AYURVEDA: Mother of All Medicines

This article was published in The Mindful Word journal of engaged living (http://www.themindfulword.org)

Ayurveda: Mother of All Medicines

Dr. V.P. Mohana Kumari, Cornelis J.M. Peters, Vighnesh Maharaj Peters

[62 minutes]

Ayurveda is a wholistic treatment system that originated in India thousands of years ago. Its practitioners believe that the soul, mind, senses and body are all part of one coordinated system. Every human being’s system contains five classical elements: earth, water, fire, air, and ether. There are three doshas (bodily humours) within each person’s physical body: vata, pitta and kapha. A person will feel best if the three doshas are in balance, but generally one overpowers the other two. Vata represents ether and air, pitta represents water and fire, and kapha represents water and earth.

Ayurveda: Mother of All Medicines begins with a journey to Dr. V.P. Mohana Kumari’s examination room in the Netherlands. The room looks more like a home than an allopathic examination room; there’s fruit on the table and no intimidating scalpels, tools, or injection needles. There’s also a distinct lack of electronic machines. Dr. Kumari greets her first patient and gives her a cup of tea, as she does with all of her patients. After hearing about the young woman’s problems with headaches over the last few years she determines that her vata is out of balance. After examining the young woman with only her hands and eyes (no instruments), Dr. Kumari prescribes the woman one powder to be sniffed and one to be swallowed, which will relieve her headaches.

Further in the video, a middle-aged man undergoes panchakarma—an intensive cleansing process for both the body and the mind. Panchakarma is extremely useful for cleaning toxins out of nadis, channels within the human body that carry energy. When nadis are blocked by too many toxins it causes mental problems. Often, someone with too many toxins within some or all of their 72 different nadis will not feel well but will not know exactly why, and the total body cleansing involved in panchakarma can be extremely helpful to them.

The man starts off in a small sauna-like room, while Dr. Kumari gets the herbal bath ready. The sauna is used to sweat a great deal of toxins out of the body before the patient proceeds with the other treatments. He then moves onto a table which resembles a traditional doctor’s table, except that it’s made out of plain wood. While on the table, Dr. Kumari pours oil all over his body, and liquid that looks like tea out of a teapot onto his forehead, rubbing it in. After the patient is covered in oil and liquid, Dr. Kumari instructs him to slide himself back and forth on the table for several minutes—a toxin-reducing exercise. Finally, he immerses himself in a herbal bath, and even takes some of the herbal liquid from the bath into his mouth, swishing it around and spitting it out.

Panchakarma is a necessary precursor to the next Ayurvedic treatment discussed in the video, kalam, which is a type of colour therapy for mental ailments. It’s an invitation to a god to enter a patient’s body so that he or she is able to heal them of diseases that cannot be observed through other medical examinations. During colour therapy, colour is drawn on the floor with coloured herbs. The colours used are the five natural colours of the five classical elements and these colours can be mixed to create other colours. There are 66 million gods that can be communicated with using colour therapy, and different gods treat different diseases. Each god has a different group of herbs that it will accept as offerings.

If a patient is able to contact a spirit during colour therapy, the interaction will act as a mirror into the patient’s mind. If the patient has given the doctor misinformation, or has hidden something important from them, this will be disclosed during colour therapy, as the practice opens up a patient’s mind and reveals many things.

Colour therapy, when used as a treatment for mental illness, serves the opposite function to allopathic antidepressants; while allopathic antidepressants put negative energy to sleep so that the patient does not have to deal with it, colour therapy wakes up all of the energies in the body and forces the patient to face and deal with all of them. Dr. Kumari believes that, taking a long-term outlook, facing these buried feelings contributes more effectively to the treatment of mental illness than taking synthetic drugs does.

The physical procedures used in Ayurvedic medicine are far less intrusive than those used in allopathic medicine; the patients are not being poked and prodded with instruments and the ingredients used are completely natural, so the patients are more likely to feel comfortable and less likely to experience negative side effects.

Ayurveda: Mother of All Medicines is a fine introduction to this ancient healing system and serves as an eye-opener for anyone frustrated with the allopathic medical system and interested in exploring alternatives.

Watch Ayurveda: Mother of All Medicines:

Learn more about Ayurvedic nutrition in FOOD WITH PRANA: 12 principles of Ayurvedic food

The post AYURVEDA: Mother of All Medicines appeared first on The Mindful Word.

Sign up for a free subscription to The Mindful Word\’s quarterly digital magazine at http://www.themindfulword.org/subscribe