Dhanwantari (How India's Ancient art of living and healing can give you a healthier happier, more joyous life)

Back of the Book

The secret to health is knowing how to deal with one's body. These life practices are not mystical or esoteric in nature, rather they deal with down-to-earth habits of daily living which can produce a tremendous improvement in mental and physical health. The practical daily habits health with in this book by Harish Johari include suggestions for regulating bowel habits, diet, sleep, meditation, water intake, sex, drug intake, breathing, massage, nostril and hemispheric predominance, planetary and lunar influences, and cyclic changes in our endocrine system. In this book, the reader will learn how to control these variables in human functioning which need regulations in order to achieve a balanced, happy and productive life.

Dhanwantari

The secret to health is knowing how to deal with one's body. These life practices are not mystical or esoteric in nature, rather they deal with down-to-earth habits of daily living, which can produce a tremendous improvement in mental and physical health. The practical daily habits dealt with in this book by Harish Johari include suggestions for regulating bowel habits, diet, sleep, meditation, water intake, sex, drug intake, breathing, massage, nostril and hemispheric predominance, planetary and lunar influences, and cyclic changes in how to control these variables in human functioning which need regulations in order to achieve a balanced, happy and productive life.

Preface

This is a book for anyone who is seeking a logical, scientific and practically tested set of principles for daily life. It is a book about waking up, cleansing, eating, drinking, massage, sex and home remedies.

It is book about right living, about synchronizing the individual organism with the cycles of the Cosmos, which has given him birth. It is a book about becoming normal.

There are chapters on meditation, exercises and the cycle of breath - for, all these are ways of tuning the system in shorter spans of time. But this is not a book about getting high. It is a book about becoming right. As much as one goes high, so much he has to go low. This is a fundamental law of Universe, readily apparent from the practical experience of life.

This is a book about technique of centring, about stabilizing one's energy, about creating a place within one's own being to which he can return at will. One who has a center within himself can then look with detachment upon the ever-changing face of the illusory world. And he can even begin to laugh.

This book is based upon my own cultural experience and the ageless traditions of India. On the pages which follow are practices from Yoga, from Ayurvedic medicine (a system dating back thousands of years before Christ), from the ancient Yunani system of the Greek and Moslems, and from the timeless tribal cultures which people the plains, deserts and mountains of the Indian subcontinent.

But the validity of these practices is not limited to Indians. There is nothing on these pages, which has not been tried successfully on and by those born and raised in America. Truth, to be worthy of its name, must be universal.

The bulk of this book springs directly from dictations given to a young Indian, Vinod Agarwal, and a young American, Dick Brenneman (who also assembled them into their present form). They, along with many others, implemented these practices in their own lives and found them worthy.

I am especially thankful to the psychologists, physiologists and experimental technicians of America for their tremendous work in developing and utilizing electronic instruments to detect and monitor the operation of the human organism. Their findings are remarkable, and an eye-opening experience for the Eastern-born thinker.

My visit to this country has increased my respect and admiration for my own culture, who converted the mysteries of the play of body chemistry and the law of polarity and rhythm into religion. These same understandings Western science is now making known through its own avenues and approaches.

There is no conflict between ancient and modern knowledge. This much has become increasingly clear to me during my visit to this land. The only real differences are those of language, not of fact.

Modern man in his life's journey must make full use of whatever tools exist, drawing on all peoples and all cultures from the dawn of Creation through the latest refinements of the present. He cannot alienate himself from Truth, wherever it exists - be it inn laboratories, universities, tribal cultures or in the homilies and folk sayings picked up at the knee of his own Grandma.

This is a practical book, one designed for use in everyday life. It is the first of its kind, though there will be others to follow.

I hope that it can serve to bring more joy into you own life, as it already has for many others.

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