Читать книгу The Ayurvedic Guide to Fertility - Heather Grzych - Страница 12
ОглавлениеI believe it’s really about unfolding ourselves.
— ANGELA FARMER, The Feminine Unfolding
Ayurveda means “the science of life,” and it is considered to be a sister science to the practice of yoga. I first discovered Ayurvedic medicine while studying to be a yoga therapist in my early thirties. I was taught just a smidgen of Ayurveda and became so fascinated that I entered a graduate program to study more. In India, it is a very old and well-established form of medicine, and today there are hundreds of thousands of Ayurvedic doctors and practitioners in India. Along with traditional Chinese medicine, which most people know by one of its popular therapies, acupuncture, Ayurveda is one of the oldest systems of medicine in the world. I had been practicing yoga and meditation for years, which helped me learn how to master my will and effort and influence my nervous system, but Ayurveda helped me unlock the golden door of understanding nature and how our cells, bodies, and minds are connected to the larger macrocosm.
In the United States, barely anyone had heard of Ayurvedic medicine when I was studying it, though it has gotten wildly popular in the last few years in the wellness world. Even now, you will see mixed feedback about it if you research it online. Some sources will say it’s the great mother of all medicines, the most transformative form of healing ever to be found. Others will say it’s quackery and practiced by snake-oil-salesman practitioners. Ayurveda is actually a medical philosophy that’s been around for thousands of years, so it comes in many forms and is difficult to nail down. It’s been referred to as ubiquitous, or present everywhere, because its principles have been applied in so many areas — from beauty products, foods, and medicines, all the way to self-help literature and the classes at your local yoga studio. For me, it just made complete sense the first moment I heard about it, and the more I learned about and practiced it, the better my health was and the more alive I felt.
I was more connected to nature. I noticed the moon in the sky more. The plants and trees were suddenly more interesting. And it finally gave me words, albeit in Sanskrit, to explain things I had felt for a long time but had no way to express. Before I knew it, I left my well-paying corporate career in the health-insurance industry to study a foreign form of medicine that no one I knew had heard of or could even pronounce.
Like traditional Chinese medicine, Ayurveda is based on a five-elements model of health, the five elements being space, air, fire, water, and earth. They provide an uncomplicated, intuitive way to describe what is happening in nature and in a body and its environment. The five elements can be used to understand the properties of what a body ingests, and how these properties show up in tissues and physiology during states of imbalance.
The body is a collection of channels through which air, energy, sound, and different substances and materials travel. Channels go in and out of cells, organs, and tissues. The integrity of the channels is paramount in Ayurvedic medicine. A healthy body has freely flowing channels, and when these channels are overwhelmed, blocked, or damaged, there is some imbalance in the body. Imbalances cause disease, and we don’t want disease if we are trying to conceive. We want to be a receptive and resilient channel.
So how do we nip imbalances in the bud? Modern medicine typically isn’t very effective unless there is some emergency going on. Even then, when the modern medical system solves a problem with drugs or surgical or device intervention, it often ends up creating another problem altogether. True healing is found in other places these days, and it all starts with you.
Healing now will make things easier for you down the road when you conceive. Studying your body can tell you a lot. Pain, inflammation, swelling, digestive issues, skin problems, headaches, tissue growths, and PMS symptoms signal that something needs to be looked at more closely, especially if the patterns remain persistent or get worse over time. Noticing quickly when the body is in a state of health versus a state of imbalance can make all the difference in trying to reverse disease processes. However, if you are like most people, you pay attention to your work, your friends and family, the news, or your thoughts more than you do your own body. That was me when I was in my thirties — until I realized that I’d been dragging this body around with me my whole life and knew very little about how it worked.
We aren’t given a manual on how our bodies work when we are born. Even trained medical professionals don’t always fully integrate their learning on the body, because intellectual knowledge, helping other people, and our own embodiment are completely different things. When I started studying my own body, I noticed how complex it was — how so much is going on all the time in all its nooks and crannies. I felt overwhelmed by how much there was to learn, and it seemed it would take forever to truly understand it. I wondered: Is there a way to learn about health that is instead really simple and won’t feel daunting to tackle? Ayurveda was my answer.
Ayurveda gives insight into the very beginnings of disease by studying seemingly benign symptoms that most people simply discount because they can oftentimes take some over-the-counter medicine for them, but they are a big deal if they persist. All disease conditions — minor or major — have their roots in these small health issues. To prevent and reverse disease, you want to catch it as early as possible, because it’s more and more difficult to address it as time goes on. The good news, which I will explain in subsequent chapters, is that imbalance follows very specific patterns, so if you pay attention, you will be able to detect and rebalance issues.
My goal is to introduce you to a few helpful concepts from Ayurvedic medicine so that you can discover how you can be your healthiest self. In introducing Ayurveda to you, I fear I will convey only a fraction of the brilliance of this medicine, because it is so very vast and wise. Nevertheless, I will try. In some cases I will use transliterated Sanskrit terms because there is no meaningful English equivalent to express certain concepts.
Definition of Health
A person with [a] uniformly healthy digestion, and whose bodily humours are in a state of equilibrium, and in whom the fundamental vital fluids course in their normal state and quantity, accompanied by the normal processes of secretion, organic function, and intellection, is said to be a healthy person.
— SUSHRUTA-SAMHITA
Ayurveda teaches us that a healthy person is healthy in mind, body, and senses. We factor in what enters the body and how it is processed, utilized, and ultimately excreted. We evaluate actual food intake and anything else that comes in contact with the sense organs, such as sound, light, smells, and so on. Anything perceived by the senses is food.
We cannot deny that the mind and body are interconnected. When we feel physical pain, there are often mental symptoms that accompany this pain. When we feel stress, anxiety, anger, or sadness, we feel physical symptoms, too, because feelings trigger energy and fluids to travel differently through the body and can even cause muscle contractions or spasms.
A blood test can give us a view of how the various organs of the body are functioning in a moment of time. What a blood test cannot do is tell us how we feel, how hungry we are, or what thoughts we have. A blood test cannot teach us about the actual disease processes behind a snapshot in time. Ayurveda factors in all these things, because how we think, feel, and behave is certainly connected with how the body is operating. Health is really about ensuring that energy and fluids are flowing properly; the physical flow depends on mental and emotional flow, and vice versa. We must give importance to mental states, emotions, and the physical condition of the body equally.
Most people don’t think too much about their health unless they’ve identified some sort of problem or discomfort in themselves. We also tend to think about our own health when a family member has a medical issue — we start to wonder if we will suffer the same fate due to genes, a similar diet, or a lifestyle that we have in common. Learning how to read the body on a day-to-day basis, and ultimately moment to moment, will actually help prevent health issues — even those we are predisposed to — because the cause of our imbalances can be determined sooner. This is why it’s important to observe the condition of our physical attributes and physiological functioning on a regular basis, including:
•Body form and composition
•Skin, including scalp
•Tongue
•Eyes
•Nails
•Voice
•Urine
•Feces
•Bodily secretions (including reproductive-organ fluids and menstruation)
Physical forms change according to the volume, frequency, and type of energy they receive. Identifying issues with skin, digestion, or periods early is very important, because these can signal the first stages of imbalance and the start of a disease process. However, every woman has to get to know her body type at its best to understand what a balanced state feels like. For example, what is normal digestion? When I ask clients to tell me about their bowel movements, they oftentimes respond by saying they are normal or that they don’t really look at them. This area of discussion is a bit embarrassing for a lot of people. In truth, “normal” is simply what a person is used to. It may or may not be a healthy state. Knowledge of Ayurveda helps a person identify the healthy state.
The Five Elements
To create anything, you need to know what materials you have at your fingertips.
Space, or akasha, is the first of the five elements Ayurveda uses to describe the matter we see in our bodies, in food, and in nature around us. Space provides a container for everything else, and even though we cannot see it — we know it’s there because we can see what’s in it. Our planet, the stars, and the sun are all in space. We can hear because sound travels through space. The body is essentially a collection of different types of channels (arteries, veins, organs, digestive tract, reproductive tract, bones, and so forth), and in each channel, there is a space for something to happen inside. Space exists in junction points, such as in the synapses between neurons and in joints. With too little space, congestion or inflammation happens, and with too much, things dry out or communications get dropped. Adequate space is a key to transmission — of information, nutrients, and energy. When a space suddenly opens up, a vacuum of receptivity is created. When a space is closed, transmission is blocked.
You can observe nature and see the same phenomena playing out in your own body. Sometimes just looking at a flower for a moment will tell you everything you need to know about how you feel right now. It may even help you solve a problem you’ve been working on. The space around us teaches us what is within us. This is because the atoms that make up the stars, the plants, and the ocean are the same atoms we have in our bodies. Creation, after all, is a reshuffling of matter and energy, and somewhere along the way, a new person like you or me comes into being.
Movement and change is created by air, or vayu. Like space, air is impossible to see, but we can see what it moves. We get our sense of touch from the air element, such as when we can feel the hairs on our arms move in the wind. A deficiency of air renders an organism inert, and excess can cause chaos and erosion. Air is necessary for respiration, for the wavelike movements of digestion (peristalsis), and for bodily and mental movements in general. We can have too much or too little air. Too little is lifeless; too much is degenerative.
Your Body’s Wind Currents
After watching a meteorologist present weather patterns two or three times, you can see that some wind currents are common on our planet. Your body has some wind-current patterns as well. These are called the five vayus. Air travels in five general directions in a human body:
1.In and out with the breath — prana vayu
2.From the gut to the head to facilitate thinking and communication — udana vayu
3.In a linear fashion to balance pressure and deliver energy and nutrients across membranes — samana vayu
4.Downward with gravity and out through the digestive, reproductive, and urinary tracts — apana vayu
5.From the heart, through the blood vessels, to the entire periphery of the body — vyana vayu
All these vayus are important in order for you to feel fully alive. Certain vayus have a more dominant force at times, such as vyana vayu when your heart is pumping during cardiovascular exercise or a startled state, or apana vayu when you have your period. In fertility, apana vayu is an important wind current to study. A woman needs to allow some pull of gravity to feel stable, safe, and secure, but she must let apana vayu take over even more when menstruation begins. This is one of the reasons why women are not advised to practice handstands or other inversions in yoga class during menstruation. It’s also a reason why women notice changes in their bowel movements around menstruation. The downward force is at play.
If a vayu becomes increased or blocked, it can affect other vayus by increasing or decreasing them. For example, a constipated person may find herself with health issues showing up in the upper part or periphery of the body, because if apana vayu has become blocked, then pressure will back up in the gut and this can push any toxicity into the blood, the lymph, and even the nerves. Also, if a person overexercises and increases energy taken in through the breath (prana), the preexisting imbalance patterns of each of the other vayus can increase even more.
Knowing that these wind currents exist, you can begin to direct energy mindfully throughout your body. You may have already noticed that some of these wind currents seem stronger than others. Your task is to seek out all the places in your body that may have become blocked so that you can let these currents flow freely — in just the right amounts for you to enjoy health and longevity.
Fire, or tejas, is responsible for transformation and provides heat, while our eyes perceive the light emitted from it. We need fire for body heat, proper digestion, and metabolism. Enzymes have fire in them to carry out their action. Too much fire element will burn (as in the case of hyperacidity or ulceration), and too little of it can cause slowness and stagnation. Extreme cases of low heat can also end up looking like burning tissues, as in frostbite, and an individual can have a burning sensation in the stomach when the body is too alkaline. The key is that the body needs a delicate balance of fire for metabolic purposes, and this balance is maintained by hunger, desire, bodily wastes, and excretions. The main fire tissues of the body are found in the liver, blood, and bile. Anemia signals an issue with an individual’s fire element, as do the colors white, yellow, or red in the stool, skin, eyes, or tongue.
Hunger is desire, and desire is fire. Without desire, there would be no matter in the universe. Both desire and fire quicken movement. Heat makes water rise and evaporate. The result is lightness. When you’re trying to create anything, fire gives objects their form, like a clay pot solidified in a hot oven. The positive transmutation of anger is passion and intensity. Do not hold in your fire. Find a way to lovingly escort it out toward a purpose that is greater than yourself so it does not damage your body.
The fourth element is water, or jala. Our planet is said to be made up of over 70 percent water, and our bodies have a lot of water, too. In the human body, water is responsible for lubrication, allowing mixing to occur, and maintaining temperature. Our tongues taste food because of water, and if we are dehydrated, our sense of taste can become affected. The many fluids of the body — plasma, lymph, cerebrospinal fluid, interstitial fluid, breast milk, and so on — all need water to be formed. Too little water prevents flow. Too much also prevents flow because it takes up too much space, causing pressure and diluting fire. All nutrients are transported in water.
When we are young, we are very juicy. Our bodies become drier the older we get. This causes the tissues to become less flexible and changeable. Very old people will often have large swatches of skin rip off because it has lost its moisture and has grown brittle, thin, and flaky. A baby is gestated in water. Water sustains life, but too much of it dulls the senses and fire element and dilutes potency. We can drink too little or too much, or imbibe at the wrong times.
The last and most tangible element is earth, or prithvi. Earth provides structure, coolness, and grounding. Our noses can smell the earth element, like the ground after a rain or the trees as we walk through the forest. We need earth for material form — our bodies need nourishment from the plants that grow on our planet. If we are meat eaters, the animals also get their nourishment from the plants. Too much earth will make us heavy and cold, and can create blockages and growths. Too little will waste away tissues and cause degeneration. All growth hormones include the earth element. We may feel a sense of lightness when we reduce the earth element, but too much lightening will then cause the body’s functions to lose their integrity.
You are both an artist and a scientist. By noticing the five elements — space, air, fire, water, and earth — in all matter, you can direct and shift energies; your will becomes potent and effortless. When you have fire in the food you eat, you become fire. When you feel the air you breathe, you become air. When you stretch your arms out in a wide-open space, you become space. This is the poetry of the mind, body, and senses. This is Ayurveda.
Dosha Theory
Ayurvedic scholars of long ago discovered something really brilliant. They noticed that, despite the myriad physical and mental issues people have, all maladies can be grouped into only a handful of different categories of imbalance. The body displays these patterns through physiological signals, temperament, and behavior, but what’s responsible for these displays is actually an imbalance of humors in the body. These humors are called doshas in Sanskrit. The word dosha literally means “that which can go out of balance.”
