Twenty years ago, my spiritual teacher, Guru Nitya, handed me a letter and said: I am sending you to my friend to learn Ayurveda. I do not know if there is a better place for you to learn. After long trip I arrived at the clinic of Sudhir Vaidya and his brother.
An evergreen like tree with a round crown, pretty leaves, and oily buds grows in the front of almost every home. It is called Nimba or Neem. In traditional families it is planted along with another sacred tree the Ashvatha.
Amalaki (Emblica officinalis, sometimes also called Emblic myrobalan), is a tree bearing small leaves and juicy fruits of green colour about the same size as a cherry. In Sanskrit it means the fruit in which dwells the goddess of prosperity.
In 1998, Czech parents of a sixteen year old boy met me to consult about their son. They were worried and wanted to know if their son was eating properly. Their son was the junior world champion in cycling, and a vegetarian.
I have tried to introduce and explain guidelines to an Ayurvedic diet. However, I do not advocate any drastic changes in your nutrition habits. Any such change one wishes to implement should be well deliberated and incorporated with caution.
The first seeds of Ayurvedic wisdom were planted in me by my grandmother. Besides being an excellent cook, she was an outstanding story teller. For any situation, she had a story. One day she told me an ancient story of the royal court physician.
Although there are only three doshas, an individual constitution is as unique as are our fingerprints. The proportion is different in each individual, and every one of us has a unique physical appearance, behaviour, tendencies and emotional reactions.
The ancient Greeks considered medicine as something mainly pertaining to the physical body, also recognized constitutional types. Hippocrates spoke of four kinds of body types. Modern medicine excluded constitutions from its vocabulary.
Johnston perfectly pacified my pitta. Through this story I only wanted to demonstrate what every one of us must have already experienced at least once in our life. Every person reacts differently to stress according to his type or constitution.
Shortly before the beginning of the year in which I was supposed to start teaching Ayurveda at Bastyr University, I prepared for my first lecture. I went to shop nearest to us. I bought a white-loaf of mozzarella, a few chillies and a packet of popcorn.
Many people in the West still believe that they are not good enough to practice yoga or that yoga isn’t suitable for them. There are some wrong assumptions of several kinds that people harbour about yoga practice.
In 1978, I had completed my yoga teachers training course in Puna and was returning to my Guru’s ashram in Ooty. Guru asked me to show him what I had learned. I gave an excellent half hour performance. But Guru asked, it it was all I learnt.
AYURVEDA TRAILS | QUESTIONS
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