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Here’s how I use Ayurveda Everyday

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There are Ayurvedic doctors who specialize in working with patients with advanced diseases. Ayurveda can certainly be utilized to heal.

I use Ayurveda, and I teach my clients to use it, everyday. It’s how I feel what’s happening in my body, and see the patterns in what’s going on around me. It’s how I integrate body, mind, and soul in day to day life. It’s how I stay sane, stay connected to what’s true, as things shift around me (because you know what they say, the only thing constant is change.)

I am an action taker. A fixer. I want to know what I can do.   So Ayurveda is helpful for me, because it’s so logical. And there are plenty of action steps.

Here is how I used Ayurveda, in the last few days:

  • When I woke up with a tummy ache, and realize it’s gas, I make ginger tea and I feel better. Because I know that it is now the Vata time of year, and that gas is excess of Vata. So instead of choosing cold granola and milk, I choose ginger tea and eggs for breakfast. I am soothed. I feel better.
  • When I wake up at 2:30am and feel clear and wide awake, I make a mental note that I will do more abhyanga this week. Because I know that in the rhythm of the day, that is Vata time of day. And again, it’s Vata time of year. And abhyanga (self massage) will calm down that excess Vata. The next night, after doing self massage that day, I sleep through the night.
  • I feel the cravings for salty and sour foods. I buy pickles and stock up on my Himalaya salt. I crave meat, and buy a whole chicken from the farm, making soup and bone broth. I remember, that the qualities of heaviness and oiliness in meat balance Vata dosha, And that my craving for pickles in the craving for sour, which also brings balance to Vata dosha. And it’s that time of year, again. I listen to my cravings, because I know the helpful from the ‘unhelpful’ from practice over the years. And I trust that what my body says I need, I do.

I feel the spacey feelings I felt over the weekend settling, and I feel truly stable. I feel so satisfied by the meals I prepare from these ingredients.

For most of us, it feels good to know ‘why’ we are doing something. And it’s easy to have faith in something when you have the experience that it works. Like, I feel better, either pretty immediately, or I see results within the next day or two. That’s going to help Ayurveda’s patterns hit home. Going to help the language land in the tangible, from the cerebral.

One of my most influential teachers always reminds me “Ayurveda takes time.” I understand this on multiple levels now. Ayurveda takes time to learn because it is a vast science, ranging from astrology to pathology. It takes time because I live in a body, and it’s learning the language of the body. It takes time, because the self healing is done so in line with the seasons, it can’t all be done or known at once, or even in one year. It takes time to travel through different stages of life, where there are different needs, where the body and mind go through different challenges, to learn how Ayurveda fits in.

I started studying yoga 10 years ago. I started studying Ayurveda 3 years after that. Sometimes I truly feel like I can see two paths that branch off from those starting points – and the one without the tools I’ve learned is truly scary to me.

  • Without yoga to help me stay present in my mind and body, I might have gotten caught up in alcohol and depression after a bad breakup years ago.
  • Without Ayurveda I might have severe eczema up and down my arms
  • Without Ayurveda I may not have found the work and job I love
  • Without Ayurveda my pregnancy and post partum might have been full of a hellish depression
  • Without Ayurveda and yoga my fear and anger might have taken over my body and mind
  • Without Ayurveda I might have severe constipation and digestive distress
  • Without Ayurveda I might have severe seasonal allergies, joint pain, etc, etc…

Do you see that there are two paths ahead of you? Do you feel like you’re at a crossroads, and it’s time to make a choice? I totally recommend deepening your study of Ayurveda. Study with me starting September 30th, 2017.

Do you have question about your “two paths”? Email me (adena at adenaroseayurveda dot com), or Apply for this Fall’s course today.

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Love,

Adena

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Zen and the Art of Regular Maintenance; Discover Maya Abdominal Therapy

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Yum.

One of my favorite novelists, Tom Robbins, mentions in one of his books that there are two mantras we can choose from: Yuck or Yum.

Through which lens do you peer?

I’ve been musing on this topic the last few weeks.  Not which mantra to choose, but what complementary and alternative healing really looks like.

I am learning so much from my experiences of healing after birthing a baby, and my clients experiences when they come for appointments, and hearing about what some friends have been struggling with in the ‘regular’ health care system.

The change is upon us – I’d say a large amount of people desire a natural solution for their health woes.  What they may not be ready for is the discovery that it is intentional work, that there is dedication and maintenance involved.

For example, in my practice of Ayurveda and Maya Abdominal Therapy and I specialize in working with women with painful or irregular cycles.  The reproductive system is a deep system of the body which modern medicine often throws a quick fix on in the form of birth control.  I do not disagree that sometimes this is the best solution in some situations, though it often leaves women feeling defeated and still frustrated because they feel that they have not solved the root cause of their problem.

What I love most about the two modalities I work within, is that I’m almost always just giving women tools to use in order to create a healing environment in their bodies.  This is in the form of herbalism, but also in practices like Self Care uterine massage, castor oil packs, vaginal steams, and other rituals for moving blood, energy and emotions that may be stagnating and preventing homeostasis.

Homeostasis and hemodynamics; these are the ATMAT (Arvigo Techniques of Maya Abdominal Therapy) buzzwords.  Homeostasis is just another word for balance.  Balance implies a give and take, an in and out, a space where we are no longer just coping, but we are actually healing.  And Hemodynamics is about blood flow, and we could also assume energy flow.  Let’s get the good stuff in where it needs to be, and the wastes out, properly and easily.  

Every one of my ATMAT clients is taught Self Care massage.  This is the most important piece to maintaining the work done in the one on one session.  I, personally, came to study ATMAT because I experienced profound healing from painful periods. And I do my Self care massage to this day, daily, and I know that it was, and is, a huge part of my menstrual and reproductive health, comfort, and connection with this part of my being.

The actual path to healing is going to look different for everyone, but there are three things I have found are congruent in all plans. Along with maintenance, come pleasure, and support.

Maintenance | What I have found to be true, even to my chagrin, is that it takes daily input to actually heal, rather than just continue to competently cope with the problems.

It matters if I drink coffee or not. Every day. It matters if I get to bed early enough. Every day. It matters if I actually do 10 minutes of alternate nostril breathing. Every day. It matters if I do abhyanga. Every day.  The days I do not, I feel off my center, the days I do, I can feel myself coming back toward a new normal.

Pleasure | When you have the experience of feeling good in your body, a lot can shift.  Coming in for a massage starts to encourage you to really look at what else you’re putting in your body.  How you’re living your day to day, where you are putting your energy.

Support | I might go on to say that there is another ‘perk’ to natural healing modalities.  There is really no going back to the way it was before.  I see this in all of my work.  It can be frustrating at first, but ultimately it leads us to living healthier, more authentic lives overall, and hopefully, usually, alleviation from our symptoms, too.

Finding support in a practitioner you trust can be the way to get loving reminders into your life, to remind you to keep doing what you really want to be doing for yourself anyway.

Want to learn useful, practical, natural tools for reproductive healing?  Ancient Womb Healing for Modern Women starts April 22.  Learn more and read the syllabus here. Any questions email me!

 

Love,

Adena

 

 

Adena Rose Bright practices Ayurveda and Maya Abdominal Therapy. She’s passionate about sharing Ayurveda to help women live better and feel better.  She offers courses in food as medicine and women’s womb healing available online. See more on her website www.adenaroseayurveda.com, instagram and FB page.

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Sisterhood Rising | Feeling empowered to heal yourself

There are more and more women’s gatherings being held – and each time I attend one, I am somehow shocked at their authenticity and power.

Perhaps it’s showing a weakness within myself, to assume that they would be full of fluff, or tainted with the energy of ‘trying to hard’ and everyone trying to sell themselves.

Women are ready to show up, and to do the work.  On the inside and outside.  We are also hungry, hungry for our great-great-grandmother’s wisdom. Not just the wisdom of childbearing or nourishing our families or herbal medicine, but what is underneath all of that.  The connection to the energy of the Earth herself, the life force that directs and fuels all their is.  And in the gathering is the power.  In the gathering we are forging the connection.

I spoke with a woman yesterday, and she expressed some interest in my Womb Healing Course.  She said, something along the lines of “I am well-trained in Ayurveda, I feel like I know alot about physical healing, but I want to know more about the virtual side of things.”

I knew what she meant, but I felt like it was a strange choice to words.  So I looked up the definition of virtual, because I was just thinking about it in relation to ‘online,’ a sort of fake world. The first listed definition is “being such in essence or effect though not formally recognized or admitted.”  She used this word, ‘virtual,’ in an attempt, perhaps in a modern way, to say, “I need spiritual healing!”

I told her that to me, it seems like a lot of the healing on the subtle layers of the body happen through intention.  I think our New Age-y downfall is that we’re looking for a mystical experience, something that feels out of body. And that somehow, this would be the real reality…the real healing, the stuff we’re seeking.

In my experience, all of the layers of our being are really just mished and mashed together, and it takes subtle awareness to create any sort of separation.  When we work with whatever layer is most tangible to us, we effectively affect the other layers.  In fact, we’re really designed that way, and that is the key to holistic medicine.

My work is outwardly, mostly on the gross, physical body, the food body, or annamaya kosha as we call it in Yoga. But what I find more and more is that it is the gateway to the subtle. Not JUST the gateway, as there is often much physical healing to happen, too!  And when physical healing happens, it’s like turning the key for those more subtle layers to come forth and also be healed.

I share vaginal steaming for healing from painful periods and pelvic pain, to healing from loss or trauma.  Uttar vasti for moving a woman’s cycle closer to the rhythm of the new moon, or for clearing up frequent infections.  Self Care massage for gently coaxing a tipped uterus back to her center, or releasing stuck emotions.  We are large, we contain multitudes.  (To butcher one of my favorite Walt Whitman quotes. 😉 )

For this Spring’s Womb Healing class, my intent is to show up, to invite a gathering, in which the power will come. Sort of like the ‘If you build it they will come,’ mentality.  There are a lot of women who might not be ready for a class like this – I talk a lot about how this stuff helps with painful periods, PMS, and more…but when I mention ‘herbal douche,’ they kind of give me a blank look, like they don’t want to do all kinds of work. Well, often, this does take dedication.  But it feels good! And it is so, so empowering to know how to help yourself, and other women.  To take back simple yet profound knowledge which can help in those in-between places where powerful emergency medicine isn’t the ideal fit.

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And, ya know, vaginal steaming can feel pretty magical in my experience.

More on the next time.

Love,

Adena

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Do you need more discipline?

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I’m always wondering if my problem is that I need more discipline.  Am I weak or lazy in some way, and is that what is preventing my progress and practice?  I know that some of you ask the same questions.

I had an experience recently which helped me realize that I do in fact have discipline to do the things I want to do.  That I am not lazy or disinterested. I just need the support to take action.

I realize that I need support not discipline.

There is a Nitya Sadhana practice from Maya Tiwari that I decided to practice starting on the last new moon.  As a mother to a 1 year old, I needed help making space to do this, as it would take me about 45 minutes each morning.  I desperately needed a return to a morning meditation, and finding this practice that was inspiring to me was just the invitation in.  And it had a start and end goal, 16 days.  A fine little chunk of time that I hoped I could complete.

I spoke with my husband about my intentions and he was fully on board to take over our son’s morning routine so I could do this.

I was able to happily and much more easily and I had imagined complete my practice each morning.

In a way this was surprising to me, as I had thought it would be much more challenging to dive into a long meditation practice. I thought that I might feel to exhausted to do it each morning, or find that old patterns were getting me distracted into making excuses to do other things in the morning.  But what I found is that within the container of my husbands support, my our son as well as with the interest in my practice, I thrived in doing it as well.

Two steps forward

I opened a copy of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras this morning, and came across a helpful stanza, #20: “For other yogins, the accomplishment of non-distinguished cognitive absorption is preceded by intense devotion, courage, mindfulness, cognitive absorption and true insight.”

It’s a great copy, written by M. Govindan, and in this he provides not only the translation, but a practice, and how to make sense of this in your daily life.  So he says to experience the benefits of yoga practices one must, “Cultivate faith, enthusiasm, vigilance, discernment and contemplation to dissolve the old tendencies.”

Simplifying it even more, I feel that this means that in order to move into living more of our authentic life, make changes and dissolve old habits we must:

  • Make goals
  • Get inspired
  • Find support
  • Have experiences that inspire faith in what you’re doing

The word for discernment or insight is prajna. first lesson in The Healing Diet we talk about this Sanskrit term, prajna paradha.  Translated, it basically means, “crimes against wisdom”, or acting out of habit rather than following what your true self guides you to do. In the lesson, we learn about how to start listening to that inner insight to start making more authentic choices.

Through the experience I shared above, I discerned that I have enough discipline to make the right choices, well the choices I know are truly right and best for myself and my health.  And that realization itself actually serves to bring me two steps forward – to strengthen my faith in future, better choices in other avenues as well.

Other experiences look like this:

“I was visiting my family and we went by our lake to have a drink…I started to feel the old anxiety coming in, fear and didn’t know if I was going to have an anxiety attack.  I realized that I had an icy cold drink in my hand, and I was sitting in the wind. Qualities of Vata dosha.  And I realized that those were immediately affecting me and partly causing the anxiety…so having that direct experience was validating, and I realized I could make different choices to prevent that!” – Spring 2016 member

“My mind has become much quieter. After many years on and off ayurveda diet and lifestyle I finally had the experience of being able to connect what went into and onto my body with the way I felt mentally. It was huge. ”— Fall 2015 Member

Nourishing

The theme for the course this Fall is Nourishment.  I allow it to arise spontaneously…the needs of the students present themselves when they send in their applications, and when we talk on the phone during the interview process.  In order for something to be supportive, it needs to be nourishing.  For the students this Fall, I don’t want it to be anothering ‘thing’ they are doing and adding to the list. The course is going to be nourishing to them, the weekly live calls as a community of support to help them step into their next stage of evolution. Even if that just means feeling inspired to keep going.  Even if that just means 1% shifts. Or even if that looks like daily meditation, self massage, and leaving an old life behind. Big or small, I aspire to give them real life experiences of how Ayurveda can help us live better and feel better in this crazy world.

Do you feel like you need more discipline? Or would you like support?  Think about going deeper with your study of Ayurveda.  Think about taking it off the page and into your life. Think about applying to be with us this Fall.  (It’s coming up! October 1, and there are 8 spots left.)

Thanks for sticking with me..this is is going to be my last ‘promotional’ email about The Healing Diet for this Fall.  I’ve been laying low, conserving my ojas (what I have left!) and allowing fate to bring me students this Fall – and it has! We have a nice group of women from all different backgrounds…some looking for postpartum ayurvedic  guidance, another an acupuncturist, another life coach and yoga teacher…and we have one returning student so far.  I share my story and my life experiences because that’s how I feel I can be authentic. I nly hope you benefit from my sharing, my experimentation. Thanks for being here, as always.