Giselle Toner explains Ayurveda as yoga's sister science, the Indian "science of life." Everyone has three doshas—vata, pitta, kapha—with one or two dominant. Ayurveda identifies imbalances and restores them through food, exercise, sound, color, and lifestyle.
Chapters
Hi everybody, it's Giselle and I am giving you this video a little bit late. Normally I send it out on Monday and I'm sending it out a day late, but that's okay. Better late than never. I am actually traveling right now. I'm on the road and I am not at my usual home base, but I can still send you a video. And I wanted to talk to you today about something called Ayurveda. Now a lot of you are familiar with it and you've heard of Ayurveda. It's spelled A Y, U R V E V A. Now, Ayurveda is the sister science to yoga. Yoga is our physical practice, also incorporating our meditation and yoga. The word yoga means union. It means everything is together, everything is one, and we are connected to everything. As human beings, we have a physical body. Our environment is part of what we are, what we eat, what we drink, what we smell, what we take in as far as our vision, our sight and our emotional well being really matters as far as what we're taking in. So if you really think about it, if you have anything that's going on stressful in your life exterior, it's going to affect you inside because we are interacting constantly with all of life. And that's where Ayurveda comes in. Ayurveda, as I said, is the sister science to yoga. Ayurveda means the Indian science of life. Now I studied Ayurveda for many years. I went out to California in the mid and late 90s with Deepak Chopra under his guidance, learning under him in a place called La Jolla, California. So I'm sure a lot of you have heard of La Jolla, California. And I studied. It was a very in depth study period of my life where I learned a lot and it was wonderful. And at that time in the mid-90s, Deepak Chopra was available. He was the teacher. I learned from him and his colleague David Simon. So I feel very, very fortunate that I was actually able to learn from the true pioneers, masters in the Ayurveda field. So I'm very fortunate and today I have the certification that allows me to teach what I learned from those two brilliant people. So here I am and I'm giving you some information because I have gotten a couple of emails and questions through the years about Ayurveda and I wanted to tell you what it is if you're not familiar with it already. So Ayurveda basically states that as physical beings, we are part of our environment and there are three principles to our makeup. And each person has one predominant part of that makeup. And we have three doshas, they're called doshas. One is vada, which is the air principle. One is pitta, which is primarily fire principle, and the other one is called kapha, which is mainly the earth principle. Each person has all three in them, but a predominance of one or two. Okay, so when we start to understand that concept, we can now take into our awareness that there are certain things that can help us along the way because each person has a balanced and an imbalanced state in each of those doshas. So what we start to do in Ayurveda is we start to look at what, what the principle is in an individual. And then where, if there is an imbalance, there may be a higher percentage or a lower percentage of that principle which will cause an imbalance in everything that you do. And then we figure out modalities to balance that principle. So for instance, someone that is primarily vada, that's the air principle, that person will be very lively, very energetic, very much like air, constantly moving, changing. And sometimes there's an imbalance in that kind of predominance. So what we do is we bring in things that will settle that person down, through food, through sound, through certain types of exercise, even music colors. And it's a very in depth study. So but if you start to understand it and you start to incorporate these healing modalities in your life, it really, really will help you. Because we all have areas of our lives where we feel slightly imbalanced. I don't care who you are, I don't care how into yoga you are or how much you meditate, most likely you're still going to be feeling certain balances. And when you learn about how to pinpoint the imbalance and how it's doing its job or not doing its job in your life, then you can't counteract it with healing modalities. And so that's basically just in a little nutshell, what Ayurveda really is. And I hope that I answered the question because I did get a lot of people just recently actually and through the years asking me, I heard about Ayurveda, what is that? So again, it is a very in depth study of your constitution, what you're made of, and what your predominance is, what your dosha is. And I am actually going to be probably giving you a lot more information about this and eventually giving you the opportunity to take a course so that you can learn about your own individual constitution and whether or not you feel like it's something that you would like to learn, to give you a better edge, a better edge on your own life and to feel better in lots of areas. Okay? So, again, thank you. And I'm sorry that I'm getting this video out to you a little bit late, but it's better late than never again. I'm going to leave you with. You are brilliant. Bring in all the brilliance that you can and then give it out to the world, because the world needs that. Namaste.
