https://wiki.yoga-vidya.de/Ayurveda_Beauty
Ayurveda is all about maximizing Ojas. Ojas is the vitality or life energy which gives you a radiant and healthy glow.
Lets take a closer look what Ojas means in a deeper understanding:
The key to living healthy is really to maximize what we call ojas. Now, Ojas is an essential vitality or life force, that really distinguish us as living beings, not only happy but healthy, comparing to someone who is not living at all.
There are 8 essential drops of Ojas, what we call ashta-bindu in Sanskrit, that must exist in the mind body in order for us to live.
Beyond that we have 1 handful of Ojas; that provides us through the mind-body. This other Ojas can at any point in live either being maximized or deprived.
And that Ojas accounts to the difference either i feel vital, healthy happy, ready to climb a mountain or swim in the ocean.
But when deficient it results in weakness, fatigue and ultimately in disease.
Ojas is a highly pure biological substance, the essence of all the types of body tissues
and the ultimate end product of the bio-sytnhese-body-metabolism standing at the top of an extremely complex refining process & food pyramid.
- You might say that ojas is the top of a pyramid of that pyramid & that top is the gateway between consciousness and physiology, between spiritual and material. You could also say Ojas is the first material or physical expression of consciousness in the body, with 1 leg still in the materiality. But it is almost both; manifest and not manifested in the same time, it pervades & nourishes the body & contains the flow of cosmic energy - what we call Prana in Ayurveda and you might know this word from your Yoga lesson.
Now, the concept of Ojas is very important to understand because when you look at the world you really see how the things work in a circle.
An example:
Soil which is nutritional rich gives the ability for a plant to get root and therefore stability and maybay the plant becomes a tree, and the tree get fruits which are rich on Ojas, and once i eat that fruit i am able to absorb that energy and the nutritional qualities from the fruit and all Ojas what comes with it.
The topic of high-quality food is the nuts and bolts of Ayurveda. The discount mentality of the Germans is really a problem since nobody can expect Ojas from a factory chicken.
In other words: Ayurveda is all about connectivity.
How i look at the world, how i feel, how optimal my Ojas is, how excellent energy levels are, how my emotional & mental resilience is working, and this really depends not only on how i am connectet with the world but with myself.
The amount of water, the quality of the water that i drink in a day, the kind of food that i eat must be relevant to what my particular body type is, we call this Dosha.
The basis to understand Ayurveda are the 3 doshas; your natural mind-body type you are born with. In Sanskrtit we call this Prakriti, but this is another complex topic i am going to write more later.
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If I were to ask a roomful of people the question, “Who would like to have more vitality and greater resistance to stress?” every hand in the room would go up, right? We all want to feel energetic, vital, happy, and healthy. Ayurveda recognizes that preserving vitality and resisting stress and disease are critical to our sense of well being and that some people are able to do so better than others. Why is this? I’d like to introduce you to the concept of ojas, which accordimng Ayurveda is the stabilizing essence in the body and mind that allows us to resist stress, prevent disease, and gives us strength, immunity and endurance. Through this article I offer insight into why preserving and building ojas is critical to your health and well-being. I'd like also offer some simple ways in which you can do so.
Ojas is one of the most important concepts in Ayurvedic treatment and is essentially an end goal of Ayurvedic healing. Deepak Chopra gives a wonderful definition of ojas as “the pure and subtle substance that’ is the extracted from food that has been completely digested". Ojas circulates throughout the bodily tissues and heart, sustaining the physical self, bringing clarity to the mind and balancing the emotions. In short, when the body produces ojas, the vital nectar of life, we feel blissful. The cells singing with happiness because both the mind and the body are receiving the nourishment they need. ”When we have strong ojas, we experience healthy tissues as well as mental and emotional stability. We also resist stress and disease, and experience strong immunity, endurance and vitality. When we have a depletion of ojas in the physical body, we experience lowered immunity, fatigue, weakness and, ultimately, disease. In the mind, ojas plays the role of providing stability. A stable mind means we are less affected by day-to-day stress and stimulation. There is a solid mental “container” for thought and emotion. Symptoms of low mental ojas reflect an ungrounded mind in which a person can lose control of thoughts and emotions, or experience mood swings and other forms of mental imbalance. The good news is that Ayurveda provides specific protocol for preserving and rebuilding our vitality and immunity through natural means.
There are several ways to build and preserve ojas, and i will touch upon a few:
- Healthy digestion: Ojas is the end result of healthy digestion. When we are able to break down food properly, we’re able to cultivate this essence that protects and preserves the functioning of every cell.
- Understanding your mind-body constitution: When one understands the nature of his or her inherent constitution, s/he is able to eat and live in a way that preserves and cultivates vitality and immunity, rather than depletes it.
- Eating appropriate ojas-building foods: Specific, nourishing foods are better at building ojas than others. Healthy digestion is key for breaking these foods down properly, but eating the appropriate foods to build the proper vital essence is the other half of the equation.
- Sufficient mental and physical rest: One of the primary causes of low ojas is continual over-exertion or over-stimulation. Mental or physical “burnout” or chronic fatigue are examples in which a person has depleted their ojas as a result of too much mental and physical activity.
- Meditation: I can’t emphasize the importance of meditation enough! In modern life our senses are constantly bombarded with stimulation, which can easily deplete our systems and destabilize the mind.
- Time in nature: The sensory impressions in nature are key to preserving ojas and are incredibly healing to body, mind and spirit.
When I first started on my Ayurvedic journey, I was a classic example of someone with depleted ojas. I was dealing with chronic fatigue, pain, weakness and unstable moods as a result of having decreased my ojas from a lifestyle and diet that were inappropriate for my constitution. After having dealt with these chronic issues for so many years, a light bulb went off when I began learning about the concept of ojas, how this vital, protective essence became less and less and how it can be rebuilt through Ayurveda.
Through my years studying and practicing Ayurveda, I’ve encountered so many people with stories like mine, who suffered from poor health and chronic conditions, but now experience robust health, vitality and a sense of peace and contentment. This potential exists for all of us. Through conscious effort we all have the power to cultivate optimal physical, mental and emotional health through returning to the medicine of Mother Nature.
