The intention of this article is not to tell you what you did wrong with your health, but to bring greater awareness about the workings of your mind and body and to share with you time-tested holistic ways to transform your health and life, no matter what challenges you are dealing with.
Let’s start with the bigger picture
The human body is an extremely intelligent organization made up of over 36 trillion cells, which is about 4000x the current world population. These cells have specific jobs; they communicate and work cohesively with one another to keep the organism alive. They are repaired, recycled or removed at the appropriate time. This occurs within a constantly-changing environment made up of thoughts; emotions; beliefs; desires; memories; relationships; culture; society; the movement of sun, moon and the planets; and all of nature. There are myriad influences and interactions going on within and around us in powerful ways, both tangible and subtle.
Continue to zoom out more and more. Cyclical patterns emerge; the interconnectedness of each part to the whole becomes profoundly significant. That in which every movement is taking place, that which is supporting and witnessing every variety of life, that intelligence—when you pay full attention—is felt both in the heart and in the natural world. The intelligence supporting the entire creation is the same intelligence abiding in each cell of your body.
There are many laws of nature that govern how your body—and the entire creation—function. Many of these laws are yet to be discovered. What we know, for sure, is the law of cause and effect. So while your current health can be seen as a consequence of past choices, it will serve you better to see it as an opportunity to create a different future experience.
Why improve your health?
To be comfortable? To have more time doing things that bring you joy? To be with people you love? What do you want to do with your life? Take a moment to pause here. What is your ultimate purpose? What is it that will give you the deepest level of satisfaction at your last breath, when you reflect on your life? Your answers will give you the motivation, commitment and discipline to make the uncomfortable, but necessary, changes that will support your body’s intelligence to heal and to experience life with greater meaning.
What factors create health and disease?
A healthy human body has self-regulating and self-repairing intelligence that can protect itself from infections and any harmful exposure in the environment. It is constantly checking and adjusting or destroying elements that pose a potential threat. This is resilience, vitality and immunity and, according to Ayurveda, is best defined as ojas. It is a positive force of stability and provides endurance in the face of any physical or emotional stress or negative energy.
Just as bees collect honey from fruits and flowers, ojas is collected by the actions, qualities, habits that make up our lifestyle and diet.
How is your ojas? How strong are you—your endurance, stamina, resilience, energy? How often do you get tired, irritable, grouchy, angry, depressed, stressed, overwhelmed? Are you content with your life? Do you have a disciplined lifestyle, regularity in your routines? What does your spiritual practice look like? Are you refreshed when you wake up? How often do you get sick? What foods are you eating and drinking? Are you generally happy? Pause here to reflect on these questions.
Improve your ojas
Learn to eat wholesome foods that your body will digest properly to nourish itself and its intelligence. There are specific guidelines to follow, based on the health of your digestion, your constitution and the season. Eating is a sacred process. Light that has been transformed into matter by nature will be transformed by you into energy for each of those 36 trillion cells. That energy will become you and be transformed into your thoughts, desires, emotions, words, actions, how you express and experience life, the purpose of your life.
What do you want to become? What do you want to create? What do you want to experience? What are you eating to support that transformation? Pause. You know what to do.
That part of the intelligence that is defined as ojas is determined by what, how and when you eat, as well as what you do, what you bring in through all your senses, your sleep, movement, work, everything that makes up your routines. What do you do from waking up to going to sleep, moment to moment, day after day? Keep a log. Do your habits nourish or deplete your ojas?
Ayurveda provides a plan for each individual for daily and seasonal self-care rituals. This plan lays the foundation for smooth movement of nourishment, information and energy to flow from one cell to another and to carry waste products out of every cell. This allows the body and mind to process all the input and experiences, so that there is no residue, resistance or blockage. You then:
• make intelligent, harmonious choices.
• respond calmly and with compassion.
• work efficiently with focus.
• remain present, alert and mindful.
• find that your sleep is deep and uninterrupted.
• awaken refreshed, with energy, eagerness and clarity, without the need for caffeine.
Proven practices
This routine is aligned with nature’s rhythms and includes various ways of taking care of all our senses—including pranayama, meditation and Yoga. Each of these practices brings benefits for every cell in our body, every layer of our personality and every facet of our life. Your self-awareness, your self-esteem, self-love and spirituality will soar!
Let’s take a look at just one of these practices—the usefulness of pranayama.
A consistent practice of pranayama will help you to:
• think more clearly and positively.
• increase your lung capacity.
• improve your concentration and memory.
• have more energy.
• improve your sleep.
• lift your mood.
• stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system.
• improve brain chemistry.
• prepare for the stillness of meditation.
How about benefits of Yoga and meditation? Hundreds of books have been written and research studies done on these ancient practices. Start your own daily practice and see for yourself!
This disciplined routine is not easy to start and you may need a guide for regular check-ins. Your own mind will resist. And the minds of others—in your home or work or through your gadgets’ screens—create immense distractions, hijacking your time, focus and energy.
A disciplined life will optimize your mental and physical health and allow you to accomplish your goals, fulfill your highest purpose, and avoid being dragged by your hair on a rollercoaster of stress and disease.
True nourishment
Continuing further for an understanding of health and disease, let’s dive deep into the workings of this extremely intelligent organism; let’s take a closer look at how the body transforms food into nourishment or waste and how the trillions of cells transform this nourishment into energy. It is this energy from digested food that forms healthy tissues and creates ojas. The process of breaking down food, digesting, assimilating and transforming it into energy is another aspect of the body’s intelligence that Ayurveda calls agni. This agni, which means fire, is not just in the belly, but within each one of the trillions of cells. It is responsible for fueling every system—even the brain—as well as the processing of experiences. Just as the sun is crucial for all life, so is the agni for the life of the individual. If agni is not working optimally, ie. your digestion is not doing its job properly, food turns into toxins and, ultimately, creates disease, not nourishment. Whether it is a leaky gut or high cholesterol, diabetes, weight gain, inflammation, arthritis, cancer or any chronic condition, this is evidence that agni was compromised. If agni is healthy, the end result is ojas, a healthy body and happy mind.
It is obvious that what we eat is going to affect our digestion and, so, knowing its importance, we can make more mindful and intelligent choices of what to eat and drink. This, however, is only half the picture; the larger picture includes the importance of how we eat, the connection between the mind and the gut, the way food affects our emotions and thoughts and, in turn, our action—and how factors like stress, sleep and the seasons affect digestion. So, once again, we have to look at our daily habits, our relationships, our lifestyle and understand how they affect our agni, the fire that digests food and experiences.
To learn ways to improve agni, refer back to those factors that improved ojas with wholesome foods and daily routines.
With right diet and right routines, agni will support ojas, which can help us to ride the waves of fluctuations in our environment, navigate stressful periods in our lives, recover from injury, manage the occasional exposure to toxins, bacteria, virus and negativity, and even ride smoothly through the stages of our lives. If agni is disturbed, food is not digested properly and creates a breeding ground for toxins and disease. A sticky substance forms, begins to ferment and drive deeper in the various cells and tissues of the body, clogging the pathways, causing inflammation and pain. This toxic substance is known as ama. Whether it is mental or physical, whether it stems from our interactions or our foods, whatever we bring in through our senses, needs to be processed and transformed appropriately. Any waste, anything no longer useful or any byproduct of the processing, needs to be removed, so that the flow continues its journey according to the law of cause and effect.
We need to bring wholesome qualities in through all our senses, and then support the mind and body to process what we have experienced, so that we are nourished. We thrive physically and emotionally, while evolving spiritually. Ayurveda defines what is wholesome and harmonious for each individual and how to support the mind and body. Again, we come back to the habits around food and our routines.
The prescribed routines include ways to prevent the build-up of mental and physical toxins, not just with herbs and spices, but with all the daily practices around food, sleep and self-care. Some of the guidelines are for day-to-day living and others relate to the larger movement of the moon, sun, the planets and the seasons. The guidelines are for every healthy individual wanting to stay healthy. For those who need to get rid of ama, herbs can be used, as well as fasting and panchakarma detoxification and rejuvenationpractices, that deeply scrape away toxins, strengthen agni and then rebuild ojas. This is based on and proven by science and has been practiced for thousands of years. We need this ancient wisdom to guide us out of the confusion and excessive consumerism of our times and help us take back responsibility for maintaining our own health and happiness. This is a science each person needs to know—how to take good care of ourselves, how to prevent disease and how to address any imbalances naturally and safely, before they gets serious—without ignoring, numbing, band-aiding or making it worse.
Every young person needs to have tools to manage stress, learn the habits that will support them to excel in whatever they choose, to really understand how their choices around food affect their emotions and energy as well as every system in their body, how to cultivate discipline so that they stay away from addictions, how to cultivate inner strength and live life with freedom to explore their fullest potential. Knowing this science of life and using it as their foundation, what will their lives look like? How will this affect their relationships, their communities?
True Freedom
Everything is intricately connected and sustained by the intelligence that weaves through the vast tapestry of cells, over the span of thousands of lifetimes. The flow of life continues, guided by the law of cause and effect, with the energy of light turning into matter, the past becoming the present, and the One becoming many on its way to becoming One again. Blessed with the gifts of self-awareness and freedom of choosing our thoughts and behavior with intuition and intelligence, we have an opportunity to master our mind and our health so that we joyfully fulfill our responsibilities and highest purpose, for which we use the Sanskrit term dharma. What does this look like? We experience harmonious interactions with one another and with our environment, a deep sense of compassion, creativity, contentment, a limitless capacity to love and the gift of expressing and realizing that Supreme Intelligence known as Light.