Welcome back.

This week as we explore the principles of perfect health, we begin with the idea of the five elements.

The five elements have an impact on balancing the Doshas. These elements have something of both matter and energy in them. Here they are from subtle to most gross. Space, air, fire, water, and earth.

You can also think of these as corresponding to certain principles.

So space would be infinite flexibility, all possibilities.

Air would be vaporous quality.

Fire would be the equivalent of metabolism or metabolic fire.

Water, everything that's liquid, and Earth, everything that's solid.

These elements correspond to real earth, air, fire, water, and space,

but as may be obvious, they're also abstract.

Asked what the five elements represent,

an Ayurvedic sage wouldn't point to the wind

or a burning log or a brook. The five elements are a code for shapes of intelligence or

codes of intelligence that make up humanity's mind and the world that humans perceive through that mind.

By mixing pairs of the five elements, one arrives at the three dosas.

Vata is composed of air and space.

Vapor and vacuum.

Peta is composed of fire and water, metabolic fire and the liquid element.

Kafa is composed of earth and water,

both the solid and the liquid element.

How does understanding the connection between the five elements and the Doshas help us begin healing?

More to come.

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