Ayurvedic Medicine: The Principles of Traditional Practice

Sebastian Pole is a British practitioner of ayurveda, traditional Chinese and Western herbal medicine as well as a professional teacher of yoga and is a pioneer in the cultivation of organic ayurvedic herbs in the UK, and has had extensive clinical training in ayurvedic clinics and hospitals in India. He has presented the health care community and the ayurvedic profession with what surely will become the definitive textbook of ayurvedic herbal medicine for aspiring practitioners and manual for clinicians in the Western and English-speaking world. This book has filled a desperate and long-felt need for an English-language work that is at a sufficient level of clinical detail for working and student practitioners of ayurveda. It is replete with color photographs, superbly well-organized details on each herb catalogued, and very well written. I refer to it daily in both my practice and my teaching. "Ayurvedic Medicine: The Principles of Traditional Practice" provides a deep and broad understanding of the theory underlying ayurvedic pharmacology and therapeutics along with a practical materia medica of over 80 ayurvedic plant remedies, each carefully denoted by its common Indian name, Sanskrit and Latin name, description, color photographs of the herb in both its prepared and fresh forms, energetics, phytoconstitutents, ayurvedic and biomedical actions, indications, contraindications, safety issues, formulations and dosage, along with additional notes. The work is divided into three main sections. Part 1 presents a history of ayurveda and the development of its materia medica; basic principles (the panch mahabhutas, the three doshas, the saptadhatus, the srota, ayurvedic anatomy, disease etiology and pathology); principles of ayurvedic herbal pharmacology and pharmacy; ayurvedic diagnosis and therapeutics, treatment protocols and the scientific basis for ayurveda's claims. Part 2 presents the plant profiles, herb sourcing, and traditional formulas, and Part 3 contains useful tabular appendices, a glossary, herbal sources, plant name indices, and transliteration and pronunciation notes. Everyone involved in ayurveda, and in a larger sense everyone involved in or interested in health care, complimentary medicine or herbalism, owes Mr. Pole a huge debt of gratitude for this excellent and very much needed work.

As a provider and practitioner of Ayurvedic Medicine, I look for books and resources that bring the classical texts of Ayurveda into a tangible and digestible format without taking away the purity of the knowledge. Pole has done an incredible job bringing every aspect of Ayurveda to the forefront, while focusing on applicable botanicals for treatment of imbalances. I suggest this book to my patients, colleagues and students and it is one of my go-to textbooks for teaching Ayurveda to allopathic physicians. I own 2 very loved copies!

It’s a beautiful book. It is well organized with chapters, charts, glossaries, and illustrations. . Unfortunately, there is much I cannot understand because the primary nouns and adjectives are in a language I don’t understand. If I were a true student of Ayurveda, I imagine I would have this text AND a professor to help me along. So, while it looks beautiful and the words and pages bountiful, I’ll have to find a less serious text, in English.

It has given me a great overview and a different insight to the material I am currently learning. I believe that most of the text books are written by individuals that have "grown up with" Ayurveda and their knowledge and method of explaining it is different than someone who chose to study it later in life and had to go about learning it in a different way. For some it was a "way of life" from the time they were born and they have a more difficult time relating it to those of us that what the knowledge later. I felt like I was able to relate to this text more easily. Thank you

This book is somewhat of an update to David Frawley's and Vansant Lad's work (in more of a in a textbook type format) The Yoga Of Herbs that came out in the Nineties . He gives a very thorough and compressed rundown of the practice and philosophy of Ayurveda to support his also thorough treatment of Ayurvedic pharmacology. The only thing I didn't like about the book is his choice of phonetic rendering of Sanskrit words. This book is a winner and should populate the library of anyone who dabbles in things Ayurveda.

This book is probably the best one I have as far as pictures with the plants and descriptions. It is beautifully laid out and the author really put some time into it and it shows.

This is a wonderful resource for anyone seriously into Ayurvedic medicine. It is not an easy read and a lot of information for a beginner. I would not recommend it for someone new to this practice, it is too detailed and very dry. But as a resource it is excellent. Half of it is explanation and how to diagnose imbalances and disorders, the other half is all about herbs and their uses.

I ordered this book for a course that I am taking next month. I received this book in pristine condition. You could tell that it was new because the pages and binding was stiff and had the feel of a brand new book. I am very pleased with my purchase.