Develop Your Five Senses

Do-It-Yourself Medicine

Ayurveda is the ideal do-it-yourself healthcare system. Since Ayurveda was to be passed down through the generations orally, from grandma to child, the founding principle of Ayurveda is that it should be practical, direct, and insightful. Ayurveda is a folk tradition that can be communicated in simple terms using biocharacteristics. Ayurveda isn't just for professionals, it was meant for you and me.

One of the most powerful Ayurveda concepts concerns the strength of your senses.

Five Sense Medicine

Ayurveda doesn't rely on expensive equipment or tests. The only equipment required to practice Ayurveda is the five senses. Ayurveda places great importance on improving the acumen and strength of the five senses.

What if your taste was stronger, your eyes keener, your ears more sensitive? You would have a higher perception of reality. Your sense organs are truly your only means of contact with the outside world. Your sense organs are the best tools you have to keep your body healthy, including selecting the right foods, wearing seasonally appropriate clothing, and even interacting with your community.

Note: The mind is considered to be 6th sense because it 'senses' the sense organs, and interprets their experiences. Classical medieval philosophers believed there were 4 internal senses. The "common sense" was the organ that interpreted all the data from the sense organs into a whole.

Here are some simple ways you can strengthen your senses:

Sense Organ	How to Strengthen
Tongue	Intermittent fasting sharpens the tongue. Bitter and aromatic herbs like mint refresh the palette and restores sensitivity of the tongue
Nose	Clear your respiratory tract with breathing exercises, and oil nasal passages with sesame oil or nasya oil
Eyes	Add alteratives, pitta pacifying herbs, and amalaki to your routine
Ears	Be in a quiet space, clear out wax
Touch	Stay clean, add massage and dry brushing to your routine
Mind	Meditate, practice deep breathing, rest

How to Interpret Your Sensory Experiences Medicinally

Ayurveda has developed a simple vocabulary for talking about your experiences. Have you ever felt hot or cold? Ayurvedic practitioners are adept at interpreting your experiences and making sense of them. For example, many practitioners could expound for hours on how a slight, chronic cold condition affects your body and what it means. You can learn a lot about your body just by studying hot and cold. Hot and cold are two of the 20 most important biocharacteristics you can use to learn about your health. Sound simple? It is.

Have you ever experienced an omega-3-fatty-acid? Omega-3 fatty acids have been a health buzzword for several years. Could you identify an omega-3 fatty acid blindfolded? If not, you probably learned about it from a textbook, TV commercial, or a friend's testimony. Ayurveda appreciates expert knowledge, but focuses on what you can learn and experience in the world using your five senses.

Making Sense of Health Buzzwords

Whether you are five years old or fifty, Ayurveda should make sense. It seems like every time you turn on the TV there is a new report about the health benefits of this or that food.

For instance, are tomatoes good for you? Everyone has an opinion, but none of them agree with each other. First, the experts say tomatoes are bad for your health. A few years later, they are good for you again. The solution to sorting out the mountains of confusing information is to recognize that your constitution and current imbalances play a role in determining the fitness of a tomato to your health goals. Tomatoes aren't good or bad, they are simply acidic, antioxidant, difficult to digest, and perhaps, like most members of the nightshade plant family, a bit funky.

How do you feel when you eat a lot of tomatoes? Whether tomatoes are good or bad depends on the person, the weather, the time of day, the preparation, how well the food is chewed, etc. Ayurveda has simple tools to interpret ones circumstances and answer this question.

Experience Over Knowledge

If you want to develop a good relationship with food you have to eat mindfully, paying attention to your experiences. The difference between knowledge and wisdom is experience. Experience brings you into a personal relationship with knowledge. Ayurveda teaches you how to be a poet of food rather than a librarian. Storing up mountains of knowledge is wonderful, but it doesn't replace experience. Experience helps to determine the relevancy of knowledge. You might say the prupose of wisdom is to prioritize knowledge. Ayurveda suggests that we learn from feeling, in addition to textbooks and labs.

Biocharacteristics medicine systems advocate for body awareness - know your body, and having a good relationship with food and the world around you. To get a better grip on reality, Ayurveda emphasizes strengthening the five senses.

From the Horse's Mouth

A colleague who studied Ayurveda with me brought her horse from Vermont to New Mexico. Within two weeks the horse learned how to survive by eating plants in the desert. How many of us would survive by eating plants in the desert? Don't worry, your tongue is no less sophisticated than a horse's. The problem is that our tongues are sleeping. If you were a horse in the desert at noon and you came upon a chili plant and a tomato plant, which one would you eat? What if you encountered a tomato plant and a cucumber plant? Are tomatoes heating or cooling? The answer is relative. It is much easier to understand the qualities of food by comparison.

Wake Up Your Tongue

The best way to wake up your tongue is to eat something wild every day. Start with a dandelion leaf, lamb's quarters, chickweed, or one of the many wild foods in your area. Leave a Comment / Question