Sadhguru on fundamentals of health

'If the energy in one's system is balanced, outside factors will not affect the body'

THE word ‘health’ originates from the root word ‘whole.’ Human beings are healthy when they ‘feel complete in body, mind and energy’. Many people are medically healthy, but do not experience a sense of inner well-being. To experience wholeness, one’s body, mind, and energy must function at a certain level of inner intensity.

Medically, one may be deemed healthy, but one’s energies may be lethargic. Or one may not understand why life circumstances aren’t happening the way they should. This is because people aren’t taking charge of the well-being of their energy systems.

For every physical or psychological situation you experience in life, there is fundamentally an energy basis, which also manifests as a chemical basis.

In a way, modern allopathic medicines have become just chemistry. For every problem in your body, you are just ingesting a medicine, or chemical, to arrive at some balance.

If you use one chemical to address a particular health issue, there is also a side-effect. For this side-effect, there is an antidote. For the antidote, there is another antidote. It is an endless chain.

Whatever is happening at the chemistry level in your body is controlled by the way your energies function. Because some people have excess acids within the system, you pump them with alkaline medicine. But why do they have excessive acids? Because of the way their mind, body, and above all, their energy functions.

In yoga, when we speak of health, we don’t look at body or mind, but at energy. If your energy body is in proper balance and full flow, your physical and mental bodies will be in perfect health. This is not about healing, but building a foundational yogic practice that establishes and activates your energy system so your body and mind are naturally fine.

It is important to distinguish between infectious and chronic diseases. Infections can be treated through medication. But for chronic ailments, the root cause is always in the energy body. If people are willing to do a certain sadhana to balance and activate their pranamayakosha, or energy body, they can be free of chronic ailments.

Of course, no human being lives in perfect conditions. The pressures of life, the food we eat, the air we breathe, the water we drink – all these can affect us in many ways. The greater our exposure to the outside world, the greater the chances of our chemistry being thrown off balance. But if the energy in our system is properly cultivated, these factors will not have much effect.

Let us say you know nothing about electricity. If I tell you to just press a button and the whole room will be flooded with light, will you believe me?

No. Now I just do it, and light appears. You will call it a miracle. Simply because you don’t understand how electricity works. Similarly, life happens in many different ways. You have limited yourself to just the physical in experience, and the logical in thinking – that’s the problem.

Right now, medical sciences are limited to knowing the physical body.

If anything happens beyond that, you call it a miracle. I just call it another dimension of science. Your life energy created your entire body. Can it not fix a malfunction? If your energy is kept in full flow and proper balance, it’s capable of much more than just health.

Ranked among the fifty most influential people in India, Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic, visionary and bestselling author. Sadhguru has been conferred the “Padma Vibhushan”, the Indian government’s highest annual civilian award, in 2017, for exceptional and distinguished service.