Welcome to another video of our series Vida Veda Answers, on Vida Veda's
YouTube channel, my name is Matheus. Today, we'll try to answer the
question: what does Ayurveda say regarding physical activity? Is physical
activity really necessary?
So, is physical activity really necessary or can I just eat
well to stay healthy? What does Ayurveda say about this? If we
look in our ayurvedic classics, our Samhitas, you'll see that
the recommendation for vyayama, for physical activity, is always there,
when we talk about the daily routine, when we talk about dinacharya,
one of the most common recommendations in dinacharya is the
practice of exercise. And daily exercise. How is this
different from what we nowadays call physical activity?
So, some points become very clear here when the Samhitas, for example,
say that people should exercise to half of their
capacity. So this is the first point. Second, humans should only
exercise until they start sweating. So, once you start producing
sweat, you know, this is a sign that your body has worked
hard enough. Usually, when people teach
Ayurveda, especially Ayurveda according to the Samhitas,
they take these to arguments: that you should only exercise to
half of your capacity, and that you should only exercise until you
start sweating, to defend that Ayurveda doesn't recommend physical
activity; or that physical activity shouldn't be done with high intensity
and so on. In reality, if you stop and think about it, it's not
really true. The texts, the Samhitas, were
written with their focus on people that were, back then, from
the brahmin caste. So, people dedicated to religious
practice, people dedicated to priesthood, for example, swamis,
people that would join the medical profession, for example, were considered
brahmins. Brahmins were not the caste responsible for
sowing the fields, they weren't responsible for intense physical
activity, they weren't responsible for defense, for example, so they weren't
in the army. So the recommended physical activity regimen to these
types of people, to this caste, was just focused on
health maintenance. So, if you want to remain
healthy, but you're not concerned with intense physical demands
or with participating in sports, it's enough if you
move daily and only do this to half of your capacity or
until you start sweating. I want to make a few comments here that
might be interesting. So, first is that if you, for example, belong to the kshatriya caste,
which was the group responsible for defense, the military,
in this case, physical activity could be much more intense,
of course, you're training to defend yourself. And remember that,
back then, it was sword fighting, you would be practicing kalaripayattu, for
example, the traditional Indian martial art. So, to the group responsible for the
military, it's obvious that more exercise was expected, more intense physical
activity. So, the recommendation we find in the Samhitas would not
apply if you are a person that does
exercise, sport, for a living. And often, nowadays, in our society, there are
people looking after their bodies and looking for more than just health
maintenance, but they want to reach physical excellence, to shape their bodies,
for example. Today, people want to have more muscles and to be more lean.
In this sense, in this case, we shouldn't apply the recommendation
for moderate physical activity. We can realize that daily and moderate
physical activity is the basic recommendation from the Samhitas
for maintaining the health of a person from whom athletic performance
is not expected, an above average performance is not expected.
Besides that, it's worth mentioning that
there is a direct correlation, mentioned in the Samhitas, between physical activity,
digestive capacity and health. So, people that exercise more or that
have a more constant physical activity regimen, have, necessarily,
stronger digestive capacity. So they'll feel more hunger, they'll
have a larger energy requirement and they'll have stronger digestion.
So, often, when it's mentioned in the Samhitas about food that is forbidden,
combinations that are not allowed,
there is an exception to these prohibitions when the person
exercises a lot. Then they can even eat stones that they'll probably
be able to digest it. It's also worth mentioning that the
Samhitas also list many contraindications, many side effects that can be
expected from excessive physical practice. So if you exercise
too much, you can expect some
negative consequences and it's not worth it here to go into
too many details, or to just cite Sanskrit texts, because that goes
beyond the goal of this video, of this series, but many negative
effects of excessive physical activity that we
see nowadays, for example, pain in the joints, muscle sourness, and even
the drop in immunity witnessed in endurance athletes, people that
run ultra marathons or that compete in triathlons, for example, we find that
there is a drop in immunity and a higher chance of infection
after the race. So this kind of contraindication
to intense physical activity was already mentioned in our Samhitas.
So I came here to one of the dams in Jamnagar to film this for you
during the sunset, and the Sun has set, and my time is up. I just wanted
to give you a general idea about physical activity and
Ayurveda. If you have more questions, leave
it in the comments below. If they are short, I can answer
directly in the comment section, if they are more in depth questions, I will
make more specific videos in the future so we can go deeper into the topic of
Ayurveda and physical activity. Thank you very much for your presence
and I'll see you in the next video.
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