Nourishment - Ayurveda's First Pillar of Health

As old as Stonehenge (if not older) and still relevant today!

A few weeks ago Āyurveda’s Three Pillars of Health were introduced. At that time, I promised more. Hang onto your pockets - it’s happening :)

And if you wear cargo pants, you have your choice of pockets to hang onto :)

Āyurveda’s first pillar of health is called āhāra in Sanskrit. The approximate translation into English is Nourishment. This pillar is about supporting our sustenance.

When people hear the word nourishment, the mind goes to food. Food, food, food, food, food. And, fair enough. This is definitely part of it.

Food, food, food, food, food. Photo by Shayda Torabi on Unsplash

However, from the Āyurvedic perspective, since we are more than just a physical body (for more on this, read the post about the kośas here), we need more than food for nourishment. When considering nourishment, if we zoom out, we might think about:

• Food

• Water

• Air / Breath

• Sensory impressions

• Energy

• Emotions

• Information

• Experiences

• Activities

• Thoughts

• Relationships

• and more!

Each of these factors nourishes us in important and meaningful ways.

Photo by Margit Bantowsky on Unsplash

With all the possibilities for nourishment, we might wonder

Is everything nourishment?

Based on experience, we know that the answer to this is no. Not everything is nourishment. Some things can be the opposite of nourishment.

What determines if something is nourishing?

There are factors that influence whether a substance nourishes us:

1. Quality: If the substance is of high quality, it likely has more nourishment to offer. Examples include nutrient-dense foods and respectful relationships. Where something is lower quality, it has less nutritional capacity, like junk food and fake news. These are more likely to use your resources than nourish you.

2. Quantity: Have you ever done the thing where you’re eating something, and you're enjoying it so you keep eating it until you give yourself a stomach ache? I just described a quantity issue. Sometimes, things are nourishing in a particular dose, but not so much in a higher dose. Examples include a square of chocolate for dessert (as opposed to three family-sized bars) or an episode of Severance (without binge-watching the whole season in one sitting). The dosage, the quantity, matters.

3. Context: This refers to a whole host of other related elements like the season, time of day, stage of life, stress levels, busy-ness, health status and so on. I noticed a funny thing when we were on vacation in St. Lucia. After dinner, I craved and enjoyed a banana split almost every night we were there. I digested it just fine. When we got home (note: it was February and I live in Canada, and we got lots of snow), I had one scoop of commemorative ice cream to celebrate our return home and ended up with a head cold the next day. It was a bummer, and I learned that the context - climate, season, environment, stress levels (way less stress on vacation) - influences our digestion.

All of these factors are pointing to whether or not our system has the ability, in that moment, to digest what we consume. From Āyurveda’s perspective, if you can DIGEST it, it nourishes you.

In Āyurveda, you are what you eat, you are what you digest!

This image is from the Cleveland Clinic website

This leads us to a whole other teaching (spoiler alert - AGNI is coming up!!!), however, let’s jump into that can of worms next week.

For this week, consider what nourishes you and the factors that influence your ability to benefit from the nourishment.

Thanks for reading!

From your favourite cargo-pant wearing Āyurvedi,