From posh spas to fitness clubs, from movies to the NFL, it’s everywhere around you. But like those savvy tech startups, it’s usually in stealth mode.
Ayurveda, one of the world’s oldest medical systems, is among the newest implants to serve as a balm for our chaotic, stressed-out American culture.
Honed more than 5,000 years ago in India, this ancient science defines perfect health as harmony among body, mind and spirit.
Simplicity is its strength. Balance springs from lifestyle choices: diet, herbs, exercise, massage, controlled breathing and meditation.
“It’s the antithesis of American culture,” says Jennifer Workman, a sports nutritionist based in Boulder.
The self-described “former Type-A
New Yorker” stumbled across Ayurveda in 1996 after injuring her knee in a ski accident. “It totally changed my life,” she says.
After studying at the Rocky Mountain Institute of Yoga and Ayurveda, she created a company – The Balanced Approach – that applies Ayurvedic principles to exercise, nutrition and weight-loss management.
A sister philosophy of yoga, Ayurveda is spreading through American culture mostly through yoga studios and spas like Arizona’s Miraval Resort, which boasts “the ultimate Ayurvedic treatment.”
Unlike yoga, Ayurveda remains mostly invisible in popular culture. Most people don’t realize, for example, that the successful company Aveda is based on Ayurvedic principles, rooted in the ancient Hindu teachings.
As an emerging lifestyle market, Ayurveda is quietly influencing a broad slice of American life: from cooking and skin care to pregnancy, postpartum care, children’s health and even pet care.
Personal trainers at health clubs use Ayurvedic breathing techniques on treadmills and weights.
Athletes – including marathon runners, tennis players and bodybuilders – use Ayurvedic teachings to improve their performance.
In Manhattan, you can eat at the Ayurveda Café.
In Portland, Ore., you can sign up for the “Ayurveda and Sex” workshop.
And last year, across America, you could go to a theater and see the smash-hit movie “What the Bleep Do We Know?” a film that explores quantum fields hidden behind ordinary reality.
“It was basically Ayurveda,” says Nita Desai, founder of East West Integrated Medicine in Boulder.
“The essence of Ayurveda, like quantum physics, is that matter and energy are interchangeable, and the physical body is not the only thing.”
Born in India and trained in Western medicine, Desai is a board-certified medical doctor in family practice who also uses Ayurvedic medicine.
“I see all kinds of people – blue collar, intellectual, students,” she says.
An Ayurvedic doctor makes a diagnosis by checking the pulse, asking questions and making observations.
The patient is then assigned to one of three constitutional types, which influence everything from speed of digestion to how a person thinks.
Ayurvedic prescriptions – from herbs to lifestyle changes – are based on each person’s unique psychophysiological pattern.
“One reason Ayurveda caught on is that you can give people simple things to do, and they truly notice a difference,” says Desai.
In India, Ayurvedic physicians have developed treatments for such diseases as diabetes, cardiovascular conditions and neurological disorders.
In America, Ayurveda is not a licensed medical practice.
But the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Health, part of the National Institutes of Health, includes Ayurveda among the integrative healing practices that it is exploring in the context of rigorous science.
Meanwhile, physicians like Desai already are starting to investigate.
“Everyone is seeing more health-
care professionals becoming interested in Ayurveda,” says Wynn Werner, administrator of The Ayurvedic Institute, one of the most respected Ayurvedic schools in the United States.
“Doctors, nurses, chiropractors, massage therapists. Organized medicine is not all that interested yet, but individual physicians are becoming more interested.”
Anne Clarke, a nurse at Longmont Hospital, discovered this holistic system when she took an ayurvedic-style yoga class at Metro State taught by Patricia Hansen, co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute of Yoga and Ayurveda.
“I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have made it through the stress of nursing school without that class,” says Clarke.
The breathing techniques she learned from Hansen are particularly helpful with her hospital patients.
“I’ll do an entire breathing exercise with someone,” she says.
“People in the hospital feel so out of control. Deep breathing helps them feel more calm, and a bit more in control. It’s something that can be so fundamental to changing their perspective and their experience.”
Ayurveda also can be as simple as when – and how – you eat lunch.
That’s a key teaching of John Douillard, a Boulder-based Ayurvedic physician who formerly worked as director of player development for the New Jersey Nets in the NBA.
“Body, Mind and Sport,” his book that integrates Ayurveda with fitness, sold more than 60,000 copies and has been translated into six languages.
When it comes to food, he dispenses the same advice to both fitness freaks and office drones.
“The law mandates a 30-minute lunch hour, so take it,” he says.
“Instead of eating a sandwich at your computer, relax and enjoy your meal. Eat slowly, instead of working through lunch so you can leave a half-hour early to get home and be more stressed out.”
He says Americans arrive home after work exhausted – craving a martini or TV jag – because we multitask, gobbling a quick salad while hunched over our computers to lose weight and save time.
Light lunches, he says, cause blood-
sugar levels to plummet about 3 p.m., which is why we line up at Starbucks for a midafternoon caffeine high.
“We have roller-coaster lifestyles,” he says. “We’re either energetic or sleepy, and pass right by feeling good.”
Instead, ancient Ayurvedic sages taught that the biggest meal should be lunch, when the digestive system is strongest.
In his own life, Douillard discovered this the hard way.
Back when he first started his busy practice, he made an appointment with an Ayurvedic doctor from India.
When a nurse took his blood pressure before the appointment, he was shocked to learn it was high: 135 over 90.
Later, when the doctor took his pulse for a diagnosis, he asked what Douillard usually ate for lunch.
He skipped lunch, Douillard said, or ate it on the run.
This habit triggered the high blood pressure, the doctor said, advising that he should take an hour each day for lunch. Make it the largest meal of the day, he advised-tasty, cooked and slowly savored.
Skeptical, Douillard nevertheless followed instructions.
His blood pressure dropped, and he happily continued with this lifestyle change, crediting this Ayurvedic advice with helping him avoid early hypertension.
One possible reason for Ayurveda’s growing popularity: In a society that prizes individualism, Ayurveda is customized for each individual.
“People’s energies and biochemistries are all different,” says Saravati
Buhrman , co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute of Yoga and Ayurveda.
“Ayurveda tried to describe this millennia ago. It’s got a long history of trying to fit the therapy specifically to the individual, and often gets results that other therapies don’t.”
Staff writer Colleen O’Connor can be reached at 303-820-1083 or at coconnor@denverpost.com.
Lessons in serenity
Introduction to Ayurvedic Herbs
Workshop by Patricia Hansen, Oct. 1
Prana Yoga and Ayurveda Mandala Training Center
5455 W. 38th Ave., Wheat Ridge
To register, call 303-432-8099
A Day of Ayurveda and Yoga
Workshop by Patricia Hansen, Nov. 12
Metropolitan State College,
St. Francis Atrium
To register, call 303-556-6954
Ayurvedic Studies Workshop
10-week session taught by Dr. Nita Desai
Thursday nights through Nov. 17
Iygengar Yoga Center
770 S. Broadway
To register, call 720-570-9642
