Ayurveda's Vision of the Body: Anatomy & Physiology 1 of 9

Ayurveda has a unique way of thinking, and that can feel a little uncanny at first. And that unique way of thinking ends up being a unique way of seeing. So how does Ayurveda see? What is Ayurveda's vision of the body? Hi, my name is John Immel, and I'm the director of Joyful Belly Ayurveda. So how does Ayurveda explain the body? How is the Ayurvedic model used to assess disease? How is the Ayurvedic model used for healing? These are essential questions if you want to understand Ayurveda, if you want to get into Ayurveda, and you want to be effective and thorough at using Ayurveda. Because Ayurveda's entire vision of health affects how Ayurveda sees the body, you need to know that. Western medicine speaks of anatomy and physiology, but does Ayurveda have that same vision? It's the same body, the same person, but does Ayurveda see it in a different way or have a different orientation? And how is it different? How is Ayurvedic anatomy distinct? Today's talk is just an orientation. We're just going to scratch the surface. It's just going to provide a window into that new way of thinking, and then we're going to Let's start from the beginning with Ayurveda's goals. Ayurveda recognizes that individuals need to maintain optimal health, that people need to make day-to-day decisions about their health. They need an efficient, quick and easy self-assessment tool, and they need to be able to do self-treatment. So you can't take the doctor home with you, and people don't have time or money to go to the doctor every day or even frequently, but they still need to stay healthy and fit. So that is where Ayurveda comes in. That's where Ayurveda's solution is going to focus. It's going to focus in the home. It's going to focus on what people can do, what people can understand. Ayurveda also recognizes the need to communicate, that we need to communicate and talk intelligently about health, that people need to recognize when something is going wrong in their body, when something's happening to them, when things are off. They need to be able to identify what it is, how to fix it, and how to talk about it. We all have feelings and experiences that are hard to recognize. It makes us feel a little dizzy even sometimes. Trying to figure out what's going on feels overwhelming. Bodily sensations can be hard to feel, and because they're a bit mysterious, because they're a bit hard to recognize, that can result in a lack of attention to the body, a kind of ignoring. So Ayurveda is a solution for everybody. It's a solution for folks. Ayurveda is going to provide a vocabulary to talk about your body. It's going to provide a model for self-assessment and treatment. It's going to help you with body awareness. It's going to help you talk with others, and it's going to help you help others. It's going to help your loved ones feel better too. Ayurveda, why do I say folks? Why do I say Ayurveda is a solution for folks? Because Ayurveda is meant for everyone. Sometimes people talk about Ayurveda as if it's something that's done in a spa, and it's true. Ayurveda is done in a spa, but I like to think of Ayurveda as like Home Depot. That's where people go to do it themselves, right? They go to Home Depot to work on their house instead of hiring a contractor, and Ayurveda is a little bit like that with your health. It's a system meant for you. It's a folk tradition, and it's meant to be used by folks, to be used by lay people, not just professionals. So what should a folk medicine be like? What should Ayurveda be like? It should be practical from beginning to end. It should be natural to humans, natural to the human powers of observation, and that means it must be accessible too. If it's going to be natural and practical for everybody, it's got to be accessible. People must be able to do it without expensive equipment. It has to work the way humans work. It has to align with how humans think naturally. It has to be easy enough so everyone can do it or learn it. It should be experiential, not abstract. It should be easy to understand and relate to. It shouldn't take too much time or effort to do it. I mentioned already, it should be inexpensive. Remedy, not just in its examination, but also in its remedies. The remedies should be easily and cheaply obtained from the environment, and of course, a folk medicine tradition should allow for discovery and innovation. We must be able to apply principles to create new solutions in new situations. People don't have the time to learn every single remedy, so we need a model that people can use to figure things out with the materials at hand. And Ayurveda should lead people to wisdom. Science focuses on knowledge and understanding, but we should always remember that truth is never ending, and that it's wisdom that puts all the knowledge together. That it's wisdom that puts all the understanding in an order. That wisdom establishes priorities. It prioritizes one thing over another and reveals how one thing fits into the whole plan. It reveals significance. So we can know a lot about something insignificant, but wisdom tells us what to pay attention to, so you can prioritize efforts and not get overwhelmed. Ayurveda is constantly searching for patterns. Western medicine collects the data, and the data is great, but there's something more. There's interpretation, and Western medicine certainly does a lot of interpretation. But Ayurveda takes all of the data, and even the individual interpretations, and puts it in the context of a whole. It interprets the nature of things. It interprets the type of things, or the kinds of things. And so, it takes the data and organizes it, and classifies it. And I think that's really unique. Ayurveda is constantly asking the question, what's that like? You know, if you start asking that question, you're going to become a great Ayurvedic counselor. What are some of the ways that we can ask that question? What are you like? Or what is your client like? What is your lifestyle like? What is your diet like? What are your imbalances like? What are your diseases like? What are your symptoms like? What is the remedy like? Ayurveda is constantly asking that question, and so Ayurveda is constantly looking for characteristics of things. Is it heavy? Is it light? Is it dull or sharp? Is it warm or cold? Is it oily or dry? Slimy or rough? Is it dense or liquid? Is it soft or hard? Mobile or stable? Gross or subtle? Clear or cloudy? In fact, these words are canonical words in the Ayurvedic lexicon. These are part of Ayurveda's core, and you could meditate on these words for your entire life, and uncover unending richness. So, Ayurveda, because Ayurveda is always asking what things are like, because Ayurveda is always putting things into categories that are simple and easy for everyone to understand, right? Those words on the previous page here, they're easy to understand. The result is that Ayurveda is a classification system, and it's a pretty simple classification system that works for folks. You know, if you collect too much data, it all starts to look like a blur. We need a way to simplify, and our brain is constantly doing this in all areas of our life, and we should do it with health too. It's easier to know the nature of something than every little thing about it, but in the end, we need to know both. And so, we should be able to gather that knowledge, and classify it, and interpret it. So, in Ayurveda, everything is a sign. Each disease is a sign of a greater picture, of something that has meaning beyond itself. Disease points to a whole pattern of things that are happening in your body. In Ayurveda, everything is part of a bigger pattern. Everything is part of a bigger story. So, Ayurveda is always generalizing. It's taking the specific, and putting it in the context of the whole. It looks at the meaning and significance of the symptom, rather than the symptom itself. And it claims that everything is a part of the whole, that everything reveals your nature. Everything reveals the nature of the disease too, and everything reveals the nature of the remedy. So, Ayurveda uses that classification system to fit your body, your imbalances, causes, disease, remedies, etc. into a pattern, into a flowchart. And that flowchart shows how symptoms and everything is interrelated, how everything affects everything else, and how disease is progressing in your body. This allows you to trace imbalances back to root causes, and diet, and lifestyle, and beliefs. It allows you to identify habits that you're doing that contribute to the pattern, based on their characteristics, which gives you the tools and knowledge you need to stop feeding your diseases. Ayurveda's classification system is an easy model and easy tool to help you get to know you, help you get to know yourself. Are you a cold-natured person? Well, then maybe you need to stay warm. Are you a hot-tempered person? Well, then maybe you need to not stay warm. Maybe you need to go out into the cold. So, Ayurveda tries to understand your nature. Ayurveda is unique to the individual. Your nature, the nature of your diseases, and the nature of your remedies is different for every person. Now, there's commonality too. We'll talk about that. But there's also a lot of differences. One person goes out into the cold and it refreshes them. Another one goes out into the cold and it makes them sick. So, how do we know who should go outside and who should stay indoors? And the answer to that is a discussion of your nature, is the discussion of your essence on some level. Now, Ayurveda is a tool to help you get at your nature. But of course, it's, you know, a person is extraordinarily complex. And even Ayurveda is just an approximation. So, I just want to highlight again some of these paradigmatic differences between Western and Ayurvedic medicine. And that's going to just highlight the whole approach that Ayurveda uses. And it's going to help you get really good at it. So, Western medicine tends to focus on the pieces and the parts, the parts of the body, the names of bacteria, the constituents in the herbs, right? Curcumin is the constituent in turmeric. Or the rhinovirus is the name of the pathogen. Or, you know, the biochemical pathway in, you know, a nerve or something like that. That tends to be Western medicine's focus. Whereas Ayurveda is focusing on the nature of things. What is the nature of a bone? Well, the nature of a bone is to be stiff and hard. What is the nature of the pathogen? Well, yeast tends to surround itself in mucus. And so, it's slimy in nature. What's the nature of the whole herb? Well, turmeric is a hot bitter, right? We don't think in Ayurveda too much about the constituents. Although that data is valuable. And Ayurveda is always using data for its interpretations. Western anatomy emphasizes the substance. And Ayurvedic anatomy emphasizes the nature of the substance. So, Ayurveda is focused on the nature of the thing, not the thing itself. And that's a little bit squirrely, a little different, a little bit of a twist than how people are used to thinking. So, what's the result of this? In Western medicine, Western medicine uses a lot of nouns. But Ayurveda medicine uses a lot of adjectives. In one sense, you could say Western medicine is noun medicine, and Ayurveda is adjective medicine. And they work side by side. They're incredibly useful. Now, Ayurveda needs the nouns to get to the adjectives, right? Ayurveda is almost something that you do after Western medicine, or after you have the knowledge, then you interpret it, right? That's the normal progression of things. And so, on one way, Ayurveda is easier because people tend to think feelings and characteristics, and your mind likes to create categories. So, on some level, Ayurveda is much more natural, and much easier, and much simpler. And on another level, you need to have a lot of data in order to understand the nature of something. And so, you could also say Ayurveda is harder. So, it's easier and harder. Well, there you go, right? The fact is that Ayurveda and Western medicine work side by side, and that is an incredibly useful approach. And so, just allow Ayurveda's different approach to create that paradigmatic shift in your way of thinking, and you'll see that there's something more than the scientific method, right? There is a technique beyond the scientific method, and that can be used in conjunction with the scientific method, and that's going to end up being really rich, and useful, and practical. All right, let's continue with Ayurveda's paradigmatic way of thinking, different way of thinking, to relationships in the body. Western medicine tends to focus on the chemical or physical pathways, whereas Ayurveda tends to focus on the functional relationships. And this is key to understanding Ayurveda's language, because sometimes Ayurveda talks about things in a way that you can easily misinterpret or misunderstand. So, a heavy meal creates mucus congestion for some folks, usually kapha folks. And so, Ayurveda would take that fact and say, oh, well, mucus moves from the stomach to the blood to the respiratory tract. And if a Western doctor hears that, and they're thinking, like, you mean, are you trying to tell me that there's this, you know, tube or something where mucus moves from the stomach into the blood and into the respiratory tract? And yeah, you could say yes to that. You could say, yeah, it went through the blood vessels, and those are tubes, and the respiratory tract is a tube, and the GI tract is a tube, too. So, there can be some, like, pipelines that this is going through. But if you say that you're, you know, that's useful, but that's not what, but Ayurveda is not necessarily even trying to operate at that level. What Ayurveda is simply saying is that there's this connection or relationship between heavy food and mucus congestion. And that, you know, connection happens through the blood. So, Ayurveda is just going to quite simply summarize it as saying, mucus moves from the stomach to the blood to the respiratory tract. Now, whether Ayurveda, whether or not you can find a chemical or hormonal pathway, Ayurveda says, well, okay, well, great if you can, but I'm just going to remember that that relationship is observable. It's something I've seen. If I can't find the chemical pathway, then I am not going to discount it. I'm still going to recognize the significance and importance. So, Ayurveda talks about the 10 great vessels connecting the heart to the 10 gates of the body. And it never really, and there's nowhere in the ancient texts where it really talks about what those 10 great vessels are or what they do. We know that the 10 gates are the two eyes, two ears, two nostrils, the mouth, the urinary tract, the anus, and the crown of the head. Interestingly enough, the crown of the head is there too. And those are gates to the body. But are those 10, are those gates really connected to the heart via 10 great vessels? And if they're not, what does this mean? Well, here again, we have to look at this as a metaphor. The 10 great vessels are metaphorically connecting the mind, the lymphatic system, the rasa, or the blood, and the sense organs, or like input into your body, right? So, what Ayurveda is saying there is that there's this functional relationship between what comes in your body through the gates, and I guess in some of those, what comes out of your body through the gates, that it's creating this functional relationship between those gates and the nourishment and toxins in the blood, and the quality of your mental state, right? And we all know that to be true. If you watch a horror movie, your mental state is going to change. If you poop out your toxins, it's going to clear the blood. So, we know there's this relationship between the heart, which was considered the center of the mind, so heart equals mind here, right? We know there's a connection between the mind and the heart and what comes in and out of our body. So, Ayurvedic anatomy captures these relationships, even if they're not tangible, physical connections. And there's lots of these in the body, lots of other non-tangible connections. A mother remains connected to her child, even after the umbilical cord is cut. Your mindset and your personality are different after eating spicy food versus eating ice cream. I just remember sitting in a barbecue joint with my dad, and we had a bunch of red meat, and then we got into a big fight 10 minutes later. And then after a few minutes, I was like, oh dad, I think this meat is making us get into a fight. Like, is this really important? It was some political discussion, I remember. And I just had to, you know, we just had to laugh at ourselves that, you know, the heat and intensity of the meat in the blood had sparked that confrontation. And then we laughed about it and moved on. So, sweet taste affects you differently than sour or bitter taste. And, you know, heavy hot meat affects you differently than broccoli. So, you feel different after watching a horror movie versus a comedy. And those relationships are the focus of Ayurveda. That Ayurveda recognizes all of life is relationship, some tangible, but many are not. And that those relationships can be complex at times, but it's also holistic, right? When we're talking about categories and types and all these other things, we're kind of summarizing. We're looking at the whole. We're trying to integrate everything. And so, as I said already, some ways Ayurveda is harder, some ways Ayurveda is easier. You don't need a laboratory to observe that drinking milk creates mucus in kava people. You know, it's just an observable thing that you feel and see that the individual can examine in themselves. All right. Population versus individuals. Western medicine tends to focus on whole populations. You know, they're thinking, like, how do we reduce costs in the hospital and, you know, and make things easier and protect the safety of the whole population? And so, Western medicine tends to focus on the similarity between individuals, which is very elegantly captured in the Western statistical medical model. I mean, one of the things that I loved is studying statistics, and it was also the hardest branch of mathematics for me. My college degree is in mathematics, and I tell you, the statistics was the hardest, but it was also something funky about it because it was just so idiosyncratic. Anyways, humans tend to operate and function in similar ways, and that makes the statistical model very useful. Risk factors for heart disease are similar across the whole population. So, we can create a little TV advertisement teaching people about the risk factors for heart disease and greatly reduce the statistical frequency of heart problems. And many pharmaceuticals also have a similar effect across a wide range of individuals. So, hugely valuable. But in Ayurveda, the uniqueness of the individual is emphasized, right? And wouldn't it be great if you could walk into your doctor's office and the doctor first talked to you about all of the common risk factors, but then said, hey, well, let's look at you and see if these statistical factors apply in your case. And is there anything different about your case? Is there something unique and special about your case? And of course, the answer is always going to be yes, that you're similar to others in many ways, but you're also very different and a unique individual in many ways. And so, we really do need both. An Ayurveda practitioner is going to highlight those unique characteristics of the person, and the practitioner is going to really be appreciating the personal, intimate, interior, and uniqueness of the individual. That's going to help them perceive essence and nature. Essence and nature, that's what Ayurveda is always looking for and never totally achieves. I don't want to overpromise. It's always important not to just get into that romantic, mystical aspect of it. And at the same time, it's something that can continue to grow so that you can become much more accurate in your perception, and you're going to how that flowers in you, how that continuously unfolds in you, and how you can see people much more accurately than you could in the past. So, Ayurveda is going to take that unique individual and compare what's happening to the environment and also in the lifestyle and diet, and we're going to use the Ayurvedic model to predict how the environment is influencing the individual, and how the individual responds to diet choices. Alright, and then this gets us to really to Ayurveda's core. Well, the second part of Ayurveda's core, I've already talked about how at Ayurveda's core, it's a classification system that seeks to understand the nature of things, and then we're going to use Ayurveda's medicinal theory of habit to influence that nature, to influence those qualities, that characteristics, and those categories, and shift them. So now we have done our assessment. How are we going to shift the pattern? How are we going to shift the disease? Well, this statement is fundamental. The more you repeat a habit, the greater its influence on your nature. This is actually right out of the Greek philosophy on habit, written 5,000 years ago. Ayurveda comes from India, but has the same basic root here, and who knows? Alexander the Great marched an army over to the Indus River, and we don't know how those cultures influenced each other. Did Alexander the Great get it from India? And did all of Greek medicine come from India? Did Ayurveda come from Greek medicine? We really don't know the answer to that question, but what we do know is that both of these cultures created a system of medicine that fundamentally was based on this fact, that the more you repeat a habit, the greater its influence on your nature. This single statement is going to lead to the fruit of Ayurveda. So Ayurveda is a medicinal theory of habit. The main thesis of Ayurveda is this, and it's going to fit your diet and lifestyle habits to those imbalances in a very unique fashion, and it's going to show you what habits have already influenced your nature in negative and positive ways. So Ayurveda is matching individuals to habits, the unique person to the right habit. It's like a hand in a glove, or two puzzle pieces that are fitting together your nature and your habits. So this is going to lead to a theory of how disease develops, and even how health develops. So this idea or vision of how things work ends up creating Ayurveda's idea of pathogenesis. Now that's a fancy vocabulary word, really comes from the Greek, and it's used in Western medicine, patho and genesis. We know that genesis means creation, and we know that patho means disorder or disease. So this is the creation of the disease. How does the disease develop? Well, we should also talk about how health develops too, so let's not forget about that. In Ayurveda, right beliefs lead to right behavior, which lead to a right diet, because your lifestyle has a huge influence on your diet. And your right diet leads to good digestion, and good digestion means that you've absorbed a lot of nutrients from your food, and that creates good blood, which is the best way to get healthy organs, right? That's the pathway of health. Well, what's the pathway of disease? Well, in a pathway of disease, a bad habit creates an accumulation of an imbalance. Suppose you're a cold natured person, and you're doing lots of cold things. Well, then coldness is going to accumulate in your body. That's going to aggravate your body. And then Ayurveda says it starts to build up in the digestive tract, which is very interesting, and that it has such a focus in the digestive tract. And then that coldness is going to enter your blood. It's going to attack the weak spots in your body first, right? Like suppose you have weakness in your ears, and the ears are very susceptible to cold, by the way. So if you have a previous injury to your ear, and it's cold outside, that coldness is going to specifically attack that ear, that weak spot, and that could overcome the defenses of your ear, and that's going to lead to disease and complications. So the weak spot is the weak link in the chain, and that could be due to genetic or trauma, etc. And I put some of the Sanskrit here, by the way, so that you can look at it. See, this word samprapti, next to the pathway of disease, and kavigunya, next to the weak spot. We're going to keep going. You're going to get all these Sanskrit terms over time, but you know, that's enough for now, really. So another part of the way Ayurveda works is that it has a heavy focus on personal experiences. Western anatomy answers, what do I see when I cut open a cadaver? And that's, you know, and here's a picture of an arm from Grey's Anatomy, and that's part of Western medicine and really Western science being objective. So, you know, when the Western anthropologists go to study the culture of some village, they try to observe it from a distance without exerting any influence on it, and so that they can be really objective. Now, of course, the criticism of that is like, how can you know a culture without being very intimate with them, and how can you be very intimate with a culture and fail to have an influence on them? And so this, you know, model of complete objectivity is a fantasy, right? And so it's always a mix, and Ayurveda says, okay, well, we can't just be objective. We need a way of seeing the body. We need an anatomy and physiology, a way of seeing that takes the subjective into account. So Ayurveda is always asking the question, what does your body feel like right now? What does my body feel like right now? And to be fair, both systems have an element of subjectivity and objectivity, right? Ayurveda does have a lot of objectivity in it, Western medicine does have a lot of subjectivity in it. Subjective meaning what the person experiences, objective meaning something you can measure with instruments, right? And both has a lot of both, but Ayurveda seems to emphasize the subjective, Western medicine seems to emphasize the objective, and I think that the subjective gets a lot more subtle, ultimately, and it's a wellness. Wellness is a little more subtle. Wellness is about how you feel. It's not just about what you can measure. All right, so hopefully I didn't confuse you. We're talking about philosophy here, right? A philosophy of medicine. And so some of the terms can get a little academic, and hopefully I'm making this accessible and easy for you. So what's an example of this subjective, personal experience? Well, as a student of Ayurveda, I spent three months meditating on each cubic centimeter of my brain, one after the other, cataloging all the different sensations I found in each spot. And if I drew a picture of that, it would be a very different picture than cutting open a cadaver and looking at a person's brain, but no less real, right? Like what I experienced in each cubic centimeter of my brain was real, but it was just a personal experience. And so you can't, you know, if I drew a picture of that, it would not correspond to some map or some cutting opening of a cadaver. And so Ayurvedic anatomy, because it's about a person's personal experience, just doesn't look like the same thing as when you open up a cadaver. I mean, I might say in one area I felt pressure, in one area I might experience or see a darkness or lightness, or I might notice different colors and things. And you do. If you take your inner gaze and start swimming around your brain, you're gonna see and feel those different things. And if you made a map of that, it's obviously not a map that you get when you cut open a cadaver. So both methods yield a map, but they're very different. They're both real. And so meditation is like an MRI, right? In Western medicine, they're making a picture using the MRI. In Ayurveda, you are looking at it with your experience. And so very interesting to compare and contrast the Western anatomical model and the Ayurvedic anatomical model. So experiences are real, and they're informative. And if you're just looking at the physical structure, you're throwing away vital info. Experiences generally refer to phenomenon that can't be measured. And that's why Western science doesn't like it. But we like it, and we characterize it, and we study it, and classify it. And so how does that lead to self-awareness, to body awareness? Well, I'm just gonna ask you a question. What are some of the ways your body communicates with you? What are some of the feelings you have? How good are you at feeling what's happening in your body? Do you have butterflies in your belly? Do you ever feel your stomach drop? Have you ever felt your stomach tied in knots? Do you know what heartache feels like? What does the expression grin it and bear it feel like? What if I said someone had a knotted or knitted eyebrow, right? You'd know they were angry. So these are all terms and things that we discuss, terms we all use in normal conversation. Ayurveda says each of these things are significant, that each have meaning and relevance to health. And so Ayurveda is going to study butterflies in the belly. Ayurveda is going to study feeling your stomach drop. Ayurveda is going to study what it is when your stomach is tied in knots. And that's what makes it really different. Can you feel your organs? Can you feel your heartbeat? Can you feel your stomach churning? Can you feel your intestines contracting? Those are pretty easy to feel, actually, with a bit of practice. Take a deep breath, and on the top of the inhale, hold it, and you'll be able to feel your heartbeat. But what about your liver? What about your kidney? What about your pancreas? Can you feel those? Ayurveda practitioners can feel what is happening in all of their essential organs, either directly or by deduction. So sometimes you can feel how your liver is doing in your eyes, for example. So you're not always directly feeling the but you can feel the effects of organ imbalances, and you can see the effects of organ imbalances everywhere in the body, not just in the eyes, but everywhere. If your liver is weak, you can see it in the skin, in the eyes, in the tongue, in the speech, in the emotions, everywhere. So I can feel when my kidneys are aching. I can feel when my liver is sore. I can actually feel when my pancreas is dry. You know that kidney ache I get? It's like a knot at the level of my lowest rib, close to the spine, in the back. And I can accentuate that feeling of slight pain by arching my back and pressing my fingers gently in that area. You don't want to press hard, because you can actually damage your kidneys. So whenever I feel this, I know I have eaten a strong diuretic. So last night we had some chili, and we got some organic Fritos, like little corn chips from Trader Joe's. And I ate some of them, but corn is a strong diuretic for me. It doesn't quite agree with my body, and I could feel my kidney ache afterwards. And that's just, you know, we had just toured the Southwest, and there was lots of Frito pie out there. And I'd never tried it. And so I figured with these organic Fritos, I would give it a shot. Well, I felt my kidney ache. C'est la vie, right? So the art of feeling what's happening in your body is the art of felt sensing, right? Sensing your feelings. And we're going to explore felt sensing throughout the course, and especially in your food and herb experiments, and in your body awareness exercises. And that's going to continually unfold. It really is. I mean, I'm finding feelings in my body that have been there my whole life, and I'm just noticing them now. You know, every year I notice new things about my body. It's something that's always unfolding. And someday, someone, hopefully you, are going to create a dictionary of sensations, a dictionary of feelings, right? I would love to be able to, you know, if I had a pain in my back, I would love to be able to look it up in a dictionary of sensations, and say, oh, here's number 32 sensation on the list, and say, oh, that's my sensation. Now, what does that mean? We need a catalog, deeply need a catalog of human sensations and human experiences. Watch and see how Ayurveda as an industry grows tremendously when someone puts that catalog together. It's underdeveloped, though. And we don't all feel pain in the same way, that's okay, but there's enough commonality that a dictionary would be useful. You know, we don't all use language in the same way, but there's a lot of commonality there, too. What are some of the different types of experiences people have, just to get into it? Well, tingling is a feeling that people have, and that's also like light touch. Or itching is a little bit more intense, like it's a very mild inflammation or pain. Then it moves to irritation, a little more intense. Or rawness, which is, yeah, a roughness there, like a scraping feeling or abrasion. And then let's talk about tension. You could be relaxed or tense. Or pressure. You could have a sharp pain, like a knife, like in a puncture wound, or even a cramp. Or you can have a burning pain or a stinging sensation, which can come from something being inflamed. Soreness is another one. And there's also dull pain, not on this list, but should be there. And there's also hot and cold. So these are different kinds of experiences that you can have anywhere in your body. And there's so many different places in your body that there's really just an infinite number of experiences there. If there's 100 different places in your body and 15 different feelings, you're talking about 1,500 sensations. And then you have to discuss the meaning of each of those. So I've talked about some of the paradigmatic differences between Ayurveda and the Western approach. And I've presented a lot of this in a real positive light of Ayurveda. But what are some of the limitations? Any good scientist, any objective person, any unbiased person should also be ready to face the limitations of what they're studying. And so let's be bold and brave and face some of these limitations too. Well, the first limitation is, is Ayurveda's typesisting inappropriate? Are generalizations inappropriate? You know, can we reduce everybody to a set of three doshas? Disease may have a specific nature. Also, disease may have a specific nature that defies the characteristic. Actually, this comes up in my practice all the time. Sometimes the devil is the details. Sometimes you really do need the Western medical knowledge. And it really is just a specific parasite that you need to kill. It's not just a part of a big pattern, right? Some people can't feel what's going on inside of them. They don't have good body awareness. They haven't developed it yet. Or they're even unwilling to engage in self-inquiry. Some people hate feeling what's going on in their body. So Ayurveda is not for everybody. What about if Ayurveda is a model for self-healing? What if a person makes a mistake? What if they lack the knowledge? What if they lack the experience, especially in the beginning and they hurt themselves? This happens all the time too. So fortunately though, Ayurveda's remedies are gentle, right? Ayurveda uses food, spices, and habits, which is generally safe, slow, and steady. And so long before, you know, once a person starts to get into Ayurveda, usually long before they create any damage, they start to notice it's not working for them. You know, if you're paying attention, your body's going to communicate with you. So most mistakes don't greatly aggravate the condition unless you're really stubborn and persisting with it. And so individuals have a lot of time to correct the mistake. But then again, certain diseases are severe and need immediate attention. So an individual using Ayurveda has to know when to seek professional or emergency medical care, right? We're not just going to try to use Ayurveda to help you if you get into a car crash. So what's our summary so far? First of all, I've talked about some goals of Ayurveda in that it is a folk medicine and that it's for everybody. And that provides a motive for Ayurveda's vision of the body, for Ayurveda's way of thinking, and therefore Ayurveda's way of seeing, and Ayurveda's understanding of anatomy. So that is going to drive how we're thinking and talking about the body, right? In a way that's natural and intuitive, in a way that's accessible, practical, efficient, inexpensive. And so from that, Ayurveda came up with a system, a classification system, so that we can provide and put things into categories natural to our human experience. Categorizing the individual, categorizing the symptom, categorizing the remedy, so we can focus on the nature of the object as opposed to its substance. That we can focus, that we can see how everything's interrelated and a part of the whole, how it's unique to the individual and not just statistical, how habits can influence that nature. So then Ayurveda has a model for improvement, right? A model for creating health using habits and discussing how habit can influence that nature, influence or create disease in the negative, and how that can lead to a pathway of health and a pathway of disease. We've talked about the importance of self-awareness, body awareness, and personal experience. And finally, we confronted the limitations of the Ayurvedic method. And the result is a unique model for health and disease, something people can relate to. And ultimately, even if it feels a little complicated at first, I promise you that once you learn it, Ayurveda's vision of the body, Ayurveda's anatomy and physiology will become second nature and you're going to start to do it effortlessly and almost without thinking. And then you'll start to wonder, have you ever got so far in life without it?