7 Questions with Karta Purkh Singh Khalsa

KP: One of the most incredible things about Ayurveda is that we can assess imbalances early on. So, things that otherwise people would only be aware of were happening to them medically once they were of advanced age. In Ayurveda, we can figure out the underlying issues that eventually result in a heart or bone condition very early. We can assess these things very early and get a handle on them, and we can do that at any time up to the time when the disease is diversified into a whole complex web of problems, ideally earlier than later. Very often, many illnesses have the same root. From an Ayurvedic perspective, that is a cold and dry metabolism. And that's something that is inherited and then goes on to create classic problems like a combination of insomnia, chronic pain, and constipation. Those can have many different names as conditions that people develop over time. But if we handle the underlying digestive issues like constipation, we promote warmth and lubrication to the body; the body can avoid all those issues. Ayurveda also is very focused on long-term support, things like herbal tonics. The word tonic has different meanings in different contexts, but here, it means something that promotes long-term stamina, homeostasis, balance, essentially prana.

KP: Yes. Prana means energy, the body's vital energy, and it's used in many different ways. Ayurveda has a more specific definition, but yoga talks about it as the vital energy that runs our body. So, having enough prana and the right kind of prana and having the prana go in the right direction is critical to maintaining good health over time. Ayurveda emphasizes these long-term issues rather than addressing symptoms when they arise, although it can do that too. The idea is to support the health of the body over the long term so we stay healthy for a long time. The goal of Ayurveda would be never to have a symptom, which is hard for people to believe, but never having had a headache or constipation or menstrual cramps, and then getting to an advanced age and still feeling great and doing the things you want to do.

KP: Well, one of the things about just allowing yourself to participate in unhealthy practices (not watching your diet, not exercising, not sleeping properly) is that you end up as the typical modern person. You develop chronic illnesses starting in your fifties or sixties, and then you have to start having serious surgeries. And by the time you die, you're taking many medications that have side effects. But assuming that you are aiming at using natural methods to treat something and you're focusing on symptoms, the problem is that if you're not getting to the root of these things, which is all prana in some way, some aspect of those manifestations of prana that I talked about, you are going to be just suppressing the symptoms, but they're never cured. So I use the example of a cold, dry metabolism called Vata in Ayurveda; if you have a Vata-type underlying structure or metabolism or organization of your body, that manifests as nerve problems primarily. And so you may start to have memory problems.

KP: Prana is just energy, and everything has energy. Our body, mind, and spirit are made of energy, and plants have energy. And so we're supplying energy to the body in the same way. The vibration of a plant continues even after the plant dies…even when dried and powdered, plant ingredients maintain this higher energy vibration to treat every aspect of the being. We call these high-energy foods sattvic. In other words, they promote sattva, a state of calm, balance, and long-term stability; everything works well, you feel good, and your mind works well. So these high-energy or sattvic foods are uplifting. They nourish your spirit, they promote a calm mind, and they then tend to support that long-term balance so that you don't develop physical illness. The energy in our being comes to our planet from the sun mainly. We have energy in our body, mind, and spirit, which is first thought of in Ayurveda as spiritual. And then you develop a mind, and your body flows from that. The body ends up being the most stable, whereas you can make spiritual changes, experience a spiritual lift at any second, and undergo profound changes. We know people who have had that happen in their life. They reassessed their relationship with their parents and realized. “Wait, I can re-decide how I will deal with this. I don't have to deal with that today.” Mental changes can still be quick.

KP: Organic food has many benefits from the start. It's grown without artificial substances like pesticides, herbicides, or fertilizers. And it is much better for the planet. You don't have runoff into rivers, affecting the entire ecosystem. It eliminates the possibility of those things appearing in our food. Those things can be subtly poisonous. Even in small amounts, we know that they're having an effect. More and more science is coming out every year showing the effect of accumulating small amounts of all those things. None of those things, in and of themselves, would be much of a concern. Still, when you get the total overload of the many tens of thousands created by humankind that never existed in the natural world. And they're out there. We're being exposed to the off-gassing of plastics, paint, clothing, furniture, everything, and industrial processes.

KP: If we go back to before agriculture, it's estimated that gathering humans were consuming about 200 different foodstuffs. That's not 200 different dishes; that's 200 different plant parts that we consumed. Today, the average is about 20. Of course, we could make a quick and easy list: milk, meat, beef, chocolate, etc. And that's why the grocery store has 12 aisles of junk made from sugar and wheat and one aisle of produce with a hundred different selections. The point is people used to eat a much wider variety of food. We are wired for that in the very way that our being is put together to require not only the 18 nutrients that we know of today, but it’s evident that we need all those phytonutrients. If you take flavonoids, for example, it's estimated that the human body needs about a gram daily to remain healthy. Nowhere is that mentioned in government documents about the nutrients that are required.

KP: It means finding a new path. In psychology, we use the phrase inform, reform, and transform. So before you can transform, you have to have information, which is happening here with our discussion and you providing all these great ingredients in these remedies. You have to know why things could be different and then figure out why you want to be different. Think about the future. What would you like in your life to be different? Then you have actually to reform; you have to make the changes. You have to try it out, work your way into it, figure out the proper things working, and use discrimination. Then, you begin to transform. You experience the change. Transformation means never going back. So it's finding a new path or way of life. You become committed to the change. You feel great, and you continue to feel great, and very often, you're able to be more than you otherwise could have been had you not experienced those kinds of things. And so people who lead transformed lives often are very grateful at the kinds of things they've been able to be informed about and then reform in their own life and finally experience that transformation.