We all know absolute beauty when we see it--skin that glows with health and an outer bearing that projects inner tranquillity. Yet, despite our every effort and expense, few of us know how to achieve it. In Absolute Beauty, Pratima Raichur, a chemist and internationally recognized expert on Ayurvedic skin care, explains how the external skin tissue is the physical reflection of everything that happens within the body: the way we eat and breathe, as well as the thoughts and emotions that fill our mind and color our spirit. Here, in the first beauty and skin care guide to reveal the secret to lasting radiance through the principles of Ayurveda, Pratima Raichur offers readers:
we see black when all are absent. (In fact, the colors we “see”—indeed, our entire “picture” of reality including shapes and forms—do not really exist in nature outside our sensory perception. There is no “red” or “white” in the phenomenal world, for example, but only a particular vibrational energy—a light wave—which the mind interprets as red or white when our awareness comes in contact with it through the machinery of the eye.) Although ordinary light has its greatest impact through the
BREATHING THERAPY Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts. THICH NAHT HANH Even if my clients don’t know themselves what they think or feel or desire, their skin tells me exactly what is happening in their body and mind. Then, using the five senses, I treat them externally with natural herbs and oils, and internally with diet, massage, aroma, color, and music. Sometimes this flurry of activity, this fuss of foods and herbs and things,
typically goes into gear only in the last three stages, when disease is already full-blown, Ayurveda detects and remedies problems even in the first three stages, when symptoms are still invisible to the Western eye. Consequently, modern medicine has little to offer the patient who has simply lost her glow. Ayurveda, on the other hand, pays careful attention to signs like the luster of the skin as a measure of health or imbalance, and offers specific treatments, as you will read, to replenish
291–94 Sound therapy, 287–99, 399 balance and, 296–98 chanting and, 293 music and, 294–96 Space, 22 basic tastes and, 105 baths, 139 body and, 34–36 doshas (biological forces) and, 36–37 properties of, 36 scents and, 271 Speech, 298–99 Spices, 207 Standards of beauty, 3 Stress hormones and, 69–71 immunity and, 71–73 massage therapy for, 230 skin problems and, 67–69, 73–75, 82–84 soul purification and, 331–33 Success-building, 352 Sun, and skin care, 140 Sun Salute, 260–61
classical Western science. Because of this essential unity, we cannot affect one layer of this anatomy without affecting the whole. To achieve a balanced life, therefore, we must balance every stratum. Hence, the many different kinds of balancing therapies you will find in this book. FIVE STRATA OF EXISTENCE EFFECT / FUNCTION Consciousness Anandamaya kosha Bliss (samadhi). Ego Viganamaya kosha Individuality, intellectual or elevated mind, feeling, intuition, desire, values. Mind
