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Atman in Ayurveda: Understanding the Self, Mind, and Consciousness

Today, let’s talk about a concept in Ayurveda that is present in everything the system talks about, but not everyone gets into it or knows about it because the whole concept itself is too abstract on the surface.   I am talking about Atman, which translates to the self, the soul, or simply the knower.   Now, before jumping into what Atman really means, let’s start with something which we are more familiar with in terms of Ayurveda, which is the Manas, the mind.   So, mind is essentially the part of you that reacts. It takes in the stimulus and turns it into a response. It distinguishes between likes and dislikes. For example, if something you eat tastes good, you want to eat more of it, and if you experience pain, you pull away. You don’t want to experience it again.   This is what the Manas does.   However, Atman is something else entirely. It is a part of you that is aware that all of this is happening. It’s not the reaction itself, but it’s the one noticing the reaction.   While Manas distinguishes experiences into pain and pleasure, Atman is simply aware of the inside and outside, it is the very awareness of this experience.   Here’s a simple way of how I think about it.   When you’re feeling unwell, usually the food that you eat every time, or the food that you like, you don’t want to have it and it might even taste unpleasant to you.   But nothing about the food has changed. What changed is how it is being received by your body.   This shift, the change between you and your mind, is the job of Atman. It is adjusting your experiences based on what is happening inside you.   Now, Atman cannot itself be described the way we describe everything else in the body, because it has no color, no shape, no texture. Its presence is not known entirely or directly.   But even if you don’t see Atman, you infer it. How differently a person can respond to the same thing, and how something within them prompts them to respond in that particular way.   The whole Atman can also be understood through this perspective, from the whole idea of possession, how it naturally comes to us when we talk about our things.   When we say, “I am tired,” there is still this strange distinction between the one who is experiencing tiredness and the tiredness itself.   This distance implied between someone who possesses and something that is being possessed, is where the idea of Atman comes from.   All the parts of your body are what is possessed by you, the person. So, despite any changes or aging or anything, the one that is staying constant is me, my. The idea of the owner is what is Atma.   And this whole distinction isn’t just philosophical. There’s a real practical framework of diagnosis around it too.   In Ayurveda, illness comes in three severities. One is ordinary, one serious, and one that is heading to a very fatal outcome.   And the way you tell these apart isn’t just purely because of external signs, but how clearly the person can experience their own feeling.   How clearly can they experience things like their preference, discomfort, desire, how they feel, and if all of this is intact in a coherent way.   Because once illness starts to get serious, all of this starts to blur. The person struggles to clearly experience. Memory becomes hazy, and the coordination too falters.   And in most serious cases, the patients may not be able to experience anything at all. They might feel numb. They can’t tell you how they feel because the whole response, the whole connection between your Atma, Manas, and the senses has weakened and there’s only basic signs of life that’s left.   This is such a different way of thinking about diagnosis compared to how we actually imagine ancient medicine, which is reduced to something that is purely external, physical observation.   In Ayurveda, the presence of your mind and the clarity of your awareness itself is one of the most important ways to diagnose what is wrong inside you, and it is sometimes arguably more important than any physical sign.   Now, the takeaway from all of this is very simple, despite how abstract Atman sounds.   And before even Ayurveda gets into the details of the body, bones, tissues, or organs, it is first establishing that awareness that is present inside every one of us, and everything else is built on top of that basic confirmation.   Health is never only about visible, measurable parts of the body. It is always, at its core, something that is changing inside you.   And I think this is where Atman becomes much less abstract than it initially sounds.   Because when we hear words like soul or self, it can immediately feel like we’re entering a completely philosophical conversation, something very distant from the body and from medicine. But Ayurveda doesn’t really separate these things in the way that we might expect. The person who is experiencing the illness is not just the body that is carrying the illness.   There is the body, there are the senses, there is the mind, and there is this awareness that experiences all of it.   If ideas like this interest you, you can check out our courses on Charaka Samhita and Ashtanga Hridayam which talk in depth about how Ayurveda understands the self, the mind, and the body as one connected system and much more.

Dinacharya in Ayurveda: The Art of Living in Rhythm With Your Body

What comes to your mind when you hear the word Dinacharya?   You might think the words morning routine, right?   And what does your morning routine include?   Waking up early, brushing your teeth, scraping your tongue, drinking warm water, exercising, meditating, and perhaps some oil pulling. Then you begin your day feeling particularly disciplined.   Yes, some of these practices are indeed part of the Ayurvedic approach to daily living, but Dinacharya is much bigger than this list of things that we do.   It extends far beyond waking up and going to bed. Even the way we eat, the timing of our meals and the way food is prepared can influence how we experience our day-to-day health.   I recently spoke about some of these in my new YouTube video, “5 Ayurvedic Eating Habits I Wish Everyone Knew | Part 1.” If you want to understand how everyday eating habits can be approached, I go into this in much more detail there.   [Watch: 5 Ayurvedic Eating Habits I Wish Everyone Knew | Part 1]   Ashtanga Hridayam has an entire chapter dedicated to Dinacharya, and Vagbhata begins the chapter with a very simple instruction:   “Brahme muhurte uttishthēt.”   Wake up during Brahma Muhurta.   Now, what exactly is Brahma Muhurta?   A Muhurta is a traditional unit of time, approximately 48 minutes. Brahma Muhurta refers to the period before sunrise, traditionally beginning two Muhurtas, or approximately 96 minutes, before sunrise and lasting for about 48 minutes. So, depending on the time of sunrise, it generally falls somewhere around 1.5 hours before sunrise.   And there is a reason Ayurveda places such importance on this particular window.   This is considered a time dominated by Vata, the Dosha associated with movement, lightness and subtle activity. It is the transition between night and day. The environment is quieter, there is less sensory stimulation, and the mind is considered to be more receptive and clear.   The chapter then talks about Danta Dhavana, using twigs from specific trees like Arka, Nyagrodha, Khadira, and Karanja, chosen for tastes that are Kashaya (astringent), Katu (pungent), or Tikta (bitter). And it specifically mentions cleaning your teeth without hurting the gums, “dantamaamsaanyabaadhayan.”   It’s such a small detail, but it tells you something important about how nothing is too minor to matter. Even your mouth, the very first point of contact between you and your food, gets its own careful instruction.   The body is made up of all these small things, and the way you care for them every day eventually becomes part of your overall health.   From Danta Dhavana, the text moves into Anjana, or the care of the eyes. Vagbhata recommends Sauviranjana as a daily practice for the eyes and mentions Rasanjana at intervals for cleansing.   Again, what stands out to me is the attention to detail. The eyes are not treated as something separate from the rest of the body. They are another part of the body that needs regular care. And when you think about how much of our day today is spent looking at screens, this idea of simply paying attention to the condition of our eyes feels particularly relevant.   Then comes Nasya, Gandusha, and Dhoomapana, with the use of Tambula. These practices belong to a very different medical context, and they should not simply be copied into a morning routine without understanding who they are intended for and under what circumstances.   But what is interesting, and what I want to point out here, is how comprehensive the total idea of daily care was.   From the mouth, nose, eyes, skin, the head, and all the senses, everything had a place in Dinacharya. There was an understanding that health was made up of all these systems that need to be cared for continuously. It was not about waiting for something to go wrong and then addressing it.   And then we come to Abhyanga, which is one of the most recognisable practices today. Vagbhata says, “Abhyangam acharet nityam.” He recommended regular oiling of the body, emphasising particularly on the head, ears, and feet, and describing benefits related to the skin, vitality, strength and sleep.   I have also made a detailed video about Abhyanga, if you wish to understand the practice in more detail. [Watch the video here.]   Then finally comes Vyayama, or exercise.   Exercise that is appropriate can bring lightness to the body, improve our capacity for work, support digestion and help reduce excess fat. But we must understand that exercise is not the same for everybody, and it is certainly not meant to be excessive.   Vagbhata actually gives detailed instructions about who should exercise, how much they should exercise and when exercise should be avoided. He says that exercise should be done up to approximately half of one’s capacity, rather than pushing the body beyond what it can comfortably tolerate.   And I think this is an important distinction.   And Dinacharya doesn’t just stop with the physical body.   This is where I find the chapter particularly interesting, because Vagbhata gradually moves from taking care of your body to how you conduct yourself.   He speaks about using words that are truthful, measured and pleasant:   “Kāle hitam mitam brūyād avisaṃvādi peśalam.”   Speak at the right time. Speak what is beneficial, measured, truthful and pleasant.   He speaks about compassion, generosity, humility and how we should conduct ourselves even when dealing with people who may not treat us well in return.   And this tells us something important about what Ayurveda actually meant by health.   It was never only about physical health. The way you conduct yourself is also part of your well-being.   The way you speak, the way you behave, the conflicts that you create, the anger you hold on to, and the way you treat other people all become part of the environment in which your body and mind have… Continue reading Dinacharya in Ayurveda: The Art of Living in Rhythm With Your Body

Satva, Rajas and Tamas: The Three Forces Behind How We Think and Act

When we look at something that already exists, we tend to focus on what we can see. To us, in our mind, a book is a book, a building is a building and a person is a person.   But let us go a little deeper, what made that thing come into existence in the first place? What happened before we could see the finished form? What allowed an idea to become reality?   According to the Ayurvedic understanding of nature, three fundamental qualities are involved in this process: Satva, Rajas and Tamas.   These are not substances in the ordinary physical sense. They are the principles that influence how things are conceived, developed, organised and eventually brought into a definite form.   They also influence how we think, respond to situations and behave.   From an idea to something real   Think about something as simple as a printed page.   Before the page existed, someone first had an idea. They imagined that information could be communicated through a page.   Then came the practical process where the paper had to be selected, its size had to be decided, the text had to be organized and the printing process had to be worked out.   Only then could the page actually be produced.   This can be understood through the three qualities.   Satva is associated with clarity, awareness and the emergence of an idea.   Rajas is associated with activity, movement and the effort required to bring that idea into action.   Tamas provides stability, limitation and resistance to further alternatives. It allows something to settle into a definite form.   All three have a role.   An idea without action remains an idea while an action without direction becomes scattered and without some form of limitation or stability, nothing is ever finalised.   This principle can be observed everywhere, from something as simple as making a page to something as complex as the development of a living being.   Satva, Rajas and Tamas in the mind   Ayurveda extends this idea beyond the physical world and applies it to Manas, or the mind.   Every person has Satva, Rajas and Tamas in relative dominance.   This explains us why two people can experience exactly the same situation but respond to it completely differently.   This is where understanding the predominance of Satva, Rajas and Tamas becomes important.   The Satva-dominant mind   A person in whom Satva is more prominent tends to be curious, observant and interested in understanding things.   They want to know why something happened.   If they fall ill, they may want to understand the cause, the relationship between their habits and their symptoms, and what they can do to improve their situation.   They may also be better able to remain composed during difficult circumstances. Instead of immediately reacting, they tend to step back, understand what is happening and work towards a solution.   This does not mean that a Satva-dominant person does not experience pain, fear or distress. Rather, their ability to understand and process the situation can influence how they respond to it.   The Rajas-dominant mind   Rajas is associated with movement, activity and constant engagement.   A Rajas-dominant person may be more expressive about both pleasure and discomfort. They may actively seek experiences, stimulation and reassurance.   If something happens to them, they may not necessarily be interested in understanding the deeper cause immediately. What they often need first is clear guidance and reassurance.   Once they feel confident about the course of action, they may be able to move forward.   Their mind is active and constantly responding to what is happening around them.   The Tamas-dominant mind   Tamas is associated with resistance, confusion and difficulty in moving forward.   A Tamas-dominant person may struggle to understand or accept what is happening around them. When they are facing a difficult situation, fear and apprehension may become stronger.   They may repeatedly question advice, seek opinions from several people and still find it difficult to make a decision.   Even with the outcome seeming clear, they may find it difficult to take a first step.   This is also why the same advice might not help every person, as they might not react to it in a similar way.   Why this matters in Ayurveda   For Ayurveda, treating a person is not limited to identifying physical symptoms.   The way a person perceives, expresses and responds to those symptoms also matters.   Let us take an example, someone may experience severe pain but barely express it while there is another person who may express relatively mild pain very dramatically. Someone else may not even understand that their symptoms require attention.   Now, the individual’s mental state might affect the way they communicate or show signs to understand about their condition.   If a practitioner judges the severity of a condition only by outward expression, there is a possibility of misunderstanding the situation.   Ayurveda’s understanding of Satva, Rajas and Tamas also highlights something that is often overlooked in modern conversations about health.   Two people can have similar physical circumstances but very different experiences of illness. Our perception, emotional response, understanding and behaviour can influence how we deal with what is happening to us.   This does not mean that mental qualities magically determine whether someone will recover. Nor does it mean that a person’s illness is simply a result of their mindset.   Rather, the Ayurvedic framework recognises that the mind is part of the individual’s overall experience and therefore deserves attention during care.   Three qualities, one constantly changing mind   Satva, Rajas and Tamas should not be understood as three permanent personality categories.   They are present in everyone, in different proportions, and can change depending on circumstances.   A person may be calm and thoughtful in one situation, highly restless in another and completely withdrawn in a third.   The important… Continue reading Satva, Rajas and Tamas: The Three Forces Behind How We Think and Act

Ama: When Digestion Is Incomplete

After you have had your meal, there might be times when you feel heavy. It is not exactly tiredness, but you do not feel nourished either. Your head feels foggy, there is a discomfort you cannot quite ignore, and yet it is not severe enough to feel like something is seriously wrong.   There may also be a feeling that you have not experienced complete satisfaction from the meal. It is almost as though something inside you is saying that the process is not finished, that the job has not been completed.   Today, we are going to talk about one of the widely spoken-about concepts in Ayurveda: Ama. When the accumulation of Ama is greater, it can give rise to a condition described as Amadosha.   To understand Ama, we have to go back to something we have spoken about before: Agni, our digestive fire.   What Is Ama?   Ashtanga Hridayam describes this state directly. When the digestive strength is low, the very first tissue formed from food, which remains undigested, becomes vitiated and gets lodged in the stomach as unprocessed matter. This is described as Ama.   When Agni is working the way it should, the food we consume gets properly digested, absorbed, and converted into Rasa Dhatu, the first and most essential tissue our body produces after digestion.   But when Agni is weak, this conversion does not happen cleanly. Your food is not entirely digested, but it is not entirely rejected either. Some of it remains half-processed, turning into something called Ama.   Ama is not exactly food. It is not waste either. It is something caught in between the two, the result of incomplete digestion and improper transformation.   What Causes Ama?   One of the causes is eating more than what your hunger can accommodate.   Ayurveda describes this as atimātrā āhāra, or consuming food in excessive quantity. When food is consumed in a quantity greater than what the digestive capacity can handle, it places a burden on Agni. This can lead to the aggravation of all three doshas and interfere with proper digestion.   But it is not exactly about quantity alone. The nature of the food also matters.   Food that is heavy, dry, or cold can contribute to the formation of ama, even when it is eaten in a reasonable amount.   And it is not just about food.   Your lifestyle, mental strain, and the mental state you carry throughout the day can also contribute. When your digestive capacity is compromised, even food that you consider light or harmless may not be processed properly.   When Agni is weak, food does not necessarily provide the nourishment your body requires. Instead, according to the Ayurvedic understanding of ama, incompletely processed material can behave like a slow-acting poison within the body.   What Happens When Ama Interacts With the Doshas?   As this undigested or improperly processed material interacts with the doshas, its effects can vary depending on how the body responds.   It may become trapped and cause a condition described in Ayurveda as Alasaka. Or it may be expelled violently from the body, which is described as Vishoochika.   Either way, the body is signalling that something has gone wrong in the process of digestion and assimilation.   The manifestation can also differ depending on which dosha is involved.   When Pitta is involved, you may see signs such as a burning sensation, excessive thirst, and disturbances in the mouth, reflecting more heat-related expressions.   When Kapha is involved, it can manifest differently, with congestion-type conditions, urinary disorders, and other Kapha-dominant patterns.   This is why Ayurveda does not look at digestion as simply a matter of what you eat. It considers the strength of Agni, the nature and quantity of food, the timing of meals, lifestyle, mental state, and the condition of the doshas together.   Ama, in this sense, is not simply about having eaten something unhealthy. It is about what happens when the body is unable to properly process what it has received.   What Are the General Properties of Ama?   Ayurveda describes Ama as having certain characteristic properties.   It is guru, meaning heavy and difficult to digest.   It is drava, meaning it has a liquid nature.   It is aneka-varṇa, meaning it can present in different colours.   And it is picchila, meaning slimy or sticky in nature.   The symptoms associated with ama are often the kind most of us have experienced at some point.   There may be a sense of blockage or obstruction, general exhaustion, heaviness in the head, dizziness, stiffness in the back and hips, unusual thirst, and that general feeling that whatever you eat is simply not sitting right.   Individually, none of these symptoms may seem particularly alarming.   But when several of them appear together, they can indicate that something is not functioning properly within the digestive system.   The answer is not always to simply eat less, eliminate one particular food, or ignore the discomfort and wait for it to disappear.   Ayurveda asks us to look deeper at Agni.   How strong is your digestion? Are you eating according to your hunger? Are you eating at regular times? Is the food appropriate for your digestive capacity? Is your lifestyle supporting digestion, or constantly working against it?   Because digestion is not merely about what happens to food after you swallow it. It is about how well the body is able to transform what it receives into nourishment.   If ideas like Ama and Agni interest you, our courses on Charaka Samhita and Ashtanga Hridayam go much deeper into understanding digestion, imbalance, and the way our body responds to what we eat, how we live, and how we care for ourselves.  

What Your Body Is Telling You Before You Ask It

There’s actually a lot we can tell about a person without asking them a single question.   If they are not feeling well, you can notice the way they look unusually pale, or that their voice sounds different, weaker than usual. Their eyes may look different, their skin may look dry, their lips may look chapped, or maybe they might just look exhausted.   These are just some observations.   Ayurveda actually has an entire section in the Charaka Samhita talking about this kind of observation called Indriya Sthana. The very first chapter is called Varṇasvarīyam Indriyam where Charaka describes how a physician should pay attention to changes in a person’s complexion, voice, and other signs when assessing an illness or the severity of a disease.   Because Ayurveda doesn’t look at the simple question of what disease this person is actually having. It instead goes a little deeper into asking what the body is telling us about the illness.   It is actually our body that gives out the first signs of illness before it becomes something more obvious. Disease isn’t always the beginning of the story. It is ultimately important to keep in check the signs that our body is giving away, always.   यच्चान्यदपि किंचिद्वर्णवैकृतमभूतपूर्वं सहसोत्पद्येतानिमित्तमेव हीयमानस्यातुरस्य शश्वत्, तदरिष्टमिति विद्यात्।   An abnormal change that was not present before, appears suddenly, and occurs in someone whose condition is already declining. Such a change, Charaka says, should be recognized as an ariṣṭa, an ominous prognostic sign.   Now, one of the most important ideas in the chapter is the distinction between Prakriti and Vikriti.   Prakriti refers to a person’s natural state, while Vikriti refers to the deviation from that state.   A person’s appearance may naturally vary depending upon their constitution, age, environment, and other individual characteristics. So we can’t just vaguely determine that one particular complexion may be healthy or unhealthy. We need to look a little deeper.   Charaka’s list of things to examine is very extensive. He not just mentions the complexion and voice, but also the smell, taste, touch, eyes, ears, nose, the mental state, and many more. The list goes on.   In fact, Charaka tells us that a person should be observed as a whole, because a single unusual sign doesn’t entirely tell the entire story.   A temporary change with an obvious explanation is different from a sudden change that appears without apparent reason in someone whose condition may already be deteriorating.   So generally, the whole idea is that observation becomes meaningful when it is placed in context.   The entire emphasis here is on the change that you witness within your body.   And I think this is where this idea becomes useful even outside the context of an Ayurvedic physician examining a patient.   Because most of us don’t necessarily pay attention to our own bodies or the signs they are giving out.   We know how we feel ultimately, whether our face is looking normal when we wake up, or if our skin is feeling as usual. We know our baseline.   But when you wake up feeling different we brush it off as, “Maybe I have not rested well.”   But you need to understand that the baseline is important.   Because if you suddenly feel unusually tired for several days, or maybe your appetite has changed, or there are other signs your body that are trying to tell you, then I think this is where we need to stop looking and start observing what is wrong.   Because from an Ayurvedic point of view, disease is never something that simply comes overnight. Long before it becomes serious, your body is already trying to protest against it through different signs.   None of those signs individually might feel like a big deal. And that is exactly why they get ignored.   But when you look at the whole picture, these small signs can slowly lead up to something more serious.   Disease isn’t the starting point, it is actually much closer to the end of the story that your body has already been trying to tell you for a while now.   We are often quick to notice when there is something wrong with our phones, our cars, or our laptops. We notice that the battery is draining faster than usual, or the screen is running slow, or the phone is lagging a bit.   But when it comes to our bodies, we often ignore the same signs.   And maybe it is because our lifestyle has changed. We sleep less, work more, eat at odd hours, and keep pushing ourselves through the day.   We think our body is adaptable, but it isn’t.   Your body is constantly giving you information. The question is whether you are paying enough attention to notice it.   You don’t have to become an expert at interpreting every single sign. You just need to know what your normal looks and feels like, so you can recognize when something starts to change.   If you want to understand your body a little more deeply, you can explore our courses on the Charaka Samhita and Ashtanga Hridayam, and learn how these texts approach the body, health, and the signs it gives us.

Samanya and Vishesha: The Ayurvedic Principle of Balance

Think of this situation, you probably find it familiar.   You come home tired, and instead of hitting the gym or going for a walk, all you want to do is sleep. So, you lie down but when you get up instead of feeling refreshed, you feel even more tired.   There might also be days when you feel jittery and restless instead. So, you go for a walk or hit the gym hoping it will help. But rather than feeling energised, you end up feeling even more wired than when you started.   You must have noticed that nobody has really taught us this. We just vaguely assume that rest will fix our tiredness, or movement will fix our restlessness, without actually stopping to think about whether they really do.   Interestingly, Ayurveda has actually talked about this phenomenon. The Charaka Samhita has a verse that describes this very pattern.   सामान्यमेकत्वकरं, विशेषस्तु पृथक्त्वकृत् । तुल्यार्थता हि सामान्यं, विशेषस्तु विपर्ययः ॥   It can be roughly translated to Samanya brings things together, Vishesha pulls them apart. Samanya is sameness of quality; Vishesha is its opposite.   This verse introduces us to two words. One is samanya, which means sameness or similarity. The other is vishesha, which means difference or distinction.   And the principle the text is pointing towards is that things that are similar to each other tend to increase each other, while things that are opposite to each other tend to reduce each other.   It’s almost like fields, where one thing can either reinforce what is already there or counter it.   Rest is slow. So, if you are already feeling heavy and slow, more rest isn’t necessarily going to rebalance you. It only reinforces that feeling of heaviness and sluggishness.   On the other hand, restlessness is hot and fast. So, if you respond to that feeling with more movement, you might end up feeling even more hot and wired rather than actually calming the restlessness. You’re reinforcing the qualities that are already present.   Now that we think about it, it sounds obvious. But we rarely think about our own habits in these terms.   This principle can also be applied to the food we consume and our body’s internal balances, what Ayurveda calls the doshas.   It’s quite simple. Whatever quality is already present in excess, you don’t add more of it. You reach for its opposite instead.   On a cold day, for example, if you’re already feeling stiff, dry and cold you naturally want to add some warmth. Similarly, if you’re feeling sluggish or heavy after a meal, you probably don’t want to eat something even heavier, right? You want something lighter.   In fact, the very first chapter of the Charaka Samhita, called Dirghanjivitiya, which is about the desire for long life, talks about exactly which tastes can calm which imbalances.   It goes through all six rasas, or tastes, and explains their qualities and what can be used to pacify different states.   Take Vata, for example. Vata is dry and is associated with movement. So, it is calmed by substances with opposite qualities. If you’re feeling dry and cold, if you’re in a Vata state, you would reach for sweet, sour and salty tastes because these carry qualities of moisture, warmth and weight.   Or if you feel like your Pitta is rising, you’re overheated or you’re feeling short-tempered, bitter and sweet tastes can help cool things down.   And this is important: none of the six tastes are universally good or universally bad. It’s not that sweet is unhealthy and bitter is healthy. Each taste has its place whether it is helpful or unhelpful depends entirely on the state it is meeting.   There is no fixed list where cold foods are always bad or sweet foods are always bad. It depends entirely on the person, the place, the timing, and the state of the body, not just the substance itself.   This is one of the core ideas of Ayurveda. It is individualistic. The same food or medicine can be helpful for one person but not for another. If you must have also noticed, even for the same person, something that suits them one day may not suit them on another day.   It depends on what qualities they are already carrying in excess at that particular time.   Ayurveda says that even a well-known poison, used with the right knowledge, at the right dose, for the right person, can become the best possible medicine. And a substance that’s technically medicine, used without that understanding, can do as much damage as poison.   The substance alone is never the whole story.   You have to look at what you’re giving, who you’re giving it to, why you’re giving it, how much you’re giving, and under what circumstances.   And this brings us back to samanya and vishesha.   Because the real question isn’t simply, “Is this food good?”   Ayurveda’s answer is rarely just about the thing itself.   It is about the relationship between the thing and the person receiving it.   If this way of looking at Ayurveda interests you, you might enjoy our courses on the Charaka Samhita and Ashtanga Hridayam, where we go deeper into the texts and the ideas behind them. Sometimes, going back to the original texts can change the way you understand Ayurveda, and even the way you look at your own life.

Your Gut, Brain, Blood and Breath Aren’t as Separate as You Think

Think about everything your body has to move around all day.   Food, water, oxygen, nutrients, hormones, waste.   Nothing just sits there. Everything is constantly travelling somewhere, through something.   And when that movement gets disturbed, your body usually has a way of showing you. Bloating, sluggishness, poor digestion, congestion, changes in your skin, feeling unusually tired.   Ayurveda has a rather interesting way of explaining why this happens.   It’s called Srotas.   Srotas literally means channel, and the idea behind it is honestly pretty simple once you get it. Your body isn’t one solid block of tissue. It’s a network, an endless system of channels and pathways carrying stuff around, nutrients in and waste out.   And not just fluids, it also carries your thoughts, emotions and your immune responses.   Charaka mentioned that the human body is a pile of these channels, so many of them that you couldn’t hope to count them all. But he and Sushruta still tried to organise the important ones into thirteen main Srotas, each responsible for carrying something specific through the body.   Let me give you a sense of how detailed they are.   There’s Pranavaha Srotas, the channel for breath and oxygen, roughly matching what we’d now call the respiratory system. The Annavaha Srotas, carries food through digestion. Rasavaha and Raktavaha handle plasma and blood while Swedavaha Srotas for sweat, and Mutravaha for urine.   And then there’s the one I find most fascinating, Manovaha Srotas, the channel through which thoughts and emotions are believed to move.   Yes, your mind has its own channel too, right alongside your blood vessels and your gut.   Strotas aren’t just for moving things around, they also help us understand something we’ve all felt but never really questioned. Why does anxiety sit in your stomach? Why does a stressful week somehow show up as a breakout, or a headache, or a flare-up in your gut?   Ayurveda’s answer is that these channels aren’t separate systems running in isolation, they’re connected. A disturbance in one can easily spill into another.   Modern medicine, interestingly, is inching toward the same conclusion. There’s actual research now on the gut-brain axis, the idea that your digestive system and your nervous system are in constant conversation, influencing each other more than we ever gave them credit for.   Ayurveda was describing something remarkably similar centuries ago.   Here’s the part that really changes how you look at illness though.   Ayurveda believed most diseases begin the same way. Not with a sudden attack from nowhere, but with a Srotas getting disturbed. And it described this disturbance, called Srotodushti, in a few specific ways. A channel can get blocked, it can narrow. It can widen beyond what it should. It can even start carrying things in the wrong direction entirely.   I think this reframes a lot of things we brush off too quickly. That afternoon brain fog you get after a heavy meal? Ayurveda would say your Annavaha Srotas, the digestive channel, is overloaded, and that congestion is now affecting clarity elsewhere. Random skin flare-ups with no obvious trigger? Possibly a disturbance that finally found somewhere to surface.   None of this means Ayurveda had X-ray vision into the body, it didn’t have MRIs or blood panels. What it had was centuries of careful observation, watching how symptoms moved, repeated and connected across generations of patients. And through that, it built an entire model of the body based on flow, not fixed parts.   This is actually a pretty different way of thinking about health compared to how most of us were taught. We tend to think in terms of organs like the stomach handles digestion, the lungs handle breathing and the brain handles thinking, full stop. Ayurveda asked a slightly bigger question. Not just what does each part do, but how does everything stay connected, and what happens when that connection breaks down.   Keeping these channels clear was never treated as an afterthought in Ayurveda either. It’s actually one of the reasons practices like proper digestion, regular elimination, oil massage and even breathing exercises show up so often in Ayurvedic practices.  They were seen as basic maintenance for keeping the body’s channels open and functioning the way they’re meant to.   But once you actually understand Srotas, a lot of Ayurveda’s other ideas start clicking into place too. Why Dinacharya matters, why Ama, the toxin buildup we mentioned earlier, is taken so seriously, why treating one symptom in isolation was never really Ayurveda’s style to begin with.   Long before modern medicine started mapping out the gut-brain axis or the lymphatic system in real detail, Ayurveda had already sketched out its own map, one built entirely on the idea that nothing in the body works alone.   If ideas like this interest you, our guided courses on Charaka Samhita and Ashtanga Hridayam explore concepts like Srotas straight from the original texts.

Your Moods Have a Pattern Too, Here’s What Ayurveda Says

Ever had one of those days where you feel completely calm and clear-headed, like nothing can shake you?   And then there are days where you feel restless, edgy, almost itching to argue with someone over nothing?   And then, of course, there are the days where you don’t want to do anything at all. Not work, not talk, not even get off the couch.   If you’ve felt all three of these at different points in your life, you already understand the Trigunas, even if you’ve never heard the word before.   We talk a lot about Doshas when it comes to Ayurveda, Vata, Pitta, Kapha. But those three govern the body. What most people don’t know is that Ayurveda had a separate set of three for the mind. These are called the Trigunas: Sattva, Rajas and Tamas.   And honestly, I think this is one of the more underrated ideas in the whole system.   Let’s break it down simply.   Sattva is that calm, clear state of mind. Sharp focus, a settled heart, the kind of headspace where good decisions just come naturally.   Rajas is the restless one, driven, ambitious, a little impatient, always chasing the next thing.   Tamas is the heavy one, sluggish, foggy, the mental version of hitting snooze five times in a row.   Here’s the part I find genuinely interesting. Ayurveda didn’t treat these as personality types you’re stuck with. Unlike your Dosha, which is largely fixed from birth, your Guna shifts, sometimes within the same day.   You could wake up Sattvic, turn Rajasic by 3pm after back-to-back meetings, and end the night fully Tamasic on the couch, scrolling your phone with zero motivation to move. Same person, three different mental states, all in twelve hours.   That alone tells you something important. Ayurveda wasn’t describing who you are, it was describing where your mind happens to be, right now.   And that’s a much more useful way to think about your own moods, isn’t it?   We tend to label ourselves. “I’m just a lazy person.” “I’m always anxious.” “I’m just wired this way.”   Ayurveda would gently push back on that. It would say, you’re not permanently anything.   This is honestly a bit of a relief when you sit with it.   Ayurveda also didn’t leave you to just observe your Guna. It gave you actual levers to pull.   Food, for one.   Ever notice how a heavy, greasy meal makes you want to do absolutely nothing afterward? That’s Tamas showing up through your plate.   Ayurveda classified food the same way it classified minds: Sattvic, Rajasic and Tamasic, and it genuinely believed what you eat nudges your mental state, not just your waistline.   Sleep, company, the media you consume, even the pace of your day. Ayurveda considered all of it capable of tilting you toward one Guna or another.   This is where it gets a little uncomfortable, in a good way.   Because it means your 2am doom-scrolling isn’t just a habit. It’s actively feeding a Tamasic state.   And that overpacked schedule you’re proud of might be keeping you stuck in Rajas far more than you realise, wired, busy, but never actually at peace.   Ayurveda wasn’t saying Rajas or Tamas are bad, by the way.   You need Rajas to get out of bed and get things done. You need a bit of Tamas to actually rest. The goal was never to eliminate them. It was to notice which one you’re leaning on too heavily, and gently steer yourself back toward Sattva, the state Ayurveda considered closest to genuine wellbeing.   So why doesn’t this concept come up as often as Doshas do?   I think it’s because Doshas feel more “medical.” They explain digestion, body type, physical symptoms, things that are easy to point to.   Gunas are quieter. They live in your mood, your focus, your patience, things we’re used to blaming on stress or personality instead of actually examining.   But if you ask me, understanding your Guna day to day might be more useful than knowing your Dosha.   Because most of us aren’t struggling with our body type. We’re struggling with why we feel foggy, restless or completely unmotivated, and not knowing there was ever a name for it, or a way back to balance.   If ideas like this interest you, our guided courses on Charaka Samhita and Ashtanga Hridayam explore concepts like the Trigunas straight from the original texts.

Amla: Everything I Tell My Patients About How To Have It

Someone asked me the other day if I like matcha.   No. I have something better. And we Indians have had it forever.   It is amla. Our humble Indian gooseberry.   Now everybody will tell you amla is good. Amla is good, amla is good. But nobody is telling you how much to have, when to have it, in what form, and what to do if you cannot get it fresh.   So that is what I am going to tell you here. Exactly what I tell my patients.     First, what amla actually is in Ayurveda     In Charaka Samhita, amalaki is placed in the vayasthapana mahakashaya. That is the group of ten drugs classified as age sustaining.   Age sustaining. Not anti-ageing. There is a difference, and Ayurveda made that difference two thousand years back.   Now here is what most people get wrong. Amla tastes sour. So everybody assumes it is heating.   It is not.   Amalaki is sheeta virya. Cold in potency. And madhura vipaka. Sweet after digestion. This is what Bhavaprakasha Nighantu tells us.   So, both of these are going against what your tongue is telling you. Your tongue says sour, your mind says heating. But that is not what is happening inside. And this is exactly why amla calms pitta, when almost every other sour thing will increase it.   And that sweetness you feel in your mouth after eating amla, especially when you drink water on top of it? That is not vipaka.   Vipaka is happening hours later, in your tissues. People mix up these two all the time.     The best form is the fruit. Always.     One amla a day itself is great. That is the whole thing.   If fresh amla is naturally available to you, please have it like that. Do not overthink it. Do not go looking for a supplement. The fruit is the best form and nothing beats it.   And amla comes in the cold season. That is not by accident. Nature is giving it to you exactly when you need it, so that is when you should be having it.   So, when it is in season, eat it. Every day. Your body knows what to do with it.     If you cannot get fresh amla, then powder     Now most of you reading this are not in India. I know. Half of my patients are in places where amla is only available as a powder in a packet.   That is okay. Powder works. But please listen to me about the quality.   Get organic. Get good quality. And I mean really check.   Because we have no idea where these people are drying it. We have no idea where they are powdering it. We have no idea what it went through before it came into that nice looking jar.   So, if you are not sure about the source, better to avoid it. Really. Do not have it at all rather than having something you cannot trace.   But if you are sure, if you know where it was dried and how it was powdered and how authentic it is, then go ahead. Find the best quality you can.   I know I am dragging on too much about quality. I know. But this is more important than the dose, more important than the timing, more important than anything else in this whole article. A bad powder is not a weaker amla. It is a completely different thing.   How much: one teaspoon of powder mixed into your food. That is the easiest way and the safest way, and this is what I tell most of my patients.     Amla juice, please read this part carefully     You can have amla as a juice. But as a shot. Not as a glass.   Never drink a full glass of amla juice. Please. Do not take ten, fifteen amlas and make a big juice out of it and sit and drink it. Do not do it.   Instead do this:   Crush two or three amlas Add a little water Add pepper, turmeric, dry ginger A little Himalayan pink salt If you do not like the salt, add mishri or rock sugar instead   And have it like a shot. Not more than 25 ml.   That is it. Every day in the morning. That is enough.     Timing and Anupana     Morning is good. Have your shot in the morning.   If you have a very strong acidic stomach, then have it after food. It works just as well and it is gentler on you.   Anupana for amla is always water. Keep it simple.   And there is one more way which I love, and most people have not even heard of it. Take amla powder, mix it with a little ghee, and have it with the first morsels of rice at lunch time.   Beautiful way to take it. You can do the same at dinner also.     Now, amla does not cause acidity     I have to correct this one, because I am hearing it constantly.   Amla does not cause acidity. It cannot. Once it goes into your stomach it cools down and it turns into sweet taste. It is not going to heat you and it is not going to burn you.   It actually reduces acidity.   Now if your stomach lining is already raw and inflamed, a concentrated shot on an empty stomach can still feel like too much for you. But that is the concentration doing it, not the amla. And that is exactly why I said have it after food.   And see the irony here. People think curd is cooling. It is not. Classically dadhi is ushna virya with amla vipaka, and it is abhishyandi, it blocks your channels. It is doing almost the opposite of… Continue reading Amla: Everything I Tell My Patients About How To Have It

Ojas: The Ayurvedic Concept Modern Medicine Doesn’t Have a Word For

Before we talk about Ojas, let me ask you a question.   What keeps you from falling sick?   Your answer would probably have been immunity, right?!   Ayurveda has a broader concept for this term called immunity, it’s called Ojas.   Most people, when talking about Ayurveda, must have heard or come across its fundamental concepts like Doshas and Agni. But very few have heard of Ojas, even though classical texts like the Charaka Samhita treat it as one of the most important substances in the body.   So what exactly is it?   Ayurveda describes Ojas as the final, most refined product of digestion. Food is broken down and transformed through seven progressive tissue layers, called Dhatus, each one nourishing the next. At the very end of this chain sits Ojas, described as the essence that remains once digestion and tissue formation have been completed properly.   In simple terms, Ojas is what your body produces when everything upstream, digestion, absorption, sleep, stress and lifestyle, is working the way it is supposed to.   This is very different from how modern medicine defines immunity.   Modern immunology has largely been about defence. It studies how white blood cells recognise a threat, how antibodies respond to an infection, how inflammation rises and eventually settles down. So much of the field is built around one fundamental question: what does the body do to fight disease once the disease has already appeared?   Ayurveda asked a slightly different question. Instead of only asking how the body fights disease once it appears, it asked what keeps a person resilient enough that disease struggles to take hold in the first place.   This is where Ojas becomes more than just another word for immunity. It points to the body’s underlying capacity to remain nourished and resilient.   Ayurveda describes Ojas as responsible not only for physical resistance to illness, but also for mental steadiness, emotional stability and general vitality. A person with strong Ojas is described as calm and capable of recovering quickly from physical or emotional strain. A person with depleted Ojas is described as fatigued, anxious and repeatedly falling ill.   Sounds familiar?   This is remarkably close to a field in modern medicine called psychoneuroimmunology, the study of how the mind and the immune system influence each other. Research in this space has repeatedly shown that chronic stress suppresses immune function, lowers the activity of certain immune cells, and disrupts hormonal balance over time.   Ayurveda arrived at a this conclusion, though earlier and through a completely different method.   According to Ayurvedic texts, Ojas exists in two forms. Para Ojas, a small, fixed reserve said to be located in the heart, considered essential to life itself. And Apara Ojas, a larger, circulating form that fluctuates based on how a person lives. Apara Ojas is what rises with good digestion, adequate sleep, emotional balance and a stable routine. It is also what depletes with poor diet, chronic stress, overexertion and disrupted sleep.   This is an important detail, because it means Ayurveda never treated immunity as fixed. It treated it as something built daily, and something that can just as easily be worn down daily.   That idea alone reframes a lot of modern health conversations.   We tend to think of immunity reactively. Ayurveda asked people to think of it proactively, as something to be cultivated through Ahara, or diet, Nidra, or sleep, and Brahmacharya, a disciplined, balanced lifestyle.   Rasayana, the branch of Ayurveda focused on rejuvenation, exists almost entirely around this idea. Its routines and therapies are not designed to treat a specific illness but to strengthen Ojas itself, on the belief that a body with strong Ojas is naturally less susceptible to disease in the first place.   This is a meaningfully different starting point from most of modern healthcare, where treatment typically begins after a diagnosis.   None of this means Ayurveda and modern immunology are describing identical things. Ojas is a broader, more integrated concept, tying together digestion, sleep, emotional health and physical resilience in a way modern immunology usually studies as separate systems. But the overlap is close enough that researchers today are actively exploring where classical descriptions of Ojas align with measurable biomarkers of immune and stress response.   Which brings us back to the original question.   If Ayurveda already had a framework for resilience that considered the body and mind as one system, why did it stay this unfamiliar to most people?   Likely for the same reason so much of Ayurveda’s deeper philosophy gets overlooked.  Concepts like Ojas require explanation, context and patience to be understood.   But this is also exactly why concepts like Ojas are worth understanding properly, and not just referencing in passing.   Because long before immunity became a trending word, Ayurveda had already built an entire framework around what it actually takes for a body to stay resilient, not just after illness, but before it ever begins.   If topics like this interest you, our courses on Charaka Samhita and Ashtanga Hridayam explore concepts like Ojas in far greater depth, straight from the original texts.