Ayurveda, in my opinion, is as old as the first humans. The term means “Knowledge of Life”, and that knowledge is not limited to the appearance of a codified expression of the Ayurveda in writing. I am not a young Earth proponent, and I don’t go along with the belief that Ayurveda is 5000 years old. I now believe that Ayurveda is a part of our consciousness and that it has existed as long as we have, though we may not have named it or recognized it as the healing science we do today.

This thought occurred to me one hot August day when watching the squirrels in my yard gathering pine needles to make their winter nests. The temperature was well over 90 degrees (32 C) and there was no indicator that I could see that they should be aware of or concerned about the impending change of season. My “Aha!” moment came when I realized that they lived so closely in alignment with nature, that they knew instinctively what to do and when to do it. There was no grandmother squirrel telling them to be aware of the need for a warm nest; rather, they were in sync with the seasonal shifts and knew what to do in order to be prepared for the coming winter. If they waited until they were cold to build a nest, they would die.

Early humans would have been no different from these squirrels. They lived in close connection with the natural world. They were attuned to its shifts and variances and saw the clues to this in the plants, animals, and environmental factors. This, to me, is life knowledge~ Ayurveda! This is the knowing of the totality of life and of one’s place in relationship to that totality. This divined science is part of our DNA; it is instinctive. Ayurveda, then, is as old as time.

When we lived in alignment with nature, we did not need to be reminded of the Ayurveda. When we moved into houses and communities, away from the instinctual relationship with nature, the task of teaching the children would have gone to the grandparents or others who were available while the work of gathering food or providing shelter was being done. As we moved further away from nature and from our familial wisdom, Ayurveda needed to be written down so that the knowledge was not lost and could be transmitted by teachers.

So often in practice, I am encouraging my clients to regain a stronger connection with nature. I advise them to live in alignment with the circadian rhythms of the day by engaging in supportive dinacharya. I educate them as to how to live in alignment with the seasonal shifts by engaging in supportive ritucharya. Like the squirrels, we prepare in this season for the coming season.

Years ago, a student challenged me when I said, as I had been taught, that Ayurveda was 5000 years old. She claimed it was more than 25,000 years old. She explained to me that when an author took on the daunting task of writing a history of India, he gave the dates of India’s origin so that India did not pre-date the Biblical genesis. He did it from his home in England, without stepping foot in India. The author was James Mills and his book, History of British India, unfortunately, became the standard of the day for understanding India, its people, places, and practices and dating its history. Later historians referred to his claims as definitive, and thus the 5000 year old version of Ayurveda was born.

Recently we have heard of the “young Earthers” – those people who, despite scientific evidence to the contrary, insist that the earth is only 6000 years old. Again, this is based on the Biblical accounting of the creation in which each process took only one day (literally) and the section often referred to as, “the begats” that details the generations that succeeded Noah. From this information they calculate the age of the earth to be around 6000 years.

Most scientists scoff at this notion. Because of the eras that are evidenced in the layers of the earth and the carbon dating that has been possible since the onset of the nuclear age, we know the earth is closer to 4.5 billion years old and that humans, in our current form (homo sapiens), have existed on its surface for over 200,000 years. Human civilization, the advent of the formation of cities where people lived and congregated, is often cited as 6000 years old. People still lived, worked, and made alliances with others long before they settled into cities and formed complicated social and political structures.

We know that the Vedas, the sacred texts, were passed down in a spoken lineage for generations before converting into written form. Perhaps we can date the writing of these texts to within the last 6000 years or so.

This divined science of Ayurveda is a gift to humanity. I believe that this gift is carried within each one of us. As a teacher of Ayurveda I often said to the students that I am not teaching them Ayurveda, rather I am helping them to remember it. The codification of the knowledge allows those us who had lost our own connection to its source to discover the map that will help us to find the way back to SatChitAnanda (Being-Consiousness-Bliss)

Now, as technology is replacing relationship, we are in dire need of Ayurveda. As practitioners and teachers we help everyone we come in contact with to remember the truth that we thrive when we live in relationship with nature, its rhythms and patterns, and we all suffer when we try to force nature to live in alignment with us. Each time we practice living in communion with the natural world, we affirm that Now is the Age of Ayurveda.