Intro To Āyurveda - Live Recording

An excerpt from an Oct '21 live. The essence of the subject is captured in the first 50 min. This was a spontaneous lecture provided to offer some insight into the practicalities of this ancient, comprehensive medicine & lifestyle science, which comes from India. Āyurveda is an updaveda of Atharvaveda. The most practical wisdom we can pull from this science is called dinacaryā, or the daily routine, which includes simple practices that attune us to the rhythms of nature. Enjoy.

Transcript

Welcome everybody to Intro to Ayurveda.

How many of you currently practice Ayurveda in some way or form?

Maybe you saw a practitioner,

Maybe you took a course,

Maybe you've been reading some books,

Whatever that is,

Just doing a little temperature check before I go right in.

I think maybe I'll start with how I found the science,

What it's done for me,

Why I practice it,

Why I aspire to become a vaidya,

Which is a doctor,

Ayurvedic doctor.

Stephanie says,

I am starting to dabble in it.

Nice,

I like that.

Oksana,

Hi,

Reading books,

Awesome.

Any cool books?

One of the participants in the course,

So this is,

We just finished our first cohort for Intro to Ayurveda on Sunday yesterday.

And one of the participants mentioned Sahar Rose's guidebook for idiots.

I didn't know she made one for idiots,

You know,

Like an idiot's guide.

I'm going to guess it's a pretty good one.

Carrie says,

I'm completely new to this part of the healing journey.

Welcome Carrie.

Yay.

Okay,

Heo says I know nothing about it.

Okay,

Cool.

So Ayurveda,

Ayus,

And vidya,

Or ayus and vid are the two Sanskrit words that come together to make Ayurveda.

When Sanskrit words come together,

Their grammar changes.

These are called sandhis or sandhyas,

And there are grammatical rules that shift the original word to create a new word when they come together.

So ayus means life in Sanskrit.

And according to the Ayurvedic text,

We have a four part description of what makes up life.

So we have sattva,

Referring to manas or the mind.

So mind is one part of life.

We have shirir,

Which is the body,

So mind body.

We have atma,

The soul or spirit,

Pure consciousness,

So that makes up another part of life.

And then we have indriya,

Which are the organs of perception.

So these four parts,

When there's balance,

Integration with all four,

This is when we get good health.

This is how Ayurveda is defined in the Ayurvedic classical texts,

Which are in Sanskrit.

Vid is a form of veda or vidya,

Referring to knowledge,

Knowledge that was,

Knowledge that's to come,

Knowledge that is being cognized in the process.

Very comprehensive,

Really beautiful.

No worries,

Erin.

I'm not going to type it out because I'm going to be saying a lot of Sanskrit words.

You don't have to memorize any of this stuff.

You could always come and take the course with me.

But even then,

I would tell you the same thing.

No need to try to memorize these things.

That's a lot of work.

Better to just expose yourself to it over and over again,

And the more you hear it,

Then it becomes a language for you.

Really nice.

Oh,

Rocio,

Did you?

That's amazing.

Amazing.

Perfect.

Hi,

Mandin.

Welcome.

So,

We have the science of life,

And oftentimes it's described as the science of longevity.

But not necessarily like,

I want to live until like my 90s or 100.

I want to keep pushing like the target further and further,

But more in the sense of,

However long you live until that very last breath that you are in the most optimal state of health.

So,

For example,

When you enter into the elder years,

And what are the diseases of the elder,

Our elderly at this moment in our modern age,

Alzheimer's,

Dementia,

These are Vata diseases,

And I'll talk about Vata in a second.

The ideal is that you wouldn't have these diseases.

And how do we have that when we implement the lifestyle practices that we get from Ayurveda?

So when we live in alignment with nature,

Ultimately,

That's what these lifestyle practices are.

They bring us back home to nature,

To cyclical rhythms of nature.

Because we are part of nature,

But we've disconnected from nature because mind has lost its connection from body and from soul,

Right?

Those parts of Ayus.

When we have the fragmentation of those different aspects of life,

That's what causes ill health.

This is why meditation is actually a big part of Ayurveda,

Because it brings the conscious mind back to Atma,

To the soul.

And the conscious mind is the one that's going to buddhi,

Intellect,

It's going to start to interpret all the information it's receiving from the indriya,

Or the organs of perception.

So if you're receiving direct information from your experience,

But your mind is clouded,

It's disconnected from its source,

It's actually completely just attached to the changeable natures of life,

Of emotions,

Of thinking,

Then it's going to misinterpret the information.

It'll have what we call prajna-para,

Which is the mistake of the intellect.

And then it's going to repeat or tell and give your body like messages to do actions that are out of alignment with nature,

Because of that misperception of what it took in.

This is how it all comes together.

And what does that cause?

That causes disease in the body.

So this is how disease starts from the Ayurvedic point of view.

Yeah,

It's so powerful.

I really love the signs.

Hi,

Jesse.

Hello.

So,

I found Ayurveda because I had IBS,

I had Crohn's disease,

I guess is what it's called.

I had early stages of hypothyroidism.

I was living in New York City in corporate America.

I was a yogi.

I mean,

I've been practicing yoga since I was four,

But I didn't grow up in a yogic family so I wasn't exposed to the entirety of the wisdom.

And so here I am,

Got a lot of trauma and stress in my body,

Very disconnected from my soul and my body.

And it's showing up as disease,

Such high level of disease that I actually was running to the toilet almost every hour,

Practically actually every hour with loose stools because of my anxiety,

Because my nervous system was completely a whack.

So I went the whole gamut of visiting the top doctors in New York.

And we got to the point where the best GI surgeon in New York told me,

Well,

The only thing I can recommend for you at this point is to do a fecal transplant,

Which is really powerful work.

Like essentially you're putting microbiome of a healthy person into your microbiome to help repopulate your own microbiome.

But financially,

I just didn't,

I was kind of done with it.

Insurance wouldn't have covered it.

I was like,

Okay,

There's gotta be another way.

I'm like done in this like roller coaster or hamster wheel of running from doctor to doctor and doing medicines and doing all the things.

So that's when I started to dive deeper into traditional Chinese medicine.

So I found my TCM doctor in New York city who's amazing.

And then I started to explore also Ayurveda.

And this is what really shifted everything for me.

Although it took time,

You know,

It didn't happen overnight.

It wasn't like I found Ayurveda and then a few months later I was healed.

Cause it's a very comprehensive science and it does take time to undo the many years or lifetimes of habits that are disconnected from nature.

So it just teaches us habits that are optimal for us.

That's it.

It's really simple in that sense.

It is comprehensive too.

Don't get me wrong.

It has surgical procedures in their text,

In the classic text,

We call them the three major texts of Ayurveda.

There are there's gynecology in Ayurveda,

There's ophthalmology,

There's like ENT,

There's psychology.

It's very comprehensive.

So this is the Ashtang Ayurveda,

The eight limbs of Ayurveda.

Breaking down the eight limbs of medical sciences that it explores.

Very powerful,

But we don't need to worry about all of that.

Like we can always see a vaidya or an Ayurvedic doctor who would do like a pulse diagnostic,

Look at you and then determine whatever it is you needed in that moment to help like you,

Whatever you're ready for,

Come back into balance as it regards your health.

And then they all have their own specialties,

The vaidyas.

But what we can do,

And the most important thing actually in Ayurveda is what we call Dinacharya.

Dinah means day,

Excuse me.

Dinah day acharya routine.

It means a few things.

In this case,

It means routine.

So Dinacharya means the daily routine.

How many of you are already practicing some Dinacharya?

Like you've heard this word before,

Just a little litmus test.

Hola,

How are you?

Erin's got it.

Yay Erin.

Do you care to share what kind of Dinacharya you're currently doing?

If you,

No pressure,

If you feel charmed,

Would love to know.

Anything you feel called to share there.

So Dinacharya,

Daily routine,

The most important thing anyone can begin with as it regards Ayurveda.

It's less about prescriptive measures.

Like what's the one pattern that's going to give you a result?

That's more allopathic medicine,

Right?

That's the more Western approach to medicine.

Ayurveda is less about that,

Although neo-Ayurvedic many people try to do it this way.

It's more about literally doing the practice.

Rini says I'm not,

Can't wait to hear more.

Yay.

Okay,

So this morning,

I think it was Dave.

Dave was in a class this morning on IT.

I was showing the,

Thank you,

Thank you for this donation.

They really help all of you.

I decided just a couple of months ago that I would like to commit my time fully to teaching.

That just was a new revelation that I said,

Okay,

I think I'm ready for this and all right,

Let's do this.

So your donations are very supportive.

I really do appreciate them.

So this morning we did one part of the Dhanacharya called Abhyanga.

So this is the Ayurvedic daily self-oliated massage.

I have a YouTube video that you could watch if you'd like to explore it.

It's a beautiful self-touch practice.

And what is self-touch?

This is in Sanskrit,

We call it sparsha,

The sense of touch.

Sparsha is connected to the element of value,

Air.

Air is connected to which dosa,

Vatha dosa?

It's actually the dosa.

It's the most important dosa actually in terms of,

This is where most of our diseases come from,

The vatha dosa.

And in our modern lifestyles,

Vatha dosa for pretty much most of us,

Very much imbalanced or we say vitiated.

So the best,

Quickest way you can bring balance to this,

One of them,

Is abhyanga.

We have many different kinds of sayings in Ayurveda.

One of them is opposites,

Bring balance,

Like increases like.

And we have the qualities with each of the elements that we can break them down into.

We call them gurva dikunas so that we can understand the elements better.

So the qualities of value,

Air element,

Or the qualities of vatha,

Which includes air element,

Are subtle,

Light,

Dry,

Mobile.

So we want to bring the opposite qualities to that in order to bring balance.

Meaning to say unctuousness,

To counter the dryness.

Stillness,

To counter the mobility.

Stability to counter the mobility.

Really simple like this.

This is how the science works.

Really powerful.

Okay,

Erin says,

Start with meditation,

Journaling,

Brush teeth,

Movement yoga or dancing.

I love that.

Oil pulling and tea.

Oh,

That is so beautiful Erin.

Thank you for sharing that.

Do you see how simple?

Erin has a really simple routine there.

It can seem very daunting.

We had a group of,

I think like 10 people,

Signed up for the last course.

And those who were on the last call expressed that,

Yeah,

It's a bit intimidating and I'm a bit overwhelmed by all this information.

I don't even know where to start.

You start with what's accessible for you and you create a really simple routine from that.

That's it.

It's impossible to adopt a fully Ayurvedic lifestyle unless you were born to be a vaidya.

Unless you were born enlightened.

So it's not all or nothing.

It's simply,

Okay,

What can I do today?

I love you Amandine.

I love you.

Thank you for that.

That's so beautiful and brilliant and uplifting.

Okay,

Jay says,

Oil pulling,

Dry brushing and intermittent fasting.

Very beautiful.

Very nice.

Jesse says,

Katrina,

What a calling.

You're an amazing teacher.

Thank you,

Jesse.

I love you all.

I could just jump up here if I ever feel like I'm having a bad day.

I should just come on here.

You're amazing.

Hi,

Sib.

Great to see you.

Oh,

Yep.

See,

If you have a rough day,

You just come on.

IT soothes the soul.

All right.

So Abhyanga,

That's one of them.

It brings balance to Vata and it's self-referral.

So that's what I was getting towards.

This is a self-referral practice.

What does that mean exactly?

It means you don't have to go looking externally for you for all of the answers.

You can use the tools you have available to you.

It's just that many of us didn't grow up learning these things,

Although we kind of know it intellectually,

Right?

It makes sense.

Like,

Oh,

I can use touch to feel what's going on in my body,

To enliven consciousness and to enliven my awareness of my state of health.

We know it,

But then we're like,

Oh,

But how and how do I stay committed to this?

So even just that,

Moving through the body with simple self-touch,

With a self-oliated massage,

You start to tune into the imbalances or the balances throughout the body and how it changes because it's dynamic.

It's going to shift.

It's going to shift according to the time of day.

It'll shift according to the time of year and it'll shift according to the time of your life.

We have cycles of time in Ayurveda that are each dominated by each of these doshas.

So what's a dosha exactly?

Maybe I should talk about that.

We know it in the West more as like constitutional theory,

Meaning to say like we can look at someone and physiologically speaking,

Mentally speaking,

Bodily speaking,

We can kind of identify their unique constitution.

The constitution of what exactly?

The constitution of their elements,

Of the five elements.

We call them the panch maha bhutas,

These are the tattvas or the principle elements of reality.

The five most gross elements because there's a whole list of them depending on which cosmology you're pulling from.

This comes from the Vedas by the way.

It's an upa veda of atarva veda.

Sometimes people will say it's abdarig veda.

So there are four Vedas,

Rig veda,

Atarva veda,

Samaveda,

And what's the other?

I'm missing it right now.

Does anyone remember?

Thank you so much Vyas,

Yajur veda.

Teamwork makes the dream work.

Thank you so much.

So sometimes people will say that this is an upa veda of the rig veda because rig veda is oldest of all Vedas and it has many references for herbal formulations and many of the sorts of things that you find in Ayurvedic texts.

So it just depends,

Depends on your lineage of study,

Right?

But ultimately it doesn't matter.

In the light of,

You know,

Our,

What we're doing,

It doesn't really matter so much.

So let's see,

Where was I going with all of that?

Great.

So cosmology,

Five panch maha bhutas.

So we have the grossest element of earth and we have the subtlest element of ether or space,

Space which contains everything else.

So we go moving from subtle to gross.

We have space,

Akash,

We have vayu,

Air,

We have fire,

Tejas or ugni,

And then we have water,

Ap or jal,

And then we have earth,

Prithvi.

Now dosa is,

Adosha,

Dushya is that which can get vitiated,

That which can go out of balance.

So adosha is simply going to be now based on a collection of elements,

The propensity for these elements to go out of balance in the physiology in the body.

And so they're grouped accordingly to ether and air,

The two subtlest elements make up vata dosa.

The next two elements we have water and fire,

They make up vitta dosa.

And then the last two elements,

Which is going to have a crossover with fire,

Water and earth make up kapha dosa.

So we're each born with what's called a prakrti,

Which refers to our unique constitutional makeup.

And we also have what we call vikrti in Ayurveda.

Vikrti referring to any imbalance in this prakrti at any given moment of time,

Because it's going to be changing all the time,

It's always going to be in some sort of imbalance.

If it wasn't perfect balance,

We'd all be in perfect health,

We'd be fully enlightened.

So we have to just simply accept as human beings being birds in the human body,

It is our sort of our responsibility,

Ultimately,

To navigate our lives and find our way to pure health and realizing that we're not already there yet,

But that we're consistently evolving and progressively getting there and getting better and better.

And that's the vision that we want.

That's the vision we want to maintain,

Not perfection per se,

Although yes,

We like to say that this is perfect health.

Perfect health would look differently for each person.

Hi,

Art,

Nice to meet you.

I used to live in New York.

New York City all the days.

So let me take a break,

Because I'll lose my voice if I keep going.

Maybe if you'd like to just say hello or ask questions,

Anything.

I'm in the southernmost state of Mexico.

I'm in Chiapas,

San Cristóbal de las Casas Chiapas,

Learning more about my Mexican heritage.

Dia de los Muertos is coming up soon.

Okay,

Almandian says,

I have a question.

For massaging with oil,

What do you think about almond oil?

Almond oil smells,

Well,

That's because the almond oil I used to use was infused with essence.

Almond is a bit heating,

So just be aware of that.

That's all.

Maybe it's good for you,

Maybe it isn't.

I know for me,

I'm very sensitive to heating,

To heat,

Because I'm pita,

Percuriti.

And my vicuriti also tends towards pita,

Pita vitiation.

So I personally have to be careful about the fire element in my foods and how I'm relating in my life and my day,

So on and so forth with fire element.

But it's not super fiery.

It just has a slight heating quality.

Yeah,

But try it,

Why not?

Sesame or coconut oil are the best.

So the ideal oil would be ghee,

But understandably we don't live on farms and we don't have cows that we can milk and do pujas with and create delicious,

Yummy,

Home-loved devotional ghee.

We call it soma.

Instead then you would look at sesame oil,

Number one,

Next to ghee.

Sesame though is very heating,

So if you know that you have a very heating constitution,

Then coconut.

And then you can adjust and adapt and mix accordingly.

Now the best of the best,

If you want to invest in you,

Is to get an herbalized oil.

And you could check out MAPI,

M-A-P-I,

Maharishi University.

I hear great things from people who ordered their herbs.

I get my herbs directly from my vaidyas who are in India and I can recommend them too.

It's drraju.

Com.

So you could check out to explore your constitution.

I would suggest working with a vaidya to get your constitutional makeup.

I wouldn't bother with a practitioner.

I would also go ahead and explore the beautiful quizzes and all of the sorts that they have on the various websites like lifespa.

Com.

I highly recommend that website.

Lifespa.

Com.

MAPI also,

M-A-P-I,

I highly recommend their website too.

I recommend it because my vaidyas helped both of those programs.

And my vaidyas were the Ayurvedic doctors who worked with Maharishi Mahashayogi.

And they are established in such a refined state of consciousness.

And they have generations of wisdom that they passed on to each other.

So it wasn't just like a university study.

It wasn't just like a couple of generations.

It was everything coming all together to create the beautiful essence of their practice.

Powerful.

They can see if they see you and they meet you and they give online consultations right now because of the pandemic they started.

And their siddhis are that,

That they can do it.

They have the ability to.

They can tell you,

Actually they can see.

They can see the diseases that are in your system,

Right?

But you can't see it yet because it's subtle to your consciousness state,

But not to theirs.

That's how refined they are in their practice.

They were starting their pulse diagnostics as little kids.

So the oldest brother in the family,

Dr.

Raju Ji,

He's in charge right now of teaching the kids in the family who are around like three years old,

That's when they started,

To do all the things.

To do the chants,

To go around and give pulse diagnostics.

Pulse diagnostics is not necessarily for you to go get to other people.

It's for you to self-referral consciousness.

To tune into your own physiology and state of health.

Just like I mentioned with the Abhyanga.

Okay cool.

So yes,

The quizzes are great because they're going to help you to refine self-inquiry.

To start to learn how to identify or bring awareness to certain things in your day to day.

Just through the questions.

But I wouldn't attach to the quiz because we're all coming from our state of consciousness.

You would much rather,

You would benefit from getting someone who's in a much more refined state of consciousness with the medicine to give you your proper constitution.

Just as you wouldn't go to like a nurse for the things that you would go to a doctor for,

I wouldn't go to a practitioner for these kinds of things.

The practitioner has very limited study relative to years and generations of practice that a vaidya has and in fact you're probably going to get it much cheaper from the vaidya than you would from a practitioner.

Much better.

Go to the source.

I hope that answered the question.

Maybe I'll talk a little bit about the course in case anyone would be interested in joining the course.

Okay.

Oh I like that.

Yes,

Okay.

If I could speak about some things that helped you the most from Ayurveda.

Yeah.

The thing about Ayurveda is that it's always unfolding something new for me in my health and maybe I could just leave it at that,

Right?

The fact that I'm consistently learning and growing,

Learning how to come back home to myself because I was so disconnected.

That's why I had IBS.

That's why I was getting diagnosed with Crohn's disease.

That's why they were suggesting me to get the fecal transplant.

That's why I got whatever hypothyroid,

Whatever,

Blah,

Blah,

Blah.

All of that was because I was so disconnected from nature and cyclical living,

Cyclical living.

So Ayurveda helped me to come back into rituals.

Rituals that were healthy for me.

Rituals that could bring me back home to nature.

What's the best time to wake up?

What's the best practice to begin with to optimize my digestion?

What are the cleansing practices that I should be doing daily?

Because we only learn to brush our teeth and shower,

But there's other cleansing practices that I should be doing actually to optimize my health.

A bhyanga is actually a cleansing practice.

It's not just an oleation.

It's a cleanse.

You're cleansing the system when you're doing it.

Oil pulling,

Same thing,

Right?

Oil pulling is a cleanse and it's preparing your digestion for the day.

So we have this thing called ama.

Ama is the toxic buildup,

Undigested food material.

So when you go and look in the mirror in the morning and you start scraping the tongue and you see white or you see whatever color is on there,

But you see film,

That's an indication of ama,

Undigested food material in the body.

So by scraping it,

You're getting rid of some of that ama.

And then there are other cleansing procedures that we would do daily as part of dinataria.

This cleansing is essential because what happens when we don't do this proper cleansing daily as we would brush our teeth and take a shower is ama starts to accumulate in the system and that's what leads to disease.

That's why I had such a high stage of disease.

Anytime I have some sort of a flare up like I did recently,

I know,

Right?

I'm learning.

I'm learning each time.

Oh,

Shoot.

Okay.

I saw the signs and I ignored them.

But I know when it comes up because I understand the science,

What I need to do to bring change,

What I need to adapt in my life to bring health.

So you can learn everything you want in Ayurveda,

But it's not going to make a difference if you don't practice it.

And what's the practice that we want to do?

That's dinataria.

It's so simple.

That's literally it.

It is just that.

Like if you go and see Ayurveda and they give you your constitution and let's say you're in okay health,

You don't need to do anything extreme yet.

They're just going to have you get to your dinataria.

And when you work with a practitioner,

That's essentially all a practitioner is doing for you is being your accountability coach.

That's it.

You just got to be responsible and do the things.

But yeah,

I mean,

So it's unfolding something new for me each time.

But what it's offered me is expanded states of consciousness because of the meditation practice,

Which is part of Ayurveda and the ability to identify now the causes of disease and to start to identify disease before it starts to come up.

But just because I'm identifying it doesn't mean I'm making the changes too.

If I make the changes,

Then I can nip it in the bud.

But it's an ongoing process of self-referral health.

Ongoing.

I'm starting to feel ill.

Each time something happens,

I hop on a call with my vaidyas.

And what happens is they unfold and unpack so much wisdom for me.

And I understand more about how to take better care of myself each time.

So I don't need to rely on medicine anymore.

I don't go to Western doctors anymore.

I don't have a need for it.

I don't need all of those medications or whatever they give people.

This lifestyle science is doing it for me.

Heather,

So if you head to my website.

Hi Vasanthi.

Thank you.

Oh,

You're amazing.

You're amazing.

Thank you so much.

So Heather,

The website is drroju.

Com.

Is it Vyas?

Hi,

It must be from this morning.

The more you do a bhyanga,

The more you glow.

Isn't that the beauty?

You always look younger because you have oil on the skin practically all the time.

The skin is nicely well hydrated.

But I am very tired because I have not admittedly been in my dinataria.

And this is circumstantial.

And I'm saying this very vulnerably,

But very honestly because it's important for us to understand that it is a privilege if someone can live a very Ayurvedic lifestyle.

I have a friend who is a practitioner of much longer,

Many years than myself.

And he's full on in his lifestyle.

He's privileged that he can do that.

He has the ability to do that.

I came off of pilgrimage unexpectedly.

I had no home.

And if I have no home,

I can't stick to a dinataria routine.

I have to think about putting a roof over my head.

So I say this because Ayurveda is going to be different for each of us in how we integrate it in our abilities.

And you just keep it simple.

You adapt.

You adapt and you adapt.

And that's it.

That's all that matters.

So you continue to learn and expose yourself to the wisdom from this incredible comprehensive lifestyle and medical science.

And then you pull in and you practice what's accessible to you in that moment.

And you consistently learn and you take the feedback from the universe and you adapt accordingly.

It's not like allopathic medicine where there's like a quote unquote answer for everything.

It's not.

You have to have a consciousness engaging with the practice and the medicine with every breath.

It sounds like a lot of work,

But I will tell you that without it,

I would be in such a miserable state right now.

I'd be supremely incapable of so much because I couldn't.

I couldn't eat with people.

I couldn't do anything with anyone.

My health was so poor.

It was so poor.

I was so unhappy.

I was so angry.

I was so bitter.

I was so confused.

I was not understanding why all of the things that I was doing,

All of the great diets that I was exploring all from the West wasn't working for my health.

Why was the medicine?

Why are the doctors not helping me?

Why am I still blah,

Blah,

Blah,

Blah,

Blah.

And then I found Ayurveda.

Yay.

Awesome Vasanthi.

Yay.

Thank you.

Vasanthi just finished the nine week course.

So let me go ahead and pull up my website and I'll talk you through what you could expect if you would like to take the course with me.

Okay.

So it begins on November 7th.

We'll meet every Sunday at 10 AM CDT for two and a half hours each time.

This course will be seven weeks long.

And for those of you who are ready to sign up,

Really good.

I'm going to send you a retreatment pamphlet.

And in that pamphlet,

You'll have a kitchen essentials guide as well as an herbal essentials guide.

If you want to start with your dinacharya,

If you want to have your kitchen prepared so you can start cooking Ayurvedically.

That way you're not like scrambling to figure everything out at the last minute,

Which is fine.

There's no pressure.

You take this at your pace.

There's no pressure to like keep up and memorize everything.

None of that kind of stuff.

Like I'm going to be talking a lot and sharing a lot and it's impossible to memorize all that stuff overnight or over seven weeks.

But at least you get the exposure.

This is how it was in India for me.

Over all of my years of studies,

The more consistently but mostly in India,

The more consistently I would show up and listen to the words,

Listen to the wisdom,

Then it started to take root.

It started as little seeds.

I never understood.

I remember I was at an ashram in India and the Satguru was talking all of this stuff about Manusruti and Bhrulla,

And Bhadranath,

And Krishna,

Which I heard before,

And then all of these other things about Krishna that I had never heard before.

I'm like,

Okay,

I know some of this stuff,

But everything else is going beyond me.

Which was nice.

Why?

Because I just had to sit back and relax and chill and just take it like story time,

Literally,

Which was nice because then the pressure was off.

It was like,

Oh,

Okay.

I'm just going to let this wash through me.

And then the more and more that I would do that,

Right,

At his ashram and then travel to the next ashram and then so on and so forth,

And then listen to all my different teachers say it,

Then it started to fruit and blossom.

Then I was like,

Oh,

I remember when Satguru said that for the first time and I was like,

I don't know what that is,

But now it's making sense.

That's the beauty.

You have the recordings,

All of you who sign up,

You'll have recordings to the classes.

So you can always go back and listen to it over and over again,

Should you desire to.

Oh,

I love you Amantim.

Yes,

Dave.

Yes,

That's it.

I like that.

Thank you.

Fluid and transformational.

I love that.

I'm going to write that down.

That's a great way to put it.

Very succinct.

Thank you so much for your donation.

I really appreciate that.

Thank you,

Dave.

Thank you.

Trademark.

Okay,

I'll find another way.

Or I'll give you credit.

Okay.

So November 7th through January 9th,

We'll meet every Sunday for two and a half hours.

The very early part of the sessions will be Q&A.

For those of you who start the Dinataria ahead of time,

It will be your opportunity to do a check-in and ask questions about how it's or share how it's going for you so far.

Sometimes it's nice to have the accountability of a group to be able to share your experiences with and to go back and forth with.

It's not IT.

It's going to be off ITVS.

So you can sign up on the website,

On my website.

I would like to have it on IT.

The thing is I've got so many projects going on.

So right now with IT,

I'm working on the meditation course,

Which is taking a lot of my time to prepare.

And once that's up,

Like little by little,

I'll start to share things more on IT.

But big first hump,

I want to get the meditation course up on IT.

So right now the intro to Ayurveda will be on Zoom and separate from IT.

Shh,

Don't tell them.

Shh.

I need to make a living.

And I really want to share and learn.

I learn by sharing and teaching.

I learn with each of you.

And so the Intro to Ayurveda course is also going to be on the website.

So if you head over to napola.

Org,

Which is linked in my bio,

You'll see on the header menu Intro to Ayurveda.

And that's where you would click to get the information for the Ayurveda course and to sign up to sign up there.

Very good.

So let me go ahead and talk a little bit more about the course.

Over the seven weeks,

What will we cover?

We're going to start with the Dhanacharya.

This is a suggestion from one of the participants in the previous course.

And they said,

Wow,

This was a lot.

It would have been helpful if you had shared this with us earlier so that we had time to work with it and ask questions.

So I'm going to do it first thing.

This week.

Thanks so much,

Dean.

Thank you so much for your donation.

I appreciate you.

Thank you.

Hasta luego,

Rocio,

Hasta luego.

Second day,

We're going to go through origin and the philosophy.

So this is where I'll give you the Vedic overview,

Like how it fits into the Vedas.

And also the cosmology,

Which comes from Samkhya,

But not just Samkhya.

It's actually all of the shadarsana,

The six darshans,

The six views from the Vedas.

I'll also introduce you to my vaidyas,

Not formally.

They're not going to like hop on a call and be like,

Namaste.

But I'll show you pictures and talk a bit more about them.

And then a third week,

We're going to squeeze vata pitta kapha into a session.

It's going to be a very intense session.

So I'll send you,

I'll send you things and materials ahead of time that you can explore before we meet,

If you desire to.

Because my hope is that we can get into the sub-doshas of each of them,

Which in our previous course we spent one day on each dosha.

But in my courses,

When I learned it,

We learned all of the dosha's at once.

Because you can do self-study,

You just have to be introduced to it.

Vital essence,

Ojas,

And then the three ways,

The three malas.

This is the urine,

The feces,

And the sweat.

So I'll speak about this,

And this is where I'll introduce the dhathus,

Which are the tissues,

The bodily tissues in Ayurveda.

This is where disease lodges when we don't clear it out quickly enough.

This is where it starts to penetrate,

And this is where it starts to enter into higher levels and stages of disease,

The dhathus.

When we do a pancha karma,

Those,

The five karmas,

The five actions of cleanse,

That purification procedure that takes about 28 days,

Not 14,

Not seven days,

That's neo Ayurveda,

That's not pancha karma.

When you do a full proper pancha karma,

It's pulling all of the dosha's out from the dhathus into the alimentary canal so that you can purgate or you can release it out of the nearest orifice of the body.

How exciting does that sound?

You get to spend 28 days feeling like shit and vomiting and pooping,

And then you feel like brand new,

And then you feel like a completely new person after all of that.

This is only if you're first starting.

If you do it more frequently,

You're less likely to have such extreme adverse feelings of nausea because what's happening is like there's so much toxin buildup.

So the less you build up Amma,

The more that you're living a lifestyle that clears up the Amma and it hindles your ugni or your digestive fire,

Then the less work you have to do in a pancha karma cleanse.

Lifestyle,

All the lifestyle and just dinacharya,

Just the dinacharya.

So then we'll go over the cycles of time.

This is what I had kind of gleaned over before.

So we have the cycles of time that we experience in a day,

The morning,

The afternoon,

The evening,

And then more beyond that.

And each of these cycles of time are dominated by a dosa.

So there's a part of the day that's dominated by Pitta.

And that would be when the sun is at its highest.

That's when you've got a predominance of fire element in the universe.

And if it's in the universe external to us,

Then it's going to affect us internally too,

Because we're part of it.

So our digestion has more support midday,

So we would eat a larger meal midday,

Ideally.

That's how we look at it.

And then we have cycles of time that work on a level of seasons.

Each of the seasons have a different purkṛti or doshik constitution.

And we want to bring balance to that accordingly and prepare accordingly as it's moving and shifting from one season into the next.

And then we have the life cycles from childhood,

Which is kapha,

Through our adulthood,

Which is pitta,

Into our elder years,

Vāta,

Our wise wisdom years.

Then I'll talk about the shadrasas.

These are the six tastes.

So then we'll end with nutrition.

The last two weeks will be nutrition.

I'll share the Ayurvedic way of eating,

The rules we could say,

Or the rituals,

The best way to approach our eating process.

And then on the last day,

I'll go into ugni and the different types of ugni,

The 13 different types of ugni,

How we can maintain good ugni and how ugni,

Good ugni,

Helps us to burn through ama.

And then I'll introduce the stages of digestion,

Which is going to be relating to the shadrasas as well.

That's it.

So the ideal is that after these seven weeks,

You're walking away with a very solid foundational introduction to Ayurveda.

This is not going to be like,

Here's the one thing you can do to cure your pitta.

Oh,

You are kapha on your quiz?

Do this.

Because that's not how Ayurveda works.

You're going to be engaging critical thinking.

This is very important.

It's a self-referral practice.

Masha says,

Last year I did a strict detox.

The first four weeks I felt half dead and then suddenly the brain fog lifted and my energy just came up and I felt vibrancy.

Yeah,

That's how I felt too,

Masha.

I literally thought I was going to die.

Hi,

James.

Well,

I was also not with my vaidyas.

I was visiting a different center in India just to kind of do some due diligence,

Right?

Before fully coming to my vaidyas,

I wanted to make sure I went and checked out other ones.

I'm never going to go check out another one ever again after that experience.

I did not trust them for one second.

I could tell that their state of consciousness was nowhere near as refined as my vaidyas.

So in any case,

I literally was in bed feeling like,

Oh my God,

I think I'm going to die.

And the pandemic,

I was just about to go into lockdown in India.

So I couldn't get over to Hyderabad where my vaidyas were.

I was like,

Fuck me,

What am I going to do?

But I'm literally nauseous all day.

I can barely move from my bed.

And I'm like,

I'm dead.

I'm dead.

And then finally I made my way through to the end of the treatment and I was like,

Like a little dog and puppy.

My tail was wagging.

I had all the energy in the world.

I'd never experienced that actually in so many years.

I can't tell you.

I can't tell you the last time I ever felt so clear,

So light.

And it wasn't like the rajasic kind of energy.

Rajasic energy is like feverish energy.

I have to go do something or else.

I have to go do something.

It was not that.

It was so stabilized.

It was so grounded,

But it was so limitless.

It was like I was fully plugged into source and I could keep going.

And at the same time,

It was easy for me to commit to my dinacharya.

It was easy for me to get to my bed and do my evening routine,

To wake up and do my morning routine.

It was easy for me to commit to the foods because my food cravings were gone.

And I wanted to maintain this,

Oh my gosh,

This sense of health and energy that I had never felt in my life that I could remember.

I did not want to destroy it and go back to the lethargy that I was experiencing before that.

I had no idea.

I had no consciousness of what heaviness I was living with until I experienced that lightness.

Pancha Karma is such a life saver.

I love it.

I can't wait to get back to India and do another one.

Portugal.

Hi.

BOMJIYA.

But I know it's,

Is it?

Yeah,

It's BOMJIYA for you.

Good morning.

VS,

Yes,

I highly recommend going to my vaidyas.

I highly recommend them.

The Raju family in Hyderabad.

They have a center in Hyderabad and they have a center in Delhi.

The last I spoke to them,

Which was last month,

Or was it earlier this month,

They said maybe they would open up in the summer.

But this was before India decided that they were going to open up on November 15th.

I haven't checked back in with them yet.

So Masha says,

I agree that connecting with yourself and being aware is the key to things shifting.

Yeah.

So we call it,

It's a consciousness based medicine.

Ayurveda.

That's all about your state of consciousness.

The more refined your state of consciousness,

The more access you have to the wisdom and the ability to put it into practice,

Which comes through the practice itself.

It's like a nice,

Beautiful continuum.

Yeah.

The thing is to pay attention to yourself and what's around.

Right.

Yes,

Masha.

Thank you for that.

Love that.

Hi Michael.

Nice to meet you.

Yeah.

And see,

It's so beautiful when we recognize that,

Right?

We're no longer a victim to the unknown.

Why is this happening to me?

We can start to take responsibility for ourselves.

There's so much liberation,

There's so much freedom,

There's so much power in responsibility.

I am so grateful for finally stepping into responsible living.

My little kid,

Katrina,

Not so long ago,

A few years ago,

Was very much afraid of responsibility.

She was like,

Oh my God,

That's such a heavy weight.

I can't.

I can't.

And then my body was like,

Well,

I'm not going to give you a choice.

You better grow up.

You better get right.

Masha says it's like hearing the things that are being shown to you,

Right?

The sensitivity,

Right?

The receptivity,

The awareness.

The dropping victimhood.

Yes.

Very good.

Okay,

So that's it everybody.

I think that was a very thorough intro to Ayurveda.

Any questions?

Anything I can share?

Ciao Pat.

Amir.

Oh,

Hi,

Amir.

You're here by chance.

It's so nice to meet you.

It's the middle of the night.

I got no idea where could I possibly let what I hear from you into my life since I thought that from now on it's got to be all about music.

But you've made me so curious.

Oh,

I love music too,

By the way.

There is a gentleman on here,

Blair.

And I also have a bunch of friends.

A lot of my friends are practitioners and musicians and DJs and all this stuff.

I'm going to sing for you all.

I'm going to start hosting sessions where I'll sing for you.

And I'm going to use their backtracks to sing with.

So Blair just joined Insight Timer as a publisher,

I think it was last month.

He and Alyssa,

His partner,

They're based in Canada.

They performed together on Friday night and it was so beautiful.

I highly recommend following him.

Blair,

B-L-A-I-R,

Francis.

So you can enjoy his live sessions.

They were such a gift.

I also have another friend on here who's into growing his spiritual path,

Found a guru,

And he's also sharing music.

His name is Victorian.

Also a wonderful person to check out.

Anyway,

Sorry.

See how I get,

Oh,

I love music too.

So he says,

Gosh,

I find it hard to leave,

But it's one at night.

So I must check that again.

After all,

Health-wise,

I still face severe threats.

So thank you so much.

And I will find a way to hear you again.

Love you,

Amir.

Love you.

Thank you for this beautiful note.

It is so nice to meet you.

It is such a pleasure to connect with you.

It brings me joy.

All of my,

Oh,

You missed it.

Oh bummer.

Okay.

Well,

I'm starting a podcast because it's really hard for me to record all of this stuff and to upload it.

In Mexico,

Where I live,

We don't have that much Wi-Fi capacity.

So I work with very slow Wi-Fi,

Slow upload speeds.

So I decided to do the podcast so that,

You know,

The information that I share here,

You can always tune into my podcast and hear it there.

I just feel recorded the first episode today.

So slowly,

Slowly.

Masha,

Right?

Oh my gosh.

Singing.

I love singing.

It brings me to flow.

It's the instrument that we all have access to is our voice when it comes to music.

Yeah.

How can you go to sleep now?

Amir,

If you have oil in the house,

Not any kind of oil,

Ideally like a coconut oil or ghee or sesame oil,

Unrefined and organic.

I know not everybody has that in the house.

You could do a padabhyanga.

Pad,

Foot or step,

Abhyanga,

The oleated massage.

You can put it on the feet.

Turn off all of your electronics.

Literally put everything into airplane mode.

Create a strong boundary so that you're not going to get sucked back into electronic mode,

Movie,

Something else to distract me.

Create a ritual.

Rituals help us to break out of our bad habits,

Conscious rituals.

So create a ritual like that.

Turn it all off and then maybe you can go give yourself a nice foot massage.

If you know any beautiful chants,

You can silently in the mind chant,

Whatever it is,

Right?

You're just attuning to yourself.

And then cover your feet with socks and then go to bed.

It's good to leave the oil on overnight.

That can help calm the nervous system.

Michael says,

Yeah,

I can sing.

Hey.

Aww.

Amir,

Just pray and close your eyes and ask for guidance.

Yes,

I love that.

That's a beautiful one too.

Literally lay back and pray to your higher self or divinity,

God.

Conscious ritual.

Oh,

Hi,

How are you?

It's so good to see you.

So she says,

I do that when I have self-care days.

I always put oil on in socks.

What did you call it?

Okay.

It's called pad of yanga.

Let me write that down for you.

It's so good to see you.

Yeah,

It brings me joy to see familiar faces.

Okay.

I think that's it.

We covered a pretty good depth.

Let's see if I have anything else coming up.

Oh,

Tomorrow I have a session.

Wow,

In the morning.

I surprised myself.

I can't even keep up with myself.

Routine is coming soon.

Slowly but surely I'm creating routine.

So I have breakthrough coaching tomorrow.

Be boldly you.

So we'll talk about the biggest fears and the biggest blocks that we all have like imposter syndrome,

Perfectionist syndrome,

Not enough syndrome,

All of these things.

To give language to it,

To get clear on it.

We've got to be able to take risks in our lives.

It requires risk to live fully,

Boldly as we are,

Who we are versus the ideas and the concepts that we adopted.

So maybe like a nice group coaching session where we can empower ourselves to step into our highest self.

About 8 a.

M.

In the morning.

CDT.

It's 6 p.

M.

Right now.

And then on Wednesday at 8 a.

M.

I'm going to talk about Zen and tea ceremony.

So my tea ceremony teacher is a Soto Zen monk.

And gosh,

He gave me incredible wisdom bits.

So does the practice of tea.

Not tea bag tea,

But tea leaf tea.

Tea sourced from farmers who are consciously looking after their tea trees and tree shrubs and consciously processing them.

That's it.

That's it.

That and the teacher training that's coming up starting on January 16th.

I'm capping it at 20 or 25 people,

But I actually I don't think we're going to get that many people.

I think it's going to be a very small and intimate cohort,

Which I'm absolutely fine with.

I'm happy to share this teacher training with whomever wants to sign up.

But there is an application process just so that I know that it's a good fit for both of us.

There are application questions on the website.

Yes,

Rini,

Of course.

So what are habits after all?

These are rituals,

But they're unconscious rituals.

A lot of times our habits are bad habits.

So in order to start,

The way that we approach Ayurveda from my lineage of study is we introduce sattva.

We introduce what's accessible.

It's less about trying to penalize ourselves and being puritanical about,

Oh,

You're not living Ayurvedic-ly.

That's not Ayurvedic.

Who's to say?

Did you study all the texts?

Do you really know for sure?

Can you chant all of the texts?

Did you come from a lineage of doctors?

How would you know?

It's not for one person to judge another in any case.

Rini,

Yes,

The way to break through those habits is to introduce new habits,

Conscious habits,

Conscious rituals.

So what's my ritual,

For example?

I love when I do abhyanga,

Make sure that all of my electronics are in airplane mode,

Right?

From the night I turn everything into electronic mode.

And if I took a peek and I was like,

Bad girl,

Quote unquote,

In the morning,

Then I go right back into the electronic airplane mode.

I play Sama Veda in the background.

So it's a Vedic chanting.

Or I might do it in pure silence,

Just depends on how it I'm feeling.

And then I have everything set up,

Right?

I have my little bowl that I've warm my oil in.

I have my oil right next to the pot that I put the bowl into that I warm it.

Everything set up,

I have my abhyanga towel laid out.

Ritual,

I have this full beautiful ritual.

And maybe to even enliven it more,

I might introduce other things into it.

Whatever makes me feel like I'm really loving up on myself and I'm creating a setting for that.

Turning off the lights,

Watching the sun rise as I do it,

Ritual.

That's how you can nip the unconscious habits in the bud.

So Jesse,

I decided,

I tried to record a podcast,

By the way,

A video cast back in 2017.

And I have incredible friends in my pocket.

So it was like lots of people that you would know.

Like Light Watkins is one of them.

Can't remember the name of the other guy.

Anyway,

There's a lot of them.

And then I lost all of my video footage one night because I accidentally formatted the drive before I could go live.

Anyway,

The long story short is I decided to just call the show the Katrina show.

Keep it simple.

I was up late at night and I'm like,

What am I going to call it?

Wake with Katrina,

Evolve.

And I was like,

Oh,

Just keep it simple.

The Katrina show.

And what is it going to be on?

I'm going to do solo cast and I'm going to bring interviews on.

So for example,

I'm actually going to be doing interviews here.

I've invited a bunch of my friends to come and join me to give,

Because you see how I do my screen,

I can do interviews with them too.

So you can see us on a Zoom call together.

You can hear us both talking and engaging and you can ask questions.

You can send your questions ahead of time if you like,

If you join a circle,

Right?

You can put your questions there in a circle.

But my friends are incredible.

They're so powerful.

One of them,

Matisse,

She's working with equestrian therapy and family constellations.

So what is that exactly?

It's a therapeutic measure that you can use to help work through generational trauma,

Intergenerational trauma.

And then equestrian therapy.

Wow.

On top of that,

The power of a horse,

Their hearts are larger than ours.

So the electromagnetic field of the hearts,

That resonance,

Very powerful for us.

In their field,

We can get coherence thanks to that resonance.

And so integrating equestrian therapy with family constellations,

She'll talk about it.

And she's a powerful woman.

You just get to hear from another woman,

Right,

Who's conscious or who's actively working on her evolution.

And I think it's always nice to hear other voices.

So my podcast will be that.

It'll be me doing solo cast where I talk about topics of social justice because I have a social justice major.

I identify as a woman of color,

Even though I'm light skinned.

And it's important to me to become cognizant of the social structures and systems and how they are helpful or unhelpful for different social groups in terms of meeting our basic needs.

So I'll talk about things like I was in a cult,

A toxic cult when I was on pilgrimage.

So I will talk about codependency,

Narcissism,

Sexual abuse,

All of these things as it relates to spiritual practice.

Got a lot to share.

I'll talk about Ayurveda.

I'll talk about all the things.

Napua is Hawaiian for blossom.

My mom's middle name,

My late mother,

She passed away in 2018.

She was hit by a car.

It was unexpected,

But on a subtle level,

She and I both knew it was coming.

We would talk about it actually.

Napua,

Her middle name is Fualau.

She's Samoan.

She's from her mother,

My grandma,

Who raised me,

Is from Samoa.

Fualau means blossoming,

But no one can really say Fualau.

So since we're from Hawaii,

I chose the Hawaiian version,

Napua,

Referring to the blossoming of spirit that comes through when we cultivate our gardens through practice.

Because that's how I've experienced it.

I experienced it as an infinite blossoming.

Once you commit to the spiritual path,

Once you commit to yourself,

To your higher self,

The work is tedious at first,

But at some point,

You start to get the support of nature,

And it's no longer tedious.

Now what's happening as you commit and sustain your practice is this beautiful blossoming of spirit that starts to unfold continuously in the awareness.

Awareness is unfolding like a big beautiful blossom.

All of it,

Just nonstop,

Infinite.

There's no quote unquote end goal.

Because for me,

It's like,

Wow,

This mystery of what lays beyond these infinite blossoming,

Who knows?

It allows me to surrender and just enjoy the process of the blossoming.

So that's why I called it napua.

Also it's a short word and easy to type.

All right,

Cool.

I love you all.

Have a wonderful rest of your night or your day,

And I look forward to seeing you again.

Hale says,

According to your video,

You're putting the oil even on your hair daily.

Yes,

Except,

So this is great,

Hale,

Great question.

I'm not literally like putting it through my hair,

Right?

But yeah,

The hair is going to get pretty oily.

So I'm not like,

Oil,

Let me get my argan oil in my hair down to the roots.

Something like that.

It's just the scalp,

Just the scalp.

And then what I'll do is I'll put my hair up before I put the oil through the rest of the body.

Now,

There are a lot of people who get,

Who for this,

Like getting,

Having oil in the hair is a bit of a problem.

So you could alternate.

You don't have to do it every day or every time you do abhyanga.

You could just do it right here on the crown.

Or you can wash and lather the head with not too much water at first.

So you put just a splash of water on the head,

Rinse it really quickly,

And then you use your lathering soap and you just lather,

Lather,

Lather.

So less water.

And then you do that for a while.

And I would also use some vinegar,

Some apple cider vinegar,

And mix it in.

That will always help me to get a lot of the oil out.

I hope that helps.

Lenore,

Best oils are sesame oil and coconut oil,

Organic and unrefined.

Those are the two most recommended.

One is heating,

That's the sesame,

And one's cooling,

That's the coconut.

So you can see which one works best for you.

Yeah,

That's it.

The only other thing is the retreat.

So I hope that the teacher training does come together.

I really do.

We don't need that many people to say yes for me to commit.

I'm happy to do it.

But in addition to the teacher training,

I have a retreat planned for Memorial Day weekend next month,

Which is coming up soon.

I'm going to fly out to Te Potslan,

Which is 30 minutes outside of Mexico City.

And I'm going to go explore the areas for a potential retreat center.

I have one in mind.

And so I would like to invite Light to come and join us as well for him to come and be a guest speaker.

It's just going to depend on whether the schedule is working for him.

But we're going to go check out the retreat centers together.

So I'm super excited.

It's not going to be a beach destination,

But it's a really beautiful mountain destination.

People say so many great things about it.

And what's most important is that it's a short drive from Mexico City,

Meaning to say it'll be very easy for you to get into.

You can take a direct flight,

Depending on where you're flying from,

To Mexico City itself.

And then just drive 30 minutes and boom,

You're in a beautiful mountain town with ruins and beautiful history of the Aztec,

Mexico,

All of it.

Okay,

All right.

Final goodbye.

Love you all.

Ciao.

Giving giving