were simple: no grains, no beans. no lentils, no gluten and no salt. Milk, butter, clarified butter, honey and sea salt were allowed, along with fruits and vegetables. During many of my own practices, I have lived on the havishya diet multiple times over the past two decades. It has been my personal experience that it truly does bring great calmness and positive changes in your health.

OXIDATIVE DAMAGE AND TAMASIC FOODS

tamasic food leads to excessive free radicals in the body. Often, in olden times, people had a few leaves of tulsi (Ocimum sanctum) after their meal, because tulsi is rich in antioxidants. Or people consumed a pickle of lemon, mango or amlaki (Emblica officinalis), that was rich in vitamin C and had a healthy dose of antioxidants.

      What is the connection between tamasic foods and free radicals? Modern research has proven beyond doubt that oxidation of food is one of the major causes of inflammation(swelling) in the body. Inflammation is the culprit in almost all major bodily ailments. It is either the direct cause, result or a significant contributory factor in most chronic disorders, from asthma to cancer.

      Oxidation is your food going rusty. Think of a piece of iron that is in a moist, wet or marshy area. It is going to rust quickly. Exactly the same thing happens with your food. When it has been cooked for a while, it gets oxidized. Cut an apple and leave it out for a few minutes and it goes brown; it gets oxidized. Squeeze a few drops of lemon on the apple you have cut, and it doesn't go brown because the vitamin C in the lemon prevents oxidation.

      An ideal diet must have a portion of foods rich in antioxidants. Free radicals damage your skin, cells and arteries. They are capable of inflicting harm on your very DNA. The two chief methods of avoiding oxidative damage is by eating freshly prepared meals and ensuring an intake of foods rich in antioxidants. Lemons and most citrus fruits rich in vitamin C are an excellent source of antioxidants. Most berry fruits such as strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and cranberries are packed with antioxidants. Beans such as small red beans, red kidney beans, pinto beans and black beans have plenty of oxidants. Chlorinated water is highly oxidized and should be avoided as much as possible. You should drink good water. And yogic texts believe that deep breathing, which will flush your body with excess oxygen, also helps in balancing some of the ill effects of consuming tamasic foods.

      According to Ayurveda, there are many factors other than the actual food that determine the effect of the food on your body. Such factors include; who prepares your food and under what conditions, the surrounding environment where you consume your food, your own state of mind, the freshness and quality of the ingredients, the time of consumption and the time taken to eat your food. These factors determine the nourishment (or lack of it) that you will derive from your meal.

      You don't have to be a fanatic or a food freak. It's okay to indulge sometimes. An occasional cup of coffee, a glass of wine or a gratifying dessert with egg in it may all be okay. For that matter, anything is okay as long as it doesn't become a part of your routine - as long as it doesn't become a habit. If you remember that your body is paying a price for everything you consume, you are free to eat whatever you fancy.

      That is all there is to good health: eat well, exercise well, sleep well and be happy. In the present day and age, some of these may be a long shot. But you can still eat wholesome foods with a grateful attitude; you can still do physical workouts; your life and living can still have a discipline; you can choose to respond to stressful situations in a more composed and calm manner; you can cut down on your television and Internet time - and consequently enjoy the unique benefits that come from good health alone. For these, there is no substitute. And it all begins with knowing what to eat and how to eat it.

Ch: 7

MEDICINE CURES, FOOD HEALS

We are what we eat. This is not philosophy but science. Think about this: you consume an apple and a little while later, once it is processed by your body, the apple has become a part of your body. You are the apple; your body is entirely made from the food you consume. No one food is good for everyone. It depends on your own mental and physical constitution. What is nectar for your body could poison another person's body.

      Therefore, most anomalies in physical health can simply be remedied by eating the right food. Not only this; if you eat the right food, the chances are that such ailments won't even emerge in your body. The more you know yourself (by identifying your physical and mental humours), the better you can judge the food you should be eating. The rule of thumb is to avoid consuming food that is not congenial to your own temperament. In Ayurveda, the food a patient can eat is often prescribed just as a physician would prescribe medicine.

Ayurveda don't believe that all your intelligence resides in your brain. Since metabolism is occurring even at a cellular level, it is evident that each cell has a certain intelligence, almost like its own brain. Any colony of cells can form a self- healing network. This is why an ointment helps in healing a wound: it's communicating directly with the local brain. The formation of pus or the clotting of blood - the healing of the wound -- are all due to the cells' local intelligence.

      The goal of Ayurveda is to interact with the local intelligence, and it does it by way of prescribing food based on the humours and other treatments - massage, oil bath, steam, purgation, etc.

Ayurveda categorizes all foods based on their taste. Taste in Ayurveda doesn't only mean how it tastes, but how it impacts the health. For example, vata is cold and dry. so foods that are hot and rich in fat are good for the vata person.

THE SIX TASTES

All food is made up of the five elements and together they produce six tastes. They are

-- Sweet

-- Sour

-- Salty

-- Pungent

-- Bitter

-- Astringent. 

Taste only support the body when enjoyed moderately.

An important thing to know about six tastes is that it strictly refers to the natural taste of a may substance, and thus the individual classification of a food. If you mix a lot of sweet in a bit of sour and bitter, this make the ultimate product sweet, but it won't act as sweet on your body.

      Just as the colours red and yellow combine to make orange, and just as you cannot get the red and the yellow colours back from orange, two tastes mixed don't act individually on the body; their combination may have an entirely different effect than if the two were consumed separately.

      Why do we crave certain foods over others? It's not just because of the taste. There are many foods that taste awful but still we consume them. What taste does beer or alcohol have? What about the sickly sweet maple syrup? Or the unique Vegemite? How a food tastes is only one aspect of its influence. What matters much more is how it acts on the body and the experience it triggers in our minds. It is this experience that makes us want to have certain foods more than others.

      A food may be sour, and therefore hot and light, but its effect on the body may be sweet and soothing. In other words, the effect of a food on your body may be quite different from its taste. For example, if you drink a sugary beverage like cola, it may taste sweet, but its effect on the body is not sweet but astringent. It will not quench your thirst-it will make you even thirstier and may cause reflux.

THE FOUR STAGES OF FOOD

Taste

Taste is the joy you get when food first touches your tongue. You are not eating food: you are experiencing it. Ayurveda uses the word rasa to indicate that taste, that joy. Rasa can evoke emotions, memories, feelings and reactions.

      It is not just the food itself that may taste delectable. An agreeable sound, a comforting touch. a delightful aroma and a delicious meal with an attractive form also are aspects of rasa, taste. These are the tastes for the various cognitive organs in your body.

      The more that these tastes or sensory experiences are in harmony, the more positive is the effect of the food on you. That is why flavour, aroma, taste, presentation and ambience all make a difference to how your body accepts the food you eat. Where and how you eat your food has a bearing on the three subsequent stages of the food's influence on your body.

Potency

Whatever we can taste has a certain potency. It is called virya. Potency of any food is realized during digestion. Virya specifically refers to the nature of food during the process of assimilation or digestion in the stomach.Virya refers to the essence of the substance. It is the influence of any food from the moment it reaches your stomach till the time the food is completely digested. In other words, it is the effect of a substance on your mind and body during the phase of digestion. For example, cabbage is cold and light in rasa but rough and hot in virya. It causes gas during the process of digestion no matter what time of the day it is consumed.

Maturity

If you notice carefully, after a food has been digested, some make you feel light and many make you feel heavy. This post-digestion effect is called the maturity of the food. After the food has been digested, but the residue has not been excreted. 

      At this stage, both the food and its residue are in your system and are having an impact on your health. Processed foods leave more residue in your body. Eating a cheese-and-tomato sandwich on white bread is not the same as eating a green salad with tomatoes, cheese and croutons in it. The latter will digest better, absorb better and leave you feeling better.

Effect

The Sanskrit word is prabhava. Its literal meaning is effect. The food has been digested, the residue has been excreted, and the rest has been fully absorbed by your body. The food you consumed has shown its complete and net effect. Let's take the example of milk again - cow's milk in this case. Its taste is sweet and light, its potency is heavy and sweet, its maturity is unctuous and heavy, and its effect is acidic and light. So milk may help wash down spices after a meal, but its net effect is acidic and it vitiates vata.

Ch: 8

THE EATING SENSE

Exercising or diet programmes. are never a permanent way of losing weight. Your weight has little to do with what or how much you are eating.

The long-forgotten eating sense: the art of choosing what, when, how and how much you put in your stomach.

Eating is not just about what you eat. What you eat matters, but how you eat matters a lot more. Nothing is absolutely bad or absolutely good. Clearly, there are millions of healthy meat eaters. I have known many who even consumed alcohol and ate meat every day, yet lived well into their eighties. Much depends on your state of mind. If you are the worrying type or mostly stressed, even a cucumber can do you harm.

Not everyone eats their food in the same manner, however. Chewing your food well is one of the most important aspects of the eating sense. When it comes to the ritual of eating, there are mostly three types of people: those who eat quickly and barely chew their food, those who eat at a moderate pace and chew their food well, and those who eat rather slowly.

      Many eat slowly because they are doing something else while they are eating: they may be reading, watching television, talking on the phone or working on the computer, etc. You can only eat your food at the right speed if you are focussing on the food while you are eating. Maintain a steady pace while eating - neither too fast nor too slow- and see your health improve by the day

FIVE ASPECTS OF THE EATING SENSE

If one is cheerful, carefree or contented, the role of diet loses much of its significance, because such people can digest practically anything. Due to their fine mental health. their bodies remain fit too. A good sense of eating has five aspects, namely mindfulness, water, quantity, gratitude and time. 

MINDFULNESS

Mindfulness requires focussing on your food while you are eating it: savouring every bite, every morsel. Don't watch television, do any work or read while you are eating. In an ideal world, you shouldn't be holding any conversations, either. These are all distractions. Mindless eating leads to either eating too quickly or too slowly. If you eat mindfully and only eat when you are eating, you can almost never overeat, and you get the most from your food.

      The second most important dimension of mindful eating is chewing your food well. Chewing well not only makes it easy on your stomach, it also helps you digest the food faster and actually makes the food more nutritious. Classical scriptures say that water should be eaten and food should be drunk. It means that whenever you are drinking water, you mustn't gulp it down. Take it sip by sip. And when eating, chew your food so well that it almost becomes liquid. Chew each bite a minimum of thirty-two times.

WATER

Chanakya made a remarkable observation on water: 'When water is consumed half an hour before eating a meal, it is like holy nectar. When one drinks water during the meal, it works more like medicine. But drink it immediately after the meal, and it works as if poison.

QUANTITY 

There can be no definitive one-size-fits-all guide on how much one should eat. Nevertheless, there are guidelines in Ayurveda. It states that you should eat in the one-third: one-third: one-third ratio. This means that one-third of your diet should be solid, one-third should be liquid and one third should be left in the stomach for air. The view in later texts was changed to half: one-fourth: one-fourth, meaning two parts of food, one part of water and one part of air. Never eat to the full extent of your appetite. Always leave some room in your stomach.

GRATITUDE 

Never underestimate the importance of saying grace and expressing your gratitude before you start your meal. In the Vedas food is called God and God is food. The process of eating is considered a sacred ritual. It has been called yajna (sacred fire offerings). The digestive fire is the sacred fire burning in the pit of your stomach; each bite of food is an oblation and each sip of drink is a libation. This is in the temple of your body, at the altar of your soul.

      People would spread a thin mat and sit down on the floor. This was done out of gratitude: 'It is from the earth we have procured the food, so let's be in touch with the ground while partaking of its gifts. They would set aside multiple bites of food for other beings in creation before eating the first one themselves. This was to thank the divine forces and to do their part of goodness.

      Here's the simple practice: Remind yourself that you work hard and do most things so you may enjoy a square meal. And, now that you have the meal in front of you, it's time to savour every bite. Thank God or nature or the universe for providing you with food. There are hundreds of millions of people on our planet who go to bed hungry every night. Remind yourself how lucky you are. Just imagine you are doing fire offerings to the divine digestive fire in your stomach. Imagine that every morsel is a part of nature and that you are about to absorb this in you. Eat slowly, chewing every bite - enjoy the rasa in every morsel. This doesn't take more time; it simply takes awareness.

TIME 

The morning mealtime may vary from person to person depending on their routine, but they strongly recommend having your dinner before sunset or just around that time. The consensus is to eat four hours before you go to sleep. Ideally, you should eat in the evening and then go for a walk. This is a simple recipe for a healthy life.

      Ayurvedic texts also state that one should only eat after the previous meal has been fully digested by the body. In other words, you should only eat when you feel hungry. If you eat the right quantity and chew it well, you'll feel like eating something every three hours. Have a light wholesome snack.

      Yogic texts state that any good food digests completely within four hours at the most, no matter how sedentary your lifestyle is. If you don't feel hungry four hours after your previous meal, the chances are that the food is not digested yet. And when your food is not digested four hours after it has been eaten, it is most definitely producing toxins in your body.

SEASONS AND DIET

Every time there is a change in season, there is a festival in India. The seasons are not four but six in Vedic scriptures, namely spring (vasanta), summer (grishma), rainy (varsha), autumn (sharada), winter (hemanta) and the cool season (shishira). The purpose of the festivals is to express gratitude to Mother Nature and introduce the new foods of the season in a cheerful manner.

Your constitutional disorders are likely to be in the seasons as per the humours above. It is best to go on a light diet during the change of seasons. Light means avoiding all processed, fried, fatty and fast foods. Ideally, you should be on a gluten-and-dairy-free diet for one week during a change of season. This is the easiest way to avoid many seasonal allergies and physical weaknesses.

the real nature of the food you consume can be ascertained by considering its two crucial aspects: light or heavy and acidic or alkaline. Either it is heavy to digest or it is light to digest. And the food acts either as acidic or as alkaline on your body. If you consume foods that are light on your digestion and alkaline in nature, you naturally remain healthier.

CH: 9

WHAT TO EAT

  

                                  

                 

Appendix 1 of the book presents two lists of acidic and alkaline foods(at the end), with the categorization of goodness (sattvic), passion (rajasic) or ignorance (tamasic). The more alkaline and sattvic foods you consume, the healthier you become. Additionally, if you take care of the quantity, time and manner of eating, you are most unlikely to fall sick. This is one way of ensuring good health: eat wholesome foods at the right time, in moderate quantities and with a sense of gratitude.

      There are five important terms in Ayurveda, namely, fat (sneha), protein (snigdha), tasty (rasya), agreeable (hridya) and carbohydrates (madhura, literally sweet).

      Although the terms sneha and snigdha literally mean oil and gluten, in terms of their effect on the body (the fourth stage of food), they are identical to fats and proteins. Five thousand years ago, most people were routinely engaged in physical labour. Therefore, Ayurveda recommended that a diet should have a decent proportion of carbohydrates, because the human body directly derives energy from carbohydrates to sustain work. And the rishis reasoned that anything with sweetness in it will contain carbohydrates. The sweeter the food, the more the carbohydrates. Even bread, rice and milk have a natural sweetness, because they all have carbohydrates.

      The rishis didn't stop at nutrients alone. They stated that for us to receive the optimum benefit from food, it must be tasty. If we dislike the food we have to eat, we put ourselves under stress. And when we are stressed, our brains release a whole heap of chemicals that have an adverse effect on our digestion. These chemicals withdraw the proteins from the gastrointestinal tract and direct them to the hypothalamus -- a region of the brain that regulates body temperature, thirst, hunger and other homeostatic systems -- thus leading to indigestion. All of this can be avoided if food is tasty.

ACIDIC AND ALKALINE FOODS

In Ayurveda, acidic foods are called amla and alkaline foods are called kshara. All meats, intoxicants, condiments, processed and canned foods are very acidic. Modern science considers dairy mostly acidic, but Ayurveda considers all dairy products generated from cow's milk to be alkaline. All herbs, spices and most vegetables are alkaline. Avocados and coconuts are very alkaline, as are rock salt, sprouted beans and vegetables like spinach, cucumber and broccoli. Kemp (sea vegetable), horseradish and miso are very alkaline. All citrus fruits are acidic before ingestion but they act alkaline on the body during and after ingestion. Your mind and body will tell you if a certain food is good for you or not.

The pH Factor

Each individual cell in your body has a pH level. pH stands for potential for hydrogen. It refers to the concentration of hydrogen ions. The fewer the hydrogen ions, the greater the pH level; the greater the pH level, the more the alkalinity. Your cells, tissues or fluids could be acidic, alkaline or neutral. Measured on a scale of 0-14, anything above 7 is alkaline and anything below 7 is acidic. A pH reading of 7 is neutral. When the three doshas are in balance, your body is in a state of homeostasis. You achieve this outcome by maintaining the acid-alkali balance in your body. In other words, maintaining a pH between 7 and 8 is ideal for your body.

      An increase of one point on the pH scale represents a tenfold or one thousand per cent decrease in the concentration: of hydrogen ions. And a decrease of one point on the pH scale means a thousand per cent increase in hydrogen ions. Therefore, the difference between a pH of six and eight is not merely two points but a twentyfold change.

The Natural Mechanism

There are three primary organs that maintain the acid-alkali balance in your body. They are your lungs, kidney and skin. The process of metabolism produces a number of gaseous acids. Most notably, carbon dioxide mixes with water to produce carbonic acid. The process of respiration flushes out these acids. Yogic texts place great emphasis on regulation of breath. Deep breathing is the easiest way to flush out the gaseous toxins. Shallow breathing is synonymous with ill health, according to Ayurvedic texts.

      In olden times, householders started their day by offering oblations to the sun while standing in a river or a pond. This reduced the positively charged particles in their bodies, thereby keeping acidity in check. Your body produces a lot of acids while you are sleeping, especially if you eat just before bedtime. After the oblations, they would breathe deeply twenty times. This produced an instant alkaline effect on the volatile or gaseous acids in the body. The yogis were required to do meditation and deep breathing before even leaving their beds. This is the first thing true yogis do even today.

      All the acids in the bloodstream produced by metabolism are filtered by the kidneys. While the lungs filter the gaseous acids, kidneys filter the fixed acids, notably uric acid. What lungs do with respiration, your skin does with perspiration; it flushes out the acids. The amount is not significant, nevertheless anything is better than keeping those acids inside your body. In Ayurveda, the benefits of abhyangama (massage) have been stated in abundance.. Massage is also another way of making your skin more responsive, strong and healthy.

Acidosis

The human body is acidic in nature. All secretions are basically acidic. Therefore, it is all the more important to soothe your body through alkaline foods.

Alkalosis

You should simply eat a balanced diet. The definition of balance is that your diet should consist of eighty per cent alkaline foods and twenty per cent acidic foods. In the ideal world, one hundred per cent of your diet should be alkaline, because your body is already producing enough acids. For most people, though, it is not possible to go on a completely alkaline diet, for a variety of reasons. So, you should at least go for the eighty-twenty rule.

CH: 10

THE LIFE OF A DISEASES

A disease is what disrupts your equilibrium, that is, your physical, mental, emotional and spiritual balance. Self-deprecation is a disease, as is pride; anger is a disease, as is envy. Anything that throws you off-balance, physically or mentally, is a disease. It is when both body and mind are in balance with each other and within themselves - that we can truly say one is healthy, that one is disease-free. 

The great physician-sage. Sushruta, is asked in Sushruta Sambita, a major Ayurvedic text: 'What is a disease? What is it in a human that actually falls sick? What do we actually treat with medicines? Is it the body or the mind?" Sushruta speaks: Anything that afflicts the inner man is disease: and that disease has its primary seat in the inner spring of vitality from which it flows out to the surface, the external body.

(The inner man is called the self or purusha in yogic texts. Pura means city. This body is a city of nine gates (the nine orifices) and the one that has the stronghold of this body is called purusha. When this purusha leaves the body, the person is pronounced dead. The atoms are there, the molecules are there, but there is no breathing, no movement, no emotions or feelings and no consciousness. Biologically, the body is intact, but it has lost the ability to maintain its individual nature within nature. It must now decompose and give back the five elements to nature.

      The vital life force that gives us individuality---that gives us the ability to sustain ourselves as a separate entity while being a part of nature-is called the inner being or purusha. This is our centre of vitality, the control centre)

The passage above contains two incredible insights. First, anything that afflicts the inner being is a disease. The inner being is the one that experiences pain and pleasure, joy and sorrow; the one that is the essence of your life. The state of your physical health and the state of your mental health both affect the inner being. Second, disease is a force and not matter. Both diseases and afflictions arise out of resistance. The body of a person who suffers from hay fever, for example, produces mucus. It does so because it believes that pollens are foreign material and must not be allowed inside the body. A body that has no seasonal allergy accepts the foreign material and there is no resistance.

FIVE CAUSES OF A DISEASE

UNWHOLESOME THOUGHTS and ACTIONS 

There is a term in Ayurveda called prajna-aparadha. Prajna means wisdom or intellect and aparadha means fault or transgression. Overindulgence or suppression of natural urges, immoral and unrighteous conduct, lack of modesty and compassion, friendship with the wicked, jealousy, hatred, anger, fear, greed and lack of discipline and enthusiasm are deemed intellectual errors. Excessive, negative and perverted use of your body, speech and mind are prajna-aparadha according to Ayurveda.

UNWHOLESOME DIET 

Ayurveda lists seven aspects of an unwholesome diet. They are prakriti (your constitution), svabhava (nature of the food), karana (how it's prepared), samyoga (combination of various ingredients), rasi (amount of food being consumed), desa (place where it's being consumed) and kala (time of consumption). In a nutshell - foods that are against your own constitution. acidic and tamasic foods, irregular eating, immoderate consumption, processed, canned and fried foods, and overeating and late eating make for an unwholesome diet.

TIME 

During the changing seasons, your body is at its weakest. on your own constitution, it is particularly important to pay attention to your diet at the cusp of seasons. It is one of the greatest preventative measures you can take to stay healthy. The time factor in Ayurveda also refers to the time when you eat. Eating before sunset or four hours before you go to sleep is highly recommended. Eating late also vitiates kapha and vata. Ideally, you should go to bed on an empty stomach.

AGEING 

It is in these later years that you will harvest the rewards of the care you took of your body in your youth. Your body can take a lot of ill-treatment when you are young. From unhealthy diets to impure thoughts, it can handle almost anything. But it all adds up and brews at the core of the consciousness, waiting to burst like a volcano when your body or mind grows weaker with age. While ageing cannot be avoided, you can certainly delay it with wholesome living: a right mindset and a right diet. A noble mind helps you to age gracefully. This is the best you can do with ageing -- make it graceful.

FATE 

The term used is daivam. It means your fate that is linked to your karmic cycle. Just like the fruit on trees, karma matures in its own time. Matured karma is called prarabdha. Like ripe fruit, it must fall from the tree.

It is through fate that Ayurveda explains why an infant, who has no karma in this lifetime - who is born to perfectly fit parents with great genetics - may still be born disabled or ill. The other four factors have not played a part yet in this child's life, so Ayurveda, intricately linked to Vedic thought, places such mysteries in the bucket of fate.

CH. 11

The four killers 

Charaka wrote that the consumption of unwholesome foods is the primary cause of disease in the human body. This also includes negative emotions, which are unwholesome food for the mind.

AMA

Here is the basic Ayurvedic principle: the food you cannot digest will eventually start to digest you. Acidic foods are called amla in Ayurveda. No matter what you eat, it gets broken down into the core nutrients. There are only five things your body can absorb. namely, fat, protein, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals. Anything that does not undergo complete transformation is residue. Any residue in the body is ultimately toxic: its very nature is acidic. Ama is produced either on account of indigestion or the excessive intake of acidic foods. It is a viscid and sludgy material with a pale yellow hue. The white deposit on your tongue is ama. One look at your tongue, and you can immediately know the state of your ama and your body's acid-alkali balance. The more toxic your body, the thicker the formation of ama on your tongue. 

      Heavy, rough, cold and overcooked foods create ama. All tamasic foods are highly ama creating, and all rajasic foods are moderately ama creating. Most sattvic foods practically no ama. In other words, acidic foods create ama and alkaline foods remove it from your system. Ayurveda states that negative emotions create ama as much as food does. It means that you may be eating a wholesome meal, but if you are mentally indisposed, your body will continue to house toxic residues. Of the many emotions, Ayurveda specifically notes passion, anger, greed, envy, grief, vanity and fear as ama --- creating mental states.

      The easiest way to reduce ama is to follow the principles outlined in the chapter titled 'The Eating Sense' (Chapter 8). In a nutshell, if you are eating alkaline foods that are mostly sattvic, and you are eating with discipline and in moderation, ama will no longer be your worry. Other methods to eliminate ama include physical cleansing (covered later in this book in Chapter 13).

INDIGESTION

You cannot possibly treat every single leaf and fruit - you have to get to the root cause of what is affecting the tree. Treating leaves and fruits is exactly what modern allopathic medicine does. And this is where you ought to know Ayurveda's view: ninety-five per cent of diseases have their roots in the digestive system. If you have good digestion, even ama is taken care of. Apart from your heart and brain, your stomach is the most important organ of your body.

      When undigested food stays in your stomach, metabolic processes continue to work in an attempt to break it down. Gaseous toxins mix with your blood and are transported to all parts of the body. Blood oxygen levels drop, and that presents the perfect breeding ground for cancerous cells. Every human body has cancerous cells. These are extremely active and robust cells that can grow at a pace much faster than normal cells in the body. Cancerous cells or tumours have more potential to grow in areas where there is a congregation of nerves, because such plexuses of nerves suffer the most from a lack of oxygen.

      shallow breathing and poor digestion create a toxic environment in our bodies. It means greater retention of carbon dioxide and reduced oxygen supply. Lumps, cysts, tumours and cancerous cells thrive in such environments. For now, just understand this: if your digestion is poor, you need to attend to it now if you want to lead a healthy life. Hypertension (blood pressure), stiff joints and body aches - they all spring from poor digestion. A clean and healthy colon is the fountain of youth and vitality.

SUGAR

Even if your digestion is strong and there is little or no ama, excess sugar intake is bound to make you sick. Most of the other ingredients 5000 years ago were purely natural and if they contained any sugar (carbohydrates), they contained good sugar - it had dietary fibre as well as other groups of nutrients. This is not the case today. Almost all inflammatory diseases in the body are caused by sugar.

      If you want to live longer and healthier, one of the first tangible steps to take is to cut down on your sugar intake. Almost all foods we consume contain sufficient natural sugar. You don't need to consume additional sugar; it will only cause harm. All artificial sweeteners are little doses of poison. There are two key hormones you should know about---both are pancreatic hormones: insulin and glucagon. Insulin gets rid of the excess sugar and glucagon supplies it when it is needed. Between the two of them, they maintain a careful balance of blood sugar levels in your body.

      This is how insulin works: any excess sugar in your blood is converted into glycogen in the liver and is supplied to the muscle and adipose tissue to reduce the blood sugar level. If you don't burn this excess sugar supplied to your muscles and fat cells by exercising, it is eventually converted into body fat. When you have long gaps between your meals, your body starts to release glucagon to increase the blood sugar level to give you the necessary energy for survival. If you eat food while the blood sugar level is on the rise, suddenly your body ends up with excess sugar because there is sugar (carbohydrates) in the food too.

      While the insulin is doing its work, the kidneys retain salt. To maintain the sodium levels, the kidneys dilute the salt by retaining more water. This results in more blood in the body that requires more pumping, which causes high blood pressure. Sugar also hardens the walls of the arteries and makes them narrow. Remember caramelized sugar or plain sugar candies? That's how hard sugar can get. Narrower arteries require the heart to pump harder to circulate the blood.

      All starchy foods, all sugary drinks and many processed white flour, breakfast cereals and cakes and muffins also have a lot of sugar in them. Fruits are full of sugar too; their intake should be regulated. But they are also packed with the goodness of vitamins and enzymes, so you should have them. But unless you burn the excess sugar, any type of carbohydrate will harm you. In olden times, lifestyles were not so sedentary: people ate everything and physical work burnt any excess carbohydrates, so they remained healthy. Our modern lifestyles are very different though.

STRESS

Stress is the greatest and deadliest of all diseases. If indigestion is the only physical disease, stress is the only mental disease. They fuel each other; stress almost instantly weakens your digestion.

      This must be emphasized stress is not a mental affliction but a response. You have no control over the stock markets, economy, governments, global problems, or a highway traffic jam, but you have control over the response you choose in any adverse or undesirable situation. 

      Playing your favourite sport or engaging in an activity you love can be a great de-stressor. For example, playing a musical instrument, painting, meditation, dancing, playing sports and going to the temple or church can help you take your mind off worries and calm you down.

      If you eat alkaline foods, regulate your sugar intake and learn to manage stress, you can almost be assured of good health and longevity.

CH: 12

Mental Afflictions

Why do we behave the way we do? Why do we feel angry or upset? What creates fear in us, or more importantly, why do we react in a fearful manner?

      Yogic and Vedic texts frequently use a term called vritti. There is no real equivalent word in the English language, but the words 'tendency' and 'temperament come quite close. Vritti refers to the fact that each of us is born with certain tendencies. The literal meaning of vritti would be mode of life or mode of conduct. The vritti of a cow is to be gentle and quiet, of a tiger to pounce. The vritti of a snake is to attack in defence, and for a sparrow to fly away. Our vrittis make us behave a certain way.

      More importantly, vritti is derived from the root element vri, meaning screen or veil. Hiding behind our vrittis is the real us: our true nature of love, compassion and eternal bliss. Since our vrittis make us behave a certain way, we start to label each other according to our feelings and tendencies. 'She is an angry woman', for example, or 'he's a jealous man'. The truth is that she is not angry and he's not jealous by birth. These emotions are simply hiding who they really are. This is why the same person can be very loving or very angry. Vrittis are like the waves in the ocean- constant and kinetic.

      Out of the many vrittis, there are some that undermine our physical and mental health. These are the prajna-aparadha (intellectual transgressions) as elucidated earlier. It means there are certain responses we choose consciously that have a negative impact on us. These responses are called mental afflictions. Emotions and our stomachs are inextricably related. The first part of the physical body to receive the effect of any emotion is the stomach, followed by the heart and the brain. There are five primary mental afflictions that are detrimental to one's physical, mental and emotional equilibrium.

FEAR

Any creature born with consciousness has fear, both instinctive and conditioned. Instinctive fear is what we are born with and conditioned fear is what we acquire. Fear can make us angry, greedy, insecure, negative, pessimistic, hateful or all of these. Whether it is the fear of rejection, of failure, of loss or of death, it can make you do impossible things --- either negative or positive. Fear weakens you; it impairs your ability to think clearly. Fear is always born of anticipation. There is no fear in the present moment. It is when you start to wonder what may happen in the future- immediate or distant - that you sow the seed of fear in your consciousness. There is only one antidote for fear, and that is action. Fear begins from a thought. If we can drop the thought, fear goes away too.

ANGER

Some hold on to it and many express it fully. Both are damaging, though. While fully expressing anger may cost you relationships, holding on to anger is just as big a blunder. Anger is primarily of two types

Reactive Anger:

Reactive anger can be your emotional, physical or psychical response to an unmanageable situation. It could be your impulsive response, triggered by sadness, disgust, surprise or fear.

Toxic Anger:

When you suppress any emotion, it settles in consciousness like a poisonous seed. With more suppression over a period of time, it thrives and grows, eventually causing enormous, sometimes irreparable, damage to your body and mind. When you are unable to express or let go of negativity and hurt, and you keep it within you, it becomes increasingly toxic over a period of time, often leading to depression and anxiety.

      The more attached you are, the greater your anger. Vedic texts list both attachment and anger as mental afflictions. The extent of hurt you experience is directly proportional to the degree of attachment you have. The greater the attachment, the more the grief, and in turn, the greater the pain -- and anger follows in tow. Above all anger is a symptom of your inner pain. It means you are hurt somewhere within; the grief is still there.

      It is important to live your life with a sense of freedom. The more you do that, the less you are frustrated, and less frustration means much less anger. Anger is a force. It is a form of energy. Therefore, like any other energy, it can be channelled and transformed. Direct it towards empathy and forgiveness and it transforms into love and compassion.

HATRED

There is a word called dvesha in Sanskrit. It is made from the union of two words: da + visha. Among other things, da means a mountain and visha means poison. Hatred is a mountain of poison. Hatred is a poison that kills every moment, with every breath, with every thought. People can hate other religions, political parties, other people, countries, their loved ones, their friends and family.

      The one who has hatred for one thing will always find his hatred shifting from one thing to another. Whom or what he hates is insignificant; the truth is that hatred is an emotion, an attitude, a response -- even a state of mind. Society, religion and culture - they all condition you. You are told what is good and bad, moral and immoral, right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable.

      For example, in certain sects of Hinduism, you are taught that slaughtering animals and eating non-vegetarian food is immoral. If you are a Christian, it is acceptable. If you are a Muslim, it's okay only if the meat is halal, and if you are a Jew, only if it is kosher. The environments at home and outside and especially religion -- give you a set of rules; some spoken and some unspoken. Whenever you see anyone transgressing your framework of rules, you experience hatred, however subtle it may be. Hatred creates the division of us' and 'them. Anger fuels hatred.

      At the core of hatred is the absence of understanding of the other party's perspective. I have observed, on countless occasions, that it is not that people are unable to understand or appreciate a different viewpoint, they often just don't want to. The more widely travelled you are or the more exposed you are to the world and its whims and variances, the more likely it is that your understanding will be deepened. Travel and good reading does that - it opens you up. When you start to see the other person's perspective - when you develop understanding - your hatred will either turn into compassion or indifference. If there is an emotional or mental equivalent of cancer, it is hatred. You cannot hate what you understand.

JEALOUSY

It is called matsara in Ayurvedic. Just like an intoxicated person has lost the sense of discrimination and coordination, a jealous person too can no longer differentiate right from wrong. There is a mismatch between their actual physical actions and what they would like to do.

      At the core of jealousy and envy is comparison, but there is a slight difference between the two. In jealousy, there is always another contender. You may be envious of someone or his circumstances, but generally you are actually jealous of someone. In envy, one thinks: 'How well off so-and-so is' or I wish I could have that'. In envy, you don't necessarily want the other person to be deprived of what he has; it's just that you desire that too.

      A thing to remember about mental afflictions is that they are very hungry. Always. The more you feed them, the stronger they become. When you can't get rid of your negative emotions, they become the consumers of your physical and mental food. Any nutrition you provide your body is consumed by negative emotions; only the residue -- devoid of nourishment -- is left for you. You may take medication, supplements and eat a good diet - these are all consumed by your jealousy and anger. Only the toxic residue becomes the basic building material of your body. The same is true for your mental food too. Thoughts and emotions are food for the mind. When you are gripped by jealousy, all of your positivity and positive emotions are consumed by it. 

      Your physical health promotes your mental well- being and your mental health supports your physical wellness. Besides the right diet and mindful living, there are other steps you can take to enjoy fine health. I am dividing those steps into two parts: Physical Cleansing and Mental Detoxification.

CH: 13

PHYSICAL CLEANSING 

According to Ayurveda, if a medicine can't cure you in nine months, it cannot cure you because new skin is formed, new cells are created and new blood is formed within this period. If a system of medicine fails to cure in nine months, one should look for alternatives.

Ayurveda understood five thousand years ago that the body is a vessel. It must be clean to protect its substance. If your body is clean and if your food is clean, you will probably never need to take medicine.

      Physical cleansing comprises a set of Ayurvedic and yogic exercises to keep your system squeaky clean and free of obstructions. It is a method of detoxification. Some of the exercises should be done at the change of every season, some once every quarter, and some can be done monthly, weekly or even daily. Some of them require the presence of an expert to guide you in the beginning.

      Let me elaborate on the various practices. Before I do that, however, I must spell out a word of caution - a warning, in fact. Please consult your physician regarding the suitability of the following exercises for you. Most notably, some of the cleansing exercises use salt, and are therefore not suitable for hypertensive patients or those with an impaired renal function. Even borderline renal function patients, especially diabetics who may not be aware of their renal status, should not perform these cleansing exercises.

COLON THERAPY (cleansing of gastrointestinal)

There are primarily two types of colon therapy in Ayurveda: conch cleansing and enema(Google it). One clears your entire gastrointestinal system and the other clears only. the large intestine. You can do both at your home; neither requires any expert supervision or medication.

Conch Cleansing (Shank)

If you observe a conch, you'll see a hole at the top. If you pour water in this hole, it travels through the conch and comes out from the bottom outlet. In doing so, it cleanses the conch from the inside. In conch cleansing, this is exactly what you do to your body. You cleanse the colon so thoroughly that by the end of the therapy when you drink a glass of water, you almost immediately pass water through the rectum.

HOW TO DO IT 

Take about four litres of warm water. The water should not be hot, just warm more than lukewarm but less than hot. It should be easily drinkable. In the four litres of water, put three teaspoonfuls of salt. You can reduce or increase. the quantity of salt. The saltiness in the water should be as if you are drinking soup, so put salt as per your taste. Take your vessel of warm water and an empty glass, and be close to the washroom, if not in the washroom. 

      Drink two glasses of the salty warm water. Water with just salt alone is repulsive and you may feel like throwing up, but gently massage your belly in round circular motions and take a few deep breaths. This will help you keep the water in your stomach. It is important to not vomit the water, because this water is the cleansing agent for your digestive tract. Once you practise it a couple of times, you will not throw up. Follow the steps below for effective conch cleansing:

1. Drink two glasses of water.

2. Do some stretching. In particular, stretch your stomach. You can do so by standing straight with your legs slightly apart. Tuck your tummy in and bend a little backwards. Hold this posture for a few seconds. Go back to the original position of standing straight and relax your stomach.

3. Move your legs a little further apart now. Raise your right arm and bend to your left. This will stretch the right oblique. 

4. Go back to your straight position and do this on the other side. 

5. Gently massage your stomach in the natural direction of the intestine or in circular motions.

6. Drink two more glasses of water and repeat the stretching.

      Most people start to feel the urge to void their bowels within the first four to six glasses of water. In case you don't, simply drink more water and do the stretching again. As you continue the process, you will start defecating almost immediately after drinking water. That's fine, that's what we want.

      Initially when you do this process, the stool in the large intestine from the previous night's meal or even before - depending on the state of your digestive system -is passed. As you continue drinking the saline solution, stagnant stools start to evacuate, and you will see a change in their colour, hardness and smell. Don't stop; drink some more water and old stools that were sticking to the walls of your colon start to flush out of your system. Drink some more and soon you will be passing only brownish water. Continue the process and you will see that the water you are taking in is now coming out almost like clear water, only a little coloured. Your colon is perfectly clean now. It's clear of any mucus, undigested food particles and stagnant stools.

       The whole process takes between thirty and forty-five minutes depending on how clogged your colon is. Once this is done, don't take a hot or cold shower right away. Instead, lie down on the bed for an hour and cover your head. You will feel extremely relaxed and light. You may even fall asleep but don't sleep just yet. It is important to eat something now.

      Keeping your stomach empty after conch cleansing can cause wind. Therefore, it's important to eat something light and nutritious.

What to Eat

Just after the conch cleansing, your stomach is extremely soft and sensitive. So it is important to eat the lightest possible food with minimal dietary fibre. Your food should have proper oil in it to lubricate the walls of your intestine, and it's best to add some turmeric to it because it is antiseptic. Do not eat raw vegetables or fruits, as your intestine is quite sensitive. Eating out in a restaurant or a fast-food outlet is simply out of the question. You should have no porridge with wheat or oats in it, no cereals and no dairy (especially milk and cheese). Dairy has active bacteria and is heavy on digestion. The best food is called khichri. It's very easy to make and is very light on your digestive system.

      For the next two days, it's best to eat only khichri and go on a light meal on the third day. You should strictly abstain from drinking alcohol for the next four days at least. You can eat raw vegetables and fruits starting from the sixth day.

      It is normal to not pass any stool for the next twenty- four or even forty-eight hours. Don't be alarmed if this happens. Unfortunately, over the years, your stomach has got used to retaining something in it. Serious yogis ritually clean their stomach every four hours. A clean abdomen is the easiest way to remain healthy.

When to Do It

Yogic texts recommend conch cleansing at the change of every season. The seasons in India are six, not four. It is important to take care of your diet for a few days after doing it. Conch cleansing must be done on an empty stomach in the morning. You should cover your head for at least an hour after you are done with the cleansing. This may seem beyond explanation, but covering your head allows you to retain body heat better and helps you regain the heat lost due to the cleansing of the colon. 

      It's best to rest or even sleep after having your meal. Try not to drink water before or during your meal. Doing so may create the urge to void your bowels. You can have some water after your meal if you are really thirsty. You can drink as much water as you want after a few hours, though.

OESOPHAGEAL CLEANSING

Cleansing the oesophagus - the tubular organ proceeding from the throat to the stomach. Drink two glasses of lukewarm water at your usual speed- not too fast and not too slowly. Ideally, there should be some salt in the water as it ensures better cleansing, but it is not absolutely necessary. Stand a little bent with your legs apart and lower your head. Make sure your hands are clean. Now press your tongue with your index and middle fingers and slide them further into your mouth. As soon as they come close to the uvula, you will throw up. Just gently move your fingers in to-and-fro horizontal movements (towards the uvula and away from it) until you vomit all the water you just drank. This should be done in the morning on an empty stomach. Many people use a toothbrush instead of their fingers. If you gently rub the toothbrush on your tongue in the same manner as described above for your fingers, you will achieve the same outcome. This promotes the digestive fire and a glowing skin. The entire process takes around seven minutes.

RESPIRATORY CLEANSING

Respiratory cleansing has a calming effect on your mind. It improves your memory, virility (or fertility) and strengthens your neurological system. According to the yogic texts, it allows the practitioner to live longer and healthier. It is called pranayama. Prana means vital life force and yama means to elongate it. The science of pranayama is a different subject and is not part of mainstream Ayurveda.

      Patanjali, in his Yoga Sutras, specifically states that only those who have perfected their posture should attempt pranayama. Even though it is very common in the Western world, few people understand why doing pranayama incorrectly can cause irreparable damage to your nervous system. Briefly, a true pranayama has three stages: inhalation (puraka), retention (kumbhaka) and exhalation (rechaka). Pranayama, the mother of all yogic exercises, is of twelve different types. For the purposes of respiratory cleansing, I will elaborate here three types of pseudo- pranayama: pseudo because you won't have to retain the breath, and we'll simply focus on different methods of inhalation and exhalation to cleanse and strengthen your respiratory system, nervous system and your whole body.

Prerequisites (before pranayama/exercise)

For all the breathing exercises, it is most rewarding to sit cross-legged. Sitting in this posture allows you better control of the flow of the vital energies in the body. In case you can't sit cross-legged, it is okay to sit in a chair. Breathing exercises should not be done while lying down. In all the exercises, your back and neck should be in one straight line. Your posture needs to be firm and straight but not tense. It is best to do these exercises on an empty stomach in the morning. If you are doing them during the day or at night, make sure there is a minimum gap two hours between your meal and the exercise. And that's assuming you have a light vegetarian meal, because a light vegetarian meal completely digests in two hours. If you have a heavier meal, you may want to increase the gap to three hours or more.

      Start all breathing exercises with an exhalation. This is a subtle but extremely significant point. Exhalation allows you to expel stale air. If you start with an inhalation, you simply pressurize toxic air, making it circulate through your system. A rule of thumb to be followed for all yogic exercises: if they make you uncomfortable, stop right away and seek expert guidance.

Simple Deep Breathing

Simple deep breathing is a hassle-free, easy and potent exercise. Assuming that you have followed the prerequisites, just sit comfortably, resting your hands in your lap if you are sitting cross-legged or on your knees if you are sitting in a chair. Inhale deeply and gently with both nostrils. Fill your belly and lungs with fresh air. Hold it for a few seconds - no more than five seconds - then exhale gently. Pull your belly in as you exhale and gently push your belly out as you inhale. 

      Set aside fifteen minutes in the morning for simple deep breathing. Do it for five minutes and take a break of two

Alternate Breathing

minutes and then do it for another five minutes. Alternate breathing is a type of pranayama that is excellent for neurological and respiratory cleansing and detoxification. It forms part of the nervous system purification (nadi-shodhana) regime. It is called anuloma- viloma in yogic texts. Anuloma means natural order and viloma means reverse order. While retention of breath is an important aspect of pranayama, it is recommended only for those who have mastered the physical posture, who eat a sattvic diet and who are complete teetotallers. You should note that the exercises in pranayama are a staged progression.

      To do alternate breathing, follow these instructions, As always, start by exhaling completely from both nostrils. Put the thumb of your right hand on your right nostril to close it. Now breathe deeply, steadily and gently through your left nostril. Hold the breath for a few seconds. Put the middle finger of your right hand on the left nostril and lift your thumb to open the right nostril. Exhale completely, steadily and gently. Ideally, your exhalation should be so soft that you should not even hear yourself breathing out. Yogic scriptures state the standard one-four-two rule for pranayama. It means if it takes you one second to breath in. for example, you should hold the breath for four seconds (four times the length of inhalation) and exhale over two seconds (double the length of inhalation). However, as I stated earlier, retention of breath should only be done if you are observing all the rules and if you have been guided by an expert.

      At one stretch, you can do twenty repetitions. One complete repetition is inhale from the left, hold, exhale from the right, inhale from the right, hold, and then exhale from the left. This is one repetition. If you have the time, you are free to do it twice or even thrice a day. There is no better purifier of your entire nervous system than pranayama. It is nothing short of a miracle exercise, handed down to us by the ancient yogis.

Bellows Breathing

This is called bhastrika in yogic texts. The metaphor in the texts for this exercise is the bellows of a blacksmith's fire. But finding a blacksmith's fire these days is harder than sourcing ancient yogic manuscripts. So instead, imagine using a hand pump to inflate a tire. It has two movements: push down and pull up. If you push down and pull up at the same speed, you are doing bhastrika. Compared to the other types of breathing exercises, this is a bit more swift and aggressive.

      To begin with, just relax your body completely- especially the shoulders. Take a few deep breaths to prepare your body and stomach. Start forceful exhalations through your nose (both nostrils), immediately followed by equally forceful deep and swift inhalation. Keep your body the torso and the limbs - as still as possible. It is diaphragmatic breathing. Only your abdomen should be seen moving. Your belly expands while you inhale and tucks towards your spine while you exhale. In other words, your body remains still and only your tummy moves in and out.

      Do twenty breaths (inhalation-exhalation) in one set. Take a rest of one minute. Do normal deep breathing during the rest time and then repeat the set. You can do up to four sets. If there is a miracle to cleanse and strengthen your colon, to improve your body's metabolism and to rid yourself of most gastrointestinal disorders, then bhastrika is it.

      Bellows breathing or bhastrika can be practised once or twice every day. Increase the count only steadily, preferably under guidance. Do it on an empty stomach and empty bladder. It is prohibited for pregnant women and for those with acute asthma.

SINUS CLEANSING

All the breathing exercises mentioned earlier are dependent on clear nasal passages. Nasal cleansing has a marked effect on headaches, migraines and nasal polyps. It is excellent for vision and the overall health of the eyes. The exercise of sinus cleaning is called neti. The literal meaning of neti in Sanskrit is 'not this'. It is a Vedic concept of transcendental wisdom that makes the seeker aware that they are not the body, mind, senses, religion, or matter; that they are beyond the sum total of physical and perceptible aggregates. In Hatha Yoga Pradipika, a classical text on yoga, neti is described as the process of inserting a soft thread through your nose and pulling it out of your mouth. It may sound a bit difficult, but with practice anyone can master it in a matter of weeks, if not days. Neti is of two types: water neti and thread neti(Google thread neti).

Water Neti 

To do water neti, you will require a neti pot. These days, all major drugstores stock neti pots or you can buy them online. Put warm water mixed with salt in the pot. It is of paramount importance to put salt in the neti water, because plain water can cause the nasal turbinate to swell up, thereby worsening its condition. If you live in a region where water is highly chlorinated, you may want to boil it first. If so, filter and cool down the boiled water and use this water to do neti. Chlorinated water may be fine too, but it's better to use soft, ionized, distilled or alkalized water. Water in your neti pot should be neither too hot nor too cold. It should be on the warmer side.

      You can do it over the sink or in the shower, or anywhere for that matter where spillage of the water is not an issue. Neti can be performed standing or sitting. If you do it standing, just hold your legs apart, knees slightly bent, bend your upper body at around a seventy degree angle and lean forward a bit. If you want to do it sitting, you will need to squat. The most important thing to remember while doing neti, is to breathe only through your mouth.

      Place the nozzle of the neti pot on your left nostril (you can also begin the neti through the right nostril, if you wish). Once the nozzle is snugly fitted on your nostril (you may have to turn, twist or adjust it to ensure that it completely blocks your nostril), tilt your head to your right side. Now raise the neti pot a little so that water starts to flow out from the nozzle.

      It will start to pass through one nostril and out of the other. You can run half the pot through one nostril and the remaining half through the other nostril. If you feel good, you may pass one potful through each nostril. There is no hard-and-fast rule regarding this. I reiterate: make sure you remember to breathe only through your mouth while doing neti, otherwise you'll end up snorting a lot of saline water and it's not a nice feeling. It's also important to dry your nose properly once you're finished, so do soft inhalations and forceful exhalations for around a minute.

      As warm water flows through your nose, it warms the sinuses and has a strange calming effect on your mind. Water neti is extremely good for sinusitis, allergies and headaches, as also for your eyes.

CH: 14

FASTING AND PANCH-KARMA

Fasting is called vrata in Sanskrit. It means a solemn vow or a resolution. As the name suggests, fasting is a resolution to do something a certain way for a specified period of time. For example, refraining from speaking or a vow to observe silence, is called mauna vrata. Abstinence from sex is called brahmacharya vrata. Yogic and Ayurvedic texts describe many types of fasts to improve well-being.

      It is better to have regular and short periods of fasting. For example, let's say you go on a fast where you only consume fruit juices. Rather than fasting for one straight week on a juice-only diet, it is better to fast one day every week for the next six weeks.

TYPES OF FASTING

A word of caution: please consult your physician before fasting, and specifically, patients with diabetes should not fast.

Light Fasting

In light fasting you eat a light meal only once every twenty- four hours. Remember khichri? That's a light meal. It is important to consume only one meal in twenty-four hours and nothing in between other than water. During light fasting, it is important to either choose a savoury meal or a sweet meal. Don't go for both of these tastes.

      In light fasting, many people have their only meal before sunrise and fast for the next twenty-four hours. Some prefer to stay hungry the whole day and have their meal in the evening. Either way is fine. Light fasting can be done once a week or once every two weeks. There are no set rules as such. Feel free to do what suits you best. I might add that I did mauna vrata (observing silence) and ekanta vrata (solitude) as well for one hundred days.

Fruits-and-veggies Fasting

The primary difference between light fasting and this fast is that in fruits-and-veggies fasting, you stay off all beans and grains. Basically, you do not consume foods with gluten of any nature. A yogic diet also prohibits peas and corn. Dairy foods are permitted in fruits-and-veggies fasting, especially ghee. Ghee is a highly sattvic food and it pacifies the three doshas. It stays in the digestive tract for some time without causing indigestion and pacifies pangs of hunger that are sometimes experienced by fasters.

      Ghee made from cow milk is considered better than ghee made from buffalo milk. In India, most of the ghee sold in the market is made from buffalo milk, which is richer in fat and harder to digest. During fruits-and-veggies fasting, you are allowed to eat two portions in twenty-four hours.

Liquid Fasting

Some people drink milk during liquid fasting but it is not a good idea. If you want to go on a liquid fast, it is best to simply consume fruit and vegetable juices. Tea, coffee and alcoholic drinks are strictly prohibited with liquid fasts.

Complete Fasting

For twenty-four hours, you feed your stomach with only your breath. Water is permitted, though. I know many people who abstain from water as well. There is a fast in India that is called nirjala vrata. It means fasting without water. It is often observed on ekadashi (the eleventh day of the lunar calendar).

PANCH-KARMA

It must be done by a bona fide practitioner of Ayurveda. It's not something you can do on your own. Pancha-karma involves five treatments (Emission therapy, Purgation, Enema, Nasal, Shiro-dhara. Google these 5 things). In addition, two pre-purification treatments (purva karma) are done to prepare the body.

      Many people, pressed for time or other resources, pick just one or two components of pancha-karma. Even that is better than not doing it at all. Ideally, pancha-karma should be done once every quarter at the change of a season. If you want to do it twice in a year, it's best to do it during the peaks of summer and winter. If you want to do it only once in a year, spring is the best season for this.

Preparatory Treatments

The preparatory treatments or the pre-purification therapies are divided into two parts. The first part is called snehana, or lubrication and anointing. In this treatment, you go on a specific diet - generally devoid of fat, oil and spices for three days. Every morning, however, you are required to take a small dosage of ghee from cow milk. This is very effective in bringing all the toxins to and lubricating the gastrointestinal system. During the day, you take the prescribed diet. Then you are given an oil massage (abhyangama). It is a specific type of massage to soften the tissues of your body and to further move the toxins in your body to your gastrointestinal system. This is the anointing part of snehana.

      It is followed by a second purificatory rite called svedana, which is sweat therapy, quite like sitting in a steam room. The toxins that have been raised to the surface of your body using oil massage are flushed out using sweat therapy. These two treatments are repeated for three days to fully prepare your body for the healing and detoxification from the pancha-karma treatment.

CH: 15

MENTAL DETOXIFICATION

Feeling depressed, angry or constrained, or brooding are all merely the symptoms of an emotionally wounded person. In order to take your immune system to an entirely new level and to enjoy every moment of your life, so that you may actually enjoy the benefit of fine physical health, it is equally important to have a mind free of toxins. Most people carry enormous baggage of negative and suppressed emotions, thoughts, expectations and grudges. This is often in addition to the mental afflictions. 

      The more purified the mind, the calmer it is going to be. Thoughts arising in a calm mind have a much better chance of manifestation than those emerging in an agitated mind. Meditation is one of the finest methods of mental detoxification. It is not always about sitting down and building your concentration. Being conscious of your thoughts, words and actions is also meditation. For sound mental, physical and emotional health, I am sharing a few exercises with you.

VISUALIZATION FOR PHYSICAL HEALTH

Thought is a force of energy. All the matter in the universe -- and, of course. on our planet -- is a form of energy. The human body is a colony of sixty trillion living cells. They have no underlying structural reality to them. At one time, scientists believed that the nucleus of an atom was a material particle, but later research and quantum physics disproved this completely. A nucleus has a proton, electron and neutron. A neutron has a quark. And neither of them have any structure; they are just a flux of energy in space.

      Similarly, your body is simply a conglomerate of the tiny cells that are nothing but living manifestations of energy. You can use visualization to heal yourself; to cure chronic ailments and even to get rid of tumours in your body. The quality of the visualization has a direct influence on the degree of healing. 

How to Do It

Sit in the standard meditative posture. If you can't sit cross-legged, sit in a chair with your back straight. Once seated, take a few deep breaths. Imagine a certain calmness coming over you. Visualize that you are not a body made from some physical structure but trillions of cells (this is the truth anyway). Imagine these cells are white in colour and illuminating. Further, shift your attention to the ailing area of this cellular body.

      Visualize that the cells in the ailing part are angry and red. They are swollen because of their negativity, and this has caused your current ailment (inflammation, clogging, swelling, cancer, a tumour or some other anomaly). Visualize calming, radiant, bluish and white waves of light pacifying these cells. Envision how they recede upon pacification and return to their original state. Imagine that they are no longer inflamed. At the root of the last statement is a sense of compassion. These cells are living entities, micro-organisms that are part of your body but independent at the same time. If you emit thoughts of compassion for them, it works wonders.

      I am not suggesting that meditation is a panacea or that visualization will absolutely rid you of all ailments. But at the same time, if you do it thoroughly and regularly, there is no reason why it can't completely transform you. In Ayurveda, disease is not matter but force. In quantum physics, this universe and every material particle in it, including our own bodies, are also the mere play of forces of energy. Thought is a force too; it has energy. The proof of this is that a thinking brain consumes more energy than a sleeping brain.

      The force of a visualization (which is a chain of intended and purposeful thoughts) can help you tap into the right energy cycles or alter the course of existing energy patterns in your body. The world around you has infinite energy; a thought is the only entry point into that world of energy. And meditation is the art of staying on a thought for as long as you wish.

      Other than using visualization to get rid of your physical ailments, you can also use it to heal your past and the negativity stored in you. It is one of the most efficient methods for erasing your psychic imprints.

ERASING PSYCHIC IMPRINTS

Whatever we experience in life, everything we do leaves an imprint on us a psychic imprint. These imprints conjure - up our thoughts, chart our tendencies, our habits, our nature, and almost everything about us. Patanjali states in his Yoga Sutras that psychic imprints resulting from karma accumulate over many lives, conditioning the mind and causing us grief. The easiest way to create a new habit or get rid of an existing one is to erase the corresponding psychic imprint.

      The mind's uncanny ability to store and recall thoughts in the form of images and words makes up our memory store. In your quiet moments, when you recall painful incidents, you feel indisposed. The more you try to forget them, the heavier they become; the faster you try to run away from them, the quicker they get to you. It is not possible to erase the memory per se, but it is possible to erase the impression a certain memory has left on you. Erasing the imprint or reducing its impact automatically makes the memory harmless. There are two ways of erasing those imprints: the yogic and the intellectual methods.

The YOGIC Method

This method requires patience, discipline and persistence, but it's an incredibly powerful method of erasing any undesirable imprint. The success in all yogic methods depends on the aspirant's ability to sit still, concentrate and visualize. Maintaining one posture stills the primary energies; concentration stills the five secondary energies and readies your mind. The actual erasure is a process of visualization. The longer you can hold on to your visualization during your session of meditation, the quicker the healing. It is like performing surgery. You are the surgeon, your mind is the patient and visualization is the procedure. Therefore, the patient (mind) needs to be perfectly still (with a steady posture) while the surgeon (you) concentrates and does the procedure (visualization).

How to Do It

1.  Sit still with your back straight, preferably cross-legged, but any other comfortable posture will do just fine for this practice. 
2.  Close your eyes.
3.  Do deep breathing - just normal deep breathing for a few minutes. Discriminating faculties of the conscious mind will become somewhat passive as a result.
4.  Recall a person or an incident that caused you great grief in the past. Your mind will automatically pick up all related emotions and thoughts. Try, though, to stay focussed on that one person or incident.
5.  Imagine releasing soft white light from your heart chakra in the form of compassion and forgiveness. Anahata chakra, known as the heart chakra, is a psychoneurotic plexus situated near your heart, in the centre of your chest - the vertical middle point between your throat and navel, between the two nipples. If you experience guilt because you did something wrong. visualize forgiving yourself, even if you feel that you are at fault for what you had to go through. You will travel through a whole spectrum of emotions as you do this practice. Bring back your attention and focus on the calming white light. Visualize yourself being infused with it. Do not hesitate to engage in self-dialogue. Your focus, however, should not be to brood over matters but to erase and eradicate the imprint. It is not about right or wrong; it is just about forgiving for your own good. Clean the whole canvas of images. Repaint it with your favourite scene. Imagine yourself in bliss and smiling: envision living your dream, being happy, being healthy. 
6.  Take a few deep breaths again and slowly open your eyes.
7.  If you believe in God, say your favourite prayer, or simply express your gratitude for all that you have been blessed with. 

      One session should last for a minimum of fifteen minutes. Be consistent. Do not expect results in the first session. Once do this a sufficient number of times -- around thirty-you will experience a miracle; you will find that recalling that incident or person no longer aggravates or irritates you. You will experience peace upon such recollection. You have successfully metamorphosed your emotion. It is a beautiful and empowering feeling.

      Most yogic methods require an average of twenty-eight days of daily practice before they show any results. It takes usually six months before an aspirant starts to perfect their practice. Once you are able to practise intense visualization, you can accomplish just about anything you can imagine. Subsequent healing sessions accomplish much more, and quickly.

The INTELLECTUAL Method

Think about what happens when a child gets a new toy. He is fascinated. The more he gets to play with it, the quicker his attractions start to wither away. He gets over the toy. Earlier he would even sleep with it, talk to it, play with it; now, the toy is dead. Its sighting does not trigger any emotion in the child. Similarly -- and just as naturally, albeit ironically when you experience abuse, rejection, failure, deceit, lies and pain, your mind gets a new toy. The more you try to avoid it, the stronger the attraction. Here is an easy way to get over those emotions.

How to Do It

To carry out this practice effectively, you either need a mirror or a voice recorder. The steps:

1.  Look in the mirror or turn on the voice recorder. 
2.  Recall a negative or painful incident from your past. 
3.  Start narrating it verbally, either by talking to the mirror or recording on your dictaphone. Try to recall every minute detail around the incident. For example, let us assume someone you deeply loved broke up with you. The news itself was most unexpected. And the timing and manner of the break-up and the demeanour of your loved one - combined with your lack of anticipation of the event - made this a most traumatic experience. Years have passed, but you have not got over it. As part of this exercise, recall the incident. Do this boldly. Think of the colour of the walls, what you ate prior to being given the news, what all of you were wearing, what was going through your mind, how the other person looked, what objects were there in the room and what were the surroundings. Recall all of these and speak them out.
4.  Take a few deep breaths and close the session. 

      You will experience pain and hurt. You may experience an emotional outpouring. Be bold. Do all this multiple times over a number of sessions. Play with this toy. You can later listen to your own recording. As you do, you will recall even greater detail. Over a period of time, as you do your sessions, the whole incident - the person and that phase of your life - will cease to matter. After fifteen to twenty sessions, its impact will simply disappear. Forever.

      Each time you talk it out, it further reduces the hurt of the painful emotions associated with the traumatic event. This is the reason that people tend to share their ordeals with friends. It is the mind's natural coping mechanism. When you speak about matters of concern or pain, their imprint softens.

      No imprint means no pain. No pain means you are healed. Healing of the mind is almost like returning to your original state of peace and bliss; of joy and happiness; of compassion and tolerance.

WITNESS MEDITATION -- FOR MENTAL HEALTH

Thought is the energy through which you match or mismatch the frequency with the reality. Thought is an extraordinary force, and an average human brain is the playground of sixty thousand or so thoughts daily. There are some thoughts we hold on to and we pursue them. These can intrude upon our emotions and feelings, completely transforming them for better or worse.

      Un-abandoned thoughts become desires, expectations or resolutions. They can give us direction or even misdirect us. The most important thing to remember, though, is that thoughts are devoid of any essence. In their own right, they have neither meaning nor value. It is what we do with thought that matters. On its own, the life of a thought is no more than a fraction of a second. It emerges, it manifests in our mind and it disappears. Between its emergence and disappearance is just a moment. If you do not react to the thought at that moment, it quietly goes away without disturbing your state of mind. Mostly, however, we grab hold of the thought, cling to it. A whole chain of interlinked thoughts follow and, before we know it, we are completely bogged down. A positive thought has a trail of positive thoughts and a negative thought has a trail of negative thoughts.

      Witness meditation is the simple method of learning how not to react to your thoughts. If you have practised mindfulness, discussed in the next section, witness meditation is much easier. To do witness meditation, you don't need to be in the meditative posture, but it'll help if you are. So sit cross-legged if you can, or in a chair. Keep your head, neck and back in a straight line. Rest your hands in your lap if you are sitting cross-legged or on your knees if you are sitting in a chair. Take a few deep breaths, and think of yourself not as the doer or the maker of your life but simply as a witness.

      Watch the thoughts as they come. Don't react to your thoughts: don't pursue them; don't reject them; don't accept them. Just watch them as if you are watching a movie. Let them be free; don't hold on to them. If it helps, think that these are the thoughts in the mind of someone you don't know. When thoughts of the past come, imagine that these thoughts don't belong to your own life but to some unknown person's life. Become a stranger to your own mind. Be completely indifferent to its flow of thoughts.

      Steadily, you will see your thoughts slowing down, and you may also experience moments of complete cessation between them. If your own thoughts cannot provoke you, nothing external can provoke you either. Every external occurrence triggers an internal thought that may alter your state of mind. If you can just be the spectator and not the reactor or an adopter of the thought, the thought becomes powerless. You are taking the kinetic energy out of that thought, so it cannot bring a whole chain of thoughts with it. The thought will disappear right away.

MINDFULNESS -- JOURNAL FOR EMOTIONAL HEALTH

A sage once asked his disciples, 'I have two bulls in my mind. One is eternally calm and happy. The other one is always restless and agitated. If the two go to fight, who will win?"

      Some voted for the calm bull, arguing that calmness brings strength, while others vouched for the agitated one, saying that for fighting well, it is adrenaline that was needed.

      ''It depends,'' the master said. "Their victory depends on their strength. It is not necessary that one will always defeat the other. If you constantly feed the calm bull more than the angry one, it will grow stronger; its chances of winning every time go up."

Simply put, mindfulness, is about being aware.

      As you cultivate the practice of mindfulness, you will find it increasingly easy to choose a preferred response in any situation. Often, a person's behaviour is governed by automatic responses. Someone yells at them and they either shout back or withdraw. This happens in a split second. They end up exercising a choice without realizing it. This is loss of mindfulness.

      Writing a mindfulness journal is one of the best methods to understand yourself. With this method, you identify your automatic responses and their triggers, so you may 'feed the calm bull' of mindfulness..

How to Do It

Each time you feel negative, agitated or indisposed, make a quick journal entry. It is best if you can do it right at that moment, but if you cannot, it is fine to do so after you have regained your composure. In your journal entry, answer the following four questions:

1.  The episode: What was actually happening at the time you experienced negativity? Anything specific? 
2.  The cause: What triggered your negative emotion? Did someone say something or were you reminded of a past incident, for example?
3.  The degree: To what extent did your negative emotion overpower you? For example, could you control yourself or did you end up doing something that you regretted later?
4.  The future: Should a similar situation arise, would you respond in exactly the same manner, or would you respond differently?

      If you do not lose a sense of the present moment - if you remain committed to your inner peace - nothing can provoke you. Most negative emotions are symptomatic. They are not just emotions but emotional responses. With practice and mindfulness, you are able to choose your response better.

CH: 16

IN A NUTSHELL 

At the root of most ailments, diseases and disorder is clutter. Most of us carry a clutter of thoughts - often painful thoughts - of the past. We walk around in a mess of negative emotions, carrying a bag of unfulfilled desires. How do we clean the clutter in the physical world? We organize the necessary stuff and discard the useless. This leads me to the golden mantra: simplify your life. This is truly the yogic sense, the wellness sense.

      The easiest way to start simplifying your life is to de-clutter it. Start by cleaning up your physical world. Look around your study, your bedroom, your kitchen, your fridge and your garage. Get rid of as much stuff as you can and organize the rest. Make it a regular practice.

      Think about things of the past that cause you grief today: people you can't forgive, incidents you can't forget, feelings you can't let go of, thoughts you are holding on to and memories you are clinging to -- all these and more that are adding to the emotional weight on you. It is time to discard them all. Write them down and shred the paper, letting go of them forever. Audit yourself minutely. These things are the real culprits; they are the agents of disease

Here are some guiding principles to sum up everything that entails food and the eating sense:

● Eat wholesome foods as much as possible.

● All processed and canned fruits damage your health, therefore avoid them.

● Ideally, eighty per cent of your diet should consist of alkaline foods.

● Squeeze a fresh lemon or a half lemon in your glass of water whenever you can. It is a great antioxidant, highly alkaline and good for the skin too.

● Completely avoid fried foods.

● Think of artificial sweeteners as doses of poison.

● Chew your food well. Eat in moderation.

● Eat less than your stomach desires. Leave some room for air and water. 

● Try to eat at the same time every day.

● Ideally, you should avoid eating after the sunset and in any case, your last meal of the day should be around four hours before you go to sleep.

● Avoid stale foods. According to Ayurveda, if three hours have elapsed since the food was cooked, it has turned stale. In modern terms, such food is oxidized and damaging for your health. Yogically, such food is tamasic and promotes ailments in the body.

● Never go on a guilt trip.

● it is simplification of life that yields the benefits of everything else.

Another matter that requires your attention is sleep. Sleeping is a divine gift. Our cells are repaired when we are sleeping. Nature allows us to forget our negative emotions, our painful thoughts, our past, our present and our future as it goes to work on our healing and rejuvenation. In the ideal world, everyone would take a short afternoon nap. If you are unable to have a siesta due to your work commitments, at least sleep really well at night. The easiest way to improve your sleep is to ensure that you sleep at the same time every day. When you sleep at the same time every day, your body falls into a perfect rhythm. It becomes more efficient at executing the repair and healing processes while you sleep. Plus, you won't need an alarm clock to wake up in the morning - your body already has an 'atomic clock.

      To optimize the quality of your sleep, you need to consider your sleeping position, and your optimal sleeping position depends on your dosha. It is best to sleep to your left if you are a kapha. When you sleep on the left side, the right nostril opens up for breathing. The right breath is called the solar breath. It generates heat in the body. If you are a pitta, you are best to sleep on your right side, because sleeping on the right activates your lunar breath from the left nostril, which maintains a sort of coolness in the body. A vata may sleep on either side. These are not set-in-stone rules: in all likelihood, you will change your position after falling asleep, anyway. If sometimes you can't avoid having a late dinner and have to go to bed before it's digested, it's better to sleep to your left side, so it ignites the digestive fire.

Whatever you do, moderation is worth practising. If we were to sum up Ayurveda in one word, it would probably be moderation. Balance is the key.

Finally, never fail to express your gratitude for all you have been blessed with. This is the easiest way of summoning nature - of becoming one with it. Every object on our planet and in our universe has an impact on our lives, however tiny it may be. Think about this: the moon, a celestial object devoid of any life, is more than 234,000 miles away, and yet it can cause massive tides in the oceans on earth. The strong gravitational pull of the earth cannot stop those tides. Can we reasonably assume that the full moon that is causing the oceans to swell is having no impact on us? I don't think so. The effect might be subtle, but it does not mean it's insignificant.

      As we become more evolved, emotionally and spiritually, we become more sensitive; we notice and feel more. Astrological treatises assign various foods to various days. And they state that the fertility and sexual drive of a woman is directly linked to the moon, for example. My point is that we are more than the sum total of the three doshas and seven dhatus. We contain within ourselves an entire universe. The more natural our lives, the healthier we become. When our frequency matches that of nature's, diseases can no longer exist in our bodies. If living physically close to nature is not possible, eating natural foods is the next best thing you can do. If you don't forget that everything springs from energy, and there's no true structural reality, you can remain eternally healthy. Such an understanding will lead you to the right thought and right action, and right consequences will follow. 

      Your health is in your hands. It starts and ends with you.

Appendix 2

THE FIVE SHEATHS 

From the union of an egg with a sperm till one's last breath, there is a reciprocal relationship between these sheaths and our thoughts, emotions and actions. How we conduct our lives affects the sheaths and these sheaths, in turn, dictate our emotional and physical health.

Annamaya kosha: Anna means food: kosha means sheath. Your physical body is the sum total of materials formed by consuming food. From the formation of an embryo to nurviving in the outside world, your body is a direct result of what you eat. Without the biological processes, there is no functioning; we are as good as dead.

Pranamaya kosha: Prana means the vital life force. It also means energy. There are five primary energies in your body. These are known as the five pranas (see Appendix 4). They are constantly flowing. If they cease to flow, there will be no breathing. digestion, excretions, secretions or speech. The vital energies keep the body alive.

Manomaya kosha: A body may have an energy flow, it may be living, but without its psychic faculties it will be a vegetable. The literal meaning of manomaya is 'made up of mind'. By psychic faculties, I don't mean anything mystical or abstract but simply our mental processes. Every living creature, certainly any animate one, has three sheaths. From ants to an elephant, all animals have these three sheaths. But we have a special utility of the elements of air and ether that gives us two additional sheaths.

Vijnanamaya kosha: When our consciousness connects with the three sheaths, it gives birth to discriminating faculties of the mind. Our minds are able to discriminate between right and wrong. We can create information. We can hypothesize. We can assess and reach intellectual conclusions. We can perceive future threats; we can meditate and contemplate. This -- the functioning of the intellectual sheath is what makes us human.

      With the help of this sheath, we can dream of a future and put our intelligence to use. It gives us the capacity for rational thought and inference. All living beings have intelligence, but only humans have intellect.

The first four sheaths -- while they create us and affect us -- are merely a covering on the one that really make us. These four sheaths make us forget our true selves our intrinsic natures. Caught and torn between their biological, mental and emotional needs, most people spend their whole lives in a state of disequilibrium. Most of our fellow humans grow up, get a degree, get a job, get married, have kids, look after them, keep working, retire, get old and die. The beautiful life we are meant to celebrate is often wasted in meaningless pursuits, unfulfilled expectations, grudges, complaints, negativity and the rest.

      There is more to you. The fifth sheath is called the transcendental sheath (anandamaya kosha). Its literal meaning is a sheath of bliss. Your true nature transcends the shackles of the body, the flow of energies, the limitations of the mind and the conditioning of intellect: you are beyond these. You are an ocean of bliss.

Appendix 3 

THE THREE BODIES.

PHYSICAL BODY 

It is through the physical body alone that you can perform any physical action. It is your field of karma. This is the first sheath. You eat and process food through your physical body. This body is perishable, though. Its only truth is death - it is ever deteriorating. Everyone is getting older. Any disease appearing in your physical body is generally not the cause but merely a symptom of an underlying problem. The physical body in itself is not the originator -- it is merely the messenger. Doubtless, there are some things you simply can't change about your body but the rest of it, which is most of it -- health and well-being included -- remains entirely in your hands.

SUBTLE BODY

Your subtle body comprises three of the five sheaths. They are physiological, psychical and intellectual sheaths. It is called sukshma sharira or the linga sharira. Sukshma means subtle. In various sutras and Vedic philosophical treatises, there is an important and revealing definition of the word linga. It means the invisible mark that proves the existence of something; a mark that is inherent evidence. For thousands of years, Shivalingam has been worshipped in India. Shivalingam is an elongated cylindrical structure, rounded at the top, on an elliptical base. It is carved out of one stone. The top represents the masculine principle; it corresponds to the seed of creation. It is also called Purusha, the Supreme Man.

      The word Purusha also means the One who has entered into the city of nine gates. This body is called a pura (city) of nine gates. The nine gates are the nine orifices of the human body (ten in the case of a female). The base of the Shivalingam represents the feminine principle; it means sustenance. It is also called Prakriti. Prakriti means Mother Nature, but it also means your constitution. Your constitution is the basis of Ayurveda. Shiva is the destroyer in the Vedic pantheon. This exemplifies the fundamental truth that seeds of destruction are present in the very creation and sustenance - of every physical element. Creation, sustenance and destruction are simply three: indivisible facets of existence.

      And creation, sustenance and destruction are the three constant aspects of your bodily existence. To maintain the best health, your body undergoes degeneration and regeneration at the cellular level. For example, red blood cells meet their destruction every one hundred and twenty days and the bone marrow produces new blood cells. The development of spermatozoa takes seventy-one days, and they are destroyed within five days of ejaculation. Ova, the female reproductive cells, are only available for thirty-six hours. Every secretion in our bodies - everything about us, even the tiniest facet of our existence- has its own life cycle. Nature knows this..

      Your subtle body is the one that sustains the flow of various energies: your consciousness and your intellect. It governs the physiology of the physical body. In its absence, the physical body is dead, and the only possibilities for a dead body are decomposition and disintegration. The subtle body is invisible, but it has a direct influence on your physical and mental well-being. If you take care of the subtle body, your physical health improves automatically and even dramatically. When the subtle body is healthy, any food you consume is properly processed by the body; the food nourishes you.

CAUSAL BODY

The causal body is called karana sharira in Sanskrit. It is the cause on which the other two bodies rest. The causal body relates to your true and original nature of peace and bliss. Vedic texts state that your atman (soul) is above the three bodies. To keep things simple, however, think of the causal body as your soul. When a person dies, he is unable to respond to any stimulation. Why? Because the causal body (the soul) has gone, and therefore the subtle body cannot operate either. Hence the physical body is already dead.

      When you bodies, you nourish and nurture your physical and subtle feel more and more connected with your soul. The more you work on self-purification, the more bliss you enjoy in life.

Appendix 4 

THE TEN ENERGIES 

The ten energies control all voluntary and involuntary physical actions, reactions and habits. The energies, in turn, can be controlled by asana siddhi - mastery of the yogic posture, regulation of the breath and concentrative meditation. The Sanskrit term is vayu.

PRIMARY ENERGIES

1. Prana vayu or vital life energy: This energy is the basis of your life. It is the vital life force in your breath, the subtle element in oxygen. It is almost like fuel for your body. It has a direct impact on your state of mind, your emotions, moods and disposition.

2. Apana vayu or descending energy: Urine, seminal fluids and defecation are controlled by the descending energy. It predominantly lives below your stomach. Mastery over this vayu can give you control over urination, bowel movements and ejaculation.

3. Udana vayu or ascending energy: This energy lives in your throat and is responsible for producing the voice. Thyroid glands can be controlled by the manipulation of ascending energy. Thyroid glands directly affect the production of hormones.

4. Samana vayu or thermal energy: This energy resides in your stomach. It is responsible for the movement of food and digestion. Control of this energy can help you change your body heat at will. Channelled thermal energy will give you an exceptionally well-functioning colon and metabolism.

5. Vyana vayu or diffusive energy: This energy circulates through your whole body. It causes the blood to transport oxygen to all parts of the body. Manipulation of this energy can help you stay in one posture for as long as you want.

SECONDARY ENERGIES

1. Naga: It controls belching, burping and all upwards wind movement from your stomach. 

2. Kurma: It controls sneezing and all abnormal wind movement in the sinuses.

3. Krikara: It controls the blinking of the eyes.

4. Devadatta: Yawning can be completely controlled by manipulation of this vayu. 

5. Dhananjaya: Twitching in any part of the body is affected by this energy.

There are many yogic practices aimed at stilling the ten energies. Stillness of the ten energies infuses extraordinary calmness and willpower in the practitioner.

PHYSICAL CONSTITUTION -- PRAKRITI (CH:4)

PHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES

Body Frame

      Vatas are thin and slender. That does not mean they lack strength or stamina. In their lean frames, they can be just as energetic as the other two doshas. Their gait is swift, and they often have long arms or long legs. They are not broad chested and tend to have a squarish body structure with small shoulders and narrow hips. Their bones are light.

      Pittas have medium body frames but very symmetrical bodies. Their limbs are in proportion to the rest of their bodies. Pittas can be quite tall, but they are still well endowed with muscle. They make good fashion models. They are full of energy, but not as agile as vatas. Pitta women tend to have a natural hourglass body shape and men a natural V-shape.

      Kaphas have the largest frame of the three. They have stout bodies and their build is stocky; their bones are heavy and they walk slowly. They have excellent physical strength and stamina. Many kaphas with a composite of vata make excellent athletes in sports such as rugby, boxing, weightlifting, etc.

Joints and Muscles

      Vatas have prominent, sometimes protruding joints, which tend to crack easily. Do some squats: if you hear crackles in your knees, it may well mean you are a vata. Those crackles could also be due to stiffness in the body, though. Be sure to differentiate between them. Vatas' muscles are slender and have almost no fat - just flesh.

      Pittas have reasonably strong joints, which are loose, well shaped and flexible. Even though their joints are good, they can develop arthritis in the later years of their life due to their pitta nature. Their muscles are well built but supple. Their muscle mass is not as lean as the vatas, but pittas have the best muscular structure from the perspective of fitness and strength.

      Kaphas have large joints like their body frame. Their joints are well padded and strong, though. When standing, they can feel tiredness in their ankles very quickly, mostly because the weight of their large body frame is on their feet. This is true even if they are not overweight. This can often lead to some swelling around the ankles. Their muscles are not as lean or supple as the other two types.

Body Temperature

      Vatas prefer summers. They are most productive and comfortable in warm environments. For most of the year, their hands and feet are cold. They are very sensitive towards any changes in the temperature, and their body reacts to such variations quickly.

      Pittas are usually warm. They love winters and cold climates. They are uncomfortable in hot weather. They are not as bothered in changing seasons or summers as vatas are in winter. Heat tires them out quickly, however. They have the greatest physical stamina when mercury is on the lower side.

      Kaphas are comfortable for most of the year, but they prefer summer and spring. Like vatas, they don't like cold days. Additionally, they feel depressed on wet days. During winters and rains, they feel low on energy and stamina.

     Various seasonal affective disorders (SAD) like winter depression, winter blues or seasonal depression affect vatas and kaphas more than pittas, as people with the two former doshas experience depressive symptoms in the winter.

Body Weight

      Vatas are generally underweight. If they are not underweight, they are certainly on the lighter side. They can be so excited about their passions that they may even forget to eat. Vatas have no problem with skipping meals, and they have a tendency to lose weight.

      Pittas are of normal weight usually; they are just right according to their body frame. Of the three, it is the easiest for pittas to gain or lose weight. Any effects of exercise and diet shows on their body in a matter of days. 

      Kaphas are normally on the heavier side of the spectrum. Relative to their build, they tend to be overweight. They gain weight easily and have great difficulty in losing it. A kapha may have the strictest diet plan, yet results come slowly for him. In fact, losing weight is one of the most difficult things for kaphas.

Hair

      Vatas commonly have dry hair; they get split ends easily. Their hair tends to be frizzy and breaks easily. They generally don't become bald like pittas, but they do need to take greater care of their hair. Their hair tangles easily.

      Pittas mostly have extremely fine but thin hair. Their hair is long and straight and never really jet black. They tend towards blonde or red in Caucasian people and light black in Asian and African cultures. Their hair usually greys at earlier an age than vatas and kaphas. Pitta males are inclined to be bald towards the later years of their lives.

      Kaphas frequently have thick and wavy hair. Their hair is oily and tends to be on the darker side. The colour of one's hair, however, is a factor almost entirely dependent on one's race. So, a Caucasian man or a woman with blonde. hair could be as much a kapha as an Indian with jet black hair.

Forehead

      Vatas usually have small foreheads and forward hairlines, making their foreheads look even smaller. They tend to have permanent frown marks as they age. Generally, when they raise their eyebrows, three lines appear on their forehead.

      Pittas commonly have medium-sized foreheads, with wrinkles and lines in no specific pattern during the later years of their lives. Their foreheads tend to be plainer, with no frown lines or only light frown lines.

      Kaphas have the largest foreheads of the three. Their foreheads are lustrous and radiant. There are usually no signs of any wrinkles there till much later in their lives.

Eyes

      Vatas have small and active eyes; their eyes may even be sunken. They blink a lot and rarely settle their gaze on anything beyond a few seconds. Their eyebrows are generally smaller and frugal. Their eyelashes are of normal thickness and length.

      Pittas have charismatic eyes. Their eyelashes are fine and thin. Their eyebrows are stately but not as hairy as a kapha's. Pittas have a penetrating gaze and their eyes have an artistic look.

      Kaphas have large, soft and smooth eyes. There is a certain stillness and warmth in their gaze. The whites of their eyes are extremely white and prominent. Their eyebrows and eyelashes are thick and luxuriant.

Lips and Teeth

      Vatas have thin lips which get dry and chapped easily. Their teeth can be somewhat uneven and may require constant care and attention.

      Pittas have medium-sized soft lips. Their upper lip is slightly darker than the lower one. Their teeth are medium sized and are generally well shaped. Pittas need to take proper care of their teeth, as they tend to suffer from cavities more than both vatas and kaphas.

      Kaphas have large and smooth lips. They have a slight natural pout, heightening their sex appeal. Their teeth are generally well formed and aligned and require the least care of the three types.

Skin and Complexion

While analysing your complexion, it is important to factor in your race. The darkest Caucasian is going to be several shades lighter than the lightest West African, for example.

      Vatas' skin is dry and somewhat rough. They need to moisturize it properly during the dry and cold seasons to protect it from wrinkling and cracking. Their skin is thin; one can see the veins running beneath it. Their complexion is on the darker side and their skin feels cold..

      Pittas have soft and smooth skin. Wrinkles don't form as easily on them as vatas. Their complexion is more on the fair side, but it tends to be wheatish or yellowish. Fair- coloured pittas suffer from skin rashes and sunburn more easily than others.

      Kaphas have thick and smooth skin. Their skin is oily, and wrinkles don't appear until late in their lives. Their skin can look cold and pale. Their complexion tends to be fair and bright. Minimal skincare does it for them.

Hands and Nails

      Vatas have long and slender hands. Their hands look creative and artistic; they make good surgeons and painters. The palms are somewhat dry and slightly rough. Their fingers are longer than their palms, with thin nails which crack easily.

      Pittas too have somewhat long hands, but they are proportionate to the size of their bodies. Pittas make good pianists and musicians. Their fingers are slender but somewhat squarish. Their palms are slightly larger than their fingers, and their nails are square, beautiful, pink and soft.

      Kaphas have short and stocky, but strong hands. Their palms and fingers are of the same length. Their nails are short and thick. With their symmetrical hands, their nails. look somewhat wide and whitish.

Voice and Speech

      Vatas have low voices, which may sound almost as if they are projected merely from the throat. Their voices, if projected from the chest, are deeper. They can be very talkative, speaking quickly and jumping from one topic to another.

      Pittas have nicely projected voices which sound slightly nasal. They don't talk as much as vatas but can argue at great length. Their speech can often have a magnetic pull, in the sense that they sound sincere and trustworthy.

      Kaphas have deep voices. They speak slowly and can remain silent for long periods. Their talking sounds like a series of prepared speeches. There are no random or redundant words: they speak with conviction, and only after thinking through what they are going to say.

Perspiration

      Vatas rarely perspire. Only if they are doing heavy physical exercise do they sweat. They may sit on the beach on a sunny day without any perspiration. Their sweat is light and stays on the body. They usually have minimal body odour. 

      Pittas tend to sweat profusely. Small temperature variations can make them sweat. They sweat evenly on their entire body. Their body odour is not as strong as kaphas.

      Kaphas perspire moderately. Their body uses sweat as a way of keeping them healthy. They tend to perspire more in certain areas of their body, notably under their arms. Their body exudes an odour stronger than both vatas and pittas.

Appetite and Digestion

      Vatas have good appetites. They need their proper breakfast in the morning or they may experience headaches or heaviness in the head. Vatas have sensitive stomachs. If they eat more than what they generally do, they experience pain in their stomach or even indigestion. High-protein foods or spicy meals can upset their stomachs in no time. They are generally lactose-intolerant. Their digestion depends on the food they have just eaten.

      Pittas have good appetites and phenomenal digestion. They eat at a moderate speed - not as quickly as vatas do. If they have to skip a meal, they feel irritated and unsettled. They need their three daily meals. The portion of the meals may be small, but pittas need to eat something at regular intervals. At the most, they can skip the first meal of the morning without experiencing a headache or feeling low on energy.

       Kaphas have decent appetites. They are not driven by their appetites, though; they are driven by their routines. They are steady eaters. They eat slowly and they digest slowly. They can easily skip meals or fast without the slightest discomfort. They can be bulimic. Due to slow digestion and metabolism, their bodies learn to utilize internal energy stores. As a result, dietary irregularities can make them more prone to diabetes.

Sleep Pattern

      Vatas are light sleepers; they can wake at the slightest of noises. They must have their required sleep. If it gets disrupted, or if they sleep less than they should in a night, they need to make up for the lost sleep within the next day or they become fidgety and irritated. They find it hard to change their sleep patterns. It takes them the longest of the doshas to get over jet lag, for example.

      Pittas are moderate sleepers. They sleep lightly but soundly. Of the three doshas, pittas require the least amount of sleep to feel refreshed and recharged. They like to get out of bed as soon as they wake up and get on with their daily routine. They sometimes wake up in the middle sleep to drink water. They enjoy drinking water immediately after getting up. It soothes their body.

      Kaphas are sound sleepers, and they can sleep for very long periods. They can easily sleep for eight to ten hours. and then go back to sleep just a few hours later. They are in no rush when the morning comes. They like to lie in their beds and relax for a while before getting up to the day.

Sex Drive

      Vatas have a good sexual appetite and do a lot of cerebral sex. They can do the full act in their brain. They are aroused very quickly, they become passionate just as rapidly, they get to the climax even quicker and feel exhausted afterwards. Vatas like to nap after the act. They remain sexually active till late in their lives. Their reproductive fluids are somewhat thin and flow easily.

      Pittas are easily aroused and very passionate. They are more romantic than vatas but less enduring than kaphas. Pittas are average performers. They feel hungry after the act. Their body temperature rises quickly and they sweat more than vatas and kaphas during intercourse. Unlike vatas, who have no time for foreplay, pittas care about their partners. It is not just sex but an act of love for a pitta.

      Kaphas take their time to be aroused and are the most enduring of the three. Unlike vatas and pittas, for them the quality matters more than the frequency. Their virility (or fertility) is excellent. Just like with their meals, they can skip intercourse without distress, but ultimately they must have it - they can fast but cannot abstain. Kaphas may feel the urge to eat something sweet after the act.

Seasonal Allergies

      When allergens are running riot during the change of seasons, vatas tend to get dry eyes. Their noses remain mostly blocked during the allergy season. There is very little discharge of mucus. They may experience chest congestion, but they get well soon enough.

      If struck with hay fever, pittas get red eyes. While a vata's nose is blocked, a pitta gets a runny nose. Pittas can suffer from chest congestion, but their coughs are mostly dry. They may also experience some difficulty in breathing. It has often been observed that pittas tend to fall sick twice during the same season.

      Kaphas get watery eyes when suffering from hay fever. Their noses are blocked with thick mucus and they experience the worst congestion of the chest among people of the three dosha types. Phlegm formation is the greatest in kaphas during the change of seasons.

Menstruation

      Ayurveda regards menstruation as a cleansing and recharging process. The ancient texts state that the menstrual cycle is a vital indicator of a woman's health. Ideally, a woman should rest during her period, because her body is undergoing a change at this time and is under strain. Every month, nature prepares a woman for conception. It readies the womb for childbearing. During the proliferative phase, kapha, with its lubricating and stabilizing properties, prepares the uterine lining (endometrium) to grow. It nurtures and nourishes it. This is the period between cessation of flow and ovulation. If there is no union of an egg and a sperm during this period, pitta comes into play. This is the secretory phase, starting from ovulation till the period. Pitta being the dominant dosha during this phase. the basal temperature of a woman's body tends to rise. After pitta, vata dominates, and with descending energy rids the body of menstrual blood.

      Vatas experience anxiety, mood swings, sleep disruption and other symptoms, such as pain in the lower back and cramps in the lower abdomen, before menstruation. Their periods are somewhat irregular and scanty; their menstrual blood is dark in colour and can be clotted. Constipation is common at this time for vatas.

      Premenstrual symptoms for pittas include tenderness in the breasts, hot flushes and irritability; skin rashes and headaches are also common. Their menstrual blood is bright red and warm. Periods for pittas tend to last longer than vatas. They can experience cramps too, but not as severe as those suffered by vatas. Some pittas experience a burning sensation while urinating at this time.

      Kaphas may experience bloating, water retention, and swollen and tender breasts. Their periods are not painful like those of the vatas and pittas. They may still have heavy periods though, and the blood often contains a white discharge. Kaphas experience lethargy and torpor during their periods; their metabolic processes slow down and they feel a general heaviness.

MENTAL ATTRIBUTES

      Vatas are lively and bubbly people. They are enthusiastic and are keen to try new things. And they don't mind. changing their opinions as they gain new information or insight. Vatas are usually extroverts. Just like the wind that's never stable, their beliefs change quickly. It doesn't take them long to form new radical beliefs. Vatas get worried and anxious quickly. But they get over their worries just as swiftly. They are quick to grasp new concepts, but their memory retention is not as good as pittas or kaphas. Vatas are quite adventurous in nature and love to spend time outdoors. They are quick-acting, accommodating and adaptable by nature. They dream a lot during their sleep but often forget their dreams.

      Pittas are generally more 'head driven' than vatas. Purposeful, and at times intense, they make great leaders. They are persuasive and good at debating. Pittas can be quite aggressive and get irritated rather easily under stress. They can be irritating too at the same time. They have very good concentration and can be quite engaging. Pittas are okay with the outdoors as long as it doesn't involve rigorous activities; they enjoy more intellectual adventures. Their memories are sharp and headspaces quite clear. Possessing critical and penetrating minds, pittas are outcome-driven and goal-oriented. They dream often too, but mostly their dreams feature battles and fights or, at least, some form of violence. Pittas are somewhat impulsive: anger is their primary shortcoming. Generally, however, they have a warm nature.

      Kaphas are the most stable of the dosha types. Slow, steady, easy-going and accepting, they are great supporters and loyal followers too. They are mostly introverts and become withdrawn under stress. Kaphas are happy to engage in indoor activities; outdoors and adventures are not their thing. They are slow to learn but have elephant- like memories. Their actions are thought out and rarely. impulsive; they have strong preferences and don't make visceral decisions. Kaphas take their time in forming opinions but stick to them for the rest of their lives. They are generally calm and stable and can be quite lazy too. Kaphas don't dream very often but when they do, their dreams are mostly romantic.

 

FUTHER READINGS

Sharangdhara Samhita

Sushurta Samhita 

Charaka Samhita

Bhavprakash Nighantu 

Harita Samhita

Kashyapa Samhita 

Ashtanga Samgraha

Ashtanga Hridayam

Shiva Samhita

Gheranda Samhita

Hatha Yoga Pradipika

Rasa Tattva Chintamani (no English translation available, I believe)

Rasaratna Samuchchaya (no English translation available, I believe)

Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali by B.K.S. Iyengar

Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom by B.K.S. Iyengar

Prakriti: Your Ayurvedic Constitution by Robert E. Svoboda 

A translation of Charaka Samhita by Gabriel van Loon

The Acid Alkaline Food Guide by Dr Susan Brown and Larry Triveri Jr

The Enzyme Factor by Hiromi Shinya.

-------- Om Swami.