E196 - Dr. Vasant Lad: Your Tongue Reveals What Your Body Is Hiding (5,000-Year-Old Science)

Dr. Vasant Lad is the founder of the Ayurvedic Institute and the man most responsible for bringing Ayurveda to the West. He has spent over 40 years teaching this 5,000-year-old science of life to practitioners across the world, and in this conversation, we sat down together at SoHum Mountain Healing Center in Asheville, North Carolina, where I had just completed a week-long Panchakarma. What unfolded was one of the most quietly profound conversations I have had on this show.What We Dive Into:1. Why unprocessed emotions don’t simply pass — and how grief settles in the heart, anger in the liver, and fear in the kidneys until they’re physically released.2. How your tongue, pulse, and face reveal what’s happening inside your body, often before any symptom appears.3. Why your original constitution (prakruti) shapes everything from your digestion to your temperament — and how modern life pulls you away from it.4. The gap between two breaths, and why Dr. Lad calls it an ocean of awareness available to anyone willing to sit in it.THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS:SoHum Mountain Healing Center — Code AndrePK2026 for $500 off from your Panchakarma bookinghttps://www.sohumhealing.comFunction Health — Code KNOWTHYSELF25 for $25 credit towards membershiphttps://www.functionhealth.com/KNOWTHYSELF___________00:00 Intro01:58 What Ayurveda Actually Means02:40 The Five Elements, Three Doshas, and the Body06:18 Prakruti, Vikruti, and the Root of Disease08:00 The Sankhya Philosophy Behind Ayurveda13:33 The Goal of Ayurveda15:26 Dr. Lad's Path: Guru, Calling, and Coming West18:06 Where Western Medicine Falls Short22:05 Ama, Agni, and the Ayurvedic View of Disease25:56 Pulse, Tongue, and Face: The Art of Diagnosis34:29 Reading Psychological Nature Through the Pulse39:00 The Gap Between Breaths: Awareness and Mysticism44:37 How Repressed Emotions Crystallize in the Body47:39 Panchakarma: Physical, Emotional, and Spiritual Cleansing51:52 Ojas, Tejas, and Prana: The Vital Essences56:18 Sexual Energy, Celibacy, and the Cultivation of Ojas1:00:07 Life as Meditation: The Unified Field1:06:00 The Ayurvedic View of Death and Dying1:14:56 Dinacharya: The Daily Routine as Spiritual Practice1:18:48 The Doshic Clock and the Yugas1:25:22 Relationship, Self-Knowledge, and the Closing Message___________MORE FROM DR. VASANT✨Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drvasantlad🌐https://ayurveda.com/about-vasant-lad/MORE FROM KNOW THYSELF🎙️Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4bZMq9l🎧Apple: https://apple.co/4iATICX✨Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/🎬TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@andreduqum👥Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/knowthyselfbyandreduqum/🌐https://knowthyselfpodcast.com/MORE FROM ANDRÉ✨Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/@andreduqum💼Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/know-thyself-podcast📚Book recs: https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com/book-list