All About Vata Dosha

According to Ayurveda, there is a direct relationship between the elements that make up the natural universe–earth, water, fire, air and space–and the human body. Therefore, it is important to know about the basic constituents and principles of a well-functioning body and the physiological aspects of Ayurveda.

Concept of doshas-dhatus-malas

In our bodies there are certain activities that are going on constantly, both structurally and functionally, from the gross outer level to the most minute internal tissue and cellular level. These activities can be divided into three groups:
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Book Review: Messages from the Dream Body

Messages from the Dream Body
by Nancy Dakota Adlman
(CreateSpace/Amazon.com, 2011)

Messages from the Dream Body is a compelling poetic account of the Shaman’s path.

Nancy Dakota Adlman, the author of “Messages from the Dream Body” is a social work educator, clinical social worker and a psychotherapist in private practice as well as a Shamanic practitioner who has studied extensively with Shamans and healers from the Peruvian, Ecuadorian, and New Mexican traditions. She has incorporated this ancient and powerful form of healing into her work with clients.
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Book Review: Light, Medicine of the Future

Light, Medicine of the Future: How We Can Use It to Heal Ourselves Now by Jacob Liberman, O.D., Ph.D.
Bear & Company/Inner Traditions Press, Rochester, Vermont 1990

Jacob Liberman, is a doctor of optometry as well as the holder of a Ph.D. In vision science and extensive experience in optometric practice, research and teaching along with postgraduate specialty training in the discipline of Syntonic Optometry. I emphasize his professional and academic credentials because he has authored a work which has proven controversial and continues to elicit both enthusiastic praise as well as criticism 22 years after it’s publication.
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Ayurvedic Management of Cystic Fibrosis

Cystic Fibrosis is an inherited disease of the mucous and sweat glands, which affects mostly the lungs, pancreas, liver, intestines, sinuses and genitalia. This condition is also known as CF, Fibrocystic Disease or Mucoviscidosis, affects mostly Europeans, particularly those tracing their ancestry to the British isles and most especially Ireland, wherein it is the leading inheritable disease capable of causing death and affects about 1 in 19 people.
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Ayurvedic Management of Allergies

About 75 million Americans – roughly one quarter of the population – suffer from airborne allergies, which reach the height of their troublesomeness over the spring, summer and autumn, depending upon where one lives. Usually accompanied by running and itching eyes and nose, sneezing and coughing and generalized discomfort, they are also occasionally accompanied by headache, muscle aches, upset stomach and low grade fevers. Their chief cause? From the perspective of Western biomedicine, it is the body’s reacting to innocuous foreign proteins (mostly airborne grass, tree and flower pollens) as through they were deadly invaders – by releasing powerful histamines to combat their potential danger. Reasonably enough, from the perspective of Western medicine, the treatment is often anti-histamines.
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Vedic Astrology: An Introduction for the Ayurvedic Practitioner

Vedic Astrology: Introduction & History
Every ancient civilization has evolved a science of astrology, the study of the effects of the zodiacal signs and planets on the tides of civilizations, world events, and individual lives. It has been in existence for countless millenia and has helped to shape and influence some of the greatest cultures in recorded history: India, China, Egypt, Rome, Babylon, Greece and the Mayan empire, to name only a few, charted their destinies according to the movements of Earth’s celestial neighbors. Among the oldest of these, and surely the oldest still in use today, is the Vedic astrology of ancient India known as Jyotish, or the “science of light.”

The scientific canon of Jyotish was reduced to writing between 1300 BCE and 590 CE. The earliest Vedic astrologers whose names are known today include Aryabhatu (476-523 CE) and Parasara (5th century CE) whose Hora Sastra was the first major individually-authored text to appear. The most renown Vedic astrologer, however, is Parasara’s student, Vaharamihira (505-587 CE). Vaharamihira summarized all of the existing astrological and astronomical knowledge of his time into his master-work, Brihat Jataka, which is still today considered to be the definitive text in the field.
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Book Review: Snake Oil Science

SNAKE OIL SCIENCE: THE TRUTH ABOUT COMPLEMENTARY & ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE by R. BARKER BAUSELL, Ph.D.
Oxford University Press (New York) 2009

Perhaps this volume should have been titled “Snake Oil Science: The Truth About Scientific Skepticism and Bad Methodology.”

This book’s author is a biostatistician and professor at the University of Maryland and was research director of an NIH-funded study of various complementary and alternative medical modalities. In writing “Snake Oil Science: the Truth About Complementary and Alternative Medicine,” Professor Bausell attempts to answer the questions “how is it possible that many millions of people, living over the course of countless centuries, could be wrong about the effectiveness of the “bizarre practices that we variously term CAM (complementary and alternative medicine), new age, integrative medicine and snake oil therapies?” and “is there any credible or plausible evidence to suggest that CAM medical therapies are anything more than cleverly packaged placebos?”
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All About Pitta Dosha

As we all know, the doshas are biological forces responsible for the substance, function and energy of the body. Although we each have all of the doshas within us, one of the doshas predominates in each individual and determines their particular constitution. Depending on our habits and proclivities, we are considered to be a vata, pitta or kapha type.

When imbalance in one of the doshas occurs, disease results. In treatment of disease, the ayurvedic doctor recommends herbal treatments and dietary and lifestyle changes that will reduce the excess or increase the deficiency to restore balance.

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Critical Information: A ‘Must Read’ for Every Ayurvedic Educator, Practitioner and Student

Fluent Bodies - Ayurvedic Remedies for Postcolonial Imbalance by Jean M. Langford

Jean Langford, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Minnesota, takes her readers on a fascinating journey into contemporary India, where ayurvedic medical practice has been shaped and re-invented by the forces of colonial and postcolonial processes of the rationalization and organization of medical knowledge. Her studies focus on how ayurvedic physicians working and teaching today take part in a wide-ranging discourse with biomedical science, national identity and what has come to be known as the Hindu Cultural Renaissance.

This is an important book. Professor Langford thoughtfully provides an insightful and in-depth description of how ayurvedic tradition developed over the course of millennia and has managed to coexist with opposing forces in both colonial times and in independent India. This is significant because far so many historians - particularly those involved in the detailed analyses of ayurvedic texts - tend simplistically to present specific Sanskrit tomes as the products of an all-encompassing, unchanging, and water-tight “system.” What is generally ignored, as a result, is the very complex nature of ayurvedic practice, which has been influenced by a host of political, social, religious and economic actors –something that becomes apparent when one researches vernacular texts and conducts interviews with the wide range of practitioners working in the diverse communities that live together in the subcontinent.

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Ayurvedic Management of Insomnia (Anidra)

Dependent on sleep are happiness and misery, corpulence and leanness, strength and weakness, potency and impotency, intellect and non-intellect, life and death. Sleep undertaken untimely, excessively and negatively takes away happiness and life like the other death-night. Sleep, if undertaken properly, provides happiness and life like the flashed true knowledge provided to a yogin. - Charaka Samhita, Sutrasthana 21:36-38

Scope & Epidemiology

Over one-quarter of the population of the USA report occasional sleep-related problems, while nearly 10% experience chronic insomnia of moderate to severe intensity. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, approximately 60 million Americans suffer from insomnia each year. Insomnia tends to increase with age and affects about 40 percent of women and 30 percent of men. (1)

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