Role of Ayurvedic Psychology in disease management
Table of contents:
1/ How do the mind & Body connect and influence our health
2/ Have you ever wondered where behavior and emotions come from?
3/ How can Ayurvedic psychological knowledge help us with our health?
Charak Samhita says that without balancing the doshas of your body and mind a person cannot benefit from Rasayana which are herbs which heal organs, improve our longevity, and rejuvenate our nervous system. Thus each one of us has a personal responsibility in improving our health, a major part of which comes from having a positive outlook towards life.
In this article, I would like to make you understand how mind and body are connected and which factors from Ayurveda play an important role in helping us stay healthy.
In my 21 years of practice, of which 45 International projects (workshops and consultations) all around Europe and the US, I found that 9/10 people have physical diseases because of mental imbalance.
It can also be that my data is supported due to the fact that most of the people who come to me have issues with the mind as I am known for treating the psychological side or because my practice has included detailed analysis and observation of the person due to my work in the field of Ayurvedic consultancy during the past 21 years.
From the beginning of these projects, instead of teaching them Ayurveda, my emphasis was on understanding how the people in Europe lived, what their upbringing was, and their perception of stress. For example, stress in India can be very different from stress in Germany or Poland. Each society based on its history, culture, schooling, and family structure has a very different perception of the situation. Perception is what creates our mental reality and hence the study of how people live in different parts is extremely important to learn.
How do the mind and Body connect and influence our health
As I have observed, the majority of people with allergies, hormonal issues, eating disorders, and gut health issues have a psychological factor which is contributing towards the illness but how does it happen scientifically?
1. Due to the hormonal influence over our health: Each and every hormone produced by the body is the result of emotional stimulus. For example, cortisol is produced due to stress, stress is a manifestation of Rajas emotions, like anxiety, nervousness, irritability, control, excessive thinking… Cortisol is the main hormone which is secreted due to which the majority of autoimmune diseases, weight gain, heart problems and organ failures.
2. Due to imbalance of sexual system hormones: Sexual system hormones like estrogen progesterone balance , level of testosterone in our body have high influence over diseases and over the last years I have seen enhancement of the diseases of the reproductive system like endometriosis, cysts, fibroids, ovarian breast cancer. Here again, emotions and stress levels play an important vital role in keeping the hormonal balance. Infertility specialists say that fertility in females is declining after 30 years due to the poor lifestyle and excess pressure. The testosterone levels in men are also declining rapidly than it was in the past. A healthy connection with our sexuality is an indication of our good connection with ourselves and in order to have balanced hormones, we need to have emotional balance
3. Living in a world which demands us to be on our toes all the time: A delicate balance of nature in between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system has been disturbed. In the past we were more in contact with nature, there was a slowness element to the evenings, resting after the hard work, work was more physical and we were more tired in the evenings vs in today’s world all physical work has been replaced with machines and we have become more sedentary. We are all aware of how serotonin is produced with physical work, exercise and happiness, social media makes all the information travel to us too fast.
All of this adds to the contribution of physical diseases due to psychological imbalances produced as a result of hormonal imbalances and a fast lifestyle.
Now we can see science also verifies this connection, here is a paragraph from an article from the National Library of Medicine which talks about body mind connection:
“It has long been established in traditional forms of medicine and in anecdotal knowledge that the health of the body and the mind are inextricably linked.. Strong and continually developing evidence now suggests a link between disorders which involve Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal axis (HPA) dysregulation and the risk of developing psychiatric disease. For instance, adverse or excessive responses to stressful experiences are built into the diagnostic criteria for several psychiatric disorders, including depression and anxiety disorders. Interestingly, peripheral disorders such as metabolic disorders and cardiovascular diseases are also associated with HPA changes.
Furthermore, many other systemic disorders associated with a higher incidence of psychiatric disease involve a significant inflammatory component. In fact, inflammatory and endocrine pathways seem to interact in both the periphery and the central nervous system (CNS) to potentiate states of psychiatric dysfunction. This review synthesizes clinical and animal data looking at interactions between peripheral and central factors, developing an understanding at the molecular and cellular level of how processes in the entire body can impact on mental state and psychiatric health”.
(Read the complete article here https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3866391/ to check scientific facts on this)
But have you ever wondered where behavior and emotions come from?
Why do we behave the way we do, instead of being calm? Why do we behave stressed, anxious and nervous? Ayurveda has a very intricate understanding of this in terms of who we are. Emotional behaviour is shaped by these four factors:
By our Prakriti (our born type): We all are born with a certain kind of morphology which determines how we look physically, our bone structure or the way we gain weight. But what is interesting is that we all have a certain inbuilt mindset according to our genetic configuration and by recognising our mind according to Ayurveda we can learn about our strengths and weaknesses. If we don’t recognise our strength we will always feel under confident, like if you judge an elephant with its ability to climb trees. Each psychological type has some kind of negative behaviour which can’t be completely deleted but can be balanced. For example, as a Vata, you will tend to have a certain level of anxiety but when it is in a balanced state, this anxiety can be channeled to creative energy.
By our Vikriti: What is happening in our life: Trauma, situations which happen like divorce of parents, loss in business, failures… all imbalance our psychological dosha and need expert intervention for healing failure, which may result in breaking down of nervous system health. It is interesting to know when warriors came back to India after the war they were put in a place of rest for months to recover their physical and mental traumas.
From Rajas or Rush: Our imbalanced emotions come from rush, you know like you have 10 minutes before a very important meeting and you are just rushing and your son is throwing a tantrum and on top of that you can’t find your keys then you are liable to be anxious or irritated.
Diseases produce emotions and vice versa: Our physical disease imbalances our body’s natural physiology. For example, the process of digestion and absorption is disturbed when we have irritable bowel syndrome, meanwhile, the disease produces a negative impact on the mind, you are anxious each time you go out and vice versa. Pain and aches of all kinds make us more irritable/anxious and vice versa has also been seen. Besides this, women’s stress creates an imbalance of estrogen and progesterone and this imbalance creates more stress. Hence we can see what a vicious circle emotions and diseases can create.
How can Ayurvedic psychological knowledge help us with our health?
You can become the best version of yourself and heal your diseases with recognition of your mind, body and dosha understanding, which causative emotion brings imbalance.
For example:
- Is your fear adding to your cortisol levels?
- Is your depression, and negativity contributing towards autoimmune diseases?
- Anger adds to enhancing your acid levels.
- Does anxiety contribute towards your heart issues?
Understanding will always help a person understand the causative factors of his diseases and will help improve the results which we get from therapies, panchakarma and nutrition. Besides this, it will make you a more confident person as it will help you recognise your strengths and gifts and help you have better quality of thoughts which will contribute towards your mental well-being.
About Dr Shivani SOOD:
Dr Shivani Sood is the founder of Shivani Ayurveda, Co-founder of Shivani Clinic (for Authentic Ayurvedic treatment) and Shivani Ayurveda Poland for educating and treating with Ayurveda with a method suited to modern times. She believes in self-empowerment through self-understanding, and enhancing body-mind connection and presents various courses which will help in this process.
You can learn more about her 1:1 sessions and education