Ayurveda is the oldest medical and healing system, science tradition, art, and practice in the world. It's origins have been traced back over 5000 years, to the great texts, evolving from the Vedas, and realized by the Great Sages. The Sanskrit name is composed of the root words ayur, which means life, and veda, which means knowledge. Ayurveda is literally the science of life, and wisdom encompasses the fullness and totality of the experience of being. The Vedas mapped, charted, compiled, and diagrammed, the nature of Nature, the unicity of the expression of body, mind, elements, seasons, aspects, conditions, Self. Ayurveda grows from the Vedic tree, and Vedanta. Vedanta is a non-dual path, practice, philosophy, and way of life. As such, Ayurveda is not holistic in the common use as a concept, which views treatment, approach, and methodology in consideration of the body as a whole, but isolated and separate self. Ayurveda embraces the whole of environment within and without, internal and external, understanding and incorporating all of life as medicine, as all life is One. The microcosm and macrocosm are integrated. Ayurveda is a science, a philosophy, Sat-Darshana, and a dharmic practice. Ayurveda associates wellness with self-knowledge, self-knowledge with realization, and Self-realization with Awareness of True-Self. To realize True-Nature is healing, and healing is the way to Self-realization, Oneness Healing.

Ayurveda does not discriminate between the patient and doctor as separate, or place one above other. A patient is not seen or referred to as 'the other', as is the way of modern medicine. In this way, Ayurveda is a spiritual practice as well as a science, and humbly maintains the respect for patients, all life, and well-being. This allows for, and is itself compassion and true healing. According to Ayurveda, and the Vedas, in helping one, one helps all. This is a spiritual principle that points to a deeper understanding of self and Self, and the perception and Awareness  of relationship to the apparent perceived environment, and all life. With the understanding that separation is illusion, one is at one, as Oneness. As such, that which one is, and all appearances, share and are of the same properties, products, energy, elements, essences, and healing is found in the recognition of this understanding.

The Vedas, the vessel of Ayurveda, recognizes the body as a vessel of True-Self, True-Nature, and a Consciousness vehicle of karma, and Self-realization. When one is young, a process and pattern of discernment, individuation, and protection develops. The personality takes shape through projection. The false-self is shaped for the safety, security, and comfort of acceptance, love, need and belonging. As a result, one identifies with personality, ego, the false-self, and not True-Nature, Presence. The mind creates the illusion of duality, and separation from True-Nature, Presence, when in fact one is never separate from True-Nature, Presence.

The attachment to this identification grows and becomes the illusory basis of being, and the intellect employs great strengths and efforts to maintain this belief. The ability to witness is surrendered to this attachment. Attachment is maintained by resistance. Resistance becomes the tension of avoidance, between the constant longing to rest as Presence, the True-Nature that is universal, present as all, and the suppression of this longing through the attachment to the false-self, an identification with suffering, the body, and the belief of who one is, as separate and isolated.

This illusion of separateness is the root source of the belief of 'other', and the means in which one isolates self into and as suffering. The identification with the false-self is an illusion, as one is always True-Nature, whether there is Awareness of this or not. From this point of view, suffering is a choice. This determines the apparent global scale of suffering, and that suffering is perceived and blamed as originating externally, by every body that experiences it, by means of the experience that one is the body. This is the pattern and mechanism of stress, illness, suffering, dis-harmony, and dis-ease of self and the body.

There is a vulnerability of self required to allow. To allow self to rest as True-Nature, either awakens one to the self-deceptions and suffering, or they are the means. The resistance to the intimacy of longing and love creates conflict, stress, and an increasing need. These stresses are stored in the body-mind, and affect health and well being. They are projected into and affect every relationship. Habits, patterns, tendencies, behaviors, all form around this core conflict, and are projected onto, and expressed, as a global state. This imbalance manifests a fundamental separation wherby internal and external are believed to be separate. As Presence is causeless, this separation is by nature dualistic. As such, the concept of cause and effect becomes the means to identify, re-integrate, restore, balance, be whole, One. The fundamental misunderstanding about who one is, determines choices, and as a result, the stability and wellness of the body. This then extends the need to search, seek, and to restore, what is already and always present.

Indeed there is a pattern, a cycle, whereby one neglects the body as a result of a fundamental misunderstanding about what one is, and what one is not, which brings suffering. One identifies self as the sensations of the body, and this belief separates one from True-Nature. Suffering becomes an identity. It is here the search and seeking externally begins for that which one already is. Whether one is identified as the body or not, imbalances of the body can disrupt clarity. The care of the body is integral for the recognition of what is always here, for clarity, to be aware of Awareness, and to have the capacity and the stability to simply come to rest. Awakening can bring avoidance of the body, and avoidance of the body can itself be the avoidance of awakening. One can have an awakened mind, and not an awakened body if there is no integration or embodiment. 

The residue of our actions and behavior, our thoughts and dissociative living in the trance, reside in and as the body, and arise, surface, for nurturing, care, compassion, as Presence. This is karma. To live in avoidance of the wound, is to live in avoidance of Truth. If unattended or suppressed, these voices will continue to arise, louder and louder, until one pays attention. What is unaddressed in the body, emotionally, physically, spiritually, will grow and progress. Pain becomes chronic, illness becomes disease. All bodies carry the scars and wounds of actions and as the past. Ever present, is the potential to heal and restore, to align and balance, through the conscious Awareness of behavior, movements, patterns and habits, how attached one is, how identified with and determined by the trance one has become, and how present one is as True-Nature. Karma is not absolute. It is Awareness that is listening. 

The illusion of living from the mind and detached from the voice of the body is akin to the body dragging the body along through life, without clarity or integration. Cause and effect is a useful guiding principle that informs bodily being and wellness, and ironically, it is this very principle that is sacrificed and ignored when living by a dualistic and separatist mindset and perspective. Often, the greater the pain or traumas, the greater the impulse or reaction, to become more detached from the body, in avoidance of the wound, and it is here the body revolts. This is to be determined by 'the blind-spot', and this is the path of resistance. While it is often true one seeks false refuge from the perception of an overwhelming moment, if there is no meeting what arises, and no return, one retreats, dissociates, becomes separated, re-identifies and lives in the familiarity and refuge of pain, the wound, and the false-self, as the sufferer.

This separation expands the trance, the identification with the false-self, distances one from healing, and distances one from Awareness of True-Nature. The strategy of the false-self is to believe in the need to abandon, avoid, neglect, to turn from love, compassion, nurturing, wellness. This is how habits, addictions, all self-denying and self-destructive behaviors take root and develop. This is the strategy of self. Believing in the false core belief that one is a victim, unworthy, or undeserving, results as the behavior, choices, and actions, which serve to distance one from healing and clarity. This is not who one is, this is not True-Nature. There is a growing, ever present need for wellness, for attention, for love and care, and all thoughts, the identification as thought, energy and actions, betray and deny these needs. How does one imbalance, unenlighten? Who is this one, and can they be found? This is the inquiry. When one rests as True-Nature, the attention, love, clarity, is available, present, and what arises can be met with and as. This is to close the apparent gap of intimacy. One is in fact those very qualities, and one can embody them. This is the natural state. One is love. One is compassion. Grace and True-Nature are always present to guide, restore and heal, at any and every arising and apparent moment of this apparent life, and one is That.

When one is resting as Awareness, as True-Nature, there is a fundamental shift in the identification of the self and body, and as a result, a shift in the relationship and understanding of suffering and the nature of suffering. The ills, pains, complaints of the body are a dialogue, metaphors, pointers, symbolic representations of an apparent life out of balance. They are a direct line and voice of Truth. The expressions of the body are not intended to be suppressed or vanquished, as modern medicine prescribes. In fact, the entire model and paradigm of Western medicine is rooted in this assumption. The intention is for the self to be maintained by any means necessary, and as such, imbalance and suffering persists. The bodily expressions are in fact intended, required, to be heard and listened to. They are the voice of True-Nature guiding and speaking to the needs of the body, and where attention and the Light of Awareness appears to be absent or needed. Unlike the modern mechanical and materialist model of systems, the essence and nature of Ayurveda is to reconcile cause and effect, the gross and subtle, the mechanical and spiritual, as a non-separatist embodied practice, as living, as life, as True-Nature, and as a means of true healing, wellness, longevity, and Self-Realization.

As wellness is manifest as the balance of the three Dhatus - Kapha, Vata, and Pitta, water, air, and fire, realization of True-Nature is manifest through the balance and equilibrium of the three Gunas, Guna-Samya, the universal principles and tendencies of material nature, and transcending them. The Gunas are Sattva - goodness / vibration, Rajas -passion / mobility, and Tamas - ignorance / inertia. Earth, water, fire, air, space, as well as the self, are all the constellation of the material, objects, the phenomenal, and equilibrium frees one from duality and establishes one as Self. Life is not defined as material existence, but that which is beyond the limitations of the Gunas, as there is but chaitanya, Consciousness. The intention of Ayurveda is to enlighten with the knowledge -veda, of life - ayuh, and realize, awaken, to True-Nature, as one is That. It is precisely the misidentification with the body, and as the body, that is at the root, and the cause, of all dis-ease, and suffering.