yoga | MedNews

Comprising yoga, massage, meditation and much more, Ayuverdic medicine is among the world’s oldest, and reputedly balances life and health. It originated in India more than 5,000 years ago, and is still practiced there alongside Western medicine.

Ayuverdic medicine is based on the belief that balance in life starts at birth, where a person’s innate qualities help to frame the person’s physical and mental patterns, to create the state known as praktiki. A person’s present state is known as vikruti, which is praktiki incorporating everything affecting one’s life—work, diet, hobbies and friends, for example. The closer one is to praktiki the better. Discord in life, or divergence from self, leads to dosha imbalance. Dosha refers to energy patterns.

To identify diseases, practitioners of ayurvedic medicine must evaluate what dosha is the greatest influence in the patient and seek to understand if there’s discourse between the innate and current self. Individuals can apply ayurvedic medicine to everyday situations, too. For example, dry skin may require more than lotion. One may need to look at emotions and consider how to heal emotional dryness.

An overview of ayuverdic medicine is published in the March, 2008 issue of Mayo Clinic Health Letter.

LJK, a New York businessman and former movie studio executive had just assumed his normal pilates position when he felt and heard a distinct "pop" in his lower back. This was accompanied, he said, "by some of the worst pain I’ve ever had in my life."

It took four ambulance attendants to carry him down a flight of stairs from the upper East Side pilates studio to the waiting ambulance.

The diagnosis? A ruptured lumbar disc. The treatment? Surgery to remove disc fragments impinging on LJK’s spinal cord.

He joined one of over 13,000 Americans treated in ERs during just the last year alone for yoga and pilates-related injuries.

His lesson, and the lesson for other yoga/pilates devotees is that your body isn’t a pretzel, and the effects of aging on joints and spinal columns doesn’t magically disappear through the ministrations of yoga. You must slowly learn these disciplines, and you must find a well-trained instructor. And even with all of these precautions, one wrong move can spell disaster.

Don’t necessarily trust the perfectly-sculpted instructor at your health club for instruction. And, by the way, don’t expect yoga or pilates to peel off the inches or pounds. For that you’ll need to hit the cardio machines or spinning classes.

Ayuverdic Natural Medicine Balances Health And Life

When Yoga and Pilates Go Bad