Ayurveda
Science of Longevity

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Ayurveda is the science and art of restoring health by balancing the three doshas using just about any natural means.

These natural means can range from medicated oils & herbal medications, from dietary restrictions to seasonal food prescriptions, from massages to enemas, from leeches to cow's urine, from paste packs to heat packs, from potli to dhara.

Ayurveda views every individual as a unique combination of three biophysical energies or forces, namely vata, pitta and kapha. This unique combination, called your prakriti, is set at conception and while in the womb. Your parents emotional and physical state at conception, to your mother's moods and diet during pregnancy help determine this, to what they ate and drank in the hours leading upto your conception helps determine your prakriti.

These doshas are composed of the 5 elements that make up all great creation, the panchbhutas. Ether or space and Air form Vata, Fire and Water make Pitta and Water and Earth make Kapha.

Every person is born with these three doshas in the exact proportion needed for them to be healthy - a very personal receipe for good health using the three doshas as ingredients.

They aren't called "doshas" (faults) without reason... these humours can very easy become imbalanced. Ayurveda believes it is this imbalance or instability of the doshas that creates diseased states in the individual.

Ayurveda is primarily preventive and secondarily curative. All its practises are designed, first and foremost, to maintaining a balanced dosha state according to your individual prakriti and the age and stage of life you are in. Should an imbalance arise, there are of course, corrective therapies to bring back that lost balance.

The medicated oils and herbs are all outlined in the various ayurveda texts for any and everyone interested in it. Howvever, if improperly followed, they can become toxic instead of curative and thus it is very important to obtain ayurvedic treatments from extremely reliable sources.

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