Episode 37: Is Ayurveda the Antidote To trauma?!; Beach downloads


Episode 37: Is Ayurveda the Antidote To trauma?!; Beach downloads


In today's episode, recorded during my usual walk along the scenic trails of Pelada, I felt an irresistible urge to share my thoughts with you. Apologies for any sound imperfections—instead, I invite you to tune into the backdrop of the ocean's roar and the cheerful chirping of birds, enhancing our journey. This episode delves into the concept of small 't' trauma and explores how Ayurveda, the ancient art and science of life, offers profound insights and remedies for healing trauma. Join me as we uncover the therapeutic power of Ayurveda to transform and heal.

By the end of this episode, you will learn about:

  1. Abhyanga - Discover the benefits of this nurturing Ayurvedic oil massage technique and how it can soothe the nervous system.
  2. Shirodhara - Understand the process and effects of this tranquil treatment, which involves gently pouring liquids over the forehead to calm and rejuvenate the mind.
  3. Digestive Health - Gain insights into the pivotal role of gut health in emotional and psychological well-being, and how Ayurvedic practices can aid in healing both the gut and trauma.

Episode Transcript
- Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Ayuvedic Therapist podcast. I am walking on the beach in palate in no Sora Costa Rica, where I live. And this is my favorite beach to walk. Um, and I do it every single day. You can probably hear the ocean and the birds. I apologize if the sun's not good, but I am receiving some downloads and I just wanted to record. So I leave this land in about three days, and I find myself incredibly blessed and grateful that I could be here and learn from this land and learn from all the elements that live here. One of the things that I have come to recognize while living here is the importance of the Ayurvedic practices and them being the antidote to trauma. Trauma with a small T is something that we have all experienced. Some of you might not agree with me that you have trauma. You might say, oh, you know, I'm fine, I'm good. I've never had anything horrible happen to me in my life. And I just want you to recognize that when we are children, especially in the first seven or eight years of our life, and we, um, We are so potent and we are our, our brain is in a different state, and we are like sponges. We take everything in. This is so beautiful. Um, I hope that you can come here one day with me. It takes my breath away every time. But when we are children, let's say you're at school and your parents are supposed to pick you up at a certain hour and they're running late and all the other children are being picked up and you're sitting there at a 4-year-old, 5-year-old, 6-year-old, and mom and dad are late, and, uh, everyone else is being picked up. And you go to the teacher and you say, are my parents coming? And the teacher says, oh yeah, I'm sure they're just running a bit late. Trauma right there. A child with that brain capacity cannot comprehend why my mom and dad are late. And so that turns into an imprint of trauma, which in Iveta we call some scars. So there are all these little experiences, so you see how they can kind of pile up and they can stay in our state of subconscious and turn into bigger things later on in life. And this is important not because we're like, oh my God, I have all these trauma now how do I live? Um, it's not something that we look at and we as a negative thing, however, I can promise you that these patterns are already running the show of your life because only 95% of your brain, or only 5%, is actively working in a conscious mind. And 95% is in the subconscious and, uh, running the show. And so these are the small patterns that behaviorally run our lives. So we feel abandoned by the parent who was running late, even though they didn't mean to abandon us. And it wasn't really an, an abandonment, but the child feels that and it stays with them. And so later on in an adulthood, in our mostly intimate relationships, when our partner maybe is running late or he's not replying back to our text messages, we imagine the worst case scenario. We feel abandoned. And so that abandonment comes from the source of the childhood abandonment that we felt. Because what we feel as children is so potent and big that if it's not processed properly, it will just become much bigger now. So there are ways to work with these small t traumas, not to panic. The number one way to work with them though is to be aware of them, to aware of the sums scars. And I've come into a place in my life where anything that doesn't feel good, that rises up any emotion that doesn't feel good, I go, wait a second, which samskara is this? And I become curious, what is this trying to teach me at this moment? Is this emotion even about my partner right now? Is it about my job right now? Is it about my client? Is it about what is happening right now? Or is it something deeper inside of me? And and often 99.9% of time it is something inside of me. So becoming curious about these patterns of trauma is a huge step. And what I am really starting to realize in my ayuvedic practice is this beautiful ancient practice of Ayurveda that is thousands of years old, and this mysterious science that somehow the rishis wrote like we don't know how many years ago. Uh, we just know that as long as there have been humans, there have, there has been a ra. And every practice in this science is an antidote to trauma. That is what I have come to recognize and realize. Trauma gets stored in our body. So if you want to heal and you are booking all the self-care, self-help books, you know, um, and you understand something logically that's great for your mental body, often the mental body is way ahead of the physical body. The link gets, gets disconnected and missed. And that's one of the issues. So how can we bring the link back together by practicing these ancient beautiful Ayurvedic practices to connect our mind, our mental body to our physical body, to connect them back? Because we were, we were always whole. It's not that we're doing these, you know, practices and we go to a healer to become whole. We already are whole. You already have it all. It's just that we forget because of these traumatic, you know, small t trauma events. Sometimes big T trauma events, we forget and we disconnect because it's not safe to be in our bodies. And so practices like ab sheara, which is application of oil on the body, warm oil that has beautiful, beautiful herbs cooked into it that is particular for that person's constitution. How how incredible is that? That they had figured this out? Every person has a particular constitution according to the, their, um, elemental way of being. And and they figured this out and they figured out what herbs would balance those elements, cook them into the oils, and then started massaging the person. And it's not just a massaging of the body and the benefits of these herbs that are intelligent carriers of information, by the way, and carriers of healing modalities. And they're penetrating into your body. But it's also about you becoming really good at giving yourself love. Ana ana is a word in reta that means immense amount of self love, self love, touching your own body, allowing yourself to really feel these oils, these herbal magical plants being penetrated into your body, Dropping your attention and your awareness into your body so that you remember who you are so that you remember that you not your mental body. That the mind takes you away and there are thoughts and it spins you out and out. And what stories are you, are you believing? You know your mind telling you? Yesterday I was speaking to my friend Lisa White, and she is, she's something, she's definitely, um, a very, very spiritual teacher. And and she teaches me every time I speak to her. And I said something like, oh, you know, I'm just worried about grieving Costa Rica and going back to Canada and I'm worried about what's gonna happen and when am I gonna come back? And she said, stop the stories. You're telling yourself the story. You are already building homes and healing centers and you are gonna go back whenever you want to. And I thought, wow, what a story I believed my mind telling me, <laugh>. And so it's like that, you know, it, our mind is really good at making us believe our stories. It creates. So the antidote to that grew up into the body doing, which is application of oil on the third eye, opening your third eye. 'cause the third eye, my friends, is your inner eye is your eye of wisdom. Open that eye so you can see clearly. You can see who you are. There's nothing scary about it. It's actually really scary to hide away and not know. And just go with whatever the society tells you do to do next. And just always be outside of your body. That feels really scary to me, to me. Um, and I have spent all of my life trying to figure back how I can come back into my body, how I can see with my third eye, how I can hear from my internal being. Um, you can too. 'cause that's who you are. And so other practices in the Ayurvedic tradition that really help strengthen our digestive track are important because not just because of digestive food, but our digestive track is, has multi levels of conscious awareness. It's, it's how we think, how we feel. Yeah. So you have probably heard of the new science now saying that your gut creates 90% of the serotonin in your body. That's the hormone that makes you feel good. And you know, when you have that gut feeling, we, we already know all this because our ancestors knew all this. So this is just common knowledge that we've forgotten. So remembering to listen to your gut. So the practices that we do, the digestive spices that we eat and ghee and, you know, clarified butter that we make while we are chanting to it, which is something I do. Um, and I'm so happy that this is, has become a tradition in my family. And so these have multilevel benefits of awakening us, of bringing that intelligence into our bodies so that we can feel the truth of who we are so that we can see with the intelligence of our being who we are, not just, not just like learn it with our head. You know, that's great. I did that for years. I learned and learned and studied everything, every book, um, for 20 years. And it wasn't until my entire being cracked open that the teachings fell in. So that's what I'm interested in cracking open and letting the teachings fall in. And the teachings are all around us. The teachings are in the trees, the teachings are in the water, the teachings are in the grass. We just have to be able to see 'em and feel them and hear them. And you can do that by opening your internal eye. And so all the Ayurvedic modalities help us step by step to get closer to our body, to take care of our body, to remind our body that the war is over, that our body can be pampered, our body can be taken care of, our body can be fed properly with the right kind of nutrition at the right times. Because our body has an internal clock, our body has an internal intelligence. Our body knows. And when it is deprived from being fed and seen and taken care of, it will go into fight or flight mode. And so we live our lives in this state of fight or flight, and there is nothing good that comes out of that. And I think that it's time to stop that the ocean is agreeing with me. It's time to stop that, it's time to awaken. It's time to, as my teacher Dr. Claudia Welsh posted yesterday, it is time to step down our treadmill and live our lives profoundly the way we want them to live it. And it's, it takes courage to do that because when we are on the treadmill mindlessly, it's easier. Yeah, kind of. Because we don't have to think about things. Everything is thought out for us. So we just have to live our lives going to work and coming back and just surviving, step down the treadmill and see what happens. Be courageous enough to do that. And let these Ayurvedic practices support you. Let them heal your body. Let them guide you back into your wholeness because that's who you truly are my dear. You are wholeness, you are whole. You have always been for centuries and centuries and who knows, millions of years. Your spirit has been whole. This is only a blip in the timeline of your existence. And so don't give in to getting stuck in the patterns of your stories and see what happens. And, uh, thank you so much for listening and if you have been inspired by anything that I have been teaching in these podcasts, I hope that you can one day come with me to this healing land in Costa Rica, do a retreat with me, um, where in a week we learn a lot together and or just hoping that I can work with you one on one. When you're ready, when you're ready to crack open your spirit and let the teachings fall in. Okay, my labs. I'll see you next time. How you go.