Have you ever sought a doctor’s appointment just because you’re feeling “sort of funny”?
Has your doctor ever outlined a new food plan for you just by looking at your tongue?
Have you ever returned from seeing your doctor with the advice “take a walk in the moonlight” on your prescription?
The answer to all the above questions can be “Yes” if your doctor is an Ayurvedic one — that is, a vaidya.
A vaidya does not go to Harvard, of course. A vaidya does not wear a white coat, or even a blue one. A vaidya does not pull out a thermometer or a stethoscope, and doesn’t write you prescriptions for drugs.
So what kind of a doctor is this vaidya?
A vaidya is a fully trained holistic physician. To become a vaidya, a person studies eight diverse branches of medicine for many laborious years. These fields of study are called:
1. Kaya Chikitsa: internal medicine
2. Bal Chikitsa: pediatrics
3. Graha Chikitsa: psychiatry
4. Shalakya Tantra: eye, ear, nose, and throat treatment
5. Shalya Tantra: surgery
6. Agad Tantra: toxicology
7. Rasayan Tantra: geriatrics (the study of old age and rejuvenation)
8. Vajikarana Tantra: aphrodisiacs and fertility
Vaidyas have studied these same branches of medicine for 1,500 years. The difference between then and now is that Ayurvedic physicians today also learn about human anatomy, nutrition, and other aspects of modern medicine. Thus, they combine ancient wisdom with cutting-edge medical knowledge.
In India, becoming a vaidya requires six years of study in an Ayurvedic college or university. In addition to academic education, many vaidyas have acquired their knowledge of Ayurveda from their families.
The story goes that when the Moguls invaded India, they burned down the entire library of Ayurvedic books at the prestigious Nalanda University in eastern India. To compensate for that loss, the vaidyas of that time committed all of Ayurvedic knowledge to memory and passed it on to their sons. These sons — now a select few vaidyas — received Ayurveda in their very genes. Along with their formal training, the invaluable experience of learning from and working with their fathers made them the best among healers. I have the privilege of working with one of them — Vaidya Ramakant Mishra, whose ancestors were physicians to the kings of India.
Let us look further at the difference between the Western and Ayurvedic approaches to healing. In the Western world, a healer is generally the doctor or physician who treats you. A visit to the Western physician is usually a formal affair. The well-appointed clinics, state-of-the-art diagnostic tools, and often polite-but-detached advice (perhaps out of fear of lawsuits?) all play their role in giving the modern physician the image of an automobile mechanic. To be fair, not all Western physicians are aloof or detached, but all too often this is the ambiance of Western medical treatment.
Writer Anatole Broyard once said, “A doctor, like a writer, must have a voice of his own — something that conveys the timbre, the rhythm, the diction, and the music of his humanity that compensates us for all the speechless machines.” To my mind, Broyard’s words draw a beautiful picture of the Ayurvedic physician. Because a vaidya perceives the patient as an individual with unique characteristics and unique problems, Ayurvedic methods of healing resonate with “the music of humanity.”
In India, vaidyas have always enjoyed a high status. In my mother’s village, the local vaidyaji (ji is a suffix added as a mark of respect) was lavished with tokens of patients’ gratitude. My mother tells me that he even played the role of general counselor on matters such as marriage, buying and selling property, and forecasting the weather.
This reverence dates back to a time when the vaidya was regarded as not only a physician but also a sage. Knowledge of healing was said to come directly to the vaidya by divine revelation. The erstwhile kings of India had their own personal physicians, who not only kept the royal family in good health but also performed religious rites. The old treatises say that a vaidya must possess enough knowledge, training, and experience to bring the patient balance in body, mind, and soul. The leading light of Ayurveda, Sage Charaka, urges the vaidya to “enter the body of a patient with the lamp of knowledge and understanding.”
In addition to the vaidya, there are three other — and no less important — components of the Ayurvedic healing process.
Ayurvedic pharmacology is called dravyaguna (dravya means “healing ingredient”; guna means “quality”). Ayurvedic medicines are prepared from plants without isolating their active ingredients. Thus, Ayurvedic drugs retain their natural synergy and are largely free of side effects.
Sage Charaka identified 350 species of healing plants, then divided them into fifty groups based on the actions — preventive or curative — of the medicines that could be extracted from them. These medicines included tonics for the heart, analgesics, anti-inflammatories, purgatives, fertility enhancers, bone-setting compounds, and diuretics. In his compendium on healing, the Charaka Samhita, he describes a good medicine as being readily available, easy to administer, safe, and effective. The Samhita also gives precise instructions on when and how to harvest a certain healing herb or plant, including the time of day. This is because Ayurvedic healers believe that everything in nature — including plants — has a biological rhythm that determines when it is at its most effective.
Because of the purity and potency of most Ayurvedic herbs, it is important not to self-administer them. Taken in the precise combination and amount recommended by a vaidya, however, most Ayurvedic herbal formulations are free of side effects.
Often a vaidya will prescribe a formulation that is less a drug than a food supplement. Prepared from precise blends of herbs and fruit, such formulations heal the body-mind as a whole. They strengthen the immune system, thus removing toxins and building up resistance to disease. Such formulations are given the status of a rasayana — something that supports the body’s essential fluids, or rasa; specifically the blood and plasma.
Ideally, one shouldn’t reach the stage of being a “patient,” the whole orientation of Ayurveda being toward prevention. But, of course, people do fall ill. That is why Ayurvedic texts dwell at length on the role of the person in the grip of a disorder. They instruct patients to describe their disease clearly, follow the physician’s advice carefully, and maintain a positive attitude toward their illness.
It is also the patient’s duty to work toward recognizing an imbalance before disease can take root. In real terms, this is how you would do it: Put down this book, and close your eyes if it helps you concentrate better. Now ask yourself if you are comfortable: is the room too hot or too cold for you? Are you snug in your clothes and shoes? Did you eat a good breakfast? How did you feel when you woke up this morning — did you spring out of bed or did you burrow deeper into the pillow to shut out the alarm clock? These seemingly trivial questions — and their answers — can often help you catch an imbalance early.
Usually a family member, friend, or nurse, the attendant forms a vital fourth dimension of the Ayurvedic healing process. The attendant should possess loyalty and love for the patient, accurate knowledge of the patient’s disease, the skill to attend to the patient’s needs, and the ability to keep the patient cheerful.
The idea of seeing a doctor if you don’t have a full-blown cold or fever can seem somewhat strange. It’s not strange in the Ayurvedic scheme of things, however.
A vaidya is trained to catch disease at its very seed level. At that point, toxic ama is still at a stage when it can be flushed out easily through simple diet and lifestyle alterations. Think of it as pulling out a young weed; give it one light twist and it is out, root and all. Similarly, vaidyas like to weed out disease before it gets a chance to grow.
Therefore, you can see a vaidya even if your complaints are “minor” in nature — flatulence, general tiredness, or simply not feeling your best. The vaidya will respect your complaint and give it the attention it deserves. You will be perceived as a sum of your body, mind, and spirit, not as a simple machine with an obvious part in need of repair.
Once you develop an intuitive relationship with your own being, you can begin to develop a sense of your own subtle symptoms. With practice, it is possible to literally sniff an illness weeks before it can manifest itself just like a meteorologist can predict a weekend snowstorm on Monday morning.
I am reminded of an experience I had many years ago. Winter had just tiptoed into New Delhi, and the evenings were nippy. Yet that night I felt excessively thirsty. Not unwell — just very thirsty. When I poured myself a sixth glass of water, my grandmother said, “I think you are going to be unwell.” Sure enough, the next morning my forehead was hot. I was laid up with viral fever for a week.
My grandmother’s prediction might seem impressive, but I know that if a vaidya had seen me a week before I fell ill, he would have made the same prediction at that time. How would he have been able to do this? As Vaidya Divakar Sharma told me, every living moment the human body gives out clues about its health, and the vaidya is trained to detect the most minute ones.
Thousands of years ago, Sage Charaka set forth a comprehensive ten-point diagnostic checklist for vaidyas. Ayurvedic physicians study and follow that list to this day. Here is what Charaka asked vaidyas to check for:
1. Prakriti: the patient’s basic constitution, which determines such factors as susceptibility to disease, digestive efficiency, work capacity, sleep requirement, and coping abilities.
2. Vikriti: the patient’s current physical and psychological imbalances, studied against the background of his or her natural constitution.
3. Sara: the body components (skin and hair texture, complexion, luster of the eyes, and resonance of the voice).
4. Samhanana: the physical build (bone structure, height, length of joints, posture).
5. Pramana: the state of development of physical features, such as height and weight, in proportion to the patient’s age.
6. Satmya: the patient’s habits, especially those that have become second nature through repeated practice (for instance, an individual’s adaptation to milk, cold weather, or job stress).
7. Sattva: the patient’s mental makeup. The more positive the person’s mental qualities, the faster and better the healing process. An action-oriented person will respond well to the correct remedy, while a sluggish person’s disease can be stubborn and acute.
8. Ahara Shakti: the patient’s appetite and digestive capacity, which are clues to the nature and extent of a disease.
9. Vyayama Shakti: the patient’s capacity to exercise or work.
10. Vaya: the relationship between the patient’s age and disease condition.
And to think that this comprehensive range of observations is made without the vaidya ever touching you! What’s more, this is only the first stage in an Ayurvedic diagnosis. In fact, the ten stages mentioned here don’t even cover the finer points that a vaidya notices. At this first stage, called darshana, or observation, the Ayurvedic physician is taking in not only your chief physical characteristics, but also such minute details as the thickness of your lips, the size of your tongue, and even the number of times you blink — all the while making pleasant small talk with you.
If the elaborate nature of this diagnosis makes you wonder, suffice it to say for now that every single one of these observations is like a nugget of gold to a vaidya. Your posture, your gait, and your smile speak volumes about your personality, your basic nature, and your current imbalances. That information, as you will see, is the bedrock upon which Ayurvedic healing rests.
The next stage in Ayurvedic diagnosis is sparsha, or touch. While a vaidya will also palpate your abdomen, the “touch” part of the diagnosis essentially begins with taking your pulse. From the moment the vaidya feels the first wave of the artery just beneath your wrist, lightning-quick signals from your body start being transmitted.
How does this happen? The Ayurvedic belief is that the circulatory channels — the arteries, veins, and capillaries — carry more than just vital nutrients; they also ferry vital information about your current state of health.
There is a reason why the vaidya always uses three fingers in pulse-diagnosis: each finger probes a specific aspect of your physiology. The first finger feels the energy of your body’s motion-based functions (for example, respiration and circulation), the second finger perceives metabolic activity, and the third picks up signals about structural health (joints and muscles).
Pressing slightly harder, the vaidya gets a sense of how your deeper body channels (veins, capillaries, lymph) and tissues are doing. At this time, vaidyas can even pick up vital genetic information about you.
The final stage in an Ayurvedic diagnosis is prashna, or questioning. This stage differs from the ten-point diagnosis in stage one as the latter is based largely on observation and casual conversation while the former is structured with a more specific line of questioning. Like a Western physician, a vaidya will ask you questions. But a vaidya’s line of questioning is very different. Unlike a Western physician, a vaidya does not ask, “When was the last time this happened?” “Where exactly do you feel it?” “How long has it been hurting?” and so on. Instead, a vaidya’s questions are geared toward confirming the preliminary findings. Therefore, you can expect the vaidya to ask, “Have you been attending too many parties lately?” “Have you been suffering from constipation?” “Are you feeling overstressed these days?” Whereas a Western physician is likely to ask, “How long have you had this problem?” a vaidya is likely to ask, “Have you had this problem for the last two weeks?” The vaidya is able to assess the duration and extent to which a person has been suffering based on how much ama he senses in a person’s system.
Fascinating, aren’t they, the vaidya’s subtle methods? Each time I pick up an Agatha Christie novel, ace sleuth Hercule Poirot reminds me of the vaidyas I have met over the years. Poirot was able to piece together the puzzle of a murdered woman using such seemingly meaningless clues as a broken mirror, a piece of blotting paper, and the remains of a fire in the grate!
Not only does the vaidya cull information about you as a whole, but the line of treatment is also designed toward treating you as a whole. This is why the vaidya does not give you medicines that show results within twenty-four hours or administer shots to take care of your flu or phlegm. What the vaidya does is to offer you some simple, solid advice on how to live more healthfully. A consultation with a vaidya usually consists of guidelines on regulating your mealtimes, making changes in your diet, and getting a better quality of sleep. In addition, you might be advised to explore the tremendous healing powers of yoga, meditation, aromatherapy, music therapy, and home-architecture therapy (called Vastu — an older cousin of feng shui). And, yes, a vaidya will give you some gentle herbal medication if that is appropriate.
Vaidyas like to start by talking about your diet. Their recommendations on good nutrition are often so simple that you might wonder if they are taking your disease seriously enough. But remember: the vaidya is trying to correct an imbalance. And most imbalances, according to Ayurvedic theory, originate when the digestion process is not functioning as it should.
We all know how it feels when work forces us to miss or delay a meal, or after we give in to our taste buds and indulge in a big chunk of cream pie. Those feelings — ranging from weakness to bloatedness — are our body’s signals that the metabolic system is under stress. A vaidya doesn’t even need to ask if you’re feeling any of those things, instead perceiving your body’s signals through observation and touch. Based on the strength of those signals, the vaidya will tell you which aspect of your food intake you need to improve: the quality, quantity, timing, or all of these.
Yes, vaidyas do make specific recommendations about what to eat and what to avoid. This can, understandably, worry some people. As Mark Twain said, “He had much experience of physicians, and said, ‘The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not.’” Relax. A vaidya will give you a variety of ingredients to choose from. If the vaidya asks you to eat rutabagas and you don’t relish them, just say so; there are other options.
Another word of advice: Don’t take a vaidya’s recommendations as absolutes. In my early days of trying Ayurvedic therapy, I went berserk trying to get exactly the amount of fennel and coriander in my diet that the vaidya had suggested. I soon realized, however, that Ayurveda is not about following lists. It is designed to awaken your body’s own healing intelligence by giving it positive support. Therefore, as long as I was getting coriander in my diet and eating a regular breakfast, I was on the right track.
During a consultation with a vaidya, questions are bound to occur to you: “Why is cardamom good for me and not cloves? Why do I need to avoid ketchup? I wonder why he asked me to cut down on my workout — I thought working out was the best thing I could do for my health!” Don’t be afraid to ask questions and seek clarification. Some vaidyas are good communicators; others might refrain from explaining the concepts of Ayurveda because they don’t want to overwhelm you. But if you ask, they will willingly explain. Sometimes language can be a barrier, too; though a vaidya practicing in Europe or America will know basic English, an accent can be hard to understand at first.
This is where reading a good basic guide on Ayurveda will help you tremendously (see the resource section at the end of this book). Armed with some background knowledge, you’ll be able to understand the reasoning behind much of what the vaidya says — and then you can ask more specific questions.
A session with a vaidya, then, is no doubt an interesting experience. But even more fascinating than the vaidya’s methods are the principles on which the diagnosis is based. Can you imagine, for instance, that a vaidya taking your pulse is feeling the energies of fire, earth, water, air, and space coursing through your veins? Tantalizing, isn’t it? Wait until you hear more — in the next chapter.
Although pulse diagnosis is a specialized art, it can be rewarding to try to understand the rhythm of your own pulse from time to time. You can take your pulse anytime during the day. Your pulse will feel different at different times.
• If you’re male, take the pulse on your right wrist.
• If you’re a female, take the pulse on your left wrist.
• Use three fingers — the index, middle, and ring fingers — to press down on your pulse.
• Feel your pulse. How would you describe it? Light, rapid, slow, or jerky?
Your familiarity with the rhythm of your pulse can help you understand your current state of health, but a vaidya is the best person to help guide you on how to interpret your pulse-signals. With practice and guidance from your vaidya, you will be well equipped to regularly monitor your current state of health and, in turn, you will grow to know and understand the unique rhythms of your pulse-signals.