This thick liquid has nine components, all of which are used in other Ayurvedic formulas for eye conditions, including the cleansing super-trio of triphala: amalaki, the superfood; haritaki the cleanser; and bibhitaki the melter. It also contains honey, coconut water, camhor, and liquorice.
All ingredients are promoters of eye health, called caksusya in Sanskrit, and most are light in property, promoting digestion and transformation of any impurities that may be irritating or inflaming the eyes.
This viscous and concentrated liquid is applied in the soft light of late evening with soothing environment as eye drops or an eyeliner to the bottom lid margin, starting from the inner lid and moving outward toward the temple. The eye is closed, and the eyeball should be rolled to spread the thick liquid through the sclera or mucous covering the eyeball. The eyes will tear and may be washed with triphasa eyewash if desired. Else, removing the tears, resting the eyes completely, and then sleeping soon after is advised.
The surreal experience stayed with her for weeks, and she changed her life and relationships responding to the powerful traumatics visions she had watched melt before her. She was not alone. There were several students who had profound cleansing, revealing a sense of coolness in their eyes, sharper vision, and a feeling of lightness as well as an unexpected emotional cleansing.
Over the years, I have added this bottle to my recommendations for weekly beauty treatments, especially for actors and people who wear a lot of eye makeup or spend a lot of time in front of the computer screen.
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Anjana, or kohl, was made by cooking herbs known to be good for the eyes, such as amalaki, haritaki, or berberry on an iron griddle until they burned to ash. A drop of oil was add to the fine blackened grit, then cooled and stored in clean jars, then applied every day with a clean stick or fingerpad to the margin of the bottom eyelid, especially to children
Modern eyeliners made by commercial giants use heavy metals as preservatives for lengthening shelf life and petroleum-based chemicals and no longer use medicinal herbs for the eye. Their use of mercury or lead is exempted by the Drugs and Cosmetics laws of most countries. Sharing applicators is not encouraged but is common.
YOGA
Every type of yoga has become a craze in the USA. Not only is it a lucrative business with very little investment required, but it also has a feel-good bonus as the yoga teacher watches students improve their lives. After much prodding, I attended a class of a self-proclaimed-famous yogi who claimed he had taught yoga at the White House and to an armful of dignitaries. His special yoga was Face Yoga, a new popular craze because of its effect on beauty. The exercises focus on the anatomy and physiology of facial muscles and the cranial nerves which regulate the brain
In a programmed and smooth flow, the yogi led us through a sequence of exercises for the face. He began with the forehead, then the temples, the ears, then the eyes, the cheeks, the nose, the mouth, and finally the neck. The session lasted 45 minutes and people were encouraged to repeat the exercises each morning in front of the mirror or in a meditative state sitting on a yoga mat.
The eye exercises are very similar to the examinations done by doctors to test the functions of the cranial nerves (III, IV, and VI) in and around the eyes. The patient is instructed to look near then far, then move the eyes up, then down, left then right, then dart diagonally left-to-right, then diagonally right-to-left, then make semicircles clockwise, then counterclockwise. The eyelids are opened wide, then pressed shut. These exercises when associated with a meditative state are thought to tone the muscles around the eye, and to reconnect the skin with the muscles and layers underneath.
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In fifth grade, a girl told me she would not sit next to me at lunch because I was handicapped: I thought it was my brown skin since that is what the British taught us Indians, but she explained that it was because I had four eyes. Her cruelty etched pain into my heart. I had become dependent after one year on eyeglasses and could not see without them anymore. I began to wonder why people with eyeglasses are handicapped and what determined which eyes never got bent out of shape. In India, few people had eyeglasses. Was it that they were poor, or that they had healthy eyes? Soon I was told bad vision was genetic, and to stop asking questions.
Dr. Jacob Liberman changed my view of eyesight during college. We had long discussions about the eyes and what he discovered from Australian aborigines. He explored the possibility of something impossible according to modern medicine: eyesight restoration without surgery. Through a series of exercises for the eyes and conditioning for the mind, which he has outlined in several of his books, he explains that we can modify our nervous system through heighened consciousness. The aborigines were yogis and knew how to transmute thoughts and the physical body.
Years later, an elder wiseman of Ayurveda talked to me about vision. Ayurveda tells us that the eyes adapt to aid the mind. If events in the environment are so perplexing for the mind that it cannot cope, the eyes shift to see everything a little less clearly because the mind sees them a little less clearly. Thus is the origin of myopia, the ability to see far away. Some yogis say that eye diseases are related to the inability of the mind to reconcile what it sees with what it believes to be real or right or good. The solution is to regularly yoke the mind with the emotions, the thoughts, and exercises on the body so everything stays connected and unclear thoughts are processed.
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Of course, biology tells us that the biosphere is sustained by the Sun, and weather patterns are deeply affected by the undulating heating and cooling during rotation and revolution of the earth around the sun. But there was something specific about the rays of the morning sun being more beneficial than its rays at any other time of day. The ninth chapter of the Atharva Veda describes 22 diseases that can be cured by the rays of the rising Sun.
The Vedas claim that the sun can heal heart problems, jaundice, and anemia. Long ridiculed as far-fetched claims, science is now discovering the importance of vitamin D, produced by the skin from the sun, in modulating hormones and enzymes that affect the heart and blood. Indeed, premature babies are laid in incubators with UV light to cure their neonatal jaundice. Over a thousand different genes, governing almost every tissue in the body, are now known to be regulated by the active form of the vitamin D3, including several involved in calcium metabolism, endorphin and pain regulation, blood pressure through modulation of renin in the kidneys, and the optimal functioning of the neuromuscular and immune systems. There is also a connection between vitamin D deficiency and the development of diabetes and metabolic syndrome. Vitamin D also induces cathelicidin, a polypeptide that effectively combats both bacterial and viral infections.
When people are exposed to sunlight or very bright artificial light in the morning, their nocturnal melatonin production occurs sooner, and they enter into sleep more easily at night. This hormone from the pineal gland also plays an important role in countering infection, inflammation, cancer, and auto-immunity.
Unprotected sunlight exposure has been discouraged mainly due to melanoma risk. However, reports also state that 0.1% of the human population is at risk for UV-light related diseases whereas 50% of the human population is at risk of other diseases from lack of sunlight exposure. The safest compromise seems to be to take in sunlight when the UV Index is low. In general, the intensity of UV rays at the end of the day is higher than at the beginning of the day.
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© 2014, Dr. Bhaswati Bhattacharya
Dinacharya: The Wisdom of Routine