Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom: A Complete Prescription to Optimize Your Health, Prevent Disease, and Live with Vitality and Joy

by Acharya Shunya

Sounds True    2017

376 Pages     Health/Wellness

I would like to share with you this morning a very insightful and useful book that came across my desk from a publicist. It is available today.

Ayurveda is a health system that believes that true health is everyone's birthright, and that each of us is a self-healing entity who can use nature's abundance to restore and renew ourselves. The practitioner and author, Acharya Shunya, was born in northern India, where her formative years were spent learning the ancient wisdom of Ayurveda from her guru, who was her grandfather (or Baba). He was a spiritual teacher and practitioner of this ancient wisdom. 

Shunya now is a practitioner herself, in California, and her book, Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom, is the result of her years of work teaching people how to understand, use, and practice the Ayurveda philosophy. Acharya Shunya presents a narrative-based guidebook that meticulously covers the how-to's of morning and evening self-care, daily contemplations, self-massage and skin care, cooking (including recipes), beauty rituals, and more. It also talks a great deal about yoga.

She writes "To rid ourselves of the suffering that afflicts the body, mind, and soul, what we need is an affirmative knowledge of life and how to live it in alignment with nature."

I loved the stories that begin each section. In them she relates the enormous influence her Baba had on her by giving examples of conversations she had with him as a child and the wisdom he imparted to her.

This is truly a unique book. It certainly can't be digested in one sitting, but it looks to me that someone seeking its wisdom needs to work on it, one step at a time.

Here  are some steps that every reader can do.

  Wake up early each morning at a set time. 

  Have an altar in your room and put fresh flowers on it every day. 

  Every morning meditate to your healing for fifteen minutes. 

  Stop eating (or minimize your consumption of) harmful foods - which foods are harmful, and which foods are best eaten at certain times of the day and the year are discussed throughout the book 

  Eat beneficial foods - there is a big section toward the end of the book that discusses food and includes recipes.

Here is a review in a blog about health and wellness.

Here is Acharya Shunya's website.