Acharya Shunya - Ayurveda lifestyle wisdom: a complete prescription to optimize your health, prevent disease, and live with vitality and joy

To my guru, my grandfather, my Baba,

For transmitting to me his lived wisdom with such grace and compassion.

Baba planted the spiritual seed of who I am today.

To my mentors, my mother and father,

Due to their trust in my inherent capacities and calling,

My seed blossomed into who I am today.

To my companion, my husband,

Through him, I understood the purpose of soul collaborations.

My seed strengthened into who I am today.

To my shishyas, my beautiful students,

Through their dedicated living of my teachings,

The seed of my knowledge shall live on tomorrow.

This book is for you.

CONTENTS

FOREWORD BY DR. DAVID FRAWLEY

A charya Shunya is a dynamic and original teacher in the Vedic tradition, well trained on many levels of study with great traditional teachers and her own extensive personal practice. I have watched her teaching and healing center develop and flower over the years according to her consistent attention, dedicated efforts, and long-term vision.

Acharya Shunyas motivating ideal is of a global Vedic education, arising from a firm foundation of right living according to Ayurveda, which she is developing in Vedika Global, her organization and school. She shares this Ayurvedic basis for developing our higher potentials in life in her book, Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom.

Ayurveda is not just another system of disease treatment, but rests upon a profound inner science of positive health and natural living. It shows us how to harmonize ourselves with the greater universe within and around us, with all its secret powers and divine blessings. Ayurvedas concern is not simply with the treatment of disease but with optimal well-being for body, mind, and consciousness extending from every cell of our body into the Infinite.

We can compare the modern medical doctor with the fireman who puts out a fire in a house, namely the fire of disease in the house of the body. An Ayurvedic practitioner does not merely take such a defensive role; he or she teaches you how to build a fireproof house in the beginning and maintain it over the full course of your life. This constructive and creative lifestyle foundation of Ayurveda is both protective and transformational.

Ayurveda teaches us how to promote and nourish optimal well-being, not simply how to destroy pathogens. It helps us awaken our own inspiration to higher living, not simply offering us drugs to sedate us. Acharya Shunya shows us this detailed Ayurvedic blueprint to build a healthy, creative, and conscious way of life, from right diet and exercise to right thinking and meditation.

Acharya Shunya teaches us how to determine our unique Ayurveda lifestyle and align it with the forces of nature as they are specially arrayed and rhythmically changing within us. Ayurvedas view of the three doshic types is unique, powerful, and without parallel in the main medical systems available today.

Ayurvedas system of right living and behavioral medicine is vast, multileveled, and encompasses not just our physical reality but our subtle energy system and deeper thought patterns. Ayurveda is a medicine of the universal life which is enduring, not simply a passing fad or a temporary phase in the development of medical science. It represents both the wisdom of the past and the future evolution of consciousness for our species in our perennial quest for lasting happiness and truth. Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom clearly and consistently guides us in this direction.

In my own work with Ayurveda, I have emphasized Ayurveda relative to the mind, our behavior, and our daily activity. I think this is the most important aspect of Ayurveda, though its ability to treat specific diseases, particularly of a severe nature, has its compelling value as well.

Ayurveda increases both physical and psychological immunity, promoting longevity for both the body as a whole and for the mind, brain, and nervous system. As we realize that well-being is a function of how we live, we will come to better appreciate Ayurvedas great contribution to world health.

Ayurveda takes the wisdom of yoga and its philosophy of the unity of existence and unfolds it relative to both physical and psychological health and disease. It is the medical side of yogic thought and healing that many are seeking today. As such, it naturally leads us to the practice of yoga and meditation such as Shunya explores.

Acharya Shunya is one of the pioneers in the growing field of Ayurveda in the West. Her book fills an important place in our appreciation and application of Ayurveda in our daily lives, providing many simple prescriptions to help us take control of our own health and happiness.

Ayurveda helps us reclaim our lives and shows us how to live our lives as a great adventure in consciousness open to the flow of divine grace. Acharya Shunya provides important guidance and practical tools to do this. I welcome her addition to the growing literature on Ayurveda and look forward to her future contributions.

PREFACE

Every book accomplishes its own spiritual journey before being born, and this one is no different. Join me in an inspiring transformative voyage to abiding health.

T his book has the potential to change your state of health for the better permanently. Health is not just a possibility that you might achieve. It is a reality, an underlying natural state of being. Health will manifest once you begin to live in alignment with Natures intelligence. This is the promise of Ayurveda, Indias five-thousand-year-old system of health and healing.

When I was growing up in India, I witnessed a spiritual master, my grandfather, whom I addressed as Baba, remind the diseased and the suffering of their abidingly healthy nature. He taught them simple ways to align with Nature on a daily basis, and enigmatically, this ignited powerful healing of body, mind, and soul. While there wasnt a focus on the symptoms of disease per se, I saw cancers disappear, ulcers heal, and chronic depressions lift.

I think I had rationalized that these miracles were possible because my teacher was a spiritually realized being. Clearly, my gurus spiritual presence was undeniable. But as I grew up and observed more, I recognized that Babas skills in transmitting a highly rational science of Ayurveda lifestyle were also a key factor. I am so glad that my teacher imparted to me his spiritual conviction along with his scientific knowledge, which includes Ayurvedas lifestyle wisdom. His teachings and his blessings have taken the form of this book so that more and more people can discover the truth of health for themselves.

Reading and implementing the lessons in this book can be a rite of transition, from a life lived routinely or unmindfully, to masterful living, encompassing the freedom that comes from embracing health consciousness, self-determination, and Natures blessings to proactively influence the course of your health and well-being. Health alone will completely undo the paradigm of disease permanently.

Ayurveda proposes two methodologies toward approaching health. The first is preventive and promotive. It proposes protecting and enhancing health with a set of lifestyle practices. This is the wisdom approach of evoking inner health, known as swasthya-raksha in Sanskrit. It incorporates at every step lessons from the spiritual sister sciences of yoga and Vedanta.

The second methodology is restorative. It includes disease management using herbal drugs, body treatments, and even surgery (though surgery is no longer an active modality in Ayurveda today). This methodology is known as vikara prashamana in Sanskrit. Both approaches are equally valid, at appropriate junctures.