The Wisdom of Ayurveda
I recently had the opportunity to attend a conference in Australia on the management of chronic pain with the NOI Group. This incredible group of people are doing groundbreaking science to create evidenced-based treatment for conditions that cause massive suffering globally. In the US alone it’s estimated we spend $635 billion dollars a year in medical care, disability and lost productivity for people suffering from chronic pain. On one hand the NOI Group’s work felt so new, even revolutionary, for the field of allopathic medicine. Their research has shown that there is no correlation between tissue or structural damage and pain levels in patients. Their scientific studies have helped us understand that pain is a system designed to protect us from danger in acute situations. When it becomes chronic, it becomes a complex wiring of our mind, immune and neurologic systems which creates the ongoing experience of pain.
The treatments they’ve developed teach people to understand their pain and provide support to create a pathway back to safety in their bodies. At the very end of the last lecture, the person speaking asked Lorimer Mosley, a founder and key investigator, to recall a conversation where he was asked, “If you were given an endless amount of money to do the research of your dreams to explore your hypothesis of the source of what really causes healing what would it be?” He paused for quite a while, took a deep breath and said, “I would like to show the power of love to heal.” WOW! Even after all of the heartfelt talks and groundbreaking science I didn’t see this coming. It felt like my jaw dropped all the way down into my wide open heart! As I reflected on what I learned during this weekend conference, I realized that the core of their discoveries reminded me of the essence of Ayurveda, the ancient medical science of yoga.
Yoga and Ayurveda offer a pathway home to our potential, to our true Self which is Love. I now see that Love is both the journey and the destination. These teachings offer practices and wisdom so we can continue to ask the question, “Who am I now?” If we’re willing to do the work of cultivating awareness, we begin to know when what we see in the mirror or feel in our bodies is out of balance and not in resonance with who we hope to be. Ayurveda is a sophisticated yet intuitive system of understanding our unique constitution and how the way we think, eat, sleep and how we act impacts what we experience. We all have the capacity to create health or dis-ease, but it requires a willingness to take responsibility for how we are living.
“We are the world and the world is us. There is conflict and fear in us, therefore there is conflict and fear in the world. The world is a screen where we project our pictures. If we change and project love and peace, the world will change. People try to change the world without changing themselves. Only when we change will the world change. When we are as full of love and compassion, loving and compassionate people will come to us and our world will become different.”
- Dr. Vasant Lad
Much love,
Sue