What I have gained the most from, throughout this entire course, has been the daily sadhana practice. This deep spiritual piece has been so transformational for me. Having lost that during this Ayurveda experiment, has taught me just how important it is for me to try and maintain that piece as part of my daily practice. If I’ve learned nothing else from this experiment, that particular lesson is invaluable to me.
Tag Archive for: ayurveda
Axis Yoga Teacher Training students have the opportunity to apply specific Ayurvedic practices to their daily lives and track the results of the experience. This student found that the process encouraged the ability to ‘stay conscious.’ And by doing so she was able to learn from healthy practices that had previously fallen away from her routine. Now she reaps the benefits on a continued journey of health.
Quite some time ago, I was introduced to ayurveda, the sister science to yoga, by wonderful teachers in the Denver-Boulder area. But then life took over, and both my yoga and ayurveda practices suffered. While asana stayed in my life much of the time, pranayama, meditation and ayurveda took a back seat, sometimes not even visible in the rear view mirror. Rekindling these practices was a key reason for enrolling in the Axis Yoga Teacher Training program.
My prakruti, or inherent natural state, has consistently been classified as pitta dominant, and this was again confirmed by the questionnaire Beth Sanchez included in her YTTP materials: V2/P3/K2. Pitta personality traits show up quite consistently, including a tendency toward anger (when stressed), perfectionism and successful when focused. And I have many of the typical Pitta physical traits, such as medium build, smaller eyes, yellowish skin and teeth tones, and a metabolism that runs ‘hot’ making it very uncomfortable to be in temperatures over 85 degrees. Even so, in my history, I have also been disposed to being vata-provoked at the emotional level (in terms of feeling personally ungrounded or indecisive), and being kapha-provoked in the form of weight gain. So, there was a definite question as to what to focus on for the personal experiment and what dosha to pacify.
Just as the ayurveda module in the Axis Yoga Teacher Training Program started, an important professional opportunity came up in my legal practice. I ended up spending almost every waking minute to hone my lawyer brain and skills for this engagement and then needed to play catch up on the ayurveda module. So, when we needed to start our personal experiment, I grew weary thinking about the past 10 days and my ongoing tendency to extremes. At first it made sense to keep the experiment simple, something like daily sadhana and abhyanga, self massage. However, after receiving Beth’s input and catching up with the reading, I realized that such a limited experiment was at odds with my intention for this program.
My personal experiment morphed into selecting and creating a checklist around daily practices recommended by Dr. Lad (at least most of them), making dietary changes, and adjusting my pranayama and meditation sadhana. My experiment was to track my practices and my physical and mental states during these practices to identify what changes, if any, I experienced and/or what insights I gained.
In terms of arriving at the experiment, Beth’s specific input was very helpful as it allowed me to create a meaningful yet practical experiment, and this advice will fair me well over the long haul:
* Start with things that are causing the greatest trouble first. For most of us, that is on the gross physical plane. Once a good self-care routine of the physical body is in place, then the subtler energies work more effectively. … It does not do much good to work on enlightenment [if you’re otherwise unstable].
*Generally, follow your dosha, for me, a pitta pacifying diet and, for brain tiredness, eat fruit or complex carbs that are sweet in nature. Remember to take fruit alone.
*The effects of tangible actions involving food, lifestyle changes, self-massage and so forth – will affect the mind because [body, mind and spirit are not …. ] separate but …. distinct. Continue to follow your primary dosha and not adopt vata pacifying measures to deal with, for example, seeming vata tendencies on an emotional level.
* Mostly DEVELOP YOUR AWARENESS. Watch how the mind works and when thoughts that are disempowering arise, notice them and introduce a new thought. Consider thoughts simply as something called “habit energy” and habits have their own momentum. Intervene with awareness and gently direct the mind back to something else.
In terms of the ayurveda experiment, the results were meaningful to me:
1. Ayuvedic Daily Routine.
(a) While I have felt overall very healthy for quite some time, the morning rituals of Dr. Lad’s, including tongue viewing and scraping, kept me in touch with what I am eating and how that is affecting my body and equally important that I have a nutritional deficiency since there are some ridges on my tongue. Whether ayurveda or the Chinese system, there is fundamental sense and insight from taking the eastern approach and spending time LOOKING at things like the tongue, eyes, ears, bowels, urine etc…
(b) The eye exercises brought energy and seemed to improve my eye sight given the amount of computer work I have been doing. It was very noteworthy the degree to which these exercises felt refreshing and revitalizing.
(c) Both nasya, nose drops, and abhyanga, self message, were very soothing to the body. Abhyanga also made me realize how much I missed having a chlorine filter in my shower as my skin started feeling particularly dry with the change in the season. While the oil massage is great, it is also time to replace the filter, which I have been without for about 4 months.
2. Food.
I have been surprised that substituting fruit for refined sugar has helped my cravings, brain and food habits. Although I had some apprehension about eating fruit ‘alone’ per ayurvedic guidelines (as I thought it might be too much of a sugar rush), it has been for the most part fine. My brain had energy to work, and I did not experience the tendency I have when eating refined sugar to want ‘more’ refined sugar. There were some occasions when I felt tiredness later after taking fruit, but I have to experiment a little more since there may have been other things factoring in to the situation.
3. Pranayama and Meditation Practices.
I ended up feeling too cooled by pitta-pacifying pranayama practices (shitali). Since I loved the effects of bhramari in class, which is vata pacifying, I ended up practicing the Four Purifications and Bhramari, along with Dr. Lad’s Empty Bowl Meditation, in the mornings and dirgha rechak (long exhale) in the evenings. It will be interesting to experience how this changes over time – or whether it will change over time and what the overall effects will be.
Overall, the personal experiments in the YTTP provide the opportunity to isolate certain practices, apply these practices in day-to-day life, and track the experience to find out what happens, if anything. The structure provides support to ‘stay conscious’ otherwise you can’t report on anything. So, after some initial resistance, I have come to value the entire personal experiment process – even the paper. And, I hope to make it a practice of creating manageable personal experiments on an ongoing basis.
Axis Yoga students have the opportunity to apply Ayurvedic principles to their lives through their second Teacher Training course experiment. This student writes about her life-long experience with depression and her new hope with Ayurvedic healing.
Choosing what specific aspect of my life I wished to address with Ayurvedic therapy was not hard. From a very young age, depression has governed my life. While my depression racked my personal, private life I was still an ambitious person. I excelled in everything I did; it didn’t matter if it was school or music or sports I was hungry for knowledge and going out and doing things well made me feel like I was alive. Doing work made me forget about how much I hated myself and for 21 years I coped with my life’s ebb and flow. Then about a year and a half ago my very dependable depression changed radically.
I noticed eventually that I didn’t care about anything, and I mean that exactly how it was written. Nothing, not family, not school mattered anymore. I hated to do anything and I could barely get out of bed without breaking out into a hysterical flood of tears. I felt desperate to get back to my “normal” self-loathing depression. I tried getting through it myself. That didn’t work. I tried acupuncture, massage, and aromatherapy. They made me feel a bit better but were too expensive to continue with. I then turned to therapy and was put on a ridiculous amount of medication. They didn’t help. After a horrifying set of hallucinations caused by the cocktail of pills I was told to take, I stopped all medications. Then I turned to yoga, which got me through some of my darkest times. I am at a point now where I can manage my depression better but some days are still extremely rough.
I feel as if I have lost my fire for life, which is ironic since I am a Pitta-Kapha person and fire is what gives Pittas their zest. I realized that a lot of my symptoms were showing up as symptoms of too much Kapha. I hypothesized that my depression could be, in part, due to an excess of Kapha and that following Ayurvedic guidelines to pacify Kapha could alleviate some of my symptoms.
I decided that I would keep to a fairly Pitta diet to keep my Pitta pacified as I went after my Kapha with lifestyle changes. I decided to force myself to be active both in my mind and my body. I listened to upbeat music and surrounded myself with invigorating people. I have had a strong dislike of being social lately and being around people was hard, but ultimately rewarding. Making kicharee with Beth, surrounded by laughing and shared stories, made me feel loved. The next day however, that sinking feeling of depression was back, strong as ever.
Getting up before 6:00 am was not very fun and made me really irritable but working out and doing more vigorous asana made me feel amazing. As a Molecular Biologist I know that a good physical stimulation can release an amazing amount of serotonin, which is what all of my old medication was doing artificially. I tried to give my mind a good workout by not reading and studying in my house and instead reading out in public, surrounded by people. I reread the Bhagavad Gita and read the Tao Te Ching, the Upanishads, and the Hatha Yoga Pradipika among other things. I forced myself to explore all the things being thrown at me. It worked but almost too well. I feel like I can’t get enough information now.
Finally I decided to do two things I really didn’t want to do: vamana dhauti. The laughter yoga was initially ridiculous. I felt really REALLY stupid being surrounded by a bunch of people with wide-open eyes pretending to laugh. About halfway through I eventually dissolved into giggles, which made it hard to do some of the breathing and postures we were supposed to be doing. I ended up enjoying it and I think I’ll keep going back. A good belly laugh brightened my whole day and made coping with sadness easier. It’s still pretty silly though.
The vamana dhauti pracice, I was sure, wasn’t going to end up being as fun as the laughter yoga. Santosh had mentioned that vamana dhauti would help get rid of some kapha and I believe him now. I was very reserved about making myself forcefully vomit because I didn’t want to give myself a tool that could be used to hurt myself. I thought a lot about it and decided that I had enough strength to try the practice. It ended up being incredible and very funny to vomit in a group of laughing women. For days after the practice I felt amazing, like I was shining. It was the most effective practice at helping with my depression of this whole experiment. It will definitely become a bi-yearly ritual.
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The Denver Yoga Underground began in 2003 at the request of dedicated students who wanted to study yoga as a holistic system. Over the years, a diversity of people, seeking education outside of a studio, found a welcome refuge in DYU.
Today we specialize in grassroots Pay What You Can workshops, accessible retreats and our signature yoga teacher training, for the outlier yogi.
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Denver Yoga Underground Director:
Derik Eselius ~ 720.934.6934
Training Location:
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Derik Eselius ~ 720.934.6934
Training Location:
Sixth Ave. UCC 3250 E. 6th Ave