It’s a beautiful thing beauty, even though we are never quite done talking about it and trying to actually understand what it is , where to find it, and how to make it last forever! The burning question is: how do we stay beautiful by reversing or slowing down the aging process? We are all born beautiful with a divine light that shines bright within us. By connecting to our own beauty within, our physical beauty and total beauty will follow, flowing with the glow of our consciousness. Our perceptions, judgments, conditioning, and the opinions we form in our mind may define what we think of as beautiful in others and ourselves, but ultimately we are all beautiful.
Ayurveda offers a unique and all-encompassing perspective on beauty that begins with good physical and mental health. The following sutra from the Shaka Vansya Ayurveda (SVA) lineage describes the three pillars of beauty and how together they embody total beauty – spiritual beauty. The Charak Samhita[1], the original text of holistic Ayurvedic science, also discusses ways for keeping ourselves beautiful, and speaks to techniques we can follow for optimum health, beauty, rejuvenation, keeping ourselves young at heart, and contentment in life.
As the above sutra states, the three pillars or foundations of beauty include; roopam, gunam, and vayastyag. Roopam refers to outer beauty, which is exemplified by our physical characteristics of beauty. Gunam refers to our inner beauty that shines from within us. Vayastyag refers to our lasting beauty and how we can look younger than our chronological age. Ayurveda offers us ancient guidelines and time-tested truths around these three pillars so that we can achieve total and true beauty that goes beyond skincare and cosmetics.
Roopam – outer beauty
Roopam is characterized by radiant skin, shiny hair, sparkling eyes, etc. Roopam is unrelated to body size, skin, hair, or eye color, and is a direct reflection of good health. Roopam, our outer beauty is categorized into two types; chhaya, and prabha. Chhaya refers to close-up beauty and the beautification techniques we use such as creams, lotions, herbs, makeup, plastic surgery etc. Prabha is the specific radiance and natural vibrations coming from ones consciousness that reflects as outer beauty. Prabha is our true essence of beauty and radiance and enhancing it should be a priority before enhancing our chhaya.
Gunam – inner beauty
Gunam reflects the beauty of our mind and soul and manifests itself as thoughts, actions and words. Gunam can be referred to as our aura that comes from inside. Our minds are the medium, and the mirror that reflects the good and bad vibes that our consciousness carries. Our gunam is governed by three main mental functions; dhi or learning, dhriti or retaining, and smriti or long-term memory and recall. A well disciplined mind that is coordinated with our senses and inner consciousness will indeed behave beautifully. By connecting with our mental intellect, we can enhance our gunam value.
Vayastyag – lasting beauty
Vayastyag is focused on how we can look younger than our chronological age and is supported by both roopam and gunam beauty. Vayastyag in itself is a complete science of how to achieve lasting beauty through shiri kamya rasayanas or skin rejuvenating regimes to slow down the aging process and promote luster and beauty.
Ayurveda classifies four types of aging; biological, psychological, social, and chronological. Chronological aging of course cannot be stopped – we age, this is a fact. Biological aging is a process of nature by which certain components in our lives will age us. For example, toxins, doshic (Vata, Pitta, Kapha – our biological humors) imbalances, EMF and EMR – electromagnetic fields and radiation, our diets, our routines, rest, exercise, lifestyle etc. Psychological age reflects how old or young you feel in your mind. It is your age attitude – your perception of how old you feel. The concept that the mind and body should be treated as a whole has been taught and practiced for thousands of years in Ayurveda. However, in 1975 the term Psycho-neuro-immunology[2] was coined based around the belief that there is a link between what we think (i.e. our state of mind), our health and our own ability to heal ourselves. The Charak Samhita discusses social aging in quite some depth and teaches us to socialize with people that are young at heart, mind and chronological age. Conversations among your social circles should also not address signs of aging as this can affect you psychologically. The seven layers of our skin reflect the qualities of our health, and if they are not nourished and nurtured adequately, will display signs of ill-health regardless of how much makeup we apply. Ayurveda supports us with a three-pronged approach known as Tri (three) Sutra (link) Ayurveda to help up solve our skincare problems. Tri-Sutra Ayurveda is explained as; hetu – the cause of the illness, lingam – the symptoms, and aushadhi gyanam – the solutions, remedies and treatments. Hetu is understood as etiological factors that create problems and directly affects our chhaya, or close-up beauty. Examples of etiological factors include synthetic skincare, unnatural preservatives, excess alcohol, poor diet, lack of sleep, excess exposure to electromagnetic devices etc. These factors then manifest themselves as lingam symptoms, such as dryness, redness, flaking, wrinkling, excess oil, rashes, acne etc. Aushadhi gyanam states that we should avoid the etiological factors we are exposing ourselves to as much as possible and formulate treatments based on the individual’s constitution and imbalance.
