27 Dec Context as Medicine: Ayurveda, Brain Hemispheres, and Perception
By Dr. Claudia Welch
The Landscape of Discomfort
The personal, physical, emotional, mental and global health challenges of our time are monumental. We live in a world where external conditions are increasingly turbulent, and the heaviness of collective suffering weighs heavily on many.
There are many medicines we can turn to. One that may often be overlooked is contextual perspective.
A Personal Lesson in Context in India
I have been fascinated with context for a long time, although I was drawn to contextual learning before I could name it.
At nineteen, I lived in Banaras, India for a year. I was enrolled in a program through the University of Wisconsin–Madison that required an original research project, and I had every intention of writing that on some aspect of Ayurveda. While all my peers selected their focuses, I couldn’t settle on mine. I was the last to settle on a topic.
I realized that, despite growing up with an Indian guru, in a spiritual lineage, and being surrounded by the Bhagavad Gita, the Adi Granth and other of India’s many spiritual texts, I had no idea what was going on around me. The pujas, the temples the incredible frequency of festivals. It was a devotional, loud, heartfelt mystery. It felt –though I couldn’t fully articulate it at the time—premature to dive deep into the study of Ayurveda without understanding the context in which it exists.
I eventually settled on the study of Banaras Hindu winter festivals. A choice that drew the unequivocal disapproval of the program’s well-meaning, Western program monitors. While I didn’t understand their disapproval, I suspect my choice didn’t fit the Western educational norm of narrowing in on the topic one is primarily interested in. In any case, I am still grateful to have stuck to the topic. I did indeed study festivals, with the incredible guidance and support of Om Prakash Sharmaji. Through the study of Hindu festivals, I had wider exposure to the culture, rhythms, beliefs and worldviews in which Ayurveda exists.
Only much later did I begin to appreciate how important that was. Learning the cycles of time, the tithi-s (lunar days), the seasonal rhythms (ṛtucaryā), and the festivals added texture and depth to my later deeper study of Ayurveda. It wove the science back into the living culture from which it arose. Without that foundation, the study would have risked becoming dislocated, and severed from its roots.
Later I also studied Jyotiṣa, which related closely to many aspects of the festivals, and further illuminated many aspects of Ayurveda. I began to see the rich and living threads that connect the different sciences and how knowledge of sister subjects greatly increases the understanding of each–an understanding that simply cannot be gleaned through the study of just one.
In hindsight, the choice to study Banaras Hindu winter festivals before narrowing in on the study of Ayurveda was one of the most positively impactful ones in my life.
Context in Hormones
The relationship with context later shaped my professional life as well. As I focused more deeply on women’s health and hormones, I noticed a similar pattern. Focusing in on a Western understanding of hormones– where they are made, where they go and what they do — was important. It allowed me to understand hormones’ mechanisms and pathways.
But it was adding in the contextual piece –the broader scope of what we are doing in our lives, how we are doing it and what life stage we are in– that allowed me to begin to see why hormones behave the way they do. Eastern ways of learning, which emphasize wholeness and integration, provided a framework in which the details made more sense, like pieces of a larger living puzzle. That broader view became a defining feature of my professional work and understanding, and shaped the way I approached both teaching and practice.
Context in Ayurveda
For explanations of truths and principles quoted from other branches (of science or philosophy) and incidentally discussed in the present work, the student is referred to expositions made by the masters (of those sciences or philosophies), since it is impossible to deal with all branches of science, etc. in a single book (and within so short a compass)… By the study of a single Shastra, a man can never catch the true import of this (Science of Medicine). Therefore, a physician should study as many allied branches (of science or philosophy) as possible. Suśruta Saṃhitā: Sūtrasthāna:IV:5-6
Suśruta is one of the fathers of Ayurveda. He tells us, in this passage, that even the fundamental texts of Ayurveda will not have all the answers; that we must go outside of it –to its fellow arts and sciences–to fill in missing pieces. If we do this, knowledge will be more complete and medicine more effective.
The Example of Mental Health in Ayurveda
There are myriad examples of the emphasis on context in Ayurveda, but hear let us look at least at one. The incalculable importance of context in Ayurveda finds a notable example when we study mental health.
One way the mind is depicted is through the subtle anatomy of the manovāhasrotas –the channel system of the mind. It is said to have its root (mūla) in the heart and to permeate the whole body, especially so the ten great vessels. However the classical Ayurveda texts nowhere explicitly list these ten vessels. We must go to the context: to find allied Indian knowledge systems like tantra that provide the missing information.
In tantric texts, we find that these ten great vessels are the inner, subtle nāḍī-s (channels) that connect with and open to the body’s nine major orifices (bāhya srotāṃsi—the orifices of the eyes, ears, nostrils, mouth, and the reproductive and elimination organs), together with the subtle suṣumṇā nāḍī, which runs along the spine and emerges through a cakra at the top of the head.
We also find that, for most of us, iḍā and piṅgalā nāḍī-s—internal pathways associated with the left and right nostrils, respectively—are the most important of the ten for therapeutic purposes. Iḍā represents cooling, nourishing (bṛṃhaṇa) energies; piṅgalā represents activating, depleting (laṅghana) energies. This duality–nourishing and activating, cooling and heating, grounding and mobilizing–is central not only to the body’s functioning, but to the balance of the mind. We discover that working skillfully with these two channels is among the most powerful tools we have for affecting change in the mind.
Understanding this helps us understand the value and power of gentle breathing practices like nāḍī-śodhana (alternate nostril breathing) in mental health. Such a practice –done correctly and with guidance, can help harmonize internal dualities, supporting mental equilibrium in a tangible way.
Without looking outside Ayurveda itself—to tantric texts, we would neither have this insight, nor understand the value of this medicine. This is a powerful medicine we risk overlooking if we fail to widen our understanding of context.
Context and Brain Hemispheres: Narrow vs. Contextual Awareness
Modern neuroscience can provide insight on contextual vs narrow focus. Dr. Iain McGilchrist’s work, particularly in The Master and His Emissary, explores the differences between the brain’s hemispheres. According to McGilchrist, the left hemisphere focuses narrowly, categorizes, and manipulates parts, while the right hemisphere perceives wholeness, relational context, and direct experience.
He offers an example to understand the distinction: the left hemisphere helps an animal locate food — like a bird focuses in on a worm in the grass, or a berry among the leaves. It specializes in narrowing attention, isolating a part from the whole. Meanwhile, the right hemisphere helps the animal avoid becoming food—allows the bird to keep aware of its surroundings — of predators, of subtle changes in the environment. This contextual awareness is essential for survival and cannot be captured by focusing narrowly.
Both modes are necessary. But when left hemisphere thinking dominates — as it tends to in modern Western culture and study— we become over-focused and fragmented. Interestingly, we also become overconfident and certain. Because we know a lot about small parts of things, we mistake that narrow certainty for real understanding. This tendency, McGilchrist suggests, contributes significantly to the division and polarization that mark today’s world.
The right hemisphere’s mode — one of awe, humility, and connectedness — is quieter but no less vital. It is less certain. It is nourished by exposure to beauty, music, nature, and direct spiritual experience. These are not luxuries; they are necessary food for the part of us that can still see the whole — and recognize that we are part of it.
Context in Eastern vs. Western Learning Styles
Education plays a significant role in whether we tend toward contextual learning or narrowly focused learning, and one well-known study helps make this difference visible.
In a study by Masuda and Nisbett (2001), participants from different cultural backgrounds were shown a short animated underwater scene. The scene was busy and layered. It included plants, rocks, small creatures, shifting currents, and several fish. Among them was one fish that stood out. It was larger, faster, or more brightly colored than the others. The researchers referred to this as the “focal fish.”
After watching the animation, participants were asked to describe what they had seen. American participants, representing a Western educational background, tended to focus almost immediately –and almost exclusively–on the focal fish. Their descriptions emphasized its size, speed, and movement. Japanese participants, representing a more Eastern educational background, were more likely to describe the broader scene first. They spoke about the water, the plants, the relationships between elements, and how the fish interacted with their environment.
Both groups saw the same film. But they saw it differently. One way of seeing isolates a part. The other situates that part within a larger field of relationships. One leans toward narrow focus; the other toward context. One aligns more with left-hemisphere habits of attention; the other with right-hemisphere modes.
Neither approach is wrong. But when one is sacrificed for the other, we do not have as well-rouned an education as we expect. If, for example, Western education consistently trains us to privilege the focal fish, we may lose fluency in seeing the water it swims in. And that loss of context has consequences, especially when we are trying to understand complex systems like health, mind, culture, or meaning itself.
If we teach or study Ayurveda—or any Eastern knowledge system—through an isolated, hyper-specialized lens, we risk reinforcing the very fragmentation that contributes to mental suffering. If we engage these systems contextually, weaving together story, art, philosophy, ritual, and science, we nourish a way of knowing that is integral to their survival.
When we study an Eastern subject in a decidedly Western way, we lose something.
If we go about exploring it in an Eastern way, we preserve, nourish and honor its roots.
It is worth asking what might happen if we were to apply a more Eastern educational model, or a more right-hemisphere mode of attention, to today’s reality.
Today, at both an individual and global level, it feels like we are starving for context. Practices like breathing gently through alternate nostrils, immersing ourselves in beauty, experiencing traditional arts and rhythms, and approaching learning with reverence for wholeness — these may not just soothe personal anxiety. They may help heal a certain and divided world.
In a time when certainty and fragmentation is the norm, remembering awe and the larger whole may be among the most potent medicines we have.
In Menopause Chronicles, we explore the context in which menopause occurs and how that context influences perimenopausal, menopausal and post-menopausal life.
In Women’s Health & Hormones Part 1, we explore the context in which hormones exist, and how that context determines how hormones act.
In Vedic Threads, we explore the context in which Indian knowledge systems like Ayurveda or Jyotisha exist. Vedic Threads is hosted by Satsangam — a project that serves to orient students of Indian knowledge systems to the context in which they exist. The heart of that work is recognizing that Ayurveda, Yoga, Jyotiṣa, and other traditions cannot be richly understood when pulled out of their cultural, philosophical, and spiritual context.