How does Ayurveda work?

Health is a simple concept that resists simple definition. You have probably felt it, and know it when you see it: a person whose step and smile radiate that certain something that feels wholesome and well-nourished. Detecting ill health is easy medical textbooks are filled with its symptoms and signs.

True health is a state of persistent well-being, not a condition of temporary tranquillity or respite from affliction. Well-being is that situation in which one feels inner peace, calm and stillness; states that resist our becoming agitated or unbalanced even when circumstances may trouble or torment us.

The literal meaning of svastha, the Sanskrit word for healthy, says it all: to be svastha is to be established in yourself. Only somebody who is well-established in him or herself will be able to radiate that joy and enthusiasm that we recognise when we see health. In all its prescriptions and proscriptions, preventatives and remedies, Ayurveda's eye stays firmly fixed on establishing living beings within themselves.

Ayurveda's fundamental aim is to generate equilibrium at all levels of a person's being body with mind, physique with environment, personality with society as it pursues its goal of progressively more profound states of self-integration and self-establishment.

When we do fall ill, Ayurvedic treatment aims at neutralising the root cause of the illness. It is not, as with Western medicine, so concerned with the classification of illnesses or with the identification of pathogens. In merely treating external pathogens, only the symptoms, not the underlying causes, are dealt with. By contrast, Ayurvedic treatment methods are often not clinical, but come from changes to our own lifestyle. In this way, Ayurveda always brings us back to self-healing.

Ayurvedic curative aids are not necessarily complex, nor do they always have to be administered by another person. They involve dietary changes, use of herbal supplements, lifestyle changes, yoga and meditation that we can implement for ourselves. The more complex remedies only become necessary when the illness process has been allowed to continue unchecked for a long time.