Ayurveda and Psychiatry

Everything that Exists is a Mirage of

the Mind
 Ayurveda is the Meeting of
Metaphysics and Medicine
• Good Health – Dharma (virtue)
– Not just based on the three humors
– Constituents of a Person
• Connection with Environment
• Connection with psyche and soul
• Polis of the cosmos in determining health
– Understands that illness may not always be at the
conscious level
 Ayurveda Cultural Scope
• Has dominated the medical traditions of all of
India, South Asia and to some extent South
East Asia.
• Western Medicine often views Ayurvedic
methods as on the edge of “lunatic fringe” or
an “ occult science “.
– Can see the high amount of emotional investment
to the body similar to a mother doting care for her
newborn, or as Bodily Narcissism.
 The Body
• Gross Physical Body
• Subtle Body
– Core of Person adhere to Soul – Personal identity
• Buddhi – intellegence, Ahamkara – I-ness, Manas –
Mind(includes heart), Indriyas – 5 sensory organs,
Tanmantas- subtle matter or potential energy.
– Rebirth Cycles
– Body and Mind are Two Different aspects of Subtle
Body
• Casual Body – Metaphysical Pure Self
 The Psyche & Ayurveda
• Greek term Psyche – comes closest to the subtle
body minus tanmantas.
• The psyche is the source of all vital activities and
psychic process (rational and irrational) and capable
of existing in disembodied state after death.
• Its based upon a predetermined lifespan,
individuation, understanding, emotional behavioral
predispositions, which reflect a psychic constellation
reached at a previous life.
Subtle Body is more than the
Psyche
• The subtle body is the locus of identity -
Mind (mental events - psychological) and
Body (brain nervous system -
physiological) and are identical.
 Mind - Psyche Soma Identity
• Mind is located in the heart
• The heart is the center network of channels
within the body which carry flow of vital
fluids.
• Any disturbance, physical or mental, manifests
in both somatic and psychic spheres.
 Umada – Mental Disorders
• All mental disorders in which individual
looses power and conduct in society.
• Includes all psychotic disorders, neurosis, and
obsessions.
• Umada therapy is a blend of psychological &
physiological.
• When a persons thoughts, speech, and
actions have become unnecessary or harmful
to society.
 Manas – True Nature of Reality
• Atomic energy made of subtle matter that becomes conscious and
capable of performing it’s assigned tasks through power of atman.

• Functions of Manas
– Activation – sensory and motor organs
– Self Regulation
– Reasoning
– Deliberation

Mental Illness is an impairment of these functions.

Root - Humoral Imbalance that disturbs the gross body.

 Different original types of insanity
• Originally defined as Wind, Bile, and Phlegm.
• Rajas and Tamas are two humors affected.
• Twin Causes are Desire (need) and Repulsion
(anxiety, fear, envy).
– Desire/ Repulsion – prenatal stage 3rd and 4th
month. Unfullfilled longing of mother, unrelieved
fears transmitted to newborn child
– Previous Existence “memory trace” unfullfilled
longings at end of previous life.
 Tibetan Ayurvedic Medicine
• Although there is no system in treating mental
illness in Vedic texts, Tibetan medicine, which
comes from Ayurveda, affirmed metaphysical
and cosmic aspects of mental illness.
– Dreams
– Nadi
– Three Mental Qualities
– Diet, character, conduct (deviance from social
ideal)
 Ayurveda Atharva Texts
• Roots in Atharva Veda
– Ritual, magical elements, mantras, precious stones,
penances, atonements, charms, amulets, sacred
pilgrimages.
– Treatment – purify, pacify, and remove root cause
• Purification –enemas, bleeding
– Enemas are main methods of purification
– Purge to head – nasal & Eye drops
– (purges and emetics were not used because of violence)
• Rejuvenation - oil massages, oils, rice bowls
• Pacification – tranquilizers, antidepressants, strengthen
nerves.
• Diet and Conduct Therapy – Rules of proper conduct
 Ayurveda Dream Theory
• Vedic healers maintain that we are in the
waking state (consciousness) during the
daytime is delusionary (shamanistic roots)
even when awake dream is predominant
psychic activity, we continually dream.

• Dreams connect us not only with psychic life,

but with physiological events in the body.
 Ayurveda Dream Examinations
• Dreams that repeat things in waking life.
• Dreams that enact what's been heard.
• Dreams that foretell the future.
• Dreams that occur in conjunction with
disturbance of particular body humor.
• Dreams that satisfy desires that could not be in
waking life.
• Dreams of drama of individual fantasy “mask of
desire”.
 Loss in texts
Psychological Content of Ayurveda is limited. It’s
skeletal. It became scattered and was more oratory.
Ayurveda could not pursue detailed investigations
of mental illness because it has to bring within its
framework social and metaphysical aspects diluting
clinical thrust dissipating force of psychological
insight.
Mental Illness became the Provence of many
healers, shamans, exorcists, mystics, and
astrologers.
 The Sacred in India
• Brahman of mystics
• Krishna devotees of gods
• Spirits of ancestors and forests
• Beings that live in enchanted groves
• Specters that haunt cremation
grounds
• Demons who wait for the next
crossing
• Gurus (malaise of spirit) Shaman
(treat illness)
 India views on Western Culture
• Scientific Naturalism has forced the priest into
exile.
• Western culture is a Christian product
• Cultural Relativity – madness often reflects
the general social and logical preoccupations
of the time.
• Atmanamvidhi – Know Thyself – Means a self
uncontaminated by space and time without
historical dimension
 Demonology (Balas)
• Devils, Demons, Goulies, Ghosts, Balas, Negative
Energies, Manifested Stumbling blocks within
ones own mind.
• Hindus, Chinese, Arabs, Greeks, Hebrews all hold
the universal belief in possession.
• Western Anthropologists see demonology as
valid as Freud.
• Psychological – Unconscious wishes and fears,
roles demons play in etiology of patients illness
 Islamic Healers in India
• 3 classes of living beings higher than man
– Angels
– Satanic Beings
– Bala – Demon or spirits – made of fire – darkness (our
unconscious impulses)
Demons do not only possess sinners
– They possess someone due to sorcery
– They possess someone the demon fancies
The Islamic Healers first question to patient is always –
“What do you see in your dreams ?”
 Islam in India (cont.)
• In India Balas prefer young unmarried girls, demons
enter person through milk, curd, or cream, and they
suck humans blood
• Types of Balas can be compared to unconscious
fantasies
• Sirkota - Headless man, Bhuta – Form of fire, Churel – Beautiful
women – bells around ankles seduces men – slits mans penis and
sucks his blood (Freudian mother anxieties).
• Western Psychoanalysis and this Indian Exorcism can
be seen as two different languages of psychic
disturbances, though Bala is not a simple reflex of Id.
• There is also a admittance in India that sometimes it is
peoples over-imaginations and the nerves in brain that
have been stretched and need medicines.
 Hindu Healers in India
• Calling Higher Power or Divine Force to rid
person of Bala (evil spirit) to deposes him or
protect him.
• They can only knock on door of higher power.
Up to him if he listens.
• Communicate with Diety to intervene on
behalf of afflicted soul
• Divine force is transmitted through healer.
 Hindu Healers
• The reputation of the healer with spirits is
more important than technique (purity of
mind, truthfulness, detachment)
• Boundary Man – Lives at the margins of his
society, he is in the world but not of it.
• Soul Face – He needs to pass through an inner
transformation that connects him and makes
him receptive.
 Hindu Deposession
• Bala Possession Problems ( anxiety, neurosis,
hysteria, accident prone )
• Those who seek Hindu Healers
– Those who are possessed by Bala
– Those who are in threat of being possessed by Bala
– Those who seek spiritual offices
• Most important question for Hindus – “What do
you see in your dreams… what do your
daydreams look like ?”
 Hindu Malignant Spirits
• Bhuta Preta – exists in halfway house between human world of
ancestral spirits.
– Bhuta – Souls of people who meet untimely death
– Preta – spirit of a child died in infancy
– Pishacha – ghost of man who was mad, dissolute or ill-tempered
– Churel – ghost of unhappy widow, or childless woman
• Atripta Spirits – ghosts of unsatisfied desires. People who could not
live out their full life potential.
• They remain Atripta Spirits until they have been judged and have
paid their karmatic debt and are allowed into the world of ancestral
spirits
• Bhuta Preta – Occupy lowest rungs of hindu hierchy of supernatural
beings and are closest to human state.
• People go to temple for healing.
•
Healing at Hindu Temple
Series of Rituals in Temple – Direct attack on possession
– Patient must attend with family members – pilgrimage to temple.
– Darkwast – application – patient makes offering of rice and dhal and gives temple attendent
laddos
– Priest touches laddos and gives it back to patient to eat.
– Eating laddos power of Balaji goes into patient and makes Bhuta appear in court.
– If unsuccessful they make more offerings (maybe sweets, ect)
– Family members chant mantras over water. Impart Divine energy into water. Patient drinks
water.
– These application and Petition rituals incorporate authority of gods and patient will eventually
go into trancelike state of Peshi.
– Peshi is altered trancelike state of conciousness where the focus of the patients awareness of
the environment I radically narrowed but not erased. (Disassociation is Western Term).
– Start of Peshi (trance) rhythmic swaying of upper body, violent shaking of head, beating fists
on floor, ect… are evidence of Bhutas appearance.
– Struggle between patient bhuta and one of temples deites. Spirit might challenge god.
– People around might try to provoke spirit to say slogans in praise of god.
– Bhuta might become angry and yell obscenities at god, mocking the onlookers.
– Audience shouts “baba give it a good thrashing otherwise villain will not listen.
– Finally patient tires and submits. Spirit will beg for forgiveness urging crowd to leave and
throw itself at the mercy of god.
– Patient Must take bath in holy water after depossesion so they don’t affect anyone else.
Comments on Hindu Temple Approach
• Could be culturally unacceptable behavior.
• It change a persons feelings of themselves, patient overcomes his feelings of
isolation and moral unworthiness. True Wall between sickness and health. All is
one.
• Healing rituals seek to connect or reconnect the individual with sources of
psychological strength, counter act unconscious feelings of despair, shame, guilt,
inferiority, confusion, and isolation.
• Patient usually has exhausted all local resources before he makes decision to
Pilgrimage to Temple (home remedies, doctors, exorcisms)
• Sometimes Bhuta (knowing of pilgrimage) will raise obstacles which patient has to
overcome before he can arrive to Temple.
• Before Pilgrimage the dreams of the patient typically involve a personal summons
from the divine healer.
• Malignant spirits are unfortunate pitris or ancestral spirits deservingn compassion
rather than anxious reaction.
• Sometime rituals are done hundreds of times. Sometimes Patient has to live in
temple for a year.
• Sometimes temple is not successful, just like western medicine 
 Shamans
• Western View: Medicine Man, Witch Doctor, Native Healer, Voodoo
Sorcerer, the quack. Mentally ill person. Veritable idiot, trickster, neurotic-
epileptoid type. They are seen as suffering from severe maladjustments,
hysteria, mental abnormalities, outright psychotic, personality disorder
with impulsive hysterical traits... but a religious specialist who connects his
community with everything that is sacred and the mediator between the
supernatural and community. They heal the sick and divine the
future....they typically have poor reality testing.
• Term S’aman comes from Tungusic tribe of northeast Asia: means “one
who is excited, moved, raised”.
• Shamans specialize in spiritual illness. They have the ability to go into
voluntary and controlled trances during their diagnostic and healing
efforts.
• Shamans are psychoanalysts sliding in between both the collective and
individual. Both shamans and psychoanalysts establish a relationship with
a patience conscious and indirectly with their unconscious. Shamans
speak for the patient.
• In India and China Shamans are as common as the dentist.
 Shamans in East India
• Oraon Shamans of East India (agricultural tribe)
• Uses gods, goddesses, deities to send him into trance like states when he is
divining or treating illness.
• They tend to take on a supermarket full of divine spirits and deities from
everywhere. The shadow is joined to their patient and is the other side of his
power.
• They undergo shamanic training, ritual workshop, periodic fasting and have been
chosen by their father or they were chosen by god via instructions in dreams.
• 2 kinds of madness
– Endogenous Madness - They tell you to stop worrying
– Shaitani Disorders – Work of Demonic Spirits
• They see a separation between spiritual and physical illness. If the illness is
physical they will tell you to go see a doctor.
• Sometimes they do mantra.
• God IS the Shaitan – Who else reminds us there is a higher power than us?
• They read leaves and sugar.
• They put themselves and sometimes their patients into disassociated states.
 Tibetian Healers and Shamans
• Foothills of Himalayans – Came to India after the Dalai Lama.
• Buddhist Monks “LAMAS”.
• Mystics and Doctors practicing the ancient art of Tibetan medicine and shamanism.
• Mix of northeast Asian shamanism, and Mahayana Buddhism, and tantric ideas from India and
Nepal.
• They believe in the softness of reality. All that exists is a “ mirage of mind “.
– Everything in the universe has meaning other than apparent
– The world is full of oracles and signs
– Imagination reigns supreme. All that is imagined is as real as all exists.
– There is no supernatural. Everything is a miracle.
• Existence is created by mind. Reality can be controlled by mental efforts.
– Concentrating meditation
– Elaborate rituals
– Transforming power of mantra
• Blurring distinction between physical and mental sickness – both ignite from fault of mind.
– Anger, desire, mental darkness (3 poisons of mind)
– These three poisons disturb 3 bodily humors – Wind, Bile, Plegm
• Cleansing of the entire mental and emotional world to cure sickness. Absoluter reality has only
limited practical value.
• Ignorance is cause for illness
 Tibetan Healers (cont.)
• 4 immediate causes of illness - Seasons of year, Food, Habit,
Behavior (If wind bile or phlegm get disturbed)
• They also believe one of 360 spirits some cause illness.
– only 18 can afflict human beings with illness or insanity
– Some spirits beneficial, some wrathful
– Spirits have same rules as humans (promoted or demoted on karmatic
behavior) in constant flux
• Nagpalla – specialists in spirits (Tibetan shamanism)
– Iha : Gods of Upper Region
– Klu : Serpent Spirits
– Sabday : of the netherworld(share cosmos with humans)
– Earth Lords
• Law of Karma Governs all beings, gods, serpents – beings in
constant flux (promoted or demoted)
 Tibetan Mental Disorders
• Causes of Mental Disorders
– Evil spirits
– Sudden Loss
– Prolonged wind disease
– Power of mantra (enemy against victim – sorcery)
– Mild insanity caused by reciting bad mantras (black magic)
• Sudden Loss Cure
– Focus on the deprived instead of loss
– Be thankful for having and experienced
– Freedom of earthly attachments
– Path of enlightenment
Tibetan Mental Disorder Diagnoses
• They establish whether the mental illness is due to spirit attack or
other – spirit attacks announce through dreams, omens, dizziness,
nightmares.
– A man becomes a child of his dreams. The child is reborn in the insane
man.
• They Diagnose spirit attack via eye movements
– Possessed by Bhuta – eyes move down towards left
– Posessed by Dakinini – female spirit – eyes move upward towards right
• A spirit attack depends on state of ones karma (dangers in life, to
the body, the dignity, to luck) - If these factors are off then spirit
will attack him.
• Mantra prevents evil spirit from entering him. Mantra is power to
Tibetans and Indians. Magic of mantra.
• Spirits are more apt to possess believers than non-believers as a
teaching.
 Mainstream Indian Religious Culture
• There is an urge to transcend a self-conscious
selfhood, self-development and self
integration in Indian mysticism.
• 4 Levels of knowledge of Man
(Transformation)
– Shrewd Level – common sense
– Rational Level – Scientist
– Imaginative Level – Artist
– Spiritual – Mystic
 Kundalini Healing in India
• Works on the Collective Subconscious
• It is the home of various orders of demonic beings (Bhuta-
Preta)
• Training where to place the mind - Heaven and Hell are
both unattractive. Both paths are evolutionary dead ends
that only lead to reincarnation on earth.
– Too much attention on left side of body( Hindu Hell ) is in
danger of spirit entering his psyche and we tend to become self
absorbed in affects and mood realms of feelings and past
events.
– Too much attention to the right side of his body (Hindu Heaven)
he dwells in the realm of the lesser gods (spirits of yogis)
“monsters of egotism” who sought mastery over themselves.
• Universal Consciousness shows mans true potential
 Umanda in Ayurveda Today
• Ayurvedic medicine views mental disorders as the imbalance of energies on an
inner level, thinking that behind the gross physical body is a subtle or astral body
composed of the life-force, emotions and thoughts.
• Causes are unhealthy spoiled food, improper eating, dejected people due to worry,
grief, emaciated persons indulging in activities in improper ways, mistakes in the
method of worship, doing sinful acts, effects of strong poisons, karma, ancestry,
sexual abuse, perversion, and taking drugs, excessive thinking, occult practices.
• It is an excess rajas and tamas turbulence and darkness in the mind. Too much
rajas involves excess of anger, hatred and fear, excessive nervousness, worry, and
anxiety. Too much tamas involves excess sleep, dullness, apathy, inertia and the
inability to perceive things as they are.
• Overall the dosha’s get increased in the mind in persons and invade the channels
of the mind and cause insanity

– Wind insanity: (vayu)

– Choleric Insanity: (pitta)
– Phlegmatic Insanity: (kapha)
– Conjunctive Insanity: (trisdosha)
 Wind insanity: (vata)
Emaciated body; inappropriate lamenting, shouting,
laughing, and smiling, as well as dancing, singing,
playing music, talking,
posturing, bursting out; repeatedly and tunelessly
imitating the sound of a flute, veena, or other
instrument; frothing at the mouth; constantly
wandering about; ceaseless talking; using things
which are not ornaments as decoration; trying to
travel on things which are not vehicles; being
greedy for food, but spurning it once it has been
obtained; bulging, Bloodshot eyes, and illness after
foods had been digested.
 Choleric Insanity: (pitta)

Threatening behavior, fury, and charging at

people with fists stones. He goes naked, and has
a yellow color. He sees thing which are not
there, such as ire, flames, stars, and lamps. Mind
is narrowed and contentious, fighting either
with others or with themselves. Agitation,
irritation, anger, and possible violence.
Domineering, authoritarian or fanatical. Some
have paranoid delusions, delusion of grandeur
or can become psychotic.
 Phlegmatic Insanity: (kapha)

• Lose desire for food, vomiting, and a reduction

in motivation, appetite, and conversation. Lust
for women. solitude. dribbles mucus and snot,
and is very frightening. He hates being clean. He
sleeps, and has puffy face. This insanity is
stronger at night. Attachment and lack of
motivation lading to depression, sorrow, and
clinging. The mind may be incapable of abstract,
objective or impersonal thinking. There is lack of
drive and motivation along with passivity and
dependency.
 Conjunctive Insanity: (tridosha)

• Tridoshic Insanity - Described as dreadful and

incurable.

• Two other types of insanity

– insanity due to loss (depressed, swoons, pale)
– insanity due to poison (dark complexion,
bloodshot eyes, senses are all ruined)
 Modern Ayurveda Treatment
• Balance the biological humors through diet,
herbs, and exercise.
• Panchakarma is a great treatment.
• Healing the energetic psychological problems
in the mind-body complex.
 Vata Disturbance
• nourishing and sedating herbs
– Ashwagandha. Sarpagandha, rauwolfia serpentine,
Valerian, guggul, jatamansi and calamus.
• Other therapies most recommended for vata
are oil and ghee therapies
– Oil enemas
– Oiling the body
– Put laxatives with the oils and ghee to remove any
blocks
 Pitta Disturbance
• Purgation is recommended.
• Good herbs - rhubarb root, senna, aloe, Gotu kola
bhringaraj, sandalwood , passion flower,
Shatavari .
• Oleation and fomentation therapies
• Purgatives
• Emetics
• Medicated enemas with jatamashi and Gotu kola.
 Kapha Disturbance
• Spicy brain-stimulating herbs to clear phlegm.
– calamus, basil, bayberry, sage, myrrh, and guggul,
which have good expectorant action.
– Other formulas include trikatu with ghee or
calamus ghee.
 Other Therapies all types
• Abhyangai, Shirodhara, shirobasti, & ghee
• nasal medicines, head and face massage mixed with
mustard and oil
• bloodletting and shock treatment
• cultivation lifestyle through all five senses
• spending time in nature
• Mediation, pranayama, mantra, prayer, and visualizations.
• Yoga, aromatherapy, and color therapy.
• satvic diet
• Avoid Modern Media
• Increase ojas and balance prana, tejas