According to Tantra
expressing the mantra with your attention in the chakra can open up energy
that may be congested in that region. The mantras for each of the seven ener gy centers are as follows:We encouraged Molly to chant the sound for the heart chakra several
times per day. Two months later, Molly wrote me a happy letter that began,
“I have no more pain!” Her angina attacks had stopped a week after she
began using the heart chakra mantra and have not returned. Delight and
relief came through in her writi ng. She feels comfortable in activity now—
most angina sufferers are extrem ely anxious about exerting themselves, even
slightly . This summer she took a bold step and enrolled as a full-time college
student. She tells me with pride  that she is the oldest under graduate in the
history of her college. How does Ayurveda explain the effects of using sounds to heal? Intellectually , you cannot possibly analyze all the vibrations that influence
your life. The oscillation of the atoms comprising your cells, the beating of
your heart, the rhythms of the planets—each of these influence  your life in
subtle but profound ways. According to Ayurveda the many different
vibrations that comprise our lives sometimes get “out of synch.” This
disharmony that results sows the seeds for illness. In that event, Ayurveda tells us to apply a specifically chosen sound, like a
mold or template slipped over the disturbed cells coaxing them back into
line, not physically , but by repairing the sequence of sound at the heart of
every cell. In the case of a disorder like angina, we know that the brain sends
specific signals that constrict the arteries, working through messengermolecules that stimulate nerve and muscle cells in the middle layers of the
blood vessels. Molly’ s spasms were being caused by some kind of improper
message. Certain medicines take advantage of this fact by inhibiting the
brain’ s chemical messengers so that their message never gets delivered. But
the real source of these molecules is the mind; if one went directly to the
thinking process and corrected the brain’ s impulses, then treatment should be
even more ef fective and gentler . This is the purpose of healing sounds. The degree of healing achieved by sound varies from person to person. After several years of prescribing them, we have witnessed hundreds of
cases where patients with heart disease, cancer , multiple sclerosis, and even
AIDS have reported alleviation of pain, anxiety , and various other troubling
symptoms. Thes e are all anecdotal reports, meaning that they have not been
studied statistically using the proper controls needed for scientific validation. Therefore, they cannot be offered as proof that this subtle healing technique
is effective; by the standards of scientific medicine, there is a long way to go
before ironclad  proof is available. On the other hand, the Ayurvedic
approach is rooted in thousand s of years of experience, and using it can
supplement the benefits of standard medical treatment. Discovering that the human body is fundamentally a web of sound comes
as a revelation,  and when put into practice, the theory yields remarkable
results. In a matter of a few hours, one’s self-image complet ely changes;
people often report dramatic transformations in their powers of perception. Using a healing  sound is a perfect illustration of the Ayurvedi c saying that
“the world is as you are.” When  your perception opens up “in here,” so does
everything “out there.”
HEALING VISUALIZA TION—USING ATTENTION AND
INTENTION
Focusing your attention on an area in your body that needs healing and
introducing an intention is a powerful therapeutic technique. Ayurveda says,
“Whatever we put our attention on grows stronger in our lives.” If you spend
two hours a day at the fitness center building up your body , your muscleswill grow  but your grades in school may fall. If you spend your evenings and
weekends at the office, your business may grow but your family
relationships may suf fer. Ayurveda states that you can use your attention to activate healing in your
body . You can change your mind and body by consciously directing your
awareness to the aspect you believe needs attention. Another principle of Ayurveda is, “Intention has infinite organizing
power .” This means that just being clear on a desired outcome can have a
pronounced effect on achieving your goal, without necessarily having to
handle all the details. When you want to throw a baseball, you do not have to
analyze the contraction and release of every muscle in your body—you
simply have the intention and your inner intelligence coordinates the tens of
millions of activities that need to occur for you to throw the ball. The release
of sugar from your liver, the metabolism of the sugar into energy, changes in
blood flow, and your breathing pattern are organized by nature without your
conscious control. If you had to consciously pay attention to the details, you
would never accomplish anything. You can use these principles to enliven the healing forces in your body ,
even though you may not have realized you can influence them. Awakening
your inner healer requires a different set of procedures than the way you
usually accomp lish things. When you want to lift your hand, you send a
signal from your brain to your spinal cord causing certain muscles to
contract and others to relax. When you want to lower your blood pressure or
improve your immune function, you must use a subtler approa ch that relies
upon your attention and intention. Try the followi ng visualization  and see if you are able to influence
functions in your body that you may have previously not thought possible. Healing Visualization
Sit quietly with your eyes closed for a few moments. Then bring your
attention into your heart and acknowledge all the things for which you feelgratitude. Now have the intention to release any grievance, regrets, or hostility you
may be carrying  in your heart or mind. Later , if you so choose, you can bring
those grievance s back into your consciousness. But for the time of this
meditation let them go. Now , for a moment or two, silen tly repeat the phrase “ Thy will be done .”
Address this to your own visio n of universal consciousness, whether you
refer to it as God, or Spirit, or in any other way. Repeat “Thy will be done ,”
like a mantra. Have the intention of quieting your internal dialogue—and allow your
attention to move through your body . If you discover an area of tension,
intend that it should be relaxed. Next, bring your attention to your breathing. At first, just observe your
breath—then intend for your breath to slow down. Move awareness to your heart. Become aware of its beat, as sound and as
feeling. Have an intention for your heart rate to slow down. Now bring
attention to your hands. Feel the throbbing of your heartbeat in your hands. Feel the tingling and warmth that emanates from your heart. Intend to
increase the blood flow and the temperature of your hands. Move your awar eness to your eyes. Feel the throbbing of your heartbeat in
your eyes, and then in your face. Now let your awareness move freely through your body . Feel the warmth,
tingling, and throbbing of your heartbeat wherever you choose. If you find
an area of your body that you believe needs healing, intend warmth for that
area. If you are not aware of such an area in your body , just return awareness
to your heart. But bring the throbbing warmth of your heartbeat to any point
that you wish to nourish and heal. Now , with awareness and intention of the healing area of your body ,
repeat for several minutes these two words, like a mantra: healing andtransformation . Move awareness back to your heart, without intention now. Just be aware
of your heartbeat. Then move  awareness to your breath. After a few
moments, open your eyes to complete the healing meditation. This meditation first raises the temperature and blood flow to areas of the
body that require nourishing attention, and then introduces the intention of
healing. This is a very powerful meditation, and it’s important to remember
to go through the whole sequence, including the intentions of gratitude and
relinquishing of grievances. Practice the healing meditation as often as
possible. With time, you’ll be able to experience warmth and tingling
wherever you choose and be able to activate healing energy in your body
through attention and intention. MARMA  THERAPY—STIMULA TING THE POINTS
WHERE MIND AND BODY  MEET
Because there is intelligence in every cell, the mind and body meet
everywhere, not just in the brain. In fact, once you strip off its physical
mask, a cell is really a junction point between matter and consciousness, a
station where the quantum mechanical body and the outside world intersect. Certain junction points are more vital than others, however . Ayurveda makes
use of certain extremely sensitiv e points located on the skin. There are 107
of these marmas , as they are called. Though invisible to the eye, marmas are
accessible through the sense of touch and are considered critical for
maintaining balance throughout the body . A massage technique called
marma therapy stimulates them; it is offered at our Center and once taught
can be practiced at home. Ancient Ayurvedic surgical texts warn the physician never to cut across
the marmas, which have been mapped out precisely according to site and
function. This is similar to but not exactly the same as the meridians mapped
out by Chinese acupuncture; marma therapy predates the Chinese approach
and is likely its direct ancestor . Avoiding damage to the marmas is a wiseprecaution. Although they do not usually intersect with prominent blood
vessels or nerves, marmas are just as vital, since they mark out where the
flow of inner intelligence is moving, indicating spots of maximum
sensitivity and awareness. STIMULA TING THE MARMAS
By stimulating the marmas, the connection between consciousness and
physiology can be enlivened. There are various ways to activa te a marma. One is through the gentle yoga movements prescribed in part III under
exercise. As you move your body in a yoga position, you are gently
stretching specific marma points. The oil drip on the forehead used in
panchakarma (called shirodhara) is profoundly soothing because the warm
oil lands directly on a major marma point in the center of the forehead. Similarly , the daily oil massage (abhyanga) taught under daily routine
reaches all the marmas on the skin. This contact is immediately registered
throughout the nervous system . Marma points thus allow you to “talk”
directly to Vata dosha and keep it in balance. Since the marmas are not super ficial but penetrate deep into the system,
they can be stimulated mentally . Meditation enlivens all the marmas, but
particularly the three “great marmas” (Mahamarma ) situated in the area of
the head , heart, and lower abdom en. These are not located on the surface of
the skin and have to be stimulated by going directly to the quantum
mechanical body; they are also the marmas you want to stimulate most,
since they have a strong influence over the lesser marmas. CLINICAL  MARMA  THERAPY
At the Chopra Center a specia l marma therapy is given that includes
instruction for home treatment. Marma points are identified with each of the
three doshas and stimulated with an appropriate essential oil mixture. A
patient is first diagnosed according to specific imbalances. Let’s say that a
chronic headache has been associated with imbalance of Prana Vata, thesubdosha of Vata located in the head. Trained technicians would gently
massage in precise order those marma points that correspond to Prana Vata,
applying prescribed herbalized oils. Patients find this treatment extremely
relaxing, with some reporting alleviation of pain and other longstanding
chronic symptoms. MARMAS AT HOME
Since marmas have to be located with a trained eye, being slightly
different from person to person , the clinical therapy cannot be taught in a
book. You can take advantage of marmas in a more general way, however . A
cluster of the most important points is located on the soles of the feet. To
enliven them, a gentle foot massage with sesame oil lasting three to five
minutes every day is recomme nded. A good time for this is at bedtime,
because the soothing effect on the nervous system, and on Vata dosha in
particular , makes this massage a good prelude to sleep. Also, when you do your daily abhyanga, pay special attention to the three
important marmas illustrated on page 181. One is located between your eyebrows, extending to the center of the
forehead. Gently  massaging this area with eyes closed is good for worry ,
headaches, mental strain, and other upper Vata problems. The one connected
to the heart (its actual location is just below the sternum, where  the rib cage
ends) is good for settling upset emotions. The one on the lower abdomen,
about four inches below the navel, is good for constipation, gas, and other
lower Vata problems. Use a light circular motion, taking a few minutes at
each site. The forehead marma can be selected by itself as an aid to falling
asleep at night, as long as you make sure that you never press hard or rush—
that would tend to disturb your Vata rather than inducing it to be more
settled.Three important marma points to massage at home. ACCESSING THE BLISS OF  NATURE
If you think about an experience  of joy—the birth of a child, the sight of a
glorious sunset, or an alpine lake at dawn—and then carry your feelings
beyond a fixed moment, you arrive at a new state called “pure joy.”
Ayurveda tells us that pure joy is a fundamental quality of life. In Sanskrit
this quality is called ananda , which is usually translated as “bliss.”
With the popula rity of Eastern teachings in the West, people have come to
use the word bliss to express many kinds of positiv e emotions. To be precise,bliss is too abstract to be expe rienced by itself. By analogy , how do you
experience being intelligent? Like intelligence, bliss is an abstraction. It
resides in the quantum mechan ical body in pure form and bubbles to the
surface only under the right conditions. You cannot see or touch the
thousands of processes in brain  and body that need to be coordinated in
order to create bliss, but there is a definite feeling—pure joy— that can be
felt and which proves that bliss exists. According to the Ayurvedic sages, all of our joys stem from pure joy. It is
the bright light we do not see directly but only by reflection in smaller joys. These lesser lights could not exist without the greater one. Even in Western
society , where money , physic al beauty , and success are equated with
happiness, everyone has unexpected moments when life seems absolutely
perfect and full of joy. If you could live in a state of pure joy all the time,
you would have the practical essence of perfect health. TUNING INT O NA TURE’S GIFTS
Nature provides  a rich source of energy and nourishment that has healing
effects on both body and mind. Open yourself to the gifts of Nature through
your five senses:
Walk barefoot on the earth for a few minutes every day . Have your
attention on your feet and the earth with the intention to absorb
nourishment from the earth. Walk along natural bodies of water . Allow the cooling, coherent
influence of water to infuse your being. Allow the light and warmth of the sun to permeate you. Acknowledge
the ener gy-giving force of the sun, the source of all life on earth. Take a walk where there is abundant vegetation and deeply inhale the
breath of plants. The ideal time to receive the life force of plants is right
before dawn and right after sunset.Gaze into the stars at night. Allow your awareness to fill the heavens
and the cosmos to fill your awareness. THE NA TURALNESS OF  BLISS
Each dosha expresses a differen t flavor of joy, and in the state of perfect
balance, one would be able to experience them all:
Vata— stimulating, exhilarating, alert, cheerful, optimistic, flexible
Pitta— content, joyous, chivalr ous, pleasant, clear -minded
Kapha— steady , strong, forgiving, courageous, gener ous, affectionate,
serene
As in most cases, Vata is the leader of the other doshas. It transmits joy
through the nervous system, causing changes in cells throughout the body . But without balance among all three doshas, your physiology cannot support
pure joy for extended periods. A major goal in Ayurveda is to change this by
cleaning the windows of inner perception. Our normal waking-state
perception of ourselves is usually ill-equipped to realize how much joy
exists inside us. Because conven tional psycholo gy concentrates so much on abnormal
states, on neuroses and psychoses, it has had little to say about the effects of
joy, and internal medicine has said nothing. Moments of ecstasy have
certainly been prized—by poets, religious figures, and ordinary people—but
the connection with higher states of health was not made until the
psychologist Abraham Maslow , working in the 1950s and 1960s, began to
study a group of high achievers whom he called “self-actualized.” Such
individuals, Maslow quickly discovered, led extremely diverse and highly
individual lives. On the surface, there was no obvious resemblance between
a successful entrepreneur , a famous novelist, and a great conductor . However , beneath their differen t lifestyles Maslow found that many had had
what he termed “peak experiences,” moments of intense well-being and joy .During their peak moments, these people felt a total transformation of
their personal reality . Obstacles  that seemed huge in ordinary  life became
laughable. An overwhelming sense of power flooded through them. They felt
deeply calm and in tune with life. The most talented athletes and performers of all kinds will testify to
moments when they effortlessly exceed their known skills. As women’ s
basketball champion Patsy Neal describes it, “There are moments of glory
that go beyond human expect ation, beyond the physical and emotional
ability of the individual. Something unexplainable takes over and breathes
life into the known life. The athlete goes beyond herself; she transcends the
natural—she almost floats through the performance, drawi ng on forces she
has not previously been aware of.”
A peak experience, Maslow found, was extremely therapeutic. His
patients attributed major life changes to realizations that had suddenly come
to them in peak moments: newfound confidence and creativity , unexpected
solutions to baffling dilemmas, and a sureness that no fear could touch them. In some cases, long-standing depression and anxiety neuroses vanished
overnight, never to return. Maslow was tremendously impressed, and his pioneering study vastly
extended the range of positive experiences that came to be considered
normal for the human psyche. However , he did not find a way to give
anyone a peak experience, nor did he find its source. Without a technique for
transcending, he could only wait for those occasional moments when the
curtains part and the psyche sees beyond its ordinary waking state. SUPERFLUIDITY
Not long ago, clinical psychologists discovered an effortless state that
creative people often fall into, popularly called “the flow.” During periods of
“flow ,” work projects seem to progress of their own accord, and even the
deepest concent ration requires no effort. As long as they are in the flow,
creative people of all types feel a pleasurable sense of being lifted far above
their ordinary capabilities. The drawback to the flow is that it cannot betaught to others  or further deve loped in oneself. Fewer than 10 percent of
ordinary people are said to experience it, and those who do are in the flow
only intermitten tly. Still, this represented an advance over the minuscule
group of self-realized people, which Maslow had estimated as less than one-
tenth of 1 percent of the general population. It was not until science began seriously to investigate meditation that the
elusiveness of these phenomena was fully explained. It turns out that a peak
experience or a sensation of being in the flow points to a deeper , more
sustained state researchers have labeled “superfluidity .” Superfluidity
resembles the flow in that less effort is required in activity , but the effort is
reduced to an absolute minimum. In the superfluid state, action becomes
completely automatic—the doer merges into his task, the thinker into his
thoughts, the artist into his art. Here is a firsthand description from a meditator . “A soft but strong feeling
of blissful evenness is present most of the time in both mind and body . Physically , it is experienced as an extremely delightful liveliness throughout
the body. This evenness is so deep and stable that it is maintained in the face
of great  activity—it cushions one against all disruptions and makes all
activity easy and enjoyable.”
The term superfluidity comes from a class of peculiar materials called
superfluids that were discovered  in physics more than fifty years ago. When
liquid helium, for example, is cooled so low that it approaches within a few
degrees of absolute zero, -273 degrees C, it acquires the ability to flow up
the sides of its container , to pass through holes almost infinitely small, and,
if set in motion, to flow forever . The reason for this mystifyin g change in
behavior is the cooling effect itself. At a low enough temperature, the helium
atoms stop moving around in random fashion and instead become almost
completely orderly, like an army that falls into parade-ground formation
after milling around the field. Supercooled helium atoms are so orderly that
they reach a frictionless state of superflow . A similar property of supercooled
materials is superconductivity , the ability to conduct electricity without
friction. Superconductivity also seems to defy normal laws of nature, but infact it is a special property that arises quite naturally as long as certain
special conditions are met. In the same way, superfluidity in awareness appears when meditation
“cools down” the thinking process. The mind discovers more orderliness at
quieter levels of the thinking process until it nears the total orderliness of
pure silence without slipping completely into it. At that exact point, the
quantum boundary of the mind, it is still possible to think and act, but
following different rules. One experiences effortless expansion and a kind of
“friction-less” creativity that cannot be discovered in the ordinary waking
state. AROMA THERAPY—BALANCE THROUGH THE SENSE OF
SMELL
Each of your five senses is form ed by a different vibration in the quantum
mechanical body . Vibrations of light falling on your retina cause a response
that is quite distinct from the vibrations of touch that greet your fingers. This
is how the “ener gy soup” of the universe gets sorted out into distinct sights,
sounds, smells, and so on. The three doshas are also precisely tuned in to
nature. Each one prefers to respond to one or more of the five senses:
Vata— hearing and touch
Pitta— sight
Kapha— taste and smell
These preferences can be seen very easily in people whose body  types are
dominated by one dosha. Pure Vatas are extremely sensitive to loud noise
and have skin that feels the slightest touch. Pitta types, particularly if fair-
haired and light-skinned, cannot bear bright sunlight for any length of time
and are also very responsive to visual beauty . Kaphas, the earthiest of types,
love the atmosph ere of hearth and home; to them, the tastes and smells of the
kitchen are especially gratifying.Since we all possess Vata, Pitta, and Kapha, these preferences are relative. Any body type can respond to marma therapy , for example, which operates
through the sense of touch; it is not restricted to Vatas alone. The ancient
Ayurvedic texts  provide us with long lists of sensory stimuli  that help to
balance the doshas, from looki ng at the full moon and walking by water
(very good for Pitta), to listeni ng to the wind in the trees (very good for
Vata). Out of this knowledge, a special treatment called aromatherapy has
been developed; our patients find it absolutely delightful to under go. THE VOCABULAR Y OF AROMAS
Each dosha can be balanced with aromas that are matched to it. The
matching is done by the rasas , or tastes, found in food. I will have a lot to
say about the rasas in part III under diet. For the moment, note that there are
six tastes in Ayurveda, the usual four of sweet, sour, salty, and bitter , plus
astringent (the dry, mouth-p uckering taste associated with beans,
pomegranate, and turmeric) and pungent (spicy). Sweet foods  are held to
balance both Vata and Pitta, as does the sweet smell of a rose. Sour tastes
aggravate Pitta, and so do sour smells, along with bad smells in general. Moist, earthy smells increase Kapha. Bitter and astringent smells particularly
aggravate Vata. The language of taste is limited to sweet, sour, salty, bitter , astringent, and
pungent. The nose, on the other hand, understands a vast vocabulary of
smells, amounting to about ten thousand different odors if you have a well-
trained beak. The odors that can be detected by the nose must first dissolve
in the moisture of the nasal tissue and are then passed on by specialized
olfactory cells straight to the hypothalamus in the brain. (These olfactory
cells are in fact nerves, the only ones exposed to the air in the whole body ,
although they are protected by their thin covering of mucus. They are also
the only nerves that regenerate, replacing themselves about once every three
weeks.) The fact that smells go straight to the hypothalamus is very significant, for
this tiny organ is responsible for regulating dozens of bodily functions,including temperature, thirst, hunger, blood-sugar levels, grow th, sleeping,
waking, sexual arousal, and emotions such as anger and happiness. To smell
anything is to send an immediat e message to “the brain’ s brain, ” and from it
to the whole body . At the same time, the message of an odor goes to the brain’ s limbic
system, which processes emotio ns, and to an area called the hippocampus,
the part of the brain responsible for memory , which is why smells bring back
past mem ories so vividly . Kitchen smells, flowers, and perfumes all trigger a
sense of déjà vu. The gardens you once walked through have turned into
you, thanks to the lingering impression of their fragrance on your brain. USING AROMA THERAPY
In Ayurveda, aromas are used to send specific signals that balance the
three doshas. Generally speaking:
Vata is balan ced with a mixtur e of warm, sweet, sour aromas like basil,
orange, r ose geranium, clove, and other spices. Pitta is balanced by a mixtur e of sweet, cool aromas like sandalwood, rose,
mint, cinnamon, and jasmine. Kapha , similar  to Vata, is balanced by a mixtur e of warm aromas, but with
spicier overtones, like juniper , eucalyptus, camphor , clove, and marjoram. Place about ten drops of aromatic oil in hot water and fill the room with a
light scent for a half-hour; you can extend this time as long as you want,
however . (Special candle-powered aroma pots are available, but using a
teacup and miniature coffee warmer is just as effective.) Bedtim e is good for
inhaling the aroma, since the various sights and sounds of the day tend to
cover over smel ls and block their effects. The aroma helps many people fall
asleep and can be left in the room all night. There is also a medical side to aromatherapy . Patients who have been
diagnosed with specific imbalan ces are given oils for the subdosha that hasgone out of balance. It is actually possible to restore balance with aroma if
you know what subdosha you want to balance and which aroma pacifies it. Sometime in February , Betsy Allen picked up a bad chest cold that kept
her in bed for a week and refused to go away . Even after she was up and
around, a dry, hacking cough continued to plague her. It lingered a month,
then two, and when it reached the third month without resolving itself, she
came for Ayurvedic evaluation. She was diagnos ed as a Vata-Pit ta type with a localized Vata imbalance in
the lining of her lungs. This can be treated in several ways. Her physician
chose aromathe rapy, prescribing a specific Vata oil she was to inhale at
night. Betsy went home, not knowing what to expect. “I didn’ t wait until bedtime,” she recalls, “because my curiosi ty got the
better of me. I just boiled up a teacup of water , put in a few drops of this
sweet-smelling oil, and leaned over to sniff. The reaction in my body was
very dramatic and totally unexpected. It was as if every cell, starting at the
top of my head down to my toes, suddenly sprang to life. I just stood there
taking in deep breaths one after another—I couldn’ t get enough of that
smell! “That night I used the aroma in the proper way, lying down in bed, and the
same exhilarating energy came back again. My mind said this was an
outrageous result to be getting from a smell , but my body was convinced.”
Very soon Betsy  stopped coughing and fell asleep more easily than she had
in months. Without accurate diagnosis, aromatherapy is very general: it may possibly
placate a symptom or merely seem pleasantly relaxing. We have been
surprised at times when migraine headache, back pain, skin rash, and
insomnia that have resisted other treatments, often for long periods of time,
have responded to aromas. This testifies to the truth of the Ayurvedic
principle that anything can be used as medicine if you know the patient well
enough.HOW  TO LEARN AROMA THERAPY
This technique requires no instruction other than what aroma oil to use. For those who cannot come in for medical evaluation, it is only possible to
follow your dominant dosha—generally the one you are trying to pacify . You
can order Vata, Pitta, or Kapha oils from the Internet source given on page
378; aroma pots and dif fusers are also available. MUSIC THERAPY—MELODIES TO BALANCE NA TURE
Even as a child you probably experienced the influence that music can
have on your body and mind. The lullaby your mother sang to you at
bedtime helped you fall asleep. Songs at summer camp connec ted you with
traditions going back generatio ns. Singing in the Christmas choir inspired
you. Ayurveda recog nizes that music can be used therapeutically to balance
body and mind. Patients in our Center spend time every day listening to
melodies that balance their doshas. Music therapy can provide a
sophisticated method for changing physiology . Music is more than
“soothing” or “rousing.” Why do we listen to it in the first place? For
pleasure, of course, but all pleasures change the body in some way. Ordinarily we do not measure our blood pressure to see how Bach or Mozart
might be affecting it, but if you wanted to lower your blood pressure,
listening to soft, slow classical music is considered very good medicine. MUSIC AS MEDICINE
The fact that music can be a therapy came home to me in New Delhi at a
conference for doctors on the clinical uses of music. At one point, a woman
Ayurvedic physician stood up and announced that rather than talking about
it, she would demonstrate what music therapy was all about. She asked us to listen for a few minutes while she sang some Vedic
melodies that specifically balan ce Vata. We closed our eyes as her voicesounded with a pulsating, exotic refrain that was very beguiling. The singing
doctor then asked us to take the pulse of the person sitting next to us. When
we did, every person reported a marked decrease in pulse rate from the norm
of seventy to eighty beats a minute. Then she sang a quicker melody based
on a different raga, or sequence of tones. Again we listene d for a few
minutes and took the pulse of the person next to us. Uniformly , the pulse rate
had jumped above the norm. In effect, our bodies were being manipulated by
sound in the direction our doctor wanted. This basic technique, with dozens
of variations keyed to different  parts of the body , constitutes  the medical
knowledge of music therapy . What lies behind it is the concept of balanced
sound, vibrations that settle the doshas. As with tastes, colors, and smell s, a dosha is balanced by certain tones and
disturbed by others. Playing fast or slow, tuning the instruments sharp or flat,
and devising intricate rhythmic patterns are all techniques for changing the
listener ’s respon se. Vedic musical texts have specified which ragas are
appropriate for morning, noon, evening, and other times of day. When Vata
is arouse d to a peak by the busyness of work at four o’clock in the afternoon,
for exam ple, music can begin the transition toward the more relaxed
functioning of early evening. When properly played, certain melodies are
said to have universal effects. Our bodies are responding with changes that
mirror the varying rhythms of nature. It is not just your pulse that calms down in the evening, after all; every
plant and animal reacts according to its own evening cycles, too. Vedic
music therapy embodies the fundamental vibrations that pulsate through
nature at every moment. USING MUSIC THERAPY
Music therapy forms a standard part of the programs at our Center . For
home use, a set of tapes or comp act discs can be ordered on the Internet (see
p. 378) and played in segments throughout the day. If you are having
difficulty gettin g energized in the morning, invigorating music can beplayed. If you are having trouble turning down your mental activity at night,
soothing sounds can be helpful. We have found both classical
Indian music and contemporary  adaptations to be very helpful  in restoring
mind body balance. Just as the turning point from season to season makes your doshas
especially vulnerable to imbalance (causing spring colds and late-summer
allergies), your body is also sensitive to different times of the day. Bodily
functions all have peaks at certain hours and troughs at others. Music
therapy balances these into one continuous stream of rising and falling
activity , elimina ting extreme swings and rough transitions. If you try to go to
sleep but can’t because your mind is still racing with unfinished business
from the day, you are witnessin g the absence of a smooth transition. This is
what music therapy can correct.You can benefit from ten minutes of music therapy:
As a gentle wakeup in the morning
After a meal to settle digestion
Just before bedtime as an aid to sleep
During the recovery period when you are sick
The best way to listen is by sitting still with your eyes closed. Let your
attention stay easily on the melody . If your mind wanders, bring it gently
back to the musi c. When you are ready to get up, turn off the tape and sit for
a minute or two in silence. If you are tryin g to lose weig ht, listening to five minutes of Kapha
balancing music several times daily will help increase your metabolism. If
you are having trouble with irritability or heartburn, try listening to Pitta
calming music. Whenever you are feeling anxious or worried, allowing your
attention to stay easily and comfortably with Vata balancing music helps
settle this turbulent dosha. Find music that resonates with your nature. It can be classical Western
music, traditio nal Indian ragas, Australian aboriginal rhythms, or
contemporary instrumentals. Find the vibrations that are most nourishing to
you and tune in to the effects the sounds have on your physiology . If you feel
pleasantly refreshed, light, and alert, the music is working. OceanofPDF .comCHAPTER 8
FREEDOM FROM ADDICTIONS
Looked at starkly , our society is becoming more addicted every  year. High-
tech medicine, public campaigns  to “Just Say No,” and a multib illion-dollar
rehabilitation industry have not solved this crushing social problem. For
every encouraging trend, there seems to be a discouraging backlash. The
overall rate of cigarette smoking has declined by about 15 percent from its
height in 1960, but over 50 million Americans continue to smoke, and
selected groups, especially teenage girls and working-class males, are
smoking in record numbers. (As a result, female cases of lung cancer
continue to rise.) It is estimated that 70 percent of cigarette smokers who
begin as teenagers will continue smoking for forty years. Alcohol consum ption has switched from hard liquor to beer and wine,
but alcoholism itself has filtere d down to shockingly young ages; many
junior high schools have been forced to run anti-alcohol campaigns. Alcohol and drug treatment programs exert mighty efforts to keep their
participants free from addiction, but their success is limited. Hard drugs
have proliferated alarmingly , and the connection between drugs  and violent
crime is at an all-time high. Again, young people are becoming involved—
the sale of “crac k” (smokable, synthetic cocaine) by school-age children is
the latest, deeply troubling trend. ROOTED IN MEMOR Y
The essence of quantum healing is that the memory of perfection cannot
be lost, only covered over. Looking at someone who is addicted to alcohol,
cigarettes, or drugs, it is appare nt that a serious loss of balance is present,
and that clear , healthy messages from the quantum mechanical body are
either extremely distorted or nonexistent. What can Ayurveda do to improvethis situation? First, we explain addictions in a new way, as a distortion of
intelligence existing at a very deep level in the addict. Instead of arguing over whether  addiction is physical or mental,  acquired
or inher ited, we point out that at the quantum level, all of these influences
merge. What Ayurveda calls smriti , or memory , controls all the choices we
make as biological organisms. In order for a cell to change, it must consult
the blueprint inside itself where all its memories, functions, and tendencies
are stored. If this blueprint is distorted, then a distorted cell will result. One of my most vivid memorie s is of Walter, a young black man who
was raised in the slums of South Boston, mostly in the streets. He dropped
out of school at 16 and joined the army the day he turned 18. Shipped to
Vietnam, he saw active combat and emer ged without being wounded, but
when he returne d home two years later, he was addicted to heroin, which
many soldiers had used to make the war less traumatic. Unlike most
soldiers, howeve r, Walter did not have a good reason to kick his habit when
he got home. Eventually the police caught up with him, and under court
orders he became a patient at the local Veterans Administration hospital. At the outset, the doctors’  main concern with Walter was simply to
detoxify him. Normally , he would have received little extra attention
afterward. But while he was recovering, I began to visit him as a staff
doctor at the facility. It was clear to me that Walter was an unusual case. Despite his desperate situatio n, Walter had retained hope and was
courageously willing to fight his habit. He progressed rapidly under
treatment, and a year after his detoxification he was holding down a steady
job and talking eagerly about his future dreams and plans. This future never materialized. One day Walter’s car broke down, forcing
him to take the subway to work , which he hadn’ t done in several months. He boarded a train to Dorch ester, an antiquated line with decrepit,
screeching equip ment. Walter was bothered by the loud noise and couldn’ t
manage to ignore it. It was a sweltering July day, and the fan was broken. Within a few minutes of being shut up in the stifling car, he found the train
unbearable. In a matter of minutes he was extremely agitated,  and by thetime he got off, he was complet ely irrational. Nothing Walter did made his
agitation subside. The next day, when he was brought back to the hospital,
he was hooked on heroin worse  than before. This time, he had no will to
recover . My notes read: “What happened to this man? A chemical explanation for
the train incident is not sufficient. I keep thinking of him wearing his
pinstriped business suit, confidently outfitted for a new life, but then having
to step onto the train that he rode when he was troubled and addicted. In
some treacherous twist of memory , the past came back, and with it came his
craving. Where did the craving hide out for a year before it returned? The
cells in everyone’ s body come and go, but their disappearance is not enough
to break  the spell that has the addict in its grip. In some way that medicine
is just beginning to unravel, a cell’s memory is able to outlive the cell
itself.”
If this is true, then one has to change the blueprint in memory to rid
oneself of the addiction. It is not enough just to remove the physical toxins
from the cells, to counsel the addicted person, or to try to teach him
different behavi or patterns. These steps are worth pursuing for their own
sake, but the addiction is ultimately rooted in memory , and there  is where it
must be uprooted. A HANDS-OFF  CURE
As it stands now, typical programs for treating addicted people employ
highly confrontational tactics, emphasizing the need for constant vigilance
to guard  against the possible return of the all-powerful habit. “The monkey
is on your back,” the addict is told, “and he’ll be there for the rest of your
life.” The rationale for this insistence is that compulsive addicts will never
be cured until they are turned into compulsive abstainers. In Ayurveda our emphasis is exactly the opposite. The cornerstone of our
addiction program is that the addict will give up his habit automatically
when offered a greater source of satisfaction. We hold that the source ofaddiction is a search for satisfaction. Alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs cause
untold damage, but their users derive some kind of pleasure from them, or
at least relief from the massive stress that they would otherwise feel. Addicts maintai n their habits for want of a way out. Bouts of guilt, shame,
remorse, and self-accusation do very little to help. But by exposing their minds to a greater source of satisfac tion, the
natural tendency would be to head away from the addiction, because the
greater satisfaction is more appealing. Support for this new view  has existed
for almost twenty years. Going back many years, studies in the United
States and Europe have repeate dly shown that when addicted people are
taught to meditate, their level of anxiety decreases, pulling down with it
their use of alcohol, cigarettes, and other drugs. If the addiction  is caught at
an early stage, a large proportion of subjects will stop abusing  substances
altogether . This is a very important point, because the early stage is where
most cures are possible. By removing the distractions of stress, meditation renews the nervous
system’ s memory of balance. Repeated meditation, day after day, jogs the
memory again and again, until in time the cells return to a normal state,
exchanging their abnormal receptors for a more normal pattern. Once the
pathways of intelligence are repaired, the cells will automatically select the
body’ s healthy signals, as once they automatically accepted the distorted
ones. The circle broken by addiction has been repaired. The various studies on meditation and addiction have led to the following
findings:
In 1972, physiologist Robert Keith Wallace and coworkers surveyed
1,860 meditators, mainly college students, about their use of all kinds
of drugs. After they began to meditate, the number of drug abusers
dropped significantly in all categories (marijuana, narcotics,
barbiturates, hallucinogens, and amphetamines). The longer the
students practiced meditation, the less their dependence on drugs, until
after twenty-one months, most had stopped abusing altogether .Marijuana was still used “very rarely” by 12 percent of the group; all
other categories were in the range of 1 percent to 4 percent. A 1974 study on marijuana compared meditators with nonmeditators
and found that after one to three months of meditation, about half of
the meditators had decreased or stopped their use of the drug; by
comparison, less than one-sixth of the nonmeditators had stopped
using marijuana or decreased its use. These results improved
dramatically the longer meditation continued. Among two-year
meditators, 92 percent decreased their use of marijuana and 77 percent
gave it up entirely . A similar study found the same results with alcohol. A high-school and college study asked 150 meditators and 1 10 controls
about their drug history and found significant decreases in marijuana,
wine, beer , and hard liquor in the meditators, while no decreases
occurred among the nonmeditators. All of these findings were based on people who had had no involvement
in any sort of rehabilitation program. No one asked them to quit, followed
their progress, or rewarded them for abstaining. Most important, no one was
selected for having any motivat ion to abstain; indeed, in a college or high-
school environment, the pressure comes in the opposite direction, from
peers who abuse alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs. The decreases across the
board suggest that simply by reducing stress and anxiety and raising the
level of inner satisfaction, one can motivate addicts to stop their habits. A stricter test of this principle occurs in institutions. A number of studies
have focused on the use of meditation among prisoners, who have little or
no motivation to quit their addictions. An overview of five such studies
found that the results were signi ficant enough to warrant placing meditation
in prisons as a major treatment for drug abuse. A study in Germany looked
at seventy-six drug abusers who enrolled in a drug rehabilitatio n program. After twelve months of meditating, decreases were found in all classes of
drugs, including heroin, barbiturates, and amphetamines, which are among
the hardest habits to kick.By their very nature, statistical studies tend to be faceless. I like to return
to indivi dual stories, such as the one a veteran counselor in New York told
me. He had been seeing a teenage girl who had started to drink before she
was 12 and was severely alcoholic by the time she turned 15. She proved
extremely resistant to all conventional rehabilitation, and in the end, after
months of frustration, the counselor had to admit defeat. Just as he was
releasing her from his program, he happened to remark, “Why don’t you try
meditating?” She showed some interest, but he was not able to follow up
the case. Some years later he noticed an attractive young mother in a local
shopping center . With a start, he realized that it was the same girl, but now
looking happy and even radiant walking her 2-year -old daughter . He went
up to congratulate her . “What happene d to you?” he asked. As it turned out, she had begun
meditation soon  after dropping out of rehabilitation and stopped drinking on
her own within a few months. She credited the meditation, which she still
practiced, for saving her from deep addiction and probably for saving her
life. The counselor has since then incorporated meditation into his work,
starting many other addicts along the same road. ADDICTION AND THE DOSHAS
All this indicate s that there is a self-correcting mechanism inside the
addict that can be triggered simply by allowing his mind to contact it. You
can also see this mechanism at work in terms of the doshas. People who
smoke or drink to excess, or who use drugs, have conditioned themselves
away from the body’ s natural desire for balance. In the beginning, the
ability to control their impulses may be fairly unimpaired; at this stage,
addicted people believe that they are still in control of their habit. Then ensues a period, lasting months or years, when all three doshas
become chronically aggravated. Every addiction has its own profile of
symptoms, but among chronic abusers we have always found that Pitta isgrossly aggravated, giving rise to irrational moods of violence, flushed skin,
abnormal sweating and thirst, and various digestive disorders, among other
things. Vata dosha seems particularly crucial, because its imbalance is
responsible for impulsive behav ior. When Vata is severely aggravated, any
impulse to drink or to smoke a cigarette or to take a fix has to be obeyed. As
impulse control starts to deterior ate, a huge amount of guilt is built up, since
the addicted person identifies with his lack of control. Not knowing that he
is following the command of Vata (as we all do, but in healthier forms), the
addicted person sees only that his resolutions to quit are failing miserably . In essence, Vata dosha itself is addicted. The stages of this addiction
resemble those for any impairment of the central nervous system. That is
why a hand tremor that is due to lack of sleep, Parkinson’ s disease, mental
illness, or alcoholism all look basically the same to the untrained eye. Vata
will generally go through the following stages of decline:
Mild imbalance: restless, scatter ed thoughts; increase of worries; easily
startled; loss of memory and concentration; absence of inner fr eshness
Moderate imbalance: insomnia; loss of physical coordination; tremor in
hands; anxiety , nervousness; loss of appetite; disconnected thinking;
passing feelings of physical weakness and hollowness
Serious imbalance: chronic insomnia; impair ed perception (things look
distant and unreal); uncontr ollable shaking of head and hands; no appetite;
apathy , general loss of all desir es; delusions and hallucinations
At the very end of an alcohol or drug addiction, Vata is often so out of
control that the symptoms are practically indistinguishable from mental
illness. A termin al alcoholic in the throes of DTs and a schizo phrenic are
both examples of Vata taken to its furthest limits. The early and middle stages of addiction are the most treatable , because
the body can be guided to rebalance itself. The catch-22 of all addictions is
that the same symptoms of distress are caused by the habit and by stoppingthe habit. This makes perfect sense once you look at Vata dosha, which has
become trained to accept the presence of the drug. As soon as the nicotine
or alcohol is withdrawn, Vata tries to shake off its bad training and return to
normal. When it heads back into balance, however , which requires throwing
off excess Vata buildup, the body is more Vata than ever, hence the
trembling, insomnia, and anxiety that accompany withdrawal. When the nervous system has become chemically unbalanced, Vata has
no anchor , no normal daily rhythm of rest and activity to stabilize the
hundreds of other body rhythms that must be coordinated in a healthy
person. Regular  meditation provides the stability of deep rest alternating
with activity. That is why peop le in the early stages of cigarette smoking
and drug use find that they can drop their habits with no ef fort at all. GIVING UP  CIGARETTES
In the case of cigarette smok ing, coaxing your body to give up its
addiction makes  much more sense than forcing it to. People do manage to
quit by going “cold turkey ,” but the sudden withdrawal of nicotine
precipitates a lot of stress. The story is told that Sigmund Freud smoked
twenty cigars a day for many years, until he began to suffer heart
palpitations as a result. He tried to quit smoking, on his doctor ’s advice, but
the palpitations returned with doubled force as soon as he stopped, driving
him back to his habit. Freud told his biographer that trying not to smoke
was “torture beyond human power to bear .”
In Ayurveda, we tell smokers to keep sending signals to the quantum
mechanical body telling it that they want to quit. These signals can be of
various kinds. Laying off cigare ttes for a day at a time is one way—many if
not most of the people who successfully quit do so by temporarily stopping
a dozen  or more times. A more powerful message is sent to the quantum
mechanical body with meditation. Even if you are a heavy smoker , this may
be all you need. One retrospecti ve study based on five thousand  meditators
showed that only 1 percent of the men and 4 percent of the women weresmokers, even though before starting meditators, a whopping  34 percent
said that they smoked at least occasionally . There are additional ways to help you quit. When patients come to
Ayurveda clinics and ask how they can stop smoking as painlessly as
possible, here is what we tell them. Three ground rules are laid down in
advance:
Do not try to give up smoking—hard-minded determination just sets
you up for failure. Nicotine is addictive, as is the habit of reaching for
a cigarette. To end these habits you have to retrain yourself as
unconsciously as you started. Keep your cigarettes with you—the strategy of throwing cigarettes
away seems to make sense, but it only leads to panicked trips for more
and the embarrassment of begging them from friends and strangers. Notice the automatic cues that make you reach for a cigarette and
dissociate yourself from them. The third point is the key one and requires explanation. All smokers light
up autom atically on cue. For some the cue is picking up the phone, for
others it is turning on the TV, starting a conversation, or ending a meal. You
probably know your own cues;  if not, take a day to observe them. These
cues are the signals to Vata that make you act on impulse. You do not notice
that you are lighting up because in fact your mind has gone blank for that
instant. Vata has taken over . You need to switch off this automatic pilot. The way to do that is
surprisingly simple: smoke consciously and pay attention to the act of
smoking. The best method, whic h has helped many of our patients to quit in
a short period of time, is as follows:
When you catch yourself lighting up, stop for a second and ask if you
really want this cigarette.If so, go outside and sit quietly by yourself. Smoke the cigarette
without distractions. As you are smoking, pay attention to your body . Feel the smoke in
your lungs; feel any sensations in your mouth, nose, throat, stomach,
or anywhere else. Take out a piece of paper or a small diary and immediately record what
you felt and the time you smoked the cigarette. Keep a record of each
cigarette, whether it was conscious or automatic, and how it felt. Do not worry about how much you are smoking; just record each
cigarette, even if you find that at the end of a phone call you don’t know
how those three butts in the ashtray got there. If you follow this procedure
faithfully , you will become a conscious smoker instead of a smoking
machine. We have found that many patients cut down their daily intake
from two packs to four or five cigarettes—this reflects how much they
actually want to smoke. Cutting  back is almost as important as stopping; it
prepares the way for quitting and also reduces the direct health risk of your
habit. CURING AN ADDICTION AT HOME
In the past, many addicted people have preferred to live with their
problem, no matter how tormenting, than to reveal it to outsiders. This
feeling is entirely understandab le, and I always feel it should be respected
as long as you are also taking productive steps to quit. A comple te course of
home treatment would include:
Learning to meditate
Detoxifying the system, either at home or under a doctor ’s care
Body-type diet (beginning with Vata-pacifying foods until the signs of
Vata imbalance are gone)Regular Ayurvedic exercise
Daily routine with oil massage (abhyanga) to settle disturbed Vata
At the outset, I recommend that you begin by learning to medita te at your
local center , then visiting an Ayurvedic physician for a complete physical
examination and diagnosis of imbalances. Tell him of your desire to quit,
frankly and honestly . He will indicate how to detoxify your body and
balance your doshas through diet and daily routine. Visiting him once a
week thereafter is advisable at the outset, since the initial period is the most
stressful for the body . But this is essentially a self-cure. Nobody coerces
you into followi ng the program; there is no confrontation or pressure of any
kind. Also be sure to take time every morning for a full-body abhyanga; a
second, shorter massage at night, moving slowly and gently as you cover
head, shoulders, and feet, is also recommended. And remember , the rule
when you are quitting any habit is regularity . The more regular you can be
about everything in your day, the better and quicker you will train Vata back
to norm al. You should not try to force Vata back into balance, since that is
impossible; you want to coax and soothe it back. The gentlest time in your
life should be the period when you are rebalancing your body . In addition, a few other treatments enter into the picture as supplements:
Music therapy
Aromatherapy
Herbal food supplements (known in Ayurveda as rasayanas— see page
221)
Listening to music is extremely settling to the nervous system while you
are purifying your body . A fifteen-minute session in the morning is
recommended, followed by another session at night before you go to bed. Filling your room with the appropriate dosha-pacifying aroma s also helps
relax you at bedtime. The use of rejuvenative herbal food supplementsbegins to repair the mind body connection at the level of your cells and
strengthens tissues damaged by drugs. We feel that no addiction treatment can succeed in the long run without
compassion and understanding. If you decide to seek counseling, look for
these qualities in a psychologist, pastor , doctor , or just a good friend. One
crippling drawback of conventional rehabilitation is that constant vigilance
means constant stress. The monkey never does get off your back. We feel
instead that addicted people have to learn to trust themselves and be
comfortable with their lifestyles. Any increase in fear and anxie ty is totally
unproductive, even if the stress is supposed to help end a habit. The
rationale behind our hands-of f approach is that nature can be trusted. An
addict’ s body will return to balance if it is treated correctly . If you are seriou sly addicted to alcohol or drugs, you may feel that you
have ruined your whole life; most addicts have inflicted pain on their
families and themselves. The vital thing for you to realize is that this
negativity is not you. It is the result  of physical and mental ama that has
been built up over time. You should take the same attitude toward it that
you would to dirt on your skin—wash it off and forget about it. If others
want to remind you of how destructive you have been in the past, take their
criticism as calmly as you can. The past is the past. You cannot  live it over
again, and you should not remind yourself of it. It is extremely important that you associate with healthy , normal people
as much as possible. You will have to choose whether to enroll in group
rehabilitation—many addicted people feel that it is an important part of
their return to normal life—but do everything you can to find a
compassionate, positive counselor . Anyone who has a confrontational or
fanatical approach to addictions should be avoided for your own good. Finally , it is norm al to have relapses as you are recovering. Of course you
will be disappoi nted, but try to see that this is not a personal failure. It takes
time for the body to normalize itself. If you have to have another drink,
cigarette, or pill, it is the habituated doshas that are forcing you. Doshas are
powerful, but you are much more powerful than they can ever be. Youressential self is untouched by addiction. It is happy , free, above all
problems, and at peace. Once you begin to touch this true self of yours,
everything will work out. Be patient and allow yourself to emer ge in
freedom. The measure of your success is not how many days you go without a
relapse. Rather , you should look for signs of self-acceptance; happiness,
moments of joy and pleasure; return of a good appetite and love of food;
better sleep, calmer dreams; lack of bad odors in the mouth and skin, less
sweating; increased physical strength and endurance; and regular physical
functioning (digestion, respiration, motor coordination, and so on). All of these will come in time. The great joy of getting clean is that the
body loves to be that way. I do not even favor the term rehabilitation . What
you are doing is washing yourself off, inside and out. It is a natural process
that will bring greater results the longer it continues. Temporary relapses are
little more than minor obstacles, as long as you are willing to get back up
and try again. A healthy , beautiful world is waiting for you and gets nearer
with every step you take. OceanofPDF .comCHAPTER 9
AGING IS A MIST AKE
Although everyo ne falls prey to the aging process, no one has ever proved
that it is necessary . One great advantage of the quantum mechanical body is
that it does not age, a quality one sees throughout the quan tum level of
nature. Protons and neutrons do not grow older; nor does electricity or
gravity . Life, which consists of these fundamental particles and forces, is
astonishingly durable; your DNA has remained much the same for at least
600 million years. A horseshoe crab crawling in the muck of ancient seabeds
bears no visible likeness to a dinosaur , or a dinosaur to a gorilla,  but from the
vantage point of DNA, these are tiny variations on one unending theme. As far as its chemical bonds go, DNA  is not glued together any more
firmly than is a leaf or a speck of pollen. You would think that such a loosely
gathered bundle of atoms would unravel over time, like an ancient,
crumbling tapestry . Certainly the forces operating against DNA ’s survival are
immense: physic al wear and tear, random destructive mutations , invasion by
competitive microbes, and abov e all entropy , the tendency of the physical
universe to wind down like a neglected clock. DNA  has outlasted them all. Mountain ranges have been worn down to
hills over the life span of DNA, and yet it is never worn down by even a
thousandth of a millimeter . The glue of the quantum mechanical body is too
strong. If DNA ’s inner intelligence is this powerful, defying time and the
elements for aeons, it seems that aging is not natural at all. Ayurveda
operates on this assumption. Looking past the fact that everyone ages, we go
to the really important question, “Do we have to?” The ancient sages,
renowned for their own immens e longevity , ascribed aging to a “mistake of
the intellect” (called pragya aparadh in Sanskrit).This mistake consists of identifying oneself solely with the physical body . To exten d life requires correcting the intellect’ s mistake, identifying with the
quantum mecha nical body instead. If you take your mind to a level of
functioning that is beyond age, then your body will begin to be touched with
the same  quality . It will age more slowly because your mind tells it to, at the
deepest level. Seeing yourself as free from aging, you in fact will be. This is
a startlingly simple principle, as yet unrecognized in mainstream Western
medicine, but as we will discover , it is valid. AGING VERSUS HEALING
Aging seems so complicated that it is difficult even to pin down exactly
what it is. A typical liver cell performs five hundred separa te functions,
which gives it five hundred different ways to go wrong. All of these
possibilities constitute the ways  in which it can age. On the other hand, the
view that aging is complex may be wrong. Despite the thousand waves that
bring it in, the ocean tide is a single phenomenon, driven by a single force. The same may be true of huma n aging, although we see it as hundreds of
waves: disconnected aches and pains, new wrinkles around the eyes and
deeper smile marks at the corne r of the mouth, a slight but inexorable rise in
blood pressure, a faint loss of hearing and eyesight, and innumerable other
minor inconveniences. Ayurveda tells us not to be fooled by this complex, distressing show . Aging is only one thing , the loss of intelligence. Healing, as we saw, is the
ability of intelligence to repair itself. Aging is the opposite, gradually
forgetting how to make things right after they go wrong. Consider the cells of a newborn baby , which are fresh, full of vigor ,
unscarred by time. If you place  them under a microscope side by side with
old adult cells, there is a startling contrast. Old adult tissue is disturbingly
ugly; its cells look battered and used up. It is, after all, a microscopic vision
of an old body . It displays dark patches here and there where debris has
collected and soft tissue has turned fibrous.This drastic change appears to be the result of wear and tear, but DNA,
which controls all the functions of cells, is virtually invulnerable  to wear and
tear, as we just observed. So we are led to conclude that some kind of
invisible damag e is at work. For example, an artery starts out in life looking
perfectly smoot h, shiny , and white, like a piece of rubber surgical tubing
fresh from the factory . But this tubing is actually a community of cells that
have gotten together and taken on the job of forming an artery , mastering the
precise sequenc es needed. Before they joined at their specialized outpost,
each cell could have wound up as part of the brain, the heart, or the stomach
—every possibility was open, because every cell contains the same DNA. Yet, evolution has dictated that these particular cells take up one job only,
that of being an artery . However specialized, the job is not simple.
Perfect_Health_-_The_Complete_Mind_Body_Guide_by_Deepak_Chopra.txt
Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        According to Tantra
expressing the mantra with your attention in the chakra can open up energy
that may be congested in that region. The mantras for each of the seven ener gy centers are as follows:We encouraged Molly to chant the sound for the heart chakra several
times per day. Two months later, Molly wrote me a happy letter that began,
“I have no more pain. ” Her angina attacks had stopped a week after she
began using the heart chakra mantra and have not returned. Delight and
relief came through in her writi ng. She feels comfortable in activity now—
most angina sufferers are extrem ely anxious about exerting themselves, even
slightly. This summer she took a bold step and enrolled as a full-time college
student. She tells me with pride  that she is the oldest under graduate in the
history of her college. How does Ayurveda explain the effects of using sounds to heal. Intellectually, you cannot possibly analyze all the vibrations that influence
your life. The oscillation of the atoms comprising your cells, the beating of
your heart, the rhythms of the planets—each of these influence  your life in
subtle but profound ways. According to Ayurveda the many different
vibrations that comprise our lives sometimes get “out of synch. ” This
disharmony that results sows the seeds for illness. In that event, Ayurveda tells us to apply a specifically chosen sound, like a
mold or template slipped over the disturbed cells coaxing them back into
line, not physically, but by repairing the sequence of sound at the heart of
every cell. In the case of a disorder like angina, we know that the brain sends
specific signals that constrict the arteries, working through messengermolecules that stimulate nerve and muscle cells in the middle layers of the
blood vessels. Molly’ s spasms were being caused by some kind of improper
message. Certain medicines take advantage of this fact by inhibiting the
brain’ s chemical messengers so that their message never gets delivered. But
the real source of these molecules is the mind; if one went directly to the
thinking process and corrected the brain’ s impulses, then treatment should be
even more ef fective and gentler. This is the purpose of healing sounds. The degree of healing achieved by sound varies from person to person. After several years of prescribing them, we have witnessed hundreds of
cases where patients with heart disease, cancer, multiple sclerosis, and even
AIDS have reported alleviation of pain, anxiety, and various other troubling
symptoms. Thes e are all anecdotal reports, meaning that they have not been
studied statistically using the proper controls needed for scientific validation. Therefore, they cannot be offered as proof that this subtle healing technique
is effective; by the standards of scientific medicine, there is a long way to go
before ironclad  proof is available. On the other hand, the Ayurvedic
approach is rooted in thousand s of years of experience, and using it can
supplement the benefits of standard medical treatment. Discovering that the human body is fundamentally a web of sound comes
as a revelation,  and when put into practice, the theory yields remarkable
results. In a matter of a few hours, one’s self-image complet ely changes;
people often report dramatic transformations in their powers of perception. Using a healing  sound is a perfect illustration of the Ayurvedi c saying that
“the world is as you are. ” When  your perception opens up “in here,” so does
everything “out there. ”
HEALING VISUALIZA TION—USING ATTENTION AND
INTENTION
Focusing your attention on an area in your body that needs healing and
introducing an intention is a powerful therapeutic technique. Ayurveda says,
“Whatever we put our attention on grows stronger in our lives. ” If you spend
two hours a day at the fitness center building up your body, your muscleswill grow  but your grades in school may fall. If you spend your evenings and
weekends at the office, your business may grow but your family
relationships may suf fer. Ayurveda states that you can use your attention to activate healing in your
body. You can change your mind and body by consciously directing your
awareness to the aspect you believe needs attention. Another principle of Ayurveda is, “Intention has infinite organizing
power. ” This means that just being clear on a desired outcome can have a
pronounced effect on achieving your goal, without necessarily having to
handle all the details. When you want to throw a baseball, you do not have to
analyze the contraction and release of every muscle in your body—you
simply have the intention and your inner intelligence coordinates the tens of
millions of activities that need to occur for you to throw the ball. The release
of sugar from your liver, the metabolism of the sugar into energy, changes in
blood flow, and your breathing pattern are organized by nature without your
conscious control. If you had to consciously pay attention to the details, you
would never accomplish anything. You can use these principles to enliven the healing forces in your body,
even though you may not have realized you can influence them. Awakening
your inner healer requires a different set of procedures than the way you
usually accomp lish things. When you want to lift your hand, you send a
signal from your brain to your spinal cord causing certain muscles to
contract and others to relax. When you want to lower your blood pressure or
improve your immune function, you must use a subtler approa ch that relies
upon your attention and intention. Try the followi ng visualization  and see if you are able to influence
functions in your body that you may have previously not thought possible. Healing Visualization
Sit quietly with your eyes closed for a few moments. Then bring your
attention into your heart and acknowledge all the things for which you feelgratitude. Now have the intention to release any grievance, regrets, or hostility you
may be carrying  in your heart or mind. Later, if you so choose, you can bring
those grievance s back into your consciousness. But for the time of this
meditation let them go. Now, for a moment or two, silen tly repeat the phrase “ Thy will be done. ”
Address this to your own visio n of universal consciousness, whether you
refer to it as God, or Spirit, or in any other way. Repeat “Thy will be done,”
like a mantra. Have the intention of quieting your internal dialogue—and allow your
attention to move through your body. If you discover an area of tension,
intend that it should be relaxed. Next, bring your attention to your breathing. At first, just observe your
breath—then intend for your breath to slow down. Move awareness to your heart. Become aware of its beat, as sound and as
feeling. Have an intention for your heart rate to slow down. Now bring
attention to your hands. Feel the throbbing of your heartbeat in your hands. Feel the tingling and warmth that emanates from your heart. Intend to
increase the blood flow and the temperature of your hands. Move your awar eness to your eyes. Feel the throbbing of your heartbeat in
your eyes, and then in your face. Now let your awareness move freely through your body. Feel the warmth,
tingling, and throbbing of your heartbeat wherever you choose. If you find
an area of your body that you believe needs healing, intend warmth for that
area. If you are not aware of such an area in your body, just return awareness
to your heart. But bring the throbbing warmth of your heartbeat to any point
that you wish to nourish and heal. Now, with awareness and intention of the healing area of your body,
repeat for several minutes these two words, like a mantra: healing andtransformation. Move awareness back to your heart, without intention now. Just be aware
of your heartbeat. Then move  awareness to your breath. After a few
moments, open your eyes to complete the healing meditation. This meditation first raises the temperature and blood flow to areas of the
body that require nourishing attention, and then introduces the intention of
healing. This is a very powerful meditation, and it’s important to remember
to go through the whole sequence, including the intentions of gratitude and
relinquishing of grievances. Practice the healing meditation as often as
possible. With time, you’ll be able to experience warmth and tingling
wherever you choose and be able to activate healing energy in your body
through attention and intention. MARMA  THERAPY—STIMULA TING THE POINTS
WHERE MIND AND BODY  MEET
Because there is intelligence in every cell, the mind and body meet
everywhere, not just in the brain. In fact, once you strip off its physical
mask, a cell is really a junction point between matter and consciousness, a
station where the quantum mechanical body and the outside world intersect. Certain junction points are more vital than others, however. Ayurveda makes
use of certain extremely sensitiv e points located on the skin. There are 107
of these marmas, as they are called. Though invisible to the eye, marmas are
accessible through the sense of touch and are considered critical for
maintaining balance throughout the body. A massage technique called
marma therapy stimulates them; it is offered at our Center and once taught
can be practiced at home. Ancient Ayurvedic surgical texts warn the physician never to cut across
the marmas, which have been mapped out precisely according to site and
function. This is similar to but not exactly the same as the meridians mapped
out by Chinese acupuncture; marma therapy predates the Chinese approach
and is likely its direct ancestor. Avoiding damage to the marmas is a wiseprecaution. Although they do not usually intersect with prominent blood
vessels or nerves, marmas are just as vital, since they mark out where the
flow of inner intelligence is moving, indicating spots of maximum
sensitivity and awareness. STIMULA TING THE MARMAS
By stimulating the marmas, the connection between consciousness and
physiology can be enlivened. There are various ways to activa te a marma. One is through the gentle yoga movements prescribed in part III under
exercise. As you move your body in a yoga position, you are gently
stretching specific marma points. The oil drip on the forehead used in
panchakarma (called shirodhara) is profoundly soothing because the warm
oil lands directly on a major marma point in the center of the forehead. Similarly, the daily oil massage (abhyanga) taught under daily routine
reaches all the marmas on the skin. This contact is immediately registered
throughout the nervous system. Marma points thus allow you to “talk”
directly to Vata dosha and keep it in balance. Since the marmas are not super ficial but penetrate deep into the system,
they can be stimulated mentally. Meditation enlivens all the marmas, but
particularly the three “great marmas” (Mahamarma ) situated in the area of
the head, heart, and lower abdom en. These are not located on the surface of
the skin and have to be stimulated by going directly to the quantum
mechanical body; they are also the marmas you want to stimulate most,
since they have a strong influence over the lesser marmas. CLINICAL  MARMA  THERAPY
At the Chopra Center a specia l marma therapy is given that includes
instruction for home treatment. Marma points are identified with each of the
three doshas and stimulated with an appropriate essential oil mixture. A
patient is first diagnosed according to specific imbalances. Let’s say that a
chronic headache has been associated with imbalance of Prana Vata, thesubdosha of Vata located in the head. Trained technicians would gently
massage in precise order those marma points that correspond to Prana Vata,
applying prescribed herbalized oils. Patients find this treatment extremely
relaxing, with some reporting alleviation of pain and other longstanding
chronic symptoms. MARMAS AT HOME
Since marmas have to be located with a trained eye, being slightly
different from person to person, the clinical therapy cannot be taught in a
book. You can take advantage of marmas in a more general way, however. A
cluster of the most important points is located on the soles of the feet. To
enliven them, a gentle foot massage with sesame oil lasting three to five
minutes every day is recomme nded. A good time for this is at bedtime,
because the soothing effect on the nervous system, and on Vata dosha in
particular, makes this massage a good prelude to sleep. Also, when you do your daily abhyanga, pay special attention to the three
important marmas illustrated on page 181. One is located between your eyebrows, extending to the center of the
forehead. Gently  massaging this area with eyes closed is good for worry,
headaches, mental strain, and other upper Vata problems. The one connected
to the heart (its actual location is just below the sternum, where  the rib cage
ends) is good for settling upset emotions. The one on the lower abdomen,
about four inches below the navel, is good for constipation, gas, and other
lower Vata problems. Use a light circular motion, taking a few minutes at
each site. The forehead marma can be selected by itself as an aid to falling
asleep at night, as long as you make sure that you never press hard or rush—
that would tend to disturb your Vata rather than inducing it to be more
settled. Three important marma points to massage at home. ACCESSING THE BLISS OF  NATURE
If you think about an experience  of joy—the birth of a child, the sight of a
glorious sunset, or an alpine lake at dawn—and then carry your feelings
beyond a fixed moment, you arrive at a new state called “pure joy. ”
Ayurveda tells us that pure joy is a fundamental quality of life. In Sanskrit
this quality is called ananda, which is usually translated as “bliss. ”
With the popula rity of Eastern teachings in the West, people have come to
use the word bliss to express many kinds of positiv e emotions. To be precise,bliss is too abstract to be expe rienced by itself. By analogy, how do you
experience being intelligent. Like intelligence, bliss is an abstraction. It
resides in the quantum mechan ical body in pure form and bubbles to the
surface only under the right conditions. You cannot see or touch the
thousands of processes in brain  and body that need to be coordinated in
order to create bliss, but there is a definite feeling—pure joy— that can be
felt and which proves that bliss exists. According to the Ayurvedic sages, all of our joys stem from pure joy. It is
the bright light we do not see directly but only by reflection in smaller joys. These lesser lights could not exist without the greater one. Even in Western
society, where money, physic al beauty, and success are equated with
happiness, everyone has unexpected moments when life seems absolutely
perfect and full of joy. If you could live in a state of pure joy all the time,
you would have the practical essence of perfect health. TUNING INT O NA TURE’S GIFTS
Nature provides  a rich source of energy and nourishment that has healing
effects on both body and mind. Open yourself to the gifts of Nature through
your five senses:
Walk barefoot on the earth for a few minutes every day. Have your
attention on your feet and the earth with the intention to absorb
nourishment from the earth. Walk along natural bodies of water. Allow the cooling, coherent
influence of water to infuse your being. Allow the light and warmth of the sun to permeate you. Acknowledge
the ener gy-giving force of the sun, the source of all life on earth. Take a walk where there is abundant vegetation and deeply inhale the
breath of plants. The ideal time to receive the life force of plants is right
before dawn and right after sunset. Gaze into the stars at night. Allow your awareness to fill the heavens
and the cosmos to fill your awareness. THE NA TURALNESS OF  BLISS
Each dosha expresses a differen t flavor of joy, and in the state of perfect
balance, one would be able to experience them all:
Vata— stimulating, exhilarating, alert, cheerful, optimistic, flexible
Pitta— content, joyous, chivalr ous, pleasant, clear -minded
Kapha— steady, strong, forgiving, courageous, gener ous, affectionate,
serene
As in most cases, Vata is the leader of the other doshas. It transmits joy
through the nervous system, causing changes in cells throughout the body. But without balance among all three doshas, your physiology cannot support
pure joy for extended periods. A major goal in Ayurveda is to change this by
cleaning the windows of inner perception. Our normal waking-state
perception of ourselves is usually ill-equipped to realize how much joy
exists inside us. Because conven tional psycholo gy concentrates so much on abnormal
states, on neuroses and psychoses, it has had little to say about the effects of
joy, and internal medicine has said nothing. Moments of ecstasy have
certainly been prized—by poets, religious figures, and ordinary people—but
the connection with higher states of health was not made until the
psychologist Abraham Maslow, working in the 1950s and 1960s, began to
study a group of high achievers whom he called “self-actualized. ” Such
individuals, Maslow quickly discovered, led extremely diverse and highly
individual lives. On the surface, there was no obvious resemblance between
a successful entrepreneur, a famous novelist, and a great conductor. However, beneath their differen t lifestyles Maslow found that many had had
what he termed “peak experiences,” moments of intense well-being and joy. During their peak moments, these people felt a total transformation of
their personal reality. Obstacles  that seemed huge in ordinary  life became
laughable. An overwhelming sense of power flooded through them. They felt
deeply calm and in tune with life. The most talented athletes and performers of all kinds will testify to
moments when they effortlessly exceed their known skills. As women’ s
basketball champion Patsy Neal describes it, “There are moments of glory
that go beyond human expect ation, beyond the physical and emotional
ability of the individual. Something unexplainable takes over and breathes
life into the known life. The athlete goes beyond herself; she transcends the
natural—she almost floats through the performance, drawi ng on forces she
has not previously been aware of. ”
A peak experience, Maslow found, was extremely therapeutic. His
patients attributed major life changes to realizations that had suddenly come
to them in peak moments: newfound confidence and creativity, unexpected
solutions to baffling dilemmas, and a sureness that no fear could touch them. In some cases, long-standing depression and anxiety neuroses vanished
overnight, never to return. Maslow was tremendously impressed, and his pioneering study vastly
extended the range of positive experiences that came to be considered
normal for the human psyche. However, he did not find a way to give
anyone a peak experience, nor did he find its source. Without a technique for
transcending, he could only wait for those occasional moments when the
curtains part and the psyche sees beyond its ordinary waking state. SUPERFLUIDITY
Not long ago, clinical psychologists discovered an effortless state that
creative people often fall into, popularly called “the flow. ” During periods of
“flow,” work projects seem to progress of their own accord, and even the
deepest concent ration requires no effort. As long as they are in the flow,
creative people of all types feel a pleasurable sense of being lifted far above
their ordinary capabilities. The drawback to the flow is that it cannot betaught to others  or further deve loped in oneself. Fewer than 10 percent of
ordinary people are said to experience it, and those who do are in the flow
only intermitten tly. Still, this represented an advance over the minuscule
group of self-realized people, which Maslow had estimated as less than one-
tenth of 1 percent of the general population. It was not until science began seriously to investigate meditation that the
elusiveness of these phenomena was fully explained. It turns out that a peak
experience or a sensation of being in the flow points to a deeper, more
sustained state researchers have labeled “superfluidity. ” Superfluidity
resembles the flow in that less effort is required in activity, but the effort is
reduced to an absolute minimum. In the superfluid state, action becomes
completely automatic—the doer merges into his task, the thinker into his
thoughts, the artist into his art. Here is a firsthand description from a meditator. “A soft but strong feeling
of blissful evenness is present most of the time in both mind and body. Physically, it is experienced as an extremely delightful liveliness throughout
the body. This evenness is so deep and stable that it is maintained in the face
of great  activity—it cushions one against all disruptions and makes all
activity easy and enjoyable. ”
The term superfluidity comes from a class of peculiar materials called
superfluids that were discovered  in physics more than fifty years ago. When
liquid helium, for example, is cooled so low that it approaches within a few
degrees of absolute zero, -273 degrees C, it acquires the ability to flow up
the sides of its container, to pass through holes almost infinitely small, and,
if set in motion, to flow forever. The reason for this mystifyin g change in
behavior is the cooling effect itself. At a low enough temperature, the helium
atoms stop moving around in random fashion and instead become almost
completely orderly, like an army that falls into parade-ground formation
after milling around the field. Supercooled helium atoms are so orderly that
they reach a frictionless state of superflow. A similar property of supercooled
materials is superconductivity, the ability to conduct electricity without
friction. Superconductivity also seems to defy normal laws of nature, but infact it is a special property that arises quite naturally as long as certain
special conditions are met. In the same way, superfluidity in awareness appears when meditation
“cools down” the thinking process. The mind discovers more orderliness at
quieter levels of the thinking process until it nears the total orderliness of
pure silence without slipping completely into it. At that exact point, the
quantum boundary of the mind, it is still possible to think and act, but
following different rules. One experiences effortless expansion and a kind of
“friction-less” creativity that cannot be discovered in the ordinary waking
state. AROMA THERAPY—BALANCE THROUGH THE SENSE OF
SMELL
Each of your five senses is form ed by a different vibration in the quantum
mechanical body. Vibrations of light falling on your retina cause a response
that is quite distinct from the vibrations of touch that greet your fingers. This
is how the “ener gy soup” of the universe gets sorted out into distinct sights,
sounds, smells, and so on. The three doshas are also precisely tuned in to
nature. Each one prefers to respond to one or more of the five senses:
Vata— hearing and touch
Pitta— sight
Kapha— taste and smell
These preferences can be seen very easily in people whose body  types are
dominated by one dosha. Pure Vatas are extremely sensitive to loud noise
and have skin that feels the slightest touch. Pitta types, particularly if fair-
haired and light-skinned, cannot bear bright sunlight for any length of time
and are also very responsive to visual beauty. Kaphas, the earthiest of types,
love the atmosph ere of hearth and home; to them, the tastes and smells of the
kitchen are especially gratifying. Since we all possess Vata, Pitta, and Kapha, these preferences are relative. Any body type can respond to marma therapy, for example, which operates
through the sense of touch; it is not restricted to Vatas alone. The ancient
Ayurvedic texts  provide us with long lists of sensory stimuli  that help to
balance the doshas, from looki ng at the full moon and walking by water
(very good for Pitta), to listeni ng to the wind in the trees (very good for
Vata). Out of this knowledge, a special treatment called aromatherapy has
been developed; our patients find it absolutely delightful to under go. THE VOCABULAR Y OF AROMAS
Each dosha can be balanced with aromas that are matched to it. The
matching is done by the rasas, or tastes, found in food. I will have a lot to
say about the rasas in part III under diet. For the moment, note that there are
six tastes in Ayurveda, the usual four of sweet, sour, salty, and bitter, plus
astringent (the dry, mouth-p uckering taste associated with beans,
pomegranate, and turmeric) and pungent (spicy). Sweet foods  are held to
balance both Vata and Pitta, as does the sweet smell of a rose. Sour tastes
aggravate Pitta, and so do sour smells, along with bad smells in general. Moist, earthy smells increase Kapha. Bitter and astringent smells particularly
aggravate Vata. The language of taste is limited to sweet, sour, salty, bitter, astringent, and
pungent. The nose, on the other hand, understands a vast vocabulary of
smells, amounting to about ten thousand different odors if you have a well-
trained beak. The odors that can be detected by the nose must first dissolve
in the moisture of the nasal tissue and are then passed on by specialized
olfactory cells straight to the hypothalamus in the brain. (These olfactory
cells are in fact nerves, the only ones exposed to the air in the whole body,
although they are protected by their thin covering of mucus. They are also
the only nerves that regenerate, replacing themselves about once every three
weeks. ) The fact that smells go straight to the hypothalamus is very significant, for
this tiny organ is responsible for regulating dozens of bodily functions,including temperature, thirst, hunger, blood-sugar levels, grow th, sleeping,
waking, sexual arousal, and emotions such as anger and happiness. To smell
anything is to send an immediat e message to “the brain’ s brain, ” and from it
to the whole body. At the same time, the message of an odor goes to the brain’ s limbic
system, which processes emotio ns, and to an area called the hippocampus,
the part of the brain responsible for memory, which is why smells bring back
past mem ories so vividly. Kitchen smells, flowers, and perfumes all trigger a
sense of déjà vu. The gardens you once walked through have turned into
you, thanks to the lingering impression of their fragrance on your brain. USING AROMA THERAPY
In Ayurveda, aromas are used to send specific signals that balance the
three doshas. Generally speaking:
Vata is balan ced with a mixtur e of warm, sweet, sour aromas like basil,
orange, r ose geranium, clove, and other spices. Pitta is balanced by a mixtur e of sweet, cool aromas like sandalwood, rose,
mint, cinnamon, and jasmine. Kapha, similar  to Vata, is balanced by a mixtur e of warm aromas, but with
spicier overtones, like juniper, eucalyptus, camphor, clove, and marjoram. Place about ten drops of aromatic oil in hot water and fill the room with a
light scent for a half-hour; you can extend this time as long as you want,
however. (Special candle-powered aroma pots are available, but using a
teacup and miniature coffee warmer is just as effective. ) Bedtim e is good for
inhaling the aroma, since the various sights and sounds of the day tend to
cover over smel ls and block their effects. The aroma helps many people fall
asleep and can be left in the room all night. There is also a medical side to aromatherapy. Patients who have been
diagnosed with specific imbalan ces are given oils for the subdosha that hasgone out of balance. It is actually possible to restore balance with aroma if
you know what subdosha you want to balance and which aroma pacifies it. Sometime in February, Betsy Allen picked up a bad chest cold that kept
her in bed for a week and refused to go away. Even after she was up and
around, a dry, hacking cough continued to plague her. It lingered a month,
then two, and when it reached the third month without resolving itself, she
came for Ayurvedic evaluation. She was diagnos ed as a Vata-Pit ta type with a localized Vata imbalance in
the lining of her lungs. This can be treated in several ways. Her physician
chose aromathe rapy, prescribing a specific Vata oil she was to inhale at
night. Betsy went home, not knowing what to expect. “I didn’ t wait until bedtime,” she recalls, “because my curiosi ty got the
better of me. I just boiled up a teacup of water, put in a few drops of this
sweet-smelling oil, and leaned over to sniff. The reaction in my body was
very dramatic and totally unexpected. It was as if every cell, starting at the
top of my head down to my toes, suddenly sprang to life. I just stood there
taking in deep breaths one after another—I couldn’ t get enough of that
smell. “That night I used the aroma in the proper way, lying down in bed, and the
same exhilarating energy came back again. My mind said this was an
outrageous result to be getting from a smell, but my body was convinced. ”
Very soon Betsy  stopped coughing and fell asleep more easily than she had
in months. Without accurate diagnosis, aromatherapy is very general: it may possibly
placate a symptom or merely seem pleasantly relaxing. We have been
surprised at times when migraine headache, back pain, skin rash, and
insomnia that have resisted other treatments, often for long periods of time,
have responded to aromas. This testifies to the truth of the Ayurvedic
principle that anything can be used as medicine if you know the patient well
enough. HOW  TO LEARN AROMA THERAPY
This technique requires no instruction other than what aroma oil to use. For those who cannot come in for medical evaluation, it is only possible to
follow your dominant dosha—generally the one you are trying to pacify. You
can order Vata, Pitta, or Kapha oils from the Internet source given on page
378; aroma pots and dif fusers are also available. MUSIC THERAPY—MELODIES TO BALANCE NA TURE
Even as a child you probably experienced the influence that music can
have on your body and mind. The lullaby your mother sang to you at
bedtime helped you fall asleep. Songs at summer camp connec ted you with
traditions going back generatio ns. Singing in the Christmas choir inspired
you. Ayurveda recog nizes that music can be used therapeutically to balance
body and mind. Patients in our Center spend time every day listening to
melodies that balance their doshas. Music therapy can provide a
sophisticated method for changing physiology. Music is more than
“soothing” or “rousing. ” Why do we listen to it in the first place. For
pleasure, of course, but all pleasures change the body in some way. Ordinarily we do not measure our blood pressure to see how Bach or Mozart
might be affecting it, but if you wanted to lower your blood pressure,
listening to soft, slow classical music is considered very good medicine. MUSIC AS MEDICINE
The fact that music can be a therapy came home to me in New Delhi at a
conference for doctors on the clinical uses of music. At one point, a woman
Ayurvedic physician stood up and announced that rather than talking about
it, she would demonstrate what music therapy was all about. She asked us to listen for a few minutes while she sang some Vedic
melodies that specifically balan ce Vata. We closed our eyes as her voicesounded with a pulsating, exotic refrain that was very beguiling. The singing
doctor then asked us to take the pulse of the person sitting next to us. When
we did, every person reported a marked decrease in pulse rate from the norm
of seventy to eighty beats a minute. Then she sang a quicker melody based
on a different raga, or sequence of tones. Again we listene d for a few
minutes and took the pulse of the person next to us. Uniformly, the pulse rate
had jumped above the norm. In effect, our bodies were being manipulated by
sound in the direction our doctor wanted. This basic technique, with dozens
of variations keyed to different  parts of the body, constitutes  the medical
knowledge of music therapy. What lies behind it is the concept of balanced
sound, vibrations that settle the doshas. As with tastes, colors, and smell s, a dosha is balanced by certain tones and
disturbed by others. Playing fast or slow, tuning the instruments sharp or flat,
and devising intricate rhythmic patterns are all techniques for changing the
listener ’s respon se. Vedic musical texts have specified which ragas are
appropriate for morning, noon, evening, and other times of day. When Vata
is arouse d to a peak by the busyness of work at four o’clock in the afternoon,
for exam ple, music can begin the transition toward the more relaxed
functioning of early evening. When properly played, certain melodies are
said to have universal effects. Our bodies are responding with changes that
mirror the varying rhythms of nature. It is not just your pulse that calms down in the evening, after all; every
plant and animal reacts according to its own evening cycles, too. Vedic
music therapy embodies the fundamental vibrations that pulsate through
nature at every moment. USING MUSIC THERAPY
Music therapy forms a standard part of the programs at our Center. For
home use, a set of tapes or comp act discs can be ordered on the Internet (see
p. 378) and played in segments throughout the day. If you are having
difficulty gettin g energized in the morning, invigorating music can beplayed. If you are having trouble turning down your mental activity at night,
soothing sounds can be helpful. We have found both classical
Indian music and contemporary  adaptations to be very helpful  in restoring
mind body balance. Just as the turning point from season to season makes your doshas
especially vulnerable to imbalance (causing spring colds and late-summer
allergies), your body is also sensitive to different times of the day. Bodily
functions all have peaks at certain hours and troughs at others. Music
therapy balances these into one continuous stream of rising and falling
activity, elimina ting extreme swings and rough transitions. If you try to go to
sleep but can’t because your mind is still racing with unfinished business
from the day, you are witnessin g the absence of a smooth transition. This is
what music therapy can correct. You can benefit from ten minutes of music therapy:
As a gentle wakeup in the morning
After a meal to settle digestion
Just before bedtime as an aid to sleep
During the recovery period when you are sick
The best way to listen is by sitting still with your eyes closed. Let your
attention stay easily on the melody. If your mind wanders, bring it gently
back to the musi c. When you are ready to get up, turn off the tape and sit for
a minute or two in silence. If you are tryin g to lose weig ht, listening to five minutes of Kapha
balancing music several times daily will help increase your metabolism. If
you are having trouble with irritability or heartburn, try listening to Pitta
calming music. Whenever you are feeling anxious or worried, allowing your
attention to stay easily and comfortably with Vata balancing music helps
settle this turbulent dosha. Find music that resonates with your nature. It can be classical Western
music, traditio nal Indian ragas, Australian aboriginal rhythms, or
contemporary instrumentals. Find the vibrations that are most nourishing to
you and tune in to the effects the sounds have on your physiology. If you feel
pleasantly refreshed, light, and alert, the music is working. OceanofPDF. comCHAPTER 8
FREEDOM FROM ADDICTIONS
Looked at starkly, our society is becoming more addicted every  year. High-
tech medicine, public campaigns  to “Just Say No,” and a multib illion-dollar
rehabilitation industry have not solved this crushing social problem. For
every encouraging trend, there seems to be a discouraging backlash. The
overall rate of cigarette smoking has declined by about 15 percent from its
height in 1960, but over 50 million Americans continue to smoke, and
selected groups, especially teenage girls and working-class males, are
smoking in record numbers. (As a result, female cases of lung cancer
continue to rise. ) It is estimated that 70 percent of cigarette smokers who
begin as teenagers will continue smoking for forty years. Alcohol consum ption has switched from hard liquor to beer and wine,
but alcoholism itself has filtere d down to shockingly young ages; many
junior high schools have been forced to run anti-alcohol campaigns. Alcohol and drug treatment programs exert mighty efforts to keep their
participants free from addiction, but their success is limited. Hard drugs
have proliferated alarmingly, and the connection between drugs  and violent
crime is at an all-time high. Again, young people are becoming involved—
the sale of “crac k” (smokable, synthetic cocaine) by school-age children is
the latest, deeply troubling trend. ROOTED IN MEMOR Y
The essence of quantum healing is that the memory of perfection cannot
be lost, only covered over. Looking at someone who is addicted to alcohol,
cigarettes, or drugs, it is appare nt that a serious loss of balance is present,
and that clear, healthy messages from the quantum mechanical body are
either extremely distorted or nonexistent. What can Ayurveda do to improvethis situation. First, we explain addictions in a new way, as a distortion of
intelligence existing at a very deep level in the addict. Instead of arguing over whether  addiction is physical or mental,  acquired
or inher ited, we point out that at the quantum level, all of these influences
merge. What Ayurveda calls smriti, or memory, controls all the choices we
make as biological organisms. In order for a cell to change, it must consult
the blueprint inside itself where all its memories, functions, and tendencies
are stored. If this blueprint is distorted, then a distorted cell will result. One of my most vivid memorie s is of Walter, a young black man who
was raised in the slums of South Boston, mostly in the streets. He dropped
out of school at 16 and joined the army the day he turned 18. Shipped to
Vietnam, he saw active combat and emer ged without being wounded, but
when he returne d home two years later, he was addicted to heroin, which
many soldiers had used to make the war less traumatic. Unlike most
soldiers, howeve r, Walter did not have a good reason to kick his habit when
he got home. Eventually the police caught up with him, and under court
orders he became a patient at the local Veterans Administration hospital. At the outset, the doctors’  main concern with Walter was simply to
detoxify him. Normally, he would have received little extra attention
afterward. But while he was recovering, I began to visit him as a staff
doctor at the facility. It was clear to me that Walter was an unusual case. Despite his desperate situatio n, Walter had retained hope and was
courageously willing to fight his habit. He progressed rapidly under
treatment, and a year after his detoxification he was holding down a steady
job and talking eagerly about his future dreams and plans. This future never materialized. One day Walter’s car broke down, forcing
him to take the subway to work, which he hadn’ t done in several months. He boarded a train to Dorch ester, an antiquated line with decrepit,
screeching equip ment. Walter was bothered by the loud noise and couldn’ t
manage to ignore it. It was a sweltering July day, and the fan was broken. Within a few minutes of being shut up in the stifling car, he found the train
unbearable. In a matter of minutes he was extremely agitated,  and by thetime he got off, he was complet ely irrational. Nothing Walter did made his
agitation subside. The next day, when he was brought back to the hospital,
he was hooked on heroin worse  than before. This time, he had no will to
recover. My notes read: “What happened to this man. A chemical explanation for
the train incident is not sufficient. I keep thinking of him wearing his
pinstriped business suit, confidently outfitted for a new life, but then having
to step onto the train that he rode when he was troubled and addicted. In
some treacherous twist of memory, the past came back, and with it came his
craving. Where did the craving hide out for a year before it returned. The
cells in everyone’ s body come and go, but their disappearance is not enough
to break  the spell that has the addict in its grip. In some way that medicine
is just beginning to unravel, a cell’s memory is able to outlive the cell
itself. ”
If this is true, then one has to change the blueprint in memory to rid
oneself of the addiction. It is not enough just to remove the physical toxins
from the cells, to counsel the addicted person, or to try to teach him
different behavi or patterns. These steps are worth pursuing for their own
sake, but the addiction is ultimately rooted in memory, and there  is where it
must be uprooted. A HANDS-OFF  CURE
As it stands now, typical programs for treating addicted people employ
highly confrontational tactics, emphasizing the need for constant vigilance
to guard  against the possible return of the all-powerful habit. “The monkey
is on your back,” the addict is told, “and he’ll be there for the rest of your
life. ” The rationale for this insistence is that compulsive addicts will never
be cured until they are turned into compulsive abstainers. In Ayurveda our emphasis is exactly the opposite. The cornerstone of our
addiction program is that the addict will give up his habit automatically
when offered a greater source of satisfaction. We hold that the source ofaddiction is a search for satisfaction. Alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs cause
untold damage, but their users derive some kind of pleasure from them, or
at least relief from the massive stress that they would otherwise feel. Addicts maintai n their habits for want of a way out. Bouts of guilt, shame,
remorse, and self-accusation do very little to help. But by exposing their minds to a greater source of satisfac tion, the
natural tendency would be to head away from the addiction, because the
greater satisfaction is more appealing. Support for this new view  has existed
for almost twenty years. Going back many years, studies in the United
States and Europe have repeate dly shown that when addicted people are
taught to meditate, their level of anxiety decreases, pulling down with it
their use of alcohol, cigarettes, and other drugs. If the addiction  is caught at
an early stage, a large proportion of subjects will stop abusing  substances
altogether. This is a very important point, because the early stage is where
most cures are possible. By removing the distractions of stress, meditation renews the nervous
system’ s memory of balance. Repeated meditation, day after day, jogs the
memory again and again, until in time the cells return to a normal state,
exchanging their abnormal receptors for a more normal pattern. Once the
pathways of intelligence are repaired, the cells will automatically select the
body’ s healthy signals, as once they automatically accepted the distorted
ones. The circle broken by addiction has been repaired. The various studies on meditation and addiction have led to the following
findings:
In 1972, physiologist Robert Keith Wallace and coworkers surveyed
1,860 meditators, mainly college students, about their use of all kinds
of drugs. After they began to meditate, the number of drug abusers
dropped significantly in all categories (marijuana, narcotics,
barbiturates, hallucinogens, and amphetamines). The longer the
students practiced meditation, the less their dependence on drugs, until
after twenty-one months, most had stopped abusing altogether. Marijuana was still used “very rarely” by 12 percent of the group; all
other categories were in the range of 1 percent to 4 percent. A 1974 study on marijuana compared meditators with nonmeditators
and found that after one to three months of meditation, about half of
the meditators had decreased or stopped their use of the drug; by
comparison, less than one-sixth of the nonmeditators had stopped
using marijuana or decreased its use. These results improved
dramatically the longer meditation continued. Among two-year
meditators, 92 percent decreased their use of marijuana and 77 percent
gave it up entirely. A similar study found the same results with alcohol. A high-school and college study asked 150 meditators and 1 10 controls
about their drug history and found significant decreases in marijuana,
wine, beer, and hard liquor in the meditators, while no decreases
occurred among the nonmeditators. All of these findings were based on people who had had no involvement
in any sort of rehabilitation program. No one asked them to quit, followed
their progress, or rewarded them for abstaining. Most important, no one was
selected for having any motivat ion to abstain; indeed, in a college or high-
school environment, the pressure comes in the opposite direction, from
peers who abuse alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs. The decreases across the
board suggest that simply by reducing stress and anxiety and raising the
level of inner satisfaction, one can motivate addicts to stop their habits. A stricter test of this principle occurs in institutions. A number of studies
have focused on the use of meditation among prisoners, who have little or
no motivation to quit their addictions. An overview of five such studies
found that the results were signi ficant enough to warrant placing meditation
in prisons as a major treatment for drug abuse. A study in Germany looked
at seventy-six drug abusers who enrolled in a drug rehabilitatio n program. After twelve months of meditating, decreases were found in all classes of
drugs, including heroin, barbiturates, and amphetamines, which are among
the hardest habits to kick. By their very nature, statistical studies tend to be faceless. I like to return
to indivi dual stories, such as the one a veteran counselor in New York told
me. He had been seeing a teenage girl who had started to drink before she
was 12 and was severely alcoholic by the time she turned 15. She proved
extremely resistant to all conventional rehabilitation, and in the end, after
months of frustration, the counselor had to admit defeat. Just as he was
releasing her from his program, he happened to remark, “Why don’t you try
meditating. ” She showed some interest, but he was not able to follow up
the case. Some years later he noticed an attractive young mother in a local
shopping center. With a start, he realized that it was the same girl, but now
looking happy and even radiant walking her 2-year -old daughter. He went
up to congratulate her. “What happene d to you. ” he asked. As it turned out, she had begun
meditation soon  after dropping out of rehabilitation and stopped drinking on
her own within a few months. She credited the meditation, which she still
practiced, for saving her from deep addiction and probably for saving her
life. The counselor has since then incorporated meditation into his work,
starting many other addicts along the same road. ADDICTION AND THE DOSHAS
All this indicate s that there is a self-correcting mechanism inside the
addict that can be triggered simply by allowing his mind to contact it. You
can also see this mechanism at work in terms of the doshas. People who
smoke or drink to excess, or who use drugs, have conditioned themselves
away from the body’ s natural desire for balance. In the beginning, the
ability to control their impulses may be fairly unimpaired; at this stage,
addicted people believe that they are still in control of their habit. Then ensues a period, lasting months or years, when all three doshas
become chronically aggravated. Every addiction has its own profile of
symptoms, but among chronic abusers we have always found that Pitta isgrossly aggravated, giving rise to irrational moods of violence, flushed skin,
abnormal sweating and thirst, and various digestive disorders, among other
things. Vata dosha seems particularly crucial, because its imbalance is
responsible for impulsive behav ior. When Vata is severely aggravated, any
impulse to drink or to smoke a cigarette or to take a fix has to be obeyed. As
impulse control starts to deterior ate, a huge amount of guilt is built up, since
the addicted person identifies with his lack of control. Not knowing that he
is following the command of Vata (as we all do, but in healthier forms), the
addicted person sees only that his resolutions to quit are failing miserably. In essence, Vata dosha itself is addicted. The stages of this addiction
resemble those for any impairment of the central nervous system. That is
why a hand tremor that is due to lack of sleep, Parkinson’ s disease, mental
illness, or alcoholism all look basically the same to the untrained eye. Vata
will generally go through the following stages of decline:
Mild imbalance: restless, scatter ed thoughts; increase of worries; easily
startled; loss of memory and concentration; absence of inner fr eshness
Moderate imbalance: insomnia; loss of physical coordination; tremor in
hands; anxiety, nervousness; loss of appetite; disconnected thinking;
passing feelings of physical weakness and hollowness
Serious imbalance: chronic insomnia; impair ed perception (things look
distant and unreal); uncontr ollable shaking of head and hands; no appetite;
apathy, general loss of all desir es; delusions and hallucinations
At the very end of an alcohol or drug addiction, Vata is often so out of
control that the symptoms are practically indistinguishable from mental
illness. A termin al alcoholic in the throes of DTs and a schizo phrenic are
both examples of Vata taken to its furthest limits. The early and middle stages of addiction are the most treatable, because
the body can be guided to rebalance itself. The catch-22 of all addictions is
that the same symptoms of distress are caused by the habit and by stoppingthe habit. This makes perfect sense once you look at Vata dosha, which has
become trained to accept the presence of the drug. As soon as the nicotine
or alcohol is withdrawn, Vata tries to shake off its bad training and return to
normal. When it heads back into balance, however, which requires throwing
off excess Vata buildup, the body is more Vata than ever, hence the
trembling, insomnia, and anxiety that accompany withdrawal. When the nervous system has become chemically unbalanced, Vata has
no anchor, no normal daily rhythm of rest and activity to stabilize the
hundreds of other body rhythms that must be coordinated in a healthy
person. Regular  meditation provides the stability of deep rest alternating
with activity. That is why peop le in the early stages of cigarette smoking
and drug use find that they can drop their habits with no ef fort at all. GIVING UP  CIGARETTES
In the case of cigarette smok ing, coaxing your body to give up its
addiction makes  much more sense than forcing it to. People do manage to
quit by going “cold turkey,” but the sudden withdrawal of nicotine
precipitates a lot of stress. The story is told that Sigmund Freud smoked
twenty cigars a day for many years, until he began to suffer heart
palpitations as a result. He tried to quit smoking, on his doctor ’s advice, but
the palpitations returned with doubled force as soon as he stopped, driving
him back to his habit. Freud told his biographer that trying not to smoke
was “torture beyond human power to bear. ”
In Ayurveda, we tell smokers to keep sending signals to the quantum
mechanical body telling it that they want to quit. These signals can be of
various kinds. Laying off cigare ttes for a day at a time is one way—many if
not most of the people who successfully quit do so by temporarily stopping
a dozen  or more times. A more powerful message is sent to the quantum
mechanical body with meditation. Even if you are a heavy smoker, this may
be all you need. One retrospecti ve study based on five thousand  meditators
showed that only 1 percent of the men and 4 percent of the women weresmokers, even though before starting meditators, a whopping  34 percent
said that they smoked at least occasionally. There are additional ways to help you quit. When patients come to
Ayurveda clinics and ask how they can stop smoking as painlessly as
possible, here is what we tell them. Three ground rules are laid down in
advance:
Do not try to give up smoking—hard-minded determination just sets
you up for failure. Nicotine is addictive, as is the habit of reaching for
a cigarette. To end these habits you have to retrain yourself as
unconsciously as you started. Keep your cigarettes with you—the strategy of throwing cigarettes
away seems to make sense, but it only leads to panicked trips for more
and the embarrassment of begging them from friends and strangers. Notice the automatic cues that make you reach for a cigarette and
dissociate yourself from them. The third point is the key one and requires explanation. All smokers light
up autom atically on cue. For some the cue is picking up the phone, for
others it is turning on the TV, starting a conversation, or ending a meal. You
probably know your own cues;  if not, take a day to observe them. These
cues are the signals to Vata that make you act on impulse. You do not notice
that you are lighting up because in fact your mind has gone blank for that
instant. Vata has taken over. You need to switch off this automatic pilot. The way to do that is
surprisingly simple: smoke consciously and pay attention to the act of
smoking. The best method, whic h has helped many of our patients to quit in
a short period of time, is as follows:
When you catch yourself lighting up, stop for a second and ask if you
really want this cigarette. If so, go outside and sit quietly by yourself. Smoke the cigarette
without distractions. As you are smoking, pay attention to your body. Feel the smoke in
your lungs; feel any sensations in your mouth, nose, throat, stomach,
or anywhere else. Take out a piece of paper or a small diary and immediately record what
you felt and the time you smoked the cigarette. Keep a record of each
cigarette, whether it was conscious or automatic, and how it felt. Do not worry about how much you are smoking; just record each
cigarette, even if you find that at the end of a phone call you don’t know
how those three butts in the ashtray got there. If you follow this procedure
faithfully, you will become a conscious smoker instead of a smoking
machine. We have found that many patients cut down their daily intake
from two packs to four or five cigarettes—this reflects how much they
actually want to smoke. Cutting  back is almost as important as stopping; it
prepares the way for quitting and also reduces the direct health risk of your
habit. CURING AN ADDICTION AT HOME
In the past, many addicted people have preferred to live with their
problem, no matter how tormenting, than to reveal it to outsiders. This
feeling is entirely understandab le, and I always feel it should be respected
as long as you are also taking productive steps to quit. A comple te course of
home treatment would include:
Learning to meditate
Detoxifying the system, either at home or under a doctor ’s care
Body-type diet (beginning with Vata-pacifying foods until the signs of
Vata imbalance are gone)Regular Ayurvedic exercise
Daily routine with oil massage (abhyanga) to settle disturbed Vata
At the outset, I recommend that you begin by learning to medita te at your
local center, then visiting an Ayurvedic physician for a complete physical
examination and diagnosis of imbalances. Tell him of your desire to quit,
frankly and honestly. He will indicate how to detoxify your body and
balance your doshas through diet and daily routine. Visiting him once a
week thereafter is advisable at the outset, since the initial period is the most
stressful for the body. But this is essentially a self-cure. Nobody coerces
you into followi ng the program; there is no confrontation or pressure of any
kind. Also be sure to take time every morning for a full-body abhyanga; a
second, shorter massage at night, moving slowly and gently as you cover
head, shoulders, and feet, is also recommended. And remember, the rule
when you are quitting any habit is regularity. The more regular you can be
about everything in your day, the better and quicker you will train Vata back
to norm al. You should not try to force Vata back into balance, since that is
impossible; you want to coax and soothe it back. The gentlest time in your
life should be the period when you are rebalancing your body. In addition, a few other treatments enter into the picture as supplements:
Music therapy
Aromatherapy
Herbal food supplements (known in Ayurveda as rasayanas— see page
221)
Listening to music is extremely settling to the nervous system while you
are purifying your body. A fifteen-minute session in the morning is
recommended, followed by another session at night before you go to bed. Filling your room with the appropriate dosha-pacifying aroma s also helps
relax you at bedtime. The use of rejuvenative herbal food supplementsbegins to repair the mind body connection at the level of your cells and
strengthens tissues damaged by drugs. We feel that no addiction treatment can succeed in the long run without
compassion and understanding. If you decide to seek counseling, look for
these qualities in a psychologist, pastor, doctor, or just a good friend. One
crippling drawback of conventional rehabilitation is that constant vigilance
means constant stress. The monkey never does get off your back. We feel
instead that addicted people have to learn to trust themselves and be
comfortable with their lifestyles. Any increase in fear and anxie ty is totally
unproductive, even if the stress is supposed to help end a habit. The
rationale behind our hands-of f approach is that nature can be trusted. An
addict’ s body will return to balance if it is treated correctly. If you are seriou sly addicted to alcohol or drugs, you may feel that you
have ruined your whole life; most addicts have inflicted pain on their
families and themselves. The vital thing for you to realize is that this
negativity is not you. It is the result  of physical and mental ama that has
been built up over time. You should take the same attitude toward it that
you would to dirt on your skin—wash it off and forget about it. If others
want to remind you of how destructive you have been in the past, take their
criticism as calmly as you can. The past is the past. You cannot  live it over
again, and you should not remind yourself of it. It is extremely important that you associate with healthy, normal people
as much as possible. You will have to choose whether to enroll in group
rehabilitation—many addicted people feel that it is an important part of
their return to normal life—but do everything you can to find a
compassionate, positive counselor. Anyone who has a confrontational or
fanatical approach to addictions should be avoided for your own good. Finally, it is norm al to have relapses as you are recovering. Of course you
will be disappoi nted, but try to see that this is not a personal failure. It takes
time for the body to normalize itself. If you have to have another drink,
cigarette, or pill, it is the habituated doshas that are forcing you. Doshas are
powerful, but you are much more powerful than they can ever be. Youressential self is untouched by addiction. It is happy, free, above all
problems, and at peace. Once you begin to touch this true self of yours,
everything will work out. Be patient and allow yourself to emer ge in
freedom. The measure of your success is not how many days you go without a
relapse. Rather, you should look for signs of self-acceptance; happiness,
moments of joy and pleasure; return of a good appetite and love of food;
better sleep, calmer dreams; lack of bad odors in the mouth and skin, less
sweating; increased physical strength and endurance; and regular physical
functioning (digestion, respiration, motor coordination, and so on). All of these will come in time. The great joy of getting clean is that the
body loves to be that way. I do not even favor the term rehabilitation. What
you are doing is washing yourself off, inside and out. It is a natural process
that will bring greater results the longer it continues. Temporary relapses are
little more than minor obstacles, as long as you are willing to get back up
and try again. A healthy, beautiful world is waiting for you and gets nearer
with every step you take.
The text does not explicitly state the purpose of using mantras in the context of chakra, but it does mention that certain mantras can help open up energy that may be congested in a particular region.
What is the purpose of using mantras in the context of chakra?
According to Ayurveda, the many different vibrations that comprise our lives sometimes get "out of sync," leading to illness. Ayurveda suggests using a specifically chosen sound to repair the sequence of sound at the heart of every cell.
What is the Ayurvedic perspective on the effects of using sounds to heal?
The text does not explicitly state the goal of aromatherapy, but it does mention that aromatherapy is used to balance the doshas and promote healing.
What is the goal of aromatherapy in Ayurveda?
The text does not explicitly state the Ayurvedic approach to treating addiction, but it does mention that Ayurveda does not force the addict to quit, but rather encourages them to learn to trust themselves and identify with their true nature, leading to a natural recovery.
What is the Ayurvedic approach to treating addiction?
The text suggests that aging is not a natural process, but rather a mistake of the intellect, where the individual identifies with the physical body rather than the quantum mechanical body.
What is the Ayurvedic perspective on aging?