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THE AYURVEDA LIFESTYLE NETWORK
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by Dr Donn Brennan Life never stands still. You become either more or less healthy from day to day. Ayurveda teaches the joy of constantly creating better health. Through food, tonics and exercise you nurture yourself. You also digest and metabolize everything you hear, touch, see, taste and smell. Ayurveda cautions that for health in mind and body, you expose your senses only to uplifting, nourishing experiences. Good speech and behaviour act as tonics. The concept of health concerns wholeness. Your relationship with your whole universe determines your health. Every feeling, thought, speech and action, every incoming sensation, every morsel of food, all should be wholesome. Take responsibility for your thoughts and feelings. If you persist in negative and unproductive thoughts and feelings you are choosing to disturb your health. Negative patterns can be changed with a bit of effort. Strategies exist in other aspects of Vedic knowledge to help here. But do choose to love as much as possible. Love heals. In fact, the whole ethos of Ayurveda is love. You must learn to love yourself. This implies attending to, listening to and cooperating with your own nature and needs. Eat when hungry, rest when tired, enjoy positive experiences and love. We often get out of touch with ourselves because we are so focused on our environment. If someone says that to listen to your own needs is selfish, they are unwise. A tenet of many cultures is to love your neighbour as yourself – which means loving yourself as much as your neighbour. We often make demands of ourselves we would never ask of anyone else. One further element of self-nurturing is the most fundamental of all and empowers you to achieve spontaneously all other strategies of Ayurveda. Allow all waves of thought to settle, and awaken the stillness of your own ocean of consciousness - your inner self. The best way to achieve this is through Transcendental Meditation, an ancient Vedic tradition that is also the only scientifically verified meditation technique. Regularly done, this settling down of the mind results in a transformation toward ideal health, happiness and fulfilment. Extracted from Live Better: Ayurveda by Dr Donn Brennan. 2006 Duncan Baird Publishers, London. Priced £4.99
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