Fundamentals of Ayurvedic medicine. I. I. Vetrova

Introduction
The history of this book has been long.
From childhood I was very interested in philosophy, and by the ninth grade of school I was familiar with the works of Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, which enriched my intellect, but left my heart calm.
Meeting Srila Vishnupad in 1980 completely changed my life. This remarkable person, being a student of A.Ch. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada came to Moscow and brought a unique knowledge of the Brahma-Madhava-Gaudya-sampradaya tradition (one of the philosophical and religious trends of the ancient Aryans). At that time, Srila Prabhupada had already left the Earth, leaving behind thousands of followers and founding 108 temples in different parts of the world. No less of his merit was that he made adapted translations of the main Vedic canons, the volume of which, together with commentaries on them, amounted to about fifty volumes. He left India at the age of seventy and traveled all over the world for almost two decades, continuing to work on translations and commentaries on the most important Vedic canons until his death. It is quite obvious that without his help, neither the Europeans nor the Americans would have been able to understand the secrets of the ancient Aryans.
Srila Vishnupad became one of his first disciples. He was instructed to educate the population of the Soviet Union and the countries of the socialist camp. It is not difficult to imagine what kind of attacks and persecution from the all-powerful KGB at that time he was subjected to. He was not accused of anything… His students experienced the most severe repressions. Many of my friends ended up in prisons and psychiatric hospitals at that time. They were expelled from prestigious jobs, from institutions. Vishnupad, starting in 1980 and for ten years, was not allowed into the USSR, and we could only keep in touch with him by phone or through secret letters. The lectures he gave in other countries were a real fount of knowledge for us. In 1981, I received the spiritual initiation and the name Acyutananda dasa from Harikesa Swami Vishnupad, and since then he has been my spiritual father. I am sure that if not for him, my life would have turned out completely differently ...
My parents (especially my father, who was a military medic) dreamed that I would become a doctor, but I had other plans. If, shortly before graduation, they told me that I waiting for the medical path, I would have laughed in response. At that time, I was more interested in a legal career. I was going to become an operative and catch criminals, and therefore I was engaged in martial arts and even led the Dzerzhinets detachment. However, two months before graduation, I realized that my spiritual aspirations and regular practices could not have anything to do with the criminal world. Then I decided to enter the Military Medical Academy. Kirov to follow in his father's footsteps. I scored a “passing mark” and passed the “young fighter course”, but immediately after that I took the documents and entered the 1st Pavlov Leningrad Medical Institute.
The first year of training seemed like hell to me. I asked myself: in the name of what did I go into medicine? Moreover, in my second year, I experienced a deep disappointment in my future profession, because I learned that not a single chronic disease is cured, and all acute ailments go away on their own. Then I thought, why not become a surgeon, because at least they really help their patients.
It should be mentioned here that from childhood I was constantly ill with chronic bronchitis, and while studying at the institute, the disease began to take on an increasingly severe course. It was worth catching a cold, and the cough did not stop for three months. Then I was advised to contact a Korean senior student. I went through acupuncture with him and very carefully followed all his recommendations on nutrition and herbal medicine. Since then, my illness has disappeared forever. I was very inspired by this success, and along with the study of the Vedic tradition and regular mantra meditations, I began to study oriental medicine.
Later, while working as an ambulance doctor and then at the Research Institute of Cardiology, I continued to study Tibetan medicine, astrology and signaturerology under the guidance of experienced mentors from China.
In 1990, I was fortunate enough to finally get to India, where I spent three months traveling to holy places. There I again, after a ten-year separation, met with Srila Vishnupad, who inspired me to deeply study Ayurvedic medicine. At that time, I managed to visit Benares, where one of the oldest schools of the Dhanvantari-Sushruta-sampradaya is located. There I realized that everything I knew before was only the surface of the deep ocean, and I realized that in order to become a master of Ayurveda (kaviraj), it will take the whole life.
The following year, I met my spiritual master in Bavaria on his Vyasa Puja (Birthday). He told me that I should continue my efforts because that was the will of the Lord.
After returning from Germany, I abandoned my unfinished dissertation on coronary heart disease. Leaving the walls of the Research Institute of Cardiology, I rented a small semi-basement room, where there was a medical couch and a table, and began to receive patients. To be honest, at that time I didn’t really know how to do anything. I am even surprised that people came to me then - three or four patients a day. I didn’t have enough money to live on, and I took my father’s car and “hacked around the city” at night.
Then I had the first student, whom I taught acupressure, and I myself put needles and conducted consultations.
In the autumn of 1993, we began to think about opening the Center, since there were already three of us. One of my patients suggested that I borrow a thousand dollars from someone and go to Turkey with him. “You will earn money and open your Center,” he told me. “But I don’t know how to trade…” I doubted. "Do not worry! I will help you sell the goods…” I agreed, and on the very first day in Istanbul we were “thrown” by the Kurdish mafia. We lost all the money, and I had to go to Turkey three more times to pay off this unfortunate debt.
In December of the same year, one of my patients, in gratitude for the help provided in the treatment of his daughter, gave us his office, since he himself emigrated to Argentina. This is how the Center for Ayurvedic and Tibetan Medicine appeared, which we named "Dhanvantari", after the founder of Ayurveda. The next year I went to India and continued my studies. Gradually, more and more specialists joined us, undergoing specialization in the field of Ayurveda. And in 1996, we were offered to move to a beautiful mansion on Krestovsky Island, where, as you know, one of the most powerful areas of the positive magnetic anomaly is located. Since then, more than twenty-five thousand people have been consulted and treated at the Center. Later we opened branches of the Center in Finland and Latvia.
In March 1998, I met Alexander Pavlovich Tseiko, who, being a follower of Saint Sai Baba, lived for about five years in India. He returned to Russia at the request of his spiritual teacher to spread the knowledge of Ayurveda.
He was engaged supplies of Ayurvedic preparations from India, and I traveled around Russia and the former republics of the USSR
with lectures. In 1999, he asked me to write a book, but my literary ability was far from perfect, and besides, I could not quickly put my thoughts on paper. It was easier for me to give lectures. Then we decided to create the journal "Ayurveda - the science of life", in order to gradually form journal articles, to collect material for the book. Since 2000, we have published eight 64-page full-color almanacs. Finally, it's time to pick up the book. However, everything I had written before seemed imperfect to me. I thought that all this should be rewritten ...
My first assistant in the creation of this book was Yulia Vladimirovna Sorokina, with whom we worked on the magazine. At one time, Julia was engaged in the translation of the Ashtanga Hridaya Samhita, considered one of the most famous medical canons of the East, and created the Internet resource http://www.ashtanga.narod.ru, today the only Russian-language web project dedicated to the history of Ayurveda. The preparation of materials related to ancient treatises, and her editorial processing of journal articles and lecture materials, allowed us to begin work on the book in the summer of 2002. Several chapters were written, and the general logical structure of the book began to take shape.
In January 2003 I met with my old friend Andrey Vladimirovich Kuzmenko. We have known each other for about thirty years, and as far as I remember him, he always showed literary abilities. After school, we entered the Kirov Military Medical Academy together and left together, successfully passing the entrance exams ... When we studied at the First Pavlov Medical Institute, our communication became more and more rare, although even in the tenth grade of A.V. Kuzmenko was keenly interested in Vedic culture and philosophy. After graduating from the institute, he worked as a psychiatrist, first in an outpatient clinic, then in a forensic psychiatric examination, and since 1998 he completely left official medicine and devoted himself to literary work in one of the best publishing houses in St. Petersburg. After graduating