Feeding

Our Three Pillars of Life

With Ayurvedic Practices
Ayurveda, a system of health and healing from India, is gaining steady ground in the
complementary and alternative medicine arena worldwide. Ayurveda’s nature-
inspired lifestyle wisdom, which includes diet, is said to positively impact both the
body and mind, simultaneously.

In fact, Ayurveda is perhaps the world’s first truly holistic expression of medicine,
given that the ancient tradition recognizes the mind (sattva), consciousness
(atman), and of course the body (Sharira) as the three pillars of life.

In order to rid ourselves of the suffering that afflicts the body and mind, Ayurveda
claims that we need an affirmative knowledge of life and how to lead it in a way that
in each moment we experience our being in alignment with Nature, which is both
our source and destination. Consequently, Ayurveda teaches a lifestyle that prevents
disease of body and optimizes wellbeing and balance in the mind.

Today, there is considerable rhetoric about the value of perceiving, diagnosing, and
treating mental conditions holistically. And yet thousands of years ago, Ayurveda
forwarded a wholly practical and usable system to implement holistic ideals in
health, including health’s interconnecting links with environment, society,
spirituality and culture.

Macrocosm and Microcosm

Understanding that the microcosm (in this case, the body and mind) is no different
from the macrocosm (Nature, or the universe) is fundamental to Ayurveda. The
interaction between an individual being and the world is represented by
chronobiological rhythms—day and night, the turns of the seasons. There is a need
to construct a lifestyle that upholds these rhythms. This lifestyle must allow the
human body and mind to adapt to the changes that are occurring in the
universe/environment; otherwise, both body and mind get stressed.

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In fact, the ancient tradition earmarks three approaches to health, and in each of
them, lifestyle restoration is the fundamental first step.

1. Physiological intervention – known as Yukti Vyapashraya

2. Psychological intervention – known as Sattva Vajaya
3. Spiritual intervention – known as Daivya chikitsa

For example, it is imperative that the human mind awakens with the rising sun. We
are now learning about the impact of sunrays on serotonin levels and the impact of
early rising on the circadian rhythm of the neuro-cardiac system. Habits regulate
metabolism, and metabolism influences the brain-gut paradigm. While expanding
upon this lifestyle in detail and addressing the time-tested practices Ayurveda
prescribes is outside the scope of this article (but the subject of my current book,
AYURVEDA LIFESTYLE WISDOM, Sounds True, 2017), I will trace the all-important
impact of food on the mind which is Ayurveda’s unique observation and
contribution to mental health. Below is a condensed excerpt from AYURVEDA
LIFESTYLE WISDOM:

The Three Qualities of the Mind

According to Ayurveda, our mind is composed of three essential qualities known as
“gunas.” These are the inherent vibrations, or qualities, of all material objects,
including food.

1. Rajas, represents energy
2. Tamas, represent inertia
3. Sattwa, represents balance

Varying quantities of intelligence (sattva), energy (rajas), and mass (tamas), in
varied groupings, act on one another, and through their mutual interaction and
inter-dependence, a world of diversity and matter, from subtle (space) to gross
(earth), is born.

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In the human being, the three qualities are witnessed through the workings of the
mind. From imagination to ideas to expression of complex beliefs and concepts —
the mind expresses itself through the interplay of the three gunas. This point is
further clarified in the descriptions below.

Sattva Guna: Sattva guna is expressed in the cosmos through the luminosity of light,
power of reflection, harmony, balance, goodness, knowledge, and purity. When
sattva emerges in our minds, we experience inner clarity, pleasure, purity of being,
contentment, intrinsic peacefulness, and a desire to be noble, good, and godly and to
share and to care for others.

Rajas Guna: Rajas guna is the principle of motion. When in excess, it produces pain,
both physical and emotional. Restless activity, feverish effort, and nonstop
stimulation are its manifestations. It is mobile and energizing. Rajas expresses itself
in the bold strokes of passion, action, change, movement, activity and compulsion,
not to mention agitation and turbulence.
Tamas Guna: In tamas, both light and movement are absent. Tamas literally means
darkness; it is the principle of inertia. It produces apathy and indifference.
Ignorance, sloth, confusion, bewilderment, passivity, and negativity are its results.
Ambiguity, lack of initiative, incomprehension, and the inability to see through
mental confusions and emerge from self-delusions (sometimes in spite of
counseling, teaching, and handholding) are characteristics of a tamas-dominant
mind.

Food, Mind, and a Sacred Life

Ayurveda informs us that food provides much more than physical sustenance for the
body. Since food (like everything else in the universe) is also made up of the three
cosmic qualities (gunas), food shapes and shifts the mind, influencing our ability to
think and to conceptualize. Therefore, we can choose our foods mindfully to reap a
calmer mind.

Ayurveda emphasizes the importance of eating sattvic food to support a peaceful,

elevated state of mind. For food to be sattvic, it must be eaten in the right measure,

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be balanced in its qualities, and always eaten fresh, meaning it must be recently
harvested and recently cooked.

Sattvic foods: These foods make the mind relaxed and serene, are full of life force
(prana), are cooked in ghee (clarified butter), and are light and easy to digest, yet
they impart stability and strength to the body. Organic vegetables, ripe fruits, and
Ayurveda spices belong in this category. Naturally, simply cooked foods, vegetables,
and fruits will be more sattvic than overly processed foods.

Rajasic foods: Rajasic foods overstimulate and irritate the body and mind because
of inherent or added properties such as excessive pungency, sourness, or saltiness
along with undue hotness, sharpness, and roughness (dryness), often overly
stimulating the gastric enzymes. These are often spicy, alkaline, salty foods, as well
as alcohol and caffeine, and even small amounts of marijuana or other drugs.

Tamasic foods: These are foods that are often stale (lacking freshness), putrid (foul
smelling), or excessively heavy due to being overly fatty. Eating meat is
recommended in Ayurveda to improve physical strength, but a diet that is
dominated by meat will increase tamasic qualities—this is especially true of old,
canned, or frozen meats, versus organic meats that are cooked fresh and consumed
in moderate or low quantity.

It may be surprising to learn that foods have this kind of influence over your
thoughts and state of mind, but it’s true. It’s a fact. And I witness this fact day after
day in my work.

Food affects our deepest emotions. When we consume food with reverence and
loving, meditative awareness, our bodies become filled with radiant health and
divine well-being. And when we eat with a toxic attitude, the very act of eating
otherwise healthy food can disturb the quality of our consciousness and disconnect
us from our own source.

Thus, a paramount concept in Ayurveda mental health, one that sets it apart from all
other modalities, is its focus on energetically-charged, mind-healing foods.

© 2017 Acharya Shunya, author of Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom: A Complete

Prescription to Optimize Your Health, Prevent Disease, and Live with Vitality and Joy

Acharya Shunya is one of the extraordinary teachers of the living, embodied wisdom
of Ayurveda. She transmits it through the roots of her ancient family lineage as well

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as throughout her book, Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom (Sounds True, 2017). Shunya is
the driving force behind Vedika Global, a wisdom school dedicated to awakening
health and consciousness, and was recognized as one of the Top 100 teachers of
Ayurveda and Yoga in America by Spirituality & Health Magazine (2015). Shunya is
President of the California Association of Ayurvedic Medicine, a frequent keynote
speaker at national and international conferences, and teaches at the California
Institute of Integral Studies and at complementary medicine symposiums at
Stanford, UCLA, and UCSF. For more information, please visit
http://www.acharyashunya.com/ and follow connect on Facebook and Twitter.