Written by John Immel, Asheville, NCAyurveda seems to exude a certain ease, as if it were second nature. In a complex world, there's something simple and very personal about Ayurveda's approach to healing. You might even wonder where this ease of Ayurveda comes from. The answer is fundamental - Ayurveda shows you how your body naturally relates to food, disease, and the environment.

Ayurveda's natural approach to food can be compared to wearing a sweater on a cold day - you don't think about it, you just do it when you feel cold. Wearing a sweater doesn't feel like a big effort. It simply makes your life easier. Ayurveda has a similar approach to food. Many of us, for one reason or another, don't have words to express how food makes us feel, so its easy to know when you should eat carrots or pizza.

Ayurveda helps you articulate your experiences with food using simple biocharacteristics such as hot, cold, oiliness, dryness, sharpness, dullness, heaviness, lightness, etc. These simple words highlight what you perhaps already felt about food, giving these experiences meaning and showing you the therapeutic value of your experiences. This experiential approach to medicine using biocharacteristics (gunas) is the foundation of the Ayurvedic way of thinking, and Ayurveda's most important contribution to your personal health practice. The technique is simple, practical, and visceral, so you can easily grasp the nature of food, your imbalances, and what you need to heal.

You start by translating what you might be feeling after a meal using the biocharacteristics (gunas) listed below. Once you have translated your experiences into these characteristics, Ayurveda also shows you the characteristics you need to restore balance. Although there are theoretically thousands of characteristics, as many as there are feelings, Ayurveda practitioners across the world have loosely agreed that these 20 characteristics found below have the most therapeutic value.

Since they focus on building your relationship to food, these biocharacteristics show you how to develop food intuition, rather than through memorization. In Western nutrition, you may find yourself stuffed with lots of data, facts, and figures. The Western approach, while valuable, can leave you feeling dissociated from your feelings and intuition and unable to make decisions on your own. The biocharacteristics theory of medicine reconnects you to the naturally healthy relationship between your body, food, and the environment.

The biocharacteristics model shows you how to select food using feeling and intuition. They classify food by effect rather than nutritional content. This method helps you create a visceral and instinctual relationship with your food. You won't feel overwhelmed by your relationship with food the same way you would with nutritional data alone. For example, chilis create a hot experience while cucumbers create a cool one. Bread feels heavy while salads are light and refreshing. Butter is oily and smooth while popcorn is dry and rough. Black pepper is sharp while cheese is dull. These effects might seem subtle at first, but soon it becomes second nature.

Once you've mastered the characteristics of food, you can use this method to categorize your ailments as well. For example, in Ayurveda you could translate your sinus congestion as gooey, heavy, and cold because that's how sinus congestion makes you feel. This concept is not new or unique to Ayurveda. Remember when sinus infections were still called 'common colds'? That's an example of the biocharacteristics method that was common in our culture only a few hundred years ago.

To counteract imbalance and restore your health, you should select food using biocharacteristics that are opposite to your disease. The sharpness of black pepper balances the gooey dullness of sinus congestion. The lightness of a homemade broth counteracts heavy. The heat of turmeric dispels cold. As you can see, selecting a home remedy becomes more obvious when you rename your diseases with feelings.

To Learn More, Click on a Biocharacteristic Below

There are 20 biocharacteristics in Ayurveda. However, on Joyful Belly we've combined several biocharacteristics (gunas) for practical use. Here are some of the other biocharacteristics, and their useful equivalents on Joyful Belly:

Biocharacteristic	Substitute		Biocharacteristic	Substitute
sharp	pungent		For dull	gooey
For rough	dry		For dense	gooey
For hard	heavy		For soft	Liquefied
For mobile	rajas		For stable	tamas
For subtle	clear		For gross	heavy
For sticky	gooey

The First 8 Biocharacteristics

Guna	Effects	Example Food
Cold	contracts, dries, soothes	cucumber, cilantro
Hot	expands, flushes, inflames	wine, chili
Oily	nourishes, moisturizes, clogs	cheese, olive oil
Dry	absorbs, ages, harsh	cranberry, celery
Heavy	stabilizes, strengthens, grows	red meat, wheat
Light	cleanses, diminishes	popcorn, salad
Gooey	pacifies, pacifies, promotes and increases mucus, stagnates	yogurt, cheese
Sharp	irritates, flushes, stimulates	chili, black pepper

History of the Biocharacteristic Theory of Medicine How Does the Biocharacteristic Theory of Medicine Work?

Facts About Biocharacteristics

• According to Ayurveda, these biocharacteristics are the 20 most important categories of nature, medicinally speaking.
• They are organized into 10 pairs of opposites.
• Similar characteristics aggravate each other.
• Opposite characteristics balance or pacify each other (as heat balances cold).

The virtues of Greek medicine and the biocharacteristics of Ayurveda share many similarities. For a complete description of how the biocharacteristics work within the framework of habit theory, see Aristotle's Niomachean Ethics, ii, 1.

Biocharacteristics & Dosha

The 3 doshas Vata, Pitta, and Kapha describe 3 relationships between biocharacteristics. Some biocharacteristics tend to have affinity for each other. For example, your skin dries out in the winter, thus, cold causes dry quality (Vata). When tissue is irritated it becomes inflamed, thus, pungent flavors increase hot quality (Pitta). When you eat heavy foods they depresses your metabolism, therefore, heavy foods cause cold (Kapha). The 3 relationships between biocharacteristics are:

• Vata: cold, dry, light
• Pitta: pungent, hot, oily
• Kapha: heavy, dull,oily

Even the five elements and the doshas are simply common collections of biocharacteristics.

Note: To make the best use of Ayurveda, keep your sense organs sharp and accurate. Ayurveda offers many techniques for sharpening the five senses. Development of the five senses offers a clearer perspective on reality and helps you identify patterns of imbalance.

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