The primary goal of Āyurveda is to maintain health and prevent disease. Āyurveda acknowledges our relationship with our environment and invites us to align with the rhythms of nature to facilitate optimum health. If we are in conflict with nature and not flowing with the natural daily and seasonal rhythms, we will promote imbalance. By developing daily routines that adjust with seasonal shifts, eating seasonal, local foods, and aligning our sleep/wake cycles with the sun and moon cycles, we can promote harmony and balance, which enhances vitality, clarity, and energy.

Ayurveda is an elemental science and provides elegant guidance in finding balance. Each element has specific qualities (e.g. heavy or light, cold or hot, dry or oily), called gunas. Understanding the gunas can help us identify early signs of imbalance by recognizing when a particular quality is too high or too low. We find balance by applying this law of the universe: Like facilities like and opposites bring balance. By understanding the qualities present in our environment, and how they affect our bodies, minds, and spirits, we can facilitate balance with treatments that provide the opposite qualities to that which is out of balance. For example, we can balance the heat of summer by eating lighter, cooling foods and modifying our activity so that we don’t fan the flames of the fire element. We can balance the coldness, dryness, and roughness of the winter by eating warm, soft foods, applying natural oils to our skin, and doing grounding practices to provide support and structure for the wind and space elements. By practicing self-awareness without judgement, we can sense what we need to stay balanced and develop the discernment needed to make choices that will be balancing, nourishing, and supportive.

“In short, Āyurveda helps people attain optimal health through a deeper understanding of their individual qualities in relationship to the qualities of the world around them.”

- The Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health

In Ayurveda, the definition of health, or svastha, is to be situated in the self, or to be in a state of equilibrium and balance. One of the things that I love about Ayurvedic medicine is that prevention is prioritized. We don’t wait for dis-ease to become full-blown disease. We start by aligning with the rhythms of nature and developing daily, seasonal routines to harmonize with the energy of the environment. Simultaneously we develop our capacity for introspection and clarity so that we notice the subtle signs of imbalance and can intervene before imbalance leads to illness or injury. 

As one of my teachers, Kate O’Donnell, says,

“The science of Ayurveda links an intuitive understanding of the qualities of our world, to how we are each affected by foods, lifestyle, and environment. When we try to live outside of the laws of our universe (example: sleeping in the daytime, eating foods out of season), we end up swimming against the current of nature, which drains our vital energies and results in low immunity, and eventually disease.” 

Our tissues are only as healthy as the prana (energy) flowing through and nourishing them, and prana is only healthy, nutritive, and fluid if the mind is centered and the spirit is calm. The mind is centered when we have built a supportive root network in our lives; when we are grounded and supported by our relationships. Our spirit is calm when the rhythm of life is aligned with the rhythm of nature and when we feel connected to the land. Because body, mind, spirit, and nature are interconnected and interdependent, anything that affects one branch will affect all of the branches. In addressing pain or illness, we have to consider the relationships between body, mind, spirit, and nature.