Balance
Excerpts from Maharishi Ayurveda and Vedic Technology: Creating Ideal Health for the Individual and World,
Revised and Updated from The Physiology of Consciousness: Part 2 by Robert Keith Wallace, PhD, Dharma Publications, 2016 available at Amazon Click Here
Each body type has its own strengths and weaknesses, and each person has his own genetic makeup and his own relative proportion of vata, pitta, and kapha. Whatever that proportion is, it should be maintained in balance. According to Maharishi Ayurveda, disease occurs only when these three fundamental psychophysiological principles— vata, pitta, and kapha—become aggravated or imbalanced.
Maharishi Ayurveda describes the various stages of imbalance that lead to disease. Perhaps most interesting, what we would consider in Western medicine to be a disorder’s early symptoms are, in fact, the last stages in Maharishi Ayurveda. Through the knowledge of body types and the three doshas, physicians are able to detect much earlier stages of disease.
For example, they may detect an imbalance caused by an excess of pitta building up in some area of the body. There may be general symptoms of irritability or anger, but it is impossible at this stage to know how the disease will actually manifest. If the buildup becomes too great, then, according to Maharishi Ayurveda, some area of the body that is weaker and more prone to a pitta imbalance will become the tar- get for the excess pitta. Instead of remaining a nonlocal mild state of weakness, the disturbance suddenly becomes localized and perhaps inflamed, causing the target organ or tissue to develop acute symptoms of a particular disease.
Since one site prone to pitta imbalance is the stomach area, the patient might develop indigestion or even ulcers. These are just a few of the common signs of pitta imbalance; it is important to note that symptoms can arise from imbalances in any of the doshas. The physician trained in Maharishi Ayurveda takes many different factors into account when diagnosing disorders and prescribing treatment for them.
In terms of modern medicine, we might understand this process of balance and imbalance in terms of one of the most important physiological principles—the principle of homeostasis. Homeostasis refers to the body’s ability to maintain internal balance and stability even when there are changes in the environment.
There are many such mechanisms to keep all parts of our body in balance. Thus, the importance of balance is well understood in modem medicine. If one of these regulatory mechanisms is disturbed or overtaxed, for example in states of physical and mental stress, then the whole system suffers. Maharishi Ayurveda has very refined procedures for detecting these physiological imbalances and treating them before they actually manifest into a particular disease; this is one aspect of its successful prevention-oriented approach to health care.
Excerpts from Maharishi Ayurveda and Vedic Technology: Creating Ideal Health for the Individual and World,
Revised and Updated from The Physiology of Consciousness: Part 2 by Robert Keith Wallace, PhD, Dharma Publications, 2016 available at Amazon Click Here