Experiences with Ayurveda

Ayurveda is the holistic medicine from India. I am by no means an expert on the subject, but I have used it with mixed results to address some of my health issues. It has been particularly helpful with aiding my problems with digestion (acidity, heart-burn, bloating, abdominal cramps) and has taught me a whole new way of looking at food. As a result, I decided to write a short article on this subject and provide references that I have found useful.

Introduction

The term Ayurveda is derived from the sanskrit words "Ayus" meaning life, and "veda" meaning knowledge. Thus, Ayurveda literally means "knowledge of life". It is supposedly thousands of years old and was communicated by Rishis who discovered it through meditation. The subject is very deep and I'm not going to attempt to delve into the details, but at a high level, it attempts to treat disease not just looking at physiology, but also at psychology and even spirituality. Diagnosis is typically done by reading the pulse, and by examination of some other body parts such as the tongue, eyes, nails, hair, and skin. There is strong emphasis on using food as medicine, but herbs are often used as well.

For a more detailed introduction to Ayurveda, there are several good books and resources, but to start with I would recommend the introductory articles by the Ayurvedic Institute in New Mexico.

Ayurveda: Art of Being is a documentary that provides some insights into the power of Ayurveda.  Unfortunately, I think a lot of the power is being lost with the recent increase in commercialization.

How did I found out about Ayurveda?

Growing up in India, I was almost exclusively treated using allopathy, the modern western medicine. I was exposed to the existence of Ayurveda, but because treatment with Ayurveda takes a lot of patience as it is slow, I never actually used it.

Then, in 2003, as I was getting my wisdom teeth extracted, my dentist told me about Ayurveda and referred me to an Ayurvedic practitioner. This was mainly to try and address some of the issues I had been facing with digestion. One of the simple things suggested by the practitioner was to take a tablespoon of sesame oil each morning on an empty stomach. Something as simple as that helped my digestion a bit, but the effect was limited in the sense that it didn't seem to get rid of things like acidity and bloating which were still bothering me. I actually used that for several years, but don't need it anymore.

In 2006, as I started visiting the Yoga Farm, I learnt a lot more about Ayurveda. They conduct many courses during the year and so I got to hear about Ayurveda on my Saturday evening visits. I learned about how spices such as turmeric powder, cumin seeds, coriander seeds, mustard seeds, cardamom, etc. help with digestion and assimilation of food. I learned that looking at a conventional nutrition label is meaningless because if the body is not able to digest and absorb the nutrients, then the body isn't going to get the benefit of those nutrients. I learned that certain foods are better for certain body types; e.g. even though conventional wisdom talks about salads being "good for you", there are certain body types that are unable to effectively digest them because the digestive heat is not sufficient; undigested food actually creates toxins in the body and over the long term lead to disease.

Since that time, I have visited several Ayurvedic centers and spas for various treatments and have also consulted several practitioners. Because Ayurveda is not regulated in the US, it can be hard to find genuine practitioners.

Ayurveda in India vs Ayurveda in the US

Ayurveda is gaining in popularity in India, but it is practiced quite differently in India vs in the west. In India, Ayurveda is recognized by the government as a legitimate form of medicine and it is possible to obtain a degree in Ayurveda and to be called a "doctor". And it is possible to visit an Ayurvedic doctor to get treated for a specific physical symptom.

In the US however, Ayurveda is not recognized as a legitimate form of medicine and thus the emphasis is more on lifestyle and disease prevention. Also, many of the Ayurvedic herbs in India contain heavy metals, and as a result they are banned in the US. This is probably not a bad thing since, being an unregulated field, it would be hard to do any kind of quality enforcement, and many of the herbs that contain heavy metals must be prepared a certain way for them to be effective.

Ayurveda centers and spas

The following are some centers that offer Ayurvedic treatments. I have been to the ones marked with an asterisk. The others on the list are ones that I have either done some research on, or personally know people that have visited there.

• Arya Vaidya Sala, Kottakkal, Kerala, India
• Ayurvedic Institute, NM, USA*
• Blue Sage Sanctuary, CA, USA*
• California College of Ayurveda, CA, USA*
• Chopra Center, CA, USA*
• Dr. Jay's Ayurveda and Panchakarma Center, Mountain View, CA
• Kayakalpa, CA, USA*
• Malayala Ayurveda Vaidya Sala, Singapore*
• Dr. Pankaj Naram / Jivanshakti
• Rejuvenation Therapies, Grass Valley, CA*
• Dr. Suhas Kshirsagar, Soquel, CA
• The Ayurvedic Center of Vermont, Williston, VT
• The Raj, IA, USA
• Vaidyagrama, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India
• Vinayak Ayurveda, NM, USA*

I'll update this list as I find out about or visit any new places.

How corrupt is a country?

(This post was updated on 06/30/2014.)

There's a relatively easy way to find out. Transparency International is an organization that ranks countries using a Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). Pre 2012, the index was a number from 0 (highly corrupt) to 10 (very clean).  From 2012 onwards, the score goes from 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean).

Here's how the CPI of the US has varied over the years.

Year - CPI - US Ranking - Least corrupt country (CPI)
1995 - 7.79 - 15 - New Zealand (9.55)
1996 - 7.66 - 15 - New Zealand (9.43)
1997 - 7.61 - 16 - Denmark (9.94)
1998 - 7.5 - 17 - Denmark (10)
1999 - 7.5 - 18 - Denmark (10)
2000 - 7.8 - 14 - Finland (10)
2001 - 7.6 - 16 - Finland (9.9)
2002 - 7.7 - 16 - Finland (9.7)
2003 - 7.5 - 18 - Finland (9.7)
2004 - 7.5 - 17 - Finland (9.7)
2005 - 7.6 - 17 - Iceland (9.7)
2006 - 7.3 - 20 - Finland + Iceland + New Zealand (9.6)
2007 - 7.2 - 20 - Denmark + Finland + New Zealand (9.4)
2008 - 7.3 - 18 - Denmark + New Zealand + Sweden (9.3)
2009 - 7.5 - 19 - New Zealand (9.4)
2010 - 7.1 - 22 - Denmark + New Zealand + Singapore (9.3)
2011 - 7.1 - 24 - New Zealand (9.5)
2012 - 73 - 19 - Denmark + Finland + New Zealand (90)
2013 - 73 - 19 - Denmark + New Zealand (91)
2014 - 74 - 17 - Denmark (92)
2015 - 76 - 16 - Denmark + New Zealand (91)
2016 - 74 - 18 - Denmark + New Zealand (90)
2017 - 75 - 16 - New Zealand (89)
2018 - 71 - 22 - Denmark (88)

2019 - 69 - 23 - Denmark + New Zealand (87)

2020 - 67 - 25 - Denmark + New Zealand (88)

The US has gotten more corrupt since the inception of the index but, on the bright side, it's still within a fairly narrow band.

Finding a "safe" bank

With all the news about the economy headed downhill, a natural question that comes up is whether or not one is banking with an institution that is sound (i.e. unlikely to fail). Here are some sites that allow us to check on the health of financial institutions -- banks, thrifts, and credit unions.

• Bauer Financial's star ratings
• The Finance Buff has a post on how to go about finding a local bank.

Food at the Yoga Farm: The yogic diet

Disclaimer: I'm still a newbie on this path, so I might have some facts that are incorrect. If so, please forgive the error and let me know so I may correct it.

In my introductory post about the Yoga Farm, I discussed how my digestive health benefited immensely from food that I ate there. Naturally, I was intrigued by how the food was prepared because the food had the same positive effect on my digestion regardless of the menu.

The diet is a simple lacto-vegetarian diet, but they also avoid ingredients such as onions, garlic, mushrooms, vinegar, fermented/aged foods, and excessive chilis. I later discovered that this is quite a common diet among Vaishnavs (followers of Vishnu), and as such it is commonly referred to as a Vaishnav diet. Yet another name for this diet is the sattvic diet. Followers of ISKCON (more commonly known as the Hare Krishnas) also follow this diet. The goal of the diet is to minimize karmic impact by being non-violent (hence vegetarian), and promote clarity of the mind for advancing on the spiritual path by eating light, fresh, easy to digest foods.

Because of abstinence from onions and garlic, people sometimes confuse this with the Jain diet, but the Jain diet is even stricter than this one and further excludes most vegetables that grow below the surface of the ground such as potatoes.

Additionally, there is a lot of emphasis on fresh food. The life force or prana that we get from the food is highest in fresh foods. The food at the Yoga Farm is usually prepared fresh starting about 2 hours or so before each meal. Any leftovers of cooked food are stored in the refrigerator, and can be reheated and served only once within 24 hours. Anything older than that is composted. Stale food lacks life force and creates heaviness in the mind and the body and that's why it must be avoided. The calories that we get from processed food and the calories that we get from fresh food have an entirely different effect on the mind and the body. It is after this education that I stopped paying attention to the "nutrition information" on packaged processed foods and usually just avoid them altogether.

Finally, the cooking methods are influenced by ayurveda which is a holistic form of medicine from ancient India. They use organic, unrefined oils, and liberally use basic ayurvedic spices such as turmeric, cumin seed, coriander seed, fennel seed, fresh ginger, and mustard seeds that are known for promoting digestion and allowing the body to better absorb nutrients.

More on onions and garlic

Onions and garlic are considered to be disturbing to the mind and hinder the practice of meditation. Perhaps the best article I have seen on the subject of avoiding onions and garlic is "Why no onions and garlic?" by Kurma. A number of Buddhist vegetarians also avoid using onions and garlic.

Personally, I have found several prosaic benefits from avoiding onions and garlic -- no bad breath, food tastes better because the flavors of the underlying ingredients are no longer overpowered by the pungent flavor of onions and garlic, and I have less trouble with heartburn.

Why no mushrooms?

From what I have been told it's because mushrooms grow in the dark and they are a fungus. With respect to food that grows in the dark, wouldn't that be true for vegetables like carrots and potatoes that grow underground?  Not quite.  While the vegetable is underground, the leaves are exposed to sunlight and grow above the ground.

More than just a diet

Of course, the yogic diet is just one of things that is part of the yogic lifestyle. The yogic lifestyle requires being careful of everything that we consume. This includes abstaining from intoxicants such as caffeine, tobacco, and alcohol, but even extends to being careful about what we consume with our other sense organs as well -- movies, books, music, etc. While I've been encouraged to follow the diet because of the more prosaic benefits that I noted above, I'm still not there yet in terms of following the complete yogic lifestyle.

Saving for retirement: A thought experiment

In an earlier post, I discussed worry-free investing which was based upon the work of Zvi Bodie. Determining how much to put away for retirement depends on so many different factors that is becomes hard to come up with a "correct" number. There are so many variables such as:

• Inflation rate: By this I don't mean just the widely publicized consumer price index (CPI), since one's spending habits may differ quite a bit from the way the CPI weights the various classes.
• Tax rates: This would relate to current and future income tax rates (federal, state, and local) as well as sales tax rates. This is also affected by where one chooses to live in retirement.
• Returns on investments: This includes things like interest rates and the movement in stocks and bond prices.
• Social security payments: With the financial problems facing the government, it's hard to say what sort of payments social security would be able to make in the future.
• Changes in income: One would normally have more income with age because of experience, but that seems to be changing nowadays with folks losing a job and being forced to accept a lower income.
• Changes in expenses: As one goes through the years, what we spend on changes.  In younger years, one may not need to spend much.  In middle age there is often added costs of supporting a family.  As we age, depending on our health, there may be a lot of expenses for medical care.
• Life span: Perhaps the most crucial one. One may not be around during one's planned retirement years!  But it's probably better to leave behind an estate than to live one's golden years in poverty.

But for the purpose of this exercise, we're going to ignore all of that.

Let's say I make 100 pieces of gold for every year that I work, with no change in income, and no loss of income at any point during my working life. Further, let's assume that what a piece of gold buys today, it will also buy n years from now, where n > 0. In other words, a piece of gold will buy in retirement exactly what it buys today. Let's assume that there are no taxes.

Now, for every year I work, I get 100 pieces of gold. Let's say I spend 50 pieces of gold each year and save the remaining 50. Thus, for every year that I work, I have basically bought one year of retirement. In other words, if I work 30 years, I can have 30 years of retirement. If, on the other hand, I spend 25 pieces of gold each year, I have bought 3 years of retirement for every year of work. And if I spend 75 pieces of gold, I have bought only one year of retirement for each 3 years of work. This, of course, ignores the time value of money as well; i.e. there was no attempt to invest the money during the working years, but also bear in mind that any kind of investing necessarily involves risk.

So if we look at the average working life of about 40 years until retirement (age 25 to 65), and we need to plan to live to age 105, a retired life of 40 years, then using this simple example, we need to be able to save 50% of our income. In general, if I work x years, and need to plan for a retirement of y years, then I need to restrict my spending to [x/(x+y)] × 100% of earnings. Put another way, if I save m% of my income each year, then I buy one year of retirement for every (100-m)/m years of work. If we want to account for taxes, then these percentages would apply to the post-tax income.

Perhaps the biggest drawback of this example is that it does not account for social security. At lower income levels, social security tends to replace a significant portion of that income, and would therefore require a significantly lower savings rate. However, at higher income levels social security contributes far less to replacing that income.

Anyway, this is just a thought experiment and is not practical by any means. But I thought I'd write it up nevertheless.

(A few days after writing this post, courtesy of A.Word.A.Day, I found out of the existence of the word gedankenexperiment, which means "thought experiment". Had I known of it before this post, I might have used it in the title.)

Inspiring words from Steve Jobs

In his commencement address at Stanford in June 2005, Steve Jobs tells 3 stories -- the first is about "connecting the dots", the second is about love and loss, and the third is about death. I found it to be a very inspiring piece filled with words of wisdom. I keep going back to it again and again, reading through the full text. Here are some excerpts:

On "connecting the dots"...

"Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever."

On love and loss...

"Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers."

On death...

"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life."

Concert at the Yoga Farm: Stephen Longfellow Fiske

Following the Thanksgiving dinner at the Yoga Farm, and after the meditation and chanting, we had a concert by Stephen Longfellow Fiske. Stephen was an acid rock musician in San Francisco before he became a disciple of Swami Satchidananda, who was a contemporary of Swami Vishnudevananda (the founder of the Yoga Farm) and they both shared the same guru, Swami Sivananda.

Stephen visits the Yoga Farm multiple times a year. He usually has a concert performance on the opening day of the Teacher's Training Course at the Yoga Farm, a month long course where people train to become teachers of yoga in the Sivananda tradition. The courses are held twice a year in May and in October.

I've sat through several of his concerts here at the Yoga Farm and always find his music inspiring even though the concert has more or less the same format and songs every time. This Thanksgiving, he entertained us with songs such as "In my imagination", "Go for it", "Green City", and some peace chants. About the only one I can recognize on a commercial album is "Green City" which is part of his album titled Stephen Longfellow Fiske.

He shared with the us the inspiring story of Andy Lipkis, whose dream was to plant a million trees, and who at the time didn't have a clue as to how he was going to accomplish it, but then went on to found Tree People.