If you have heard from an ayurvedic or a yoga practitioner, they might have told you about ghee as a vedic rasayana or medicine-aushadha and its long and celebrated history of healing properties. Or, they might have told you about its use in the culture of India for preparing healthy and very tasty food-ahara for thousands of years. As you might surmise, ghee is a substance that is well known and valued as both a food and a medicine.
Unlike mistaken popular belief, medicines do not create the tissues-dhatus. Food-ahara is the only thing that creates tissues. In fact, many older ayurvedic teachers, vaidyas, used to say, if you do not want to eat my diet, do not bother to take my medicines. The use of food as medicine and medicine as food is one of the unique and wonderful qualities of ayurveda and is also one of the unique attributes of ghee. Herbs, pastes of herbs or decoction of herbs are infused in ghee and later administered to patients after diagnosing the conditions and diseases. Ghee also serves as a moisture-free preservative.
The ingestion of ghee is like offering the finest of fuels into the fires of digestion- agni. Accordingly, ghee builds the aura, makes all the organs soft, builds up the internal juices of the body, rasa, which aging destroys and increases the most refined element of digestion, shukra, or ojas- the basis of all immunity in the body. Ghee is known to increase intelligence, dhi, refine the intellect, buddhi, and improve the memory, smrti. Although ghee kindles or increases agni, the digestive fire on which all nutrition depends, it does so without aggravating pitta, the elemental functioning of fire within the body.
Ghee causes secretions and liquification in the dhatus, bodily tissues that dissolve wastes allowing the functional intelligences of the body, doshas, to carry away waste/toxins, ama.
Unlike mistaken popular belief, medicines do not create the tissues-dhatus. Food-ahara is the only thing that creates tissues. In fact, many older ayurvedic teachers, vaidyas, used to say, if you do not want to eat my diet, do not bother to take my medicines. The use of food as medicine and medicine as food is one of the unique and wonderful qualities of ayurveda and is also one of the unique attributes of ghee. Herbs, pastes of herbs or decoction of herbs are infused in ghee and later administered to patients after diagnosing the conditions and diseases. Ghee also serves as a moisture-free preservative.
The ingestion of ghee is like offering the finest of fuels into the fires of digestion- agni. Accordingly, ghee builds the aura, makes all the organs soft, builds up the internal juices of the body, rasa, which aging destroys and increases the most refined element of digestion, shukra, or ojas- the basis of all immunity in the body. Ghee is known to increase intelligence, dhi, refine the intellect, buddhi, and improve the memory, smrti. Although ghee kindles or increases agni, the digestive fire on which all nutrition depends, it does so without aggravating pitta, the elemental functioning of fire within the body.
Ghee causes secretions and liquification in the dhatus, bodily tissues that dissolve wastes allowing the functional intelligences of the body, doshas, to carry away waste/toxins, ama.
