Parenting with ayurveda

Ayurveda holds the secret to keep your children healthy, balanced and happy. Ayurveda is the traditional holistic system of healing that has been practiced in India for over four thousand years. The term Ayurveda comes from the Sanskrit  “ayur” meaning “life” or “longevity”, and, “veda”, meaning “knowledge” or “wisdom”; it is therefore often translated as “knowledge of living” or “the science of long life”.

This is a sacred science, not only because of its aim to balance the mind and body, but also because it supports one’s spiritual journey. It is said that Ayurveda has first been realized by the Seers (seekers of truth) who lived in the Himalayas, and then evolved among the Brahmin sages of ancient India. They observed the fundamentals of life and organized their observations into a system. Ayurveda was their gift to us, an oral tradition passed down from generation to generation.

Ayurvedic knowledge of herbal medicine, nutrition, psychology, body work, purification therapies, and spirituality can be seen as emanating from ancient enlightened Vedic culture.

Since Ayurvedic medicine employs the language of Nature to explain the principles of health and natural living, it is quite literally the language of the natural world. The language of nature is an energetic system of elements and biological forces. It is based on things that are observable, such as our way of experiencing things as either dry or damp, light or heavy, hot or cold, sweet or sour, rough or smooth, and so on. Therefore, to speak this language, you must cultivate direct observation with all the senses, including intuition.

As a parent you can learn about Ayurveda by observing how the five elements interact and use your intuition to know how the elements combine to form the six tastes and the three doshas (body constitutional types) then you can experience a deeper feeling as to why certain foods or herbs are balancing for particular doshas and not others.

This 5,000-year-old system of medicine empowers people to be proactive about their health and their children’s health as it puts a big focus on ‘prevention’.  It focuses on the individual rather than on the disease itself. In North America, we have lost this medical tradition with more focus on the cure for diseases.

We all know that each individual is unique with different body types, emotional make-up and behavior and not surprising when one watches the diversity of nature. We are part of nature so if we forget to observe what our own bodies are telling us, we are not listening to nature and we can lose our health.

Ayurveda teaches us to reach for our full potential. It is a natural way to incorporate good health practices into your family and child’s life, building a solid foundation for well-balanced physical, emotional, mental and spiritual