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He served for three years as Medical Director of the Ayurveda Hospital in

Pune, India. He also held the position of Professor of Clinical Medicine at
the Pune University College of Ayurvedic Medicine where he was an
instructor for more than a decade. Dr. Lad’s Academic and practical
training includes the study of allopathic medicine and surgery as well as
traditional Ayurveda.

Dr. Lad is also the author of Ayurveda, the Science of Self-Healing and the
co-author of Ayurvedic Cooking for Self-Healing and The Yoga of Herbs,
as well as numerous published articles on various aspects of Ayurveda. He
presently directs the Ayurvedic Institute in Albuquerque and teaches the
eight month Ayurvedic Studies program. Dr. Lad travels extensively
throughout the year, consulting privately and giving seminars on Ayurveda:
its history, theory, principles and practical applications.

The Ayurvedic Institute was established in 1984 to promote the traditional

knowledge of Ayurveda. In support of this, the Institute also offers
programs in the sister disciplines of Sanskrit, Yoga and Jyotisha (Vedic
Astrology).

The main Ayurvedic programs reflect the style of sitting with a traditional
Indian teacher. The Vedic educational model is quite different from the
“Western” experience with which most of us are familiar. In keeping with
these oral traditions, the knowledge is presented with the integral aspects of
the body, mind and spiritual components intact, along with practical
examples and stories.
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Editor’s Note

on conventions used for this book in the presentation of Sanskrit words.

Knowledge of Ayurveda originates in the Sanskrit language. In many

languages the basic characters of the alphabet are similar to English (e.g., a,
b, c...). Sanskrit is a precise phonetic language and uses a set of written
symbols that are quite “foreign” to most Westerners (e.g., 3FT—vâta.) The
phonetic representation of Sanskrit words using the English alphabet is
called transliteration. However, there are quite a few sounds that do not
exist in the English language, requiring special characters to represent them
accurately. For instance, the first a in vâta is a long a, as in “father,” that is
held for two beats and the second a is a short a, as in “what.” Another
example is a sound somewhere between i, u and r that occurs in the word
H'jfd. This word is transliterated as prakrti. The r is pronounced as the ri in
the English spelling of the word Krishna. Among those who speak Hindi,
the r is pronounced in northern India as the i in “it” and in southern India as
the u sound in “root.” Because of the regional variations in pronunciation,
in this book both ru and ri will be found in place of the technically correct r.
Also, because of the influence of Hindi, the trailing a in Sanskrit words is
sometimes omitted. It is included in many of the words in this book.

In Secrets of the Pulse we have chosen not to use the technical

transliteration character set except for long vowels, denoted by an
overscore, and the nya sound denoted by n. The pronunciations are: à as the
a in “father,” û as the oo in “root,” and i as the ee in “see.”

This book assumes some knowledge of Ayurveda and should not be

considered an introductory text. For further reading and information on
Ayurveda, please consider the texts listed in the bibliography.

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