|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
Metaphysical fitness |
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Metaphysical fitness and Ayurvedic medicine - Medical Anthropology
Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients, April, 2003 by Tim Batchelder Continued from page 4. Many Westerners scoff at Ayurvedic exercise prescriptions which seem woefully inadequate for building muscular, cardiovascular or respiratory stamina or strength. Caraka notes that exercise is considered no more important for building strength than being born in a place where people are strong, where seed and soil are of good quality, at a time that is conducive to strength or being cheerful. Caraka adds that one should not exercise above half of one's ability (ardha-sakti), until one's heart begins to palpitate or until one starts to sweat (Rao 1987:87). Excess exercise is thought to lead to exhaustion, internal hemorrhage, darkness before the eyes, cough, fever, vomiting, fatigue, emaciation and thirst. Walking is considered the best exercise since it does not tax the body excessively. Running is thought to cause death. Critics of this approach suggest that it was developed by sedentary Brahmins or reclusive ascetics, not common people. Further, Deshpande (1992) notes that many younger people in India engage in running, weight lifting, swimming, boxing, as they have during the Vedic, epic and medieval periods of Indian history. Contemporary wrestlers in Vrindaban (Lynch 1990) and Banaras (Alter 1992) as well as Jayesthimalla wrestlers of medieval Gujarat (Das 1968) all use far more than 50% of their athletic abilities and include Brahmins. Deshpande (1992: 220) notes that these moderate regimens are particularly useful for middle-aged Brabmin householders and older Vanaprastha renunciants. Younger Kshatriya nobles engage in more vigorous, martial routines that involved archery; wrestling, and competitive sports. But overall in Ayurvedic literature it is clear that pushing the body beyond the limits of its ability in order to increase the strength of muscles or the efficiency of the heart and lungs, as is prescribed in the West, is not the point and is not healthy. Ayurvedic exercise is able to improve the luster of the skin, concentration, limb proportions, vigor, and most importantly, aid digestion and metabol ic transformation. Thus exercise in Ayurveda is to diet as diet is to exercise in Western medicine: where in the West diet provides the fuel to support exercise, in Ayurveda exercise provides the movement and heat to support digestion. Rao (1987:871) explains that the main purposes of exercise are to facilitate proper elimination of waste products from the body (malanihsarana), to increase the digestive power (agni-dipana), and to reduce fat (medo-nasa). Food does not fuel physical activity and build or strengthen muscles; physical activity promotes the transmutation of food into semen. Digestion produces semen which enhances physical strength which promotes digestion. Fitness is simply a manifestation of virility, and strength is measured by how much of a particular kind of food one is able to eat and efficiently digest without getting sick. Vigorous exercise can promote exceptional digestion, indeed, as in the case of wrestlers (Alter 1992). Rasayana, Soma, Mercury and the Royal Consumption The seventh branch of Ayurveda is rasayana (rejuvenation therapy). "Ayurveda" can be translated not only as the science of life but also as knowledge for prolonging life (Zimmermann 1987:2). According to Ayurvedic cosmology, the fiery sun drains the life from everything and dries up essential fluids, and the moon cools, replenishes, and moisturizes. The sun is most powerful and devastating at the peak of summer, just before the onset of the summer monsoon, and the moon most nourishing during the winter monsoon. When the sun is in the ascendency, humans are said to be at high risk for contracting rajayaksma or royal consumption (White 1996:24). Rajayaksma is a wasting disease in which the body's vital fluid is completely dried up. In mythology, King Moon is the first to suffer from royal consumption since he is married to 27 stars and as he moves through their astrological mansions in the course of a lunar month sleeps with one every night eventually drying up his rasa (vigor or semen), and requiring him to perform a soma sacrifice in order to recover his lost rasa, and so the cycle begins anew (White 1996:24). Thus macrocosmic soma elixir (mythology) and microcosmic semen (medicine) are identical and connected and rasayana is designed to revive a waning moon and cure royal consumption. Further both branches of Ayurveda, rasayana therapy and vajikarana virility therapy assume that youthful vigor is a matter of good digestion which when overly troubled by excess manifestations of time must be restored through a more radical treatment than diet or purification which is rasayana. Rasayana is remedy for royal consumption but more than that it is a radical regimen of physical re-fitness and a cure for the waxing of time (old age). Rao (1987:176) explains that rejuvenation is regeneration of vitality so that the individual, although old and worn out, would get a fresh lease on life, full of energy and stamina. It is clear that senility is not an inescapable condition of old age and that premature degeneration can be corrected in Ayurveda. But more than that conditions such as degeneration of body tissues, sense organs, and mental function can actually be reversed not just prevented and rasayana bestows immortality, which obviously is a much more aggressive claim than that possible with Western medicine. The more radical of the two forms of rasayana requires complete purging of the body, inside and out, especially the intestines which are purged of all fecal accumulations (Rao 1987: 177). The person is then placed in a series of three concentric huts built to administer the therapy and must follow a strict therapy for four months that defines exactly what can be eaten and done in minute detail and is a regimen for rebirth through dissolution (White 1984: 52). Rasa refers primarily to the herb soma, the essence of all essences, and to mercury, the elemental distillate of all elements in the alchemical formulation of Siddha medicine. Soma, mercury and rasa are identical to semen in the physiology of dhatu metamorphosis thus rasayana therapy rejuvenates the whole body. However, it does this not by enhancing virility but rather restoring youth which is a precondition to virility even though, as White notes (1996:26) the term rasayana has become synonymous with contemporary Ayurvedic treatments for a range of sexu al disorders. There are 24 varieties of the soma plant, all of which have a bulb, look like a creeper, and secrete a milky juice (Singhal and Patterson 1993:42) and for which the Susruta-Samhita provides a long list of Western equivalents. Soma is the herbal equivalent of mercury (Ayurveda is empirical, after all) and requires a very specific context for its use. The basic protocol is for a person to build a special house with three chambers -- one inside the other, begin a special diet, and collect the plant during an auspicious time with specific ceremonies and prick the bulb with a gold needle and drink the fluid that emerges at the dose of one cupped palm full in one gulp. Then he should stay in his inner most chamber and practice yoga, sleeping only if necessary on a bed of grass. He will vomit blood and worms and have loose stools full of worms on the third day at which point he should have a bath and drink some milk. On the seventh day, he will become thin, his teeth, nails and hair will fall out, and his skin will flake off at which point he should have a massage and a bath. By the 17th day new teeth, nails, and a luxurious new head of hair will grow and his muscles will start to grow back and he should start to eat more. After six weeks he can leave his innermost chamber for a short time to acclimatize himself, then spend longer periods in the middle one and finally ten days in the outer one until he reaches four months at which point he can go wherever he wants. According to the texts a man who has taken soma will always stay young and beautiful, cannot be harmed by fire, water, poison or weapons and will never be exhausted. Reference Alter, Joseph S. Heaps of health, metaphysical fitness Current Anthropology; Chicago; Feb 1999 For more detailed information on the anthropology of Ayurveda, references, web links, etc. as well as many other articles on the anthropology of medicine please go to www.anthrocode.com
COPYRIGHT 2003 The Townsend Letter Group
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
