Finding Balance.
The Disease process in Ayurveda
Each of us possesses a basic nature or constitution, Prakriti, in whose state of balance or equilibrium is health. Disease arises from a differentiation or degeneration from that basic state of health, Vikriti.
Ayurveda aims at restoring our basic nature (Prakriti) and allowing us to live in harmony with it. To do this, we must first understand what it is. For that determination of constitution, physical and mental, is necessary, which is the foundation of Ayurveda.
In Ayurveda, therefore, the state of health is natural. We should all be naturally and spontaneously healthy and happy if we merely live in harmony with our own nature. But we are so caught in a conditioned pattern of ego responses that we confuse our desire nature, which really comes to us from the outside as various conditioned or artificial wants, with our original nature. We indulge ourselves and dissipate ourselves, rather than seek to know and understand ourselves.
Even treatments and medicines tend to be outside of our nature and may be a further imposition on it. For this reason Ayurveda tries to harmonize us with our nature as a primary treatment and uses outside modalities only in a supplementary way.
Ayurveda always aims at restoring balance, at the return to Nature as a means of returning to the Spirit. Its approach and methodology is primarily sattvic. It works through love, faith, peace, and non‑violence. Sattvic healing is through nature and the life force, like the use of herbs, diet and yoga.
Principles of Ayurvedic Treatment
Like Attracts Like
Factors of similar nature to health, like rest, good food or meditation will increase health. Those of variant nature like overwork, bad diet or worry, will detract from it. We must promote as many of the positive factors and reduce as many of the negative factors in order to arrive at the optimum. Without having done this we cannot expect our condition to improve. This concept further develops into the idea that conditions are corrected by their opposite:
The Opposite Brings Balance
A condition of excess heat in the body can only be corrected through the application of cold. Hence in Ayurveda we employ opposite qualities to balance conditions. First we ascertain the qualities that are in excess, like cold, dryness and disturbance in a Vata (air) disorder. Then we apply substances or actions that are opposite, like the use of a gentle warm oil massage in this case, to correct it.
This same principle holds true on a psychological level also. Hatred never comes to an end through hatred but only through love, its opposite. Hence in examining mental disturbances we must also seek balance, not try to find justification for any imbalanced state.
Recognition of Like Cures Like
This is used in Homeopathy, and like it, Ayurveda employs it only on a subtle level. For example, a small amount of a toxin (like immunization or homeopathic treatment) can be used to stimulate the body to cleanse itself of a larger amount of the same toxin. This principle does not work on the level of foods or herbs or any substance that is taken in quantity, however.
The principle of causation in Ayurveda
Ayurveda through the Samkhya system is firmly based upon the principle of causation. As is the cause, so will be the effect. This doctrine, that from a real cause can only occur a real effect of like nature.
The Law of Karma
This doctrine of cause and effect is the basis of the law of Karma, the basic law of action in the universe. Whatever we do must produce an effect of like nature. This principle of causation is important in Ayurveda. Whatever is our condition there is a reason for it. A disease cannot arise without a cause of like nature. If one has a Kapha (phlegm) disease like the common cold, a Kapha cause must exist in such things as exposure to cold or damp, eating of damp or mucus forming foods, excessive sleeping and other Kapha-increasing actions. Everything has a reason and if we discover that reason we can correct the chain of circumstances that brings us pain or disease. It means that we possess the power to correct it by remedial measures of opposite nature. As we have made all that we are, we can also unmake it. It gives freedom through which we can arrive at self‑mastery.
Ayurveda is not a passive form of treatment. It does not give the patient a treatment or remedy and send them away. It insists that the patient themselves must take an active part in the treatment, for it is only the individual that can change their own chain of cause and effect.