An Ayurvedic Guide to Happy Family Life

When we talk about family we think about our parents, siblings and spouses. A family, however, is not just a group of people connected by consanguinity, affinity or co-residence alone. There must have to be a healthy coordination and an undercurrent of genuine love and affection among and between every member of the family.

The Modern Family
The modern age with its fast-paced life has taken its toll on the family life of people in general. After the day’s hard work people are left with almost no time to even talk to other members of the family. This has created a sort of artificial barrier between each other. The net result is utter non-cooperation and incongruence—the son does not know where his father is going the next morning or the mother is not aware of her daughter’s greatest day in school the next day. There are also examples of a ‘family’ of four living together as neighbours in separate rooms, with individual television sets, bathrooms and wardrobes!

Jiva Ayurveda Articles - An Ayurvedic Guide to Happy Family Life

The large families of yore comprising parents, children and grand-parents have been degenerated to form smaller ‘nuclear’ families, or worse still, single-parent families. The slow decline of love, cohesion and understanding among people has given rise to these queer situations. In a single-parent family comprising son and mother, e.g., the mother has to arrange for all familial needs that include cooking, house-keeping, baby-sitting, emotional support and financial support such as paying up for grocery bills, laundry bills, home rents, transport overheads, medical expenses and future savings. This keeps the mother exceedingly busy and takes away from her the most important aspect of living—health and happiness.

Similar is the case with other small families. They keep on accumulating means for enjoying each and every luxury of the world but fail to attain the perpetual joy derived from a healthy body, mind and soul ensconced in a happy family. A large, mutually connected family, on the other hand, encourages healthy division of labour for sustenance and mutual benefit.

There are numerous examples of thugs, convicts, rapists, conmen and robbers who had chosen the path of violence and ignominy just because they did not get a healthy family that shared a cordial relationship among its members in their formative years. Just as charity begins at home, contempt too starts from home. The family into which a child is born acts as the first and the most important teacher for the highly impressionable mind of the child.

Therefore, it is highly important that we give to ourselves a healthy family that binds every member harmoniously through a cord of mutual understanding, love and cooperation and leads an individual towards the path of eternal health and spirituality.

An Ayurvedic Perspective
Fortunately, ancient texts from the 5000-year old Indian system of medicine, Ayurveda have a solution to build up a happy family. Ayurveda sees family as an extension of the different aspects of a human being at micro-levels. Understanding the functions of the various constituent parts of a human being will help us to easily comprehend the ideal functions of every member of the family. Let us explore.

An ayurvedic perspective-GyanendriyaAccording to Ayurveda, a person’s behaviour and overall outlook is a manifestation of his or her being at all five levels—bodily, mental, sensual, emotional and spiritual. Different aspects of life co-exist inside the human being and work together harmoniously to run the various life processes. The human being is the conglomeration of Sharira (body), Gyanendriya (the five senses—eyes, nose, tongue, ears and skin), Karmendriya (the five working senses—the vocal cords, hands, feet, genitals and anus), Buddhi (intelligence), Atma (soul) and Ahamkara (ego). The five sensory faculties of Gyanendriya help humans to see, smell, taste, hear and feel. The five motor faculties of Karmendriya help us to speak, grasp, move, procreate and eliminate.

When each of these individual elements cooperates between each other in harmony, the human is considered healthy at all five levels—bodily, mental, sensual, emotional and spiritual. An anomaly creeping in any single element sends the entire system in disharmony. Here, I would like to cite an example.

We often find ourselves devouring our favourite dish even when we had just finished our main course meal and we are not feeling hungry. This is a classic example of feeding our senses at the cost of taxing our body. Let me now explain it at a fundamental level.