How To Choose an Ayurvedic School That Is Right For You

What I have found in my experience teaching at and attending Ayurvedic schools is that there is a fairly simple but robust formula for who does best in which school.  I get asked pretty often by students which school to go to.  This post is for you.

Each school has an overall characteristic that can tell you what its working rising sign is.  For example, a certain school has a very academic approach, very technical.  It functionally has a Gemini ascendent.  Sure enough, almost all of the students have a Scorpio rising sign.  How does this make sense?  Well, Ayurveda is represented by the eighth house. Scorpios have Gemini in their eighth house and so tend to learn Ayurvedic mystery-school type stuff, represented by the eighth house, in a Gemini way.

There is a nice symmetry here too in that the sixth house of Gemini, which represents the healing model that the Gemini school takes, is Scorpio. So, all these Scorpio rising students satisfy the healing approach of the Gemini school, and the Ayurvedic education of these Scorpios are satisfied by the Gemini approach of the school.

In short, the 6/8 relationship works very well in general for Ayurvedic education.
Similarly, an institute-style school is very Aquarian in its approach, taking the grand transhumanist Satabishak (a fixed star in Aquarius that means “100 physicians”) framework.  Sure enough, the students who do best there are Cancer types, very loving, nurturing and feminine in their approach to life, since they have Aquarius in their eighth house, and the Aquarian school has Cancer in its healing sixth health house.

A nutrition based school, Taurus rising, similarly does best with Libra ascendants. I have empirically seen this.  Similarly a truly temple-like spiritually complete school which is Piscean and meditation-centric is a great home for proud Leos looking for Ayurvedic education.

Is the school’s approach meticulous, plodding, careful to approach completion, perhaps with a hatha yoga emphasis? It may be Capricorn rising.  Here the detailed high ordered geekiness of a Gemini student is best.

Is there a strong charismatic leader, perhaps with government connections, that is leading the school?  The plodding careful work of a Capricorn rising student would be best in such a Leonine school.  And so it goes.

Finally, as a sidenote, one merely needs to look to the tenth house to see how the school appears to the world: the Gemini school hence appears as highly spiritual and Piscean.  The Aquarian institute would have a public reputation of  a very transformative, somewhat scary Scorpionic mien. The Taurean nutrition school is likely to have a reputation of a nonpersonal society-improving  higher purpose of Aquarius, and the Piscean spiritual school as a mutable fiery place of monks in higher Saggitarian  learning.

However, I must emphasize that love for the teacher is paramount, that it comes before any of the above analysis, and that a good teacher can teach to and for anybody.  For example, the Aquarian institute would be fine for a Scorpio as long as the Scorpio is willing to accept his or her Ayurvedic education as a kind of remaking college experience (Aquarius is fourth house, symbolizing college and other things, for the Scorpio) even if if the Scorpio has already been to college or even graduate school.

The bottom line to all of this is that Ayurvedic schools, all holy, all beautifully intentioned, have dramas of their own. It would be a disservice to the student to say otherwise.  The responsibility is on the teachers to make sure that a complete experience is available to each student.  The responsibility is on the student not to take the dramas of the sky personally.  If he or she could learn this as a general principle, he or she will go far toward becoming a general healing practitioner.

Make sense?  This system of observations has really held up empirically.  I hope it is of use.

Good luck in your search and feel free to ask questions.