E196 - Dr. Vasant Lad: The Doctor From India: The Forgotten 5,000-Year-Old Science of the Human Body (Ayurveda

Know Thyself

André Duqum

Self-improvement, Education

4.8 • 658 Ratings

🗓️ 26 May 2026

⏱️ 92 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dr. Vasant Lad is the founder of the Ayurvedic Institute and the man most responsible for bringing Ayurveda to the West. He has spent over 40 years teaching this 5,000-year-old science of life to practitioners across the world, and in this conversation, we sat down together at SoHum Mountain Healing Center in Asheville, North Carolina, where I had just completed a week-long Panchakarma. What unfolded was one of the most quietly profound conversations I have had on this show.

What We Dive Into:

Why unprocessed emotions don’t simply pass — and how grief settles in the heart, anger in the liver, and fear in the kidneys until they’re physically released.
How your tongue, pulse, and face reveal what’s happening inside your body, often before any symptom appears.
Why your original constitution (prakruti) shapes everything from your digestion to your temperament — and how modern life pulls you away from it.
The gap between two breaths, and why Dr. Lad calls it an ocean of awareness available to anyone willing to sit in it.

THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS:

https://sohumhealing.com/panchakarma-retreat/

Code AndrePK2026 for $500 off your Panchakarma

https://www.functionhealth.com/KNOWTHYSELF

Code KNOWTHYSELF25 for $25 off membership

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00:00 Intro

01:58 What Ayurveda Actually Means

02:40 The Five Elements, Three Doshas, and the Body

06:18 Prakruti, Vikruti, and the Root of Disease

08:00 The Sankhya Philosophy Behind Ayurveda

13:33 The Goal of Ayurveda

15:26 Dr. Lad's Path: Guru, Calling, and Coming West

18:06 Where Western Medicine Falls Short

22:05 Ama, Agni, and the Ayurvedic View of Disease

25:56 Pulse, Tongue, and Face: The Art of Diagnosis

34:29 Reading Psychological Nature Through the Pulse

39:00 The Gap Between Breaths: Awareness and Mysticism

44:37 How Repressed Emotions Crystallize in the Body

47:39 Panchakarma: Physical, Emotional, and Spiritual Cleansing

51:52 Ojas, Tejas, and Prana: The Vital Essences

56:18 Sexual Energy, Celibacy, and the Cultivation of Ojas

1:00:07 Life as Meditation: The Unified Field

1:06:00 The Ayurvedic View of Death and Dying

1:14:56 Dinacharya: The Daily Routine as Spiritual Practice

1:18:48 The Doshic Clock and the Yugas

1:25:22 Relationship, Self-Knowledge, and the Closing Message

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Without self-knowing, life has no meaning at all.
0:03.2	We always live in the dead past and we speak from the dead past.
0:06.8	We listen from the dead past.
0:08.3	The image is created by judgment, criticism, like, dislike.
0:12.8	And when image is heard, that unresolved hurt, develop crystals and the crystals accumulate into the body.
0:19.8	If it is deep sorrow, it will be in the heart.
0:22.6	Liver is a seat of anger, kidney is a seat of fear. And through Ayurwe, those emotions, they start liquefying.
0:29.6	They literally cry. My guru bless me, he said, you will teach Ayurway to the Western world.
0:35.6	Ayurway is a science of life. Body, mind, and consciousness become one.
0:40.3	I want to go a little witchy on me.
0:42.3	I'm gone.
0:45.3	So...
0:46.3	Yeah, Sam.
0:47.3	Um, okay.
0:48.3	So...
0:49.3	Every person's deep nature of his consciousness
0:53.3	can be failed through the pulse.
0:55.0	Expiration is the death.
0:57.0	Inspiration is reborn again.
0:59.0	When you practice, it's dying.
1:01.0	You reborn every moment.
1:03.0	In that gap between two breath, this ocean of awareness.
	...

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