Balance your life, balance your nervous system
Persistent pain that lasts after the tissue has healed means the nervous system needs to heal. Balance your life; balance your nervous system.
Understanding pain
Pain is your nervous system’s response to the perception of threat. The first step to reducing pain is understanding it. Explaining pain reduces the perception of threat, which reduces pain. As pain comes down, function improves. The next step is to figure out your triggers, and build up your toolbox to help you manage those triggers. As you balance your life, you will start to balance your pain.
Food is Medicine: Part 1 - Digestive FIre
All of Life is a Fire Ceremony
In ancient yogic texts, the first word of a text is the most important word. The first word of the Rig Veda, one of the oldest spiritual texts in the world, is agni, which means fire, and the first chapter is devoted to rituals to honor the god of fire. My teachers frequently say, “All of life is a fire ceremony,” and Ayurvedic practices center around tending to the digestive fire. This is because without fire, we would not be able to transform the food we eat into the energy we need to sustain our lives. Keeping the digestive fire strong is key to maintaining health and to recovering from illness and injury. In fact, almost every disorder or disease begins in the gastrointestinal tract and can be treated, in full or in part, by tending the digestive fire and using food as medicine.
10 Pairs of opposites
Ayurveda is an elemental science and provides elegant guidance in finding balance. Each element has specific qualities (e.g. heavy or light, cold or hot, dry or oily), called gunas. Understanding the gunas can help us identify early signs of imbalance by recognizing when a particular quality is too high or too low. We find balance by applying this law of the universe: Like facilities like and opposites bring balance. By developing practicing self-awareness without judgement, we can sense what we need to stay balanced and develop the discernment needed to make choices that will be balancing, nourishing, and supportive.
Come to Your Senses
The sensory organs are the gateway to the nervous system. They connect our outer and inner worlds by sending information about our interaction with our environment to our brain, which then perceives and interprets that information. When the sensory channels are clear, we can perceive things clearly, which helps us to make choices that are nourishing and balancing.
Creating an Altar for abundance & Prosperity
Creating an altar for abundance and prosperity using the principles of Vastu Shastra.
Root Causes
The classical Ayurvedic texts explain that health is a state of balance. My treatment style aims to be both preventative and responsive to current imbalances, and to treat the root causes, not just the symptoms. I take a three-pronged approach to wholeness and wellness:
PREVENTION, EARLY INTERVENTION, AND TREATMENT.
I use an integrative, holistic process for evaluation and treatment, looking at the state of all of the tissues, the digestive fire, and the nervous system to bring your whole system into balance and facilitate optimum conditions for healing.
everything is connected
The most powerful medicine is often the simplest. Ayurveda looks at the context and asks, "What in the environment is creating the conditions for this imbalance to thrive?" For me, the answer is in the question. When I ask myself what sharks are in my waters, the answer is anything in my environment that disconnects me from my inner wisdom and from the wisdom of the natural world. When I think about solving every problem, it feels overwhelming. But when I think about connecting to the rhythm of my heart and the rhythm of nature, it seems quite simple.
the birthday of the world
I recently listened to an On Being episode featuring Rachel Naomi Remen in which she tells the Hebrew story of “the birthday of the world.” I'd like to share her story with you, and I encourage you to listen to the full episode:
tapas: The friction that happens when an old habit and a new habit rub up against each other
Tapas is the fire of transformation that sparks positive change. It is the commitment and discipline we need to break free of habits, or samskaras, even when it is difficult or uncomfortable. We experience tapas when we choose to stay with challenge and not back away.
Small Changes over time
Yoga Sutra 1.14: Practice that is done for a long time without a break, and with sincere devotion, becomes a firmly rooted, stable, and solid foundation.
