To make health twice or ten times better you need a new kind of knowledge, based on a deeper concept of life. A system called Ayurveda dates back to India more than 5000 years ago. The word Ayurveda comes from two Sanskrit root words, Ayus, or “life,” and Veda, meaning “knowledge” or “science.” Therefore, Ayurveda is usually translated as “the science of life.” The purpose of Ayurveda is to tell us how our lives can be influenced, shaped, extended, and ultimately controlled without interference from sickness or old age. The guiding principle of Ayurveda is that the mind exerts the deepest influence on the body, and freedom from sickness depends upon contacting our own awareness, bringing it into balance, and then extending that balance to the body. This state of balanced awareness, more than any kind of physical immunity, creates a higher state of health.
A recent report in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that over 40 percent of Americans are now regularly accessing unconventional medical care the goes beyond a materialistic view of the human body. More and more medical schools are introducing courses in alternative and complementary medicine to their students. Patients are demanding greater choice and access while insurance companies and health maintenance organizations are beginning to cover the cost of holistic medical care. The scientific community has shifted from outright rejection and ridicule of alternative healing approaches to serious investigation. If you access the National Library of Medicine’s database, you will find over forty thousand articles on alternative and complementary medicine with over sixteen hundred on herbal medicines alone.
Meditation, yoga, massage, and alternative nutritional approaches are increasingly embraced as mainstream tools for healing. St. John’s wort, ginkgo biloba, and echinacea have become household words, with almost every pharmacy in America carrying its own line of natural medicines. As an alternative practitioner, it has been quite gratifying to witness the changes occurring in world consciousness. We are in the midst of a new frontier that will forever change the way we view the world and ourselves. The timeless wisdom tradition of Ayurveda and the most advanced theories of modern physics both point to a deeper reality that encourages us to see the universe as an eternal, infinite field of potentiality that we can access for healing and transformation.
In my continuing exploration of alternative healing, I am totally convinced that true health is much more than the absence of an abnormal laboratory finding; it is even more than optimal mind body integration. Health in its essence is a higher state of consciousness. For thousands of years the great Vedic seers have proclaimed that the purpose of attending to the body is to support the state of being known as enlightenment. In this state our internal reference point shifts from ego to spirit, and we recognize that the knower, the process of knowing, and that which is known are one and the same. The boundaries of time and space become fluid as we remember ourselves as unbounded beings temporarily masquerading as individuals. The bottom line is that the state of wholeness is the basis of all healing. This is the “Science of Life.”
O’Dell Johnson is a Transpersonal Life Coach specializing in the area of health and wellness psychology. His approach to health and wellness psychology focuses on the entire mind/body/spirit connection.
O’Dell has worked in the field of Bio-Medicine, Bio-Feedback, Mind-Body Medicine, Alternative Therapies, and Spiritual Psychology for more than 20 years. He holds multiple certifications in Mind/Body Medicine. He is a certified Ayurvedic specialist specializing in creating and perfecting health from holistic perspectives. O’Dell has studied and trained globally while connecting working with some of today’s most renowned spiritual teachers. Occasionally, he serves as spiritual guide and trainer in eastern methodology for the Chopra Center in Carlsbad, Ca. Currently, he is pursuing a PhD in Transpersonal Psychology at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, Ca.
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