Misspellings: This little paragraph is added to cater for misspellings of the word Ayurveda so that those, like me, that do not know how to spell can still get to our pages by using search engines. I hope that I have managed to get all the most common ones: Ayuveda, Ayurweda, Ayurvada, Ayurvida, Ajurveda, Aurveda.

As far as we can determine Ayurveda is the oldest medical discipline on earth. Ayurveda dates back to earlier than 3000BC and is believed to have been handed down by Brahma, the original of all the Gods. Even as far back as 2000 BC records exist that indicates that Ayurveda was already well developed and was catering for many of the modern medical sciences we have today, including psychology.

Ayurveda is a complex Holistic discipline that deals with all aspects of Body, Mind and Soul. Ayurveda even extends well beyond an individual body, mind and soul. Ayurveda medicine practice includes environment, social habits and more.

Ayurveda is as much a philosophy of life and how to live as Ayurveda is a practise of medicinal techniques and theories. Ayurvedic Healing is based on the supposition that all of life is made up of five elements that makes up the substance and place of every atom in the universe, these being: mass, cohesion, space, energy and motion.

Ayurveda practitioners believe that mass or weight comes from the earth, cohesion from water, space from ether, energy from fire and motion from air, making up the five elements constantly referred to in Ayurvedic Healing: Earth, Fire, Water, Air and Ether. 

Keeping these five elements in harmony is central to Ayurvedic Healing and the entire discipline of Ayurveda. Illnesses in Ayurvedic Healing are not confined to the physical and psychological symptoms that are the guidelines of modern medicine. Ayurvedic Healing goes much further than that, constantly monitoring the balance between the five elements even in the absence of otherwise perceived symptoms.

As the observation and diagnoses of these imbalances are very complex a convention of combining and typifying the balance or bias of these five elements was developed many thousand years ago by the creation and adoption of the three Doshas of Ayurveda:

Kapha: a blend of Water and Earth

Vata: blending Ether and Air, and

Pitta: a blend of Fire and Water.

These three Doshas allows a Ayurveda practitioner to classify a person as having a particular bias as it is rare to have all three in balance at all times in a single person. 

In Ayurveda these imbalances or biases roughly classifies the subject person. Vata people are mostly energetic and thin, Kaphas are slower moving, deliberate and strong and Pitta people are leaders and inclined to a medium build.

Although the above mentioned imbalances are accepted as part of the necessary makeup of the individual, an Ayurveda practitioner will also spend time and effort to ensure that these biases do not imply a lack of harmony or synergy. Ayurveda regards disharmony of the five elements as the root of all evil, believing that this disharmony can lead to unhappiness and even disease. 

To this end an Ayurvedic practitioner will prescribe treatments that range from diet to exercise, meditation and herbal medicines, lifestyle changes and massage, invasive laxatives and emetics and gentle aromatherapy, to name but a few. Ayurveda treatments are varied and cover almost every area of physical, mental and spiritual healing known to man. 

Ayurveda may be regarded as well tried and thousands of years old but Ayurveda is so all encompassing and complex that there are very few Ayurveda practitioners that have in depth knowledge of this discipline. It is strongly recommended that any Ayurveda treatment is only attempted on the advice of an appropriate and responsible professional.