Ayurveda regards food and its role in daily life in a unique and integrated way. Understanding some basic principles will help one to recognize foods that help keep the doshas in balance. Each dosha has certain attributes or qualities, such as dry, hot or heavy. In the same way as the doshas, each kind of food is made up of certain qualities.

Since I have started my Ayurveda studies, I wanted to apply Ayurveda to my lifestyle, especially I found out, and already knew that my dosha was imbalanced. 

My vikruti is Pitta and compare to my childhood, my Pitta is increased, my secondary dosha is Vata.

As to correct my imbalance, I have been reading and studying about different herbs, legumes, spices, food combinations, fruits, dairy and more.

I have started adding more beans and lentils into my diet. My breakfast has been always pretty nutritious but I took out certain spices like cinnamon and cayenne. I added more turmeric, cardamom, cumin in to my diet. My lunch now is more combined with cooked and raw food. I still eat my fruits in between meals. I started cooking with mung beans, green and red lentils as these are good for Pitta. Also I am learning more about spices and if I can cook with them. I know certain spices should not be cooked. 

I also added a small amount of milk at night time, warming my milk (raw or goats milk) with turmeric, cumin, cardamom, fennel. I started enjoying this process.

I realize that nutrition is very important and also essential element of our balanced dosha, and at the same time wrong nutrition would cause imbalance in our bodies.

I enjoy my madhura as dates, honey, rice. Sweet taste enchances the vital essence of life (ojas). Sweet taste relieves thirst and burning sensations, enchances blood sugar, nutritive to body tissues. Sweet can bring stability and gives energy, vigor and vitality. I was never a person eat excessive amount of sweet, and also knew what sweets are better for body. Applying Ayurveda is not going to come difficult for me. I am looking forward to learning challenge and improve myself as an efficient person to others.

I cut down salt, pungent and sour, growing up in Turkey with eating pickles and still loving sauerkraut, pickles is not the easy to stop, but once in a while I am enjoying a little.

Mango chutney we had yesterday at the workshop, made by Atul, was so delicious and right amount of sweet. This kind of combination in food does not really look for sour.

Bitter (tikta) and astringent (kashaya) something that I am adding to my cooking and my pantry. These air and ether/air and earth what I need to balance my Pitta. I believe it will also help with any inflammatory issues I come across thru my yoga, dance, exerices. Bitter is laxative, and cleansing to the liver. Small dose can help to relieve intestinal gas which I also need in my nutrition. So I am using now more turmeric. I probably need to do some research on neem juice as most yogis use this for celibacy and austerity. But too much bitter also affect negatively. I am adding more pomegranate, green beans, okra because these are astringent, and air and earth is cooling, drying and heavy in nature which I need in my nutrition to balance. Too much astringent though, can create negative affects like insomnia, fear, mind scatterness.

Each of these taste in the appropriate dose will bring balance, yield happiness, good health. I am also looking forward learning more of stages of digestion, anatomy of digestion in more details, how certain foods affect agni, and how this agni affects digestion, and absorption and how one’s health can be affected with this agni.


Resources:

Textbook of Ayurveda, Dr Vasant Lad

Four Types of Ayus of Life
Ayurveda describes four types of life: hita-ayu, ahita-ayu, sukha-ayu and dukha-ayu: Hita-ayu is life that is led for doing good to yourself and others. Ahita-ayu refer to actions which are not for the good of yourself or another person. Sukha-ayu refers to those healthful and blissful actions that you do for the good of your physiology, while dukha-ayu is leading a life that harms the physiology. Ayurveda encourages and prescribes choosing to lead the hita-ayu and sukha-ayu life, and one’s days be filled with bounty in every way.

I completely agree philosophy and prescription of Ayurveda, even trying in my personal life, which is living fulfill life with good intentions, nutrition, yoga, self heal, conscious living, care and compassion towards others, animals, nature, loving heart and positive mind.

Ayurveda teaches us to live life in balance. And it helps us to find exactly what that balance is for each one of us. We learn individual strategies for diet, exercise, and lifestyle. Since health is more than the physical, it is also mental, emotional, and spiritual, Ayurveda can be used to help us create and maintain healthy relationships. It can help us to better understand ourselves, and the people in our lives. We can work with our natural strengths to help balance each other out. We can stop trying to "change" others to fit our needs, and instead accept a person's characteristics as a part of their wholeness, and honor who they are.

Ayurvedic principles can be applied to our work and career, to help us find and live our dharma, or purpose in life. They can help us with our family lives, in parenting, and to help resolve conflicts. Ayurveda is a lifestyle that shows us how to take care of ourselves, in a simple, practical, and loving way.

Ayurveda is a holistic approach to balancing body, mind and spirit. Diseases happen outside our control.

Miseries caused by other entititues Adibhautika , seasonal vagaries and natural disasters Adhidaivika.
The goal of Ancient Rishis (RSis) was human happiness and deliverance from misery. Whether it was Vedas, Yoga, Bhoga, Philosophy, or Ayurveda or anything else.

The Adibhautika group is the category of karma that can arise from enemies, animals attack such as tiger, lion, serpent, etc. Adibhautika means miseries caused by other living beings such as germs, bacterias, viruses, or accidents, poisonous gases.
Sometimes our friends betray us, sometimes people are competitive against us, sometimes people



will insult us, blaspheme us, try to destroy us, or just neglect us. Very difficult.

Adidaivika is the class of karma that can arise from the asuras etc. Then, there is a miseries caused by natural disturbances, too much heat, too much cold, high winds, earthquakes, Tsunamis, tidal waves, wild fires, so suffering is inevitable.
Also believed that lack of spiritual conscious mind would cause Adhidaivika miseries, which are those that arise due to the imbalances created by man, that incur the wrath of the Gods, the different planets and so on, which result in various types of inconveniences and difficulties for humans.

Adhibhautika misery is the misery that arises from the five great elements like Earth, Water, Fire, Ether and Air.

Certain type of disasters can be avoided by the governments of those countries. Japan have been building earthquake resistance buildings for years now, besides tsunami hits the country, high scale earthquake in most cases don’t damage people’s lives. However certain disasters cannot be avoided, thousands of lives lost because of these type of disasters. Helping humanity, helping financially, physically, monetarily is our responsibilities to create better karma.

Also in the ancient civilizations they would pray to Gods for natural happenings. Humanity has changed to become more self conscious in material and high tech ways. Communications, consciousness focused on self then self realization and happenings.

Ayurveda is the systematic knowledge of life. Treatments of diseases for external sources also need to be treated, since these external affects cause uncontrollable imbalances in doshas. Ayurveda recognizes ones life as a whole and to understand the disturbance is essential to treating their effects. 

BLOCK 20 Week 2 Assignment By Dilek Koksal

Comparison of Ayurveda to
any Holistic Health Modality such as TCM, Homeopathy, Naturopathy

The process of treatment of these alternative medicine includes ancient types of procedure, have there unique features, unique ways of treatment of different diseases, unique principles & laws which they follow & also unique medicine, those totally different from allopathic medicine.

IN INDIA• There are some pathies of alternative medicine which are widely used for treatment now a days• include 1. Ayurvedic 2. Homoeopathy 3. Unani 4. Yoga 5. Sujok 6. Siddha 7. Naturopathy 8. Acupressure & Acupuncture.

I started my comparison with TCM since it is a more full life concept than Homeopathy or Naturopathy.

These Eastern philosophies can be summed up with a brief comparison of the two from Tao and Dharma: Chinese Medicine and Ayurveda, by Robert Svoboda and Arnie Lade. Both Ayurveda and Chinese medicine are ancient living systems of medicine, in fact, they are the oldest continually practiced and recorded in the world. Both Indian and Chinese cultures recognize that living in harmony with nature and human society is a prerequisite for health. Both traditions agree that human beings have inherently unique physical and psychological characteristics, which arise from predisposed heredity and karmic factors, developing according to the conditioning received from one's social milieu. In Ayurveda, people are differentiated by the Three Doshas, while in Chinese medicine the theories of Yin-Yang and the Five Elements provide the basis for understanding a person's constitution and susceptibility to illness.

One common feature of both systems is the belief in the essential life force, called Prana by the Indians and Qi by the Chinese. Both have similar ideas on the nature, transportation, origin and importance of this vital energy. Both systems use the natural sensory skills of the physician to interpret the patient's symptoms, with striking similarities in diagnostic techniques, such as palpation of the pulse, tongue diagnosis, visual inspection, listening and questioning.

Awareness is at the center of Ayurveda and TCM. It is central in choosing to balance and critical in choosing health no matter where one is in the process of health or disease.


Ayurveda’s foundation in spiritual awareness puts humans in harmony with the creation, and puts the creation within humans; TCM does the same through Chinese philosophy.

Also, both systems see the world (and the self) through a macrocosmic – microcosmic relationship. In the subtlest sense, both of these traditions can define the whole self as the whole world.

Ayurveda and TCM both have five element theories central to their practice. Yet the role these theories play and the way they are described are very different. The primary difference is Ayurveda’s five elements (ether, air, fire, water, and earth)
are very static compared to interrelatedness of TCM’s five elements (wood, fire, earth, metal, and water). Constitutions in both systems have a genetic component. Thus differences in gene pools could explain variation between the constitutional types.

Ayurveda identifies six tastes and TCM identifies five, however cold, and hot (Yin, and Yang) are the most important.
The two systems are in agreement of the effects of the tastes, with the exception of salt. Ayurveda gives it a heating quality, while TCM identifies it as cooling. The reason for the divergence can be attributed to salts ability to increase digestive fire, but also increase water retention, and can purge the intestines in larger amounts

In both systems, diet either stimulates or pacifies a dosha or element to create balance within the body. Unique to TCM is the idea that certain tastes strengthen particular meridians and organs. This occurs because every organ has an element in resonance.

HOMEOPATHY SYSTEM OF MEDICINE is a system of medicine that treats diseased individuals on the basis of using medicinal substances capable of producing similar changes in the health of a person as that of the diseased person.

What's common between homeopathy, ayurveda and Chinese medicine is the law of similars.

Homeopathy is relatively a recent system of medicine. The word “Homeopathy” is derived from two Greek words, Homois meaning similar and pathos meaning suffering. Homeopathy simply means treating diseases with remedies, prescribed in minute doses, which are capable of producing symptoms similar to the disease when they taken by the healthy people. It is based on the natural law of healing. “Similia Similibus Curantur” which means “Likes are cured by likes”