Written by John Immel, Asheville, NCIs Ayurveda really about your health? At Joyful Belly, we believe Ayurveda is about something greater than health. Ayurveda literally translates into "the science of life." As a practitioner, I have come to realize that Ayurveda's focus is exactly what its name implies - not health, but living.

The science of life simply asks one question: "How can we have life?"

Health obviously plays an important role in living well. Yet everyday we see in our clinic how excessive concern for one's health often leads to disease due to stress, worry, and perfectionism.And how this anxiety is a contraction from, not an opening to, the fullness of life. Orthorexia, or excessive preoccupation with healthy eating, is itself a disease.

What then, if not health perfectionism, does practicing the "having life" look and feel like?

Ayurveda Cultivates a Perfect Love for Life

Instead of striving for perfect health, Ayurveda practitioners are life-lovers. They "love living things." They may love gardening and growing their own food. Perhaps they own a few chickens or pets. They love children, family, and people. They choose to surround themselves with life, giving their attention to things that are alive. They devote themselves to increasing life and celebrate the birth of life. They preserve life with medicines, encourage others with philosophies that affirm life, and live life fully and completely. They cultivate love of living things as a virtue.

Loving and tending livings things is a character choice that affects each and every part of a practitioner's existence. This disposition also brings them into communion with all that is necessary to support life, and gives practitioners an uncanny knack for living well. This sentiment of a society organized in the support of life is eloquently captured in the gospel of John, where Jesus states, "I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly." (John 10:10)

Wholesome Tending to the Self & Others

The practice of loving life naturally leads to a certain "bio-passionate" lifestyle and personality. The habit of life-loving may be compared to tending a garden. To tend a garden, you regularly water the garden, fertilize it, and let it grow. Tending the garden is simple, peaceful, and quiet. It is a wholesome, structured activity requiring time, patience, daily attention, and a gentle hand.

Ayurveda is similarly wholesome, gentle, and patient. Practicing Ayurveda means inviting routine, regularity, and slowness to your life. To love life, one must tend to the body. This includes cultivating joy for all the activities necessary to support one's biology, from cooking, to fitness, to cleanliness, to getting to bed on time. Supporting life also requires pruning some branches every now and then.

Yet, a garden is insufficient to give humans all that they need to thrive. Humans are also social beings. In short, life-loving people recognize they need each other to support life well. So the personality of life-loving is not only a habit of self-care, but includes warmth and affection towards those closest to us.

Ayurveda works best in a structured environment of mutual support, such as that found within a family. Family is the foundational societal unit for creation and maintenance of life, so the "science of life" flourishes naturally in this context. In India, Ayurveda is practiced by traditional families. It is anything but exotic. Instead, the feeling of Ayurveda is more like going to grandma's house for Thanksgiving. It is not an escape from social norms, but a return home.

As you deepen into your practice of Ayurvedic life-loving, health perfectionism naturally transforms into a healthy appreciation for the miracle of life and trust in its natural design. With this change, a spirit of nurturing will replace intemperate diet and health austerity, and rigidity. Ayurveda's gentleness will reassure you that you truly can be flexible with your diet even as you follow some simple guidelines. Let Ayurveda cultivate this wholesome practice as a way of life. You will enjoy the stability and contentment Ayurveda offers.

Then, let Ayurveda's generosity extend to those individuals in your family or close circle of friends, even to those that have hurt you. Harness your new strength and resilience, the gifts of Ayurveda, to be an inspiring example of love to those who need it. The joy that results is the true practice of Ayurveda.

Inspiration for Life-Loving Activities:

• Prioritize activities with living things
• Spend time with children
• Spend time with family, young and old
• Nurture long-lasting friendships
• Cook for and share food with others
• Visit someone in prison
• Volunteer at a homeless shelter
• Care for the sick, elderly, and vulnerable
• Support pregnant women, new moms and dads
• Start a family
• Be open to creation of life in general, in all its forms
• Plant and nurture a garden
• Appreciate wildlife
• Care for a pet
• Take care of your body
• Eat foods that come from a farm, not a factory

Read more about Ayurveda's beliefs in John's article Bringing Ayurveda to a Christian audience.

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