Immunity according to Ayurveda

First of all, as this is my first attempt to write anything, i would request you to bear with my mistakes and/or juvinile thoughts and help me out if i am mistaken in any way.

I would like to introduce myself. I am Manaan Gandhi, a BAMS student studying ayurveda in DY Patil college, nerul.

Being just a first year student, frankly i do not know much about the details of this science but have tried to understand some concepts which, to me, seemed important and without which the base of ayurveda would seems incomplete. I am presenting my understanding here and will wait and see if i get thumbs up for this or if im corrected. In either case, i will be benefited.

To understand ayurvedic concepts, we must know some basics about the philosophies is revolves around

Ayurveda says that all beings have 3 bodies.

a) The gross body, or the one we see in front of us.

b) The subtle body, or the one in which there is a flow of energy and chakras (this body can be related to the mind). This body includes our aura. It stores the exact detail and pattern of our body structure and function. For eg. We know that everyday a new layer of skin appears on our face. Then why do some marks remain for a lifetime? Why does our skin colour not change drastically? It is because gross impressions are stored in this body and due to this, the new skin will also carry these impressions along with it. The same goes with other parts of this body. Thus this body contains the blueprint of our gross body. This print takes 6 months max to come into action. Hence the saints try and alter this blueprint via various methods of yoga,etc so as to gain a purer body. If this can be tapped into, we can change our appearance at will like yogis used to do in the bygone days. A healthy new human could be ready in a year's time.

c) The causal body, or the ones which stores all our subtle impressions(samskars) including our karmas. This body does not get destroyed at the time of death and hence karmas are carried forward from one birth to the other resulting in what we call destiny or fate.

The understanding of things like immunity, digestion, etc according to ayurveda (or my understanding of it) are very different from the ones we have heard from the modern aspect...

Lets start with Immunity

Immunity: According to ayurved(my understanding) we have 3 lines of defence. These systems protect our body from various diseases by preventing disease causing agents to enter our body.

The first line of defence is our aura, or the energy system of our body. The karmas or the deeds done previously are stored in the causal body in the form of subtle charges and are released out at specific times with respect to the surrounding environment, planetary positions etc. These charges enter the subtle body which forms the aura. Thus when our energy is low, we are prone to diseases i.e. the first line of defence has been broken.

The next line of defence is divided into 2, internal and external

The external line of defence is formed by the skin. As we all know, the skin acts as a divider between the self and non-self externally. It is difficult for microbes to pierce this line of defence. Hence making it the strongest line of defence

The internal line of defence is formed by our GI tract. We take in food (non-self) and we convert in into our body tissues(self) by the action of ahamkara(power of self-identification) on this food. Internally the GI tract acts as a divider between the self and non-self. Do you self identify with your faeces? No. Only the absorbed part of food will be a part of you because, by the process of absorption, ahamkara acts on the food and it becomes a part of the self. This is known as selective absorption in modern science. Although passive absorption may also be included. Therefore any anomaly in the GI tract anatomically of physiologically may give rise to many problems.

The third line of defence comprises of the WBCs, antibodies, etc. which do not allow the disease to manifest itself

Thus, only when all the three defences are broken can a disease enter our system and affect us.

The question that arises here is that, how do we strengthen all these three lines of defence in order to protect our body and remain healthy for a longer period of time?

The answer to these questions will lie in my next blog.

Please feel free to comment, praise, criticize or give your point of view in this subject. And as i have mentioned before, this is my understanding of the subject and im more than happy to learn new theories and concepts or correct myself as im just a young student.

Thanking you,

Manaan Gandhi.