Title: Ayurveda : a comprehensive guide to traditional Indian medicine for the West /
Authors: Ninivaggi, Frank John.; Ninivaggi, Frank John.
Publisher: Praeger,
Year: 2008
Subjects: Medicine, Ayurvedic.; Medicine, Ayurvedic; Attitude to Health; Life Style; Medicine, Ayurvedic history
Abstract: Written by a North American psychiatrist (Yale Univ. School of Medicine), this is a first-rate introduction to a set of traditional medical theories and practices from India that are represented as an organized system of healing principles and clinical interventions. In India, Ayurveda has enjoyed a postcolonial resurgence, and elsewhere it finds a place today among alternative and complementary forms of medicine. Healing as a process of restoring balance through exercise and physical manipulation, prescribed diet, and carefully selected herbal remedies is a key feature of Ayurveda. The ancient wisdom of Ayurvedic medicine, with its emphasis on balance in diet and lifestyle, is a good fit with the contemporary Western model of integrative mind-body medicine. He introduces the underlying concepts, applications, and scientific research on this Indian tradition that treats disease from a holistic perspective. Appendices add a timeline of Ayurvedic oral and written tradition, list of disorders said to be caused by doshas (a fundamental bioenergetic principle, per the glossary), and clinical case examples.
Contents: Background, history, and development -- Theoretical foundations and an overview -- Anatomy -- Physiology and digestion -- Prakruti and vikruti -- Health and the disease process I -- Health and the disease process II -- Nutrition and diet in Ayurveda -- Lifestyle and behavioral regimens in Ayurveda and in yoga -- Ayurvedic therapies, panchakarma, and materia medica -- The cultivation of consciousness -- The biopsychospiritual perspective in contemporary clinical psychiatry.