Yoga and Āyurveda are twinned with one another in the popular imagination but until recently they developed separately with little apparent influence on one another.
This workshop will sketch Āyurveda or Indian medicine (literally ‘knowledge of life’) from its roots in the Compendium of Caraka over two millennia ago and consider the modern day’s seeming synergy between yoga and Āyurveda. Ruth will sketch the Āyurvedic understanding of the body (pathways or nāḍīs and humours or dhātus) and the concept of health as a balance between physical, psychological, social and environmental planes of being. We will compare Āyurvedic and Yogic conceptions of the body and their proper functioning in terms of health, longevity and liberation. Drawing on recent research we will trace the points on which Āyurveda and Yoga converge and the extent to which they differ.
This workshop will be part-lecture, part-discussion but will not be a practical application of Āyurvedic principles of diagnostics.
The eleventh century Amṛtasiddhi teaches, for the first time, bodily practices that become central to haṭha yoga. The startling teachings are explained systematically, in terms of the nature of the body, the practices, and the results of the practice in this tantric Buddhist source text. In this course we will read the Sanskrit and discuss in English the section on ‘the body’ as set out in the first four chapters of the Amṛtasiddhi. The course comprises four online sessions and one in-person workshop in London.