I am just going to write a few words today on the importance of fat to our bodies. Many Americans spend their whole lives hating themselves for having what they perceive as "too much" fat. We have become obsessed with low-fat and nonfat foods. Although nature certainly gives us plenty of low-fat and nonfat fruits and vegetables, eating a low- or nonfat diet for most Americans means eating lots of pre-packaged foods that have been loaded with sugar and chemicals to make them taste good. This is a poor trade-off. Our bodies do not know how to process all of those chemicals that are used to compensate for lack of fat. Our detoxification systems become clogged up and tired, and in the long run, disorders such as gallstones, acid reflux, and chronic constipation can manifest.

Did you know that not getting enough fat also can cause health problems? Signs of insufficient fat intake include hair loss, insomnia, arthritis, anxiety, forgetfulness, weak bones, and menstrual disorders.

Rather than being paranoid about fat intake, it is more beneficial to eat healthy fats that provide nourishment to the nerves, vital organs, and bones. Healthy fats come from whole foods such as sesame seeds, whole milk, and avocados. Sautéing vegetables in ghee is an excellent way to get healthy fat into the body and add wonderful flavor to a meal.

In Ayurveda we recommend regular oil massage to deliver oil through the skin deep into the tissues. Different oils are used for each dosha and dosha-balancing herbs are frequently added to the oil. Sesame oil is typically used for Vata skin, coconut for Pitta, and Sunflower for Kapha. Massaging herbal oil into the skin delivers beneficial nutrients all the way into the nerves. Rubbing oil on the feet at bedtime is a wonderful way to calm the nervous system and aid restful sleep.

Sometimes it is easy to forget that practicing compassion includes extending that compassion to yourself. Quite often, people overlook self care in favor of meeting the needs of others. We think that it's selfish to decline the opportunity to help someone else if the reason we decline is to take care of ourselves. We planned to meditate for a few minutes, but our significant other wants to watch a movie with us. We want to take a walk outside, but there is work to catch up on. There is certainly a difference between being selfish and taking care of yourself. Even so, making sure that you are eating healthy food, taking time for daily physical movement, and ensuring that your emotional needs are being met are not selfish activities. Taking good care of yourself allows you to better realize your purpose in the world. Self care is actually a very selfless activity. When we are happy and healthy, our bodies are strong and our minds are clear. We can then offer others our best selves rather than a worn-out, overextended version.

In Western thought, we typically separate the functions of mind and body.  We are accustomed to thinking of illness as being either physical or psychological.  In Ayurvedic thought, we perceive all illness as involving both mind and body. Physical changes affect mental processes.  Likewise, our emotions and thoughts affect our physical functions.  The body follows the mind and the mind follows the body.  Whatever you attach to mentally will manifest itself in your body.  By knowing your underlying mental state, you can understand what dosha is likely to be causing imbalances in your  health.  
 
Dreams provide clues for Ayurvedic practitioners about the mental and emotional states of a person.  Paying attention to your own dreams is one way that you can learn about what dosha needs to be balanced for you.  Below are some tips to help you practice your own dream
analysis.

First, a review:
Unbalanced Vata causes people to dream about fearful situations and flying. Such dreams include: flying through the air, becoming a bird, being in an airplane, being alone, people chasing you, your romantic partner leaving you, betrayal, any dream scenario in which you feel frightened, insecure, or lonely.

Unbalanced Pitta causes dreams that relate to image, conflict, and career. Such dream scenarios include: being late for something, showing up to an event or place wearing no clothing or being inappropriately dressed, your physical appearance suddenly changing, dreaming about your job, failing a test, fire, physical fights, arguments, war, and violence.

Unbalanced Kapha causes dreams that are full of water and indulgence. Unbalanced Kapha causes dreams such as seeing your own death, drowning, eating lots of sugary foods, or being unable to move quickly.

If you cannot remember your dreams, try this exercise for one week.  Each night before you go to bed, state this intention out loud three times, “I will remember my dreams.”

The following week, you will likely begin to remember parts of your dreams, if not all of them.  

The Practice of Dream Journaling

My most influential meditation teacher was a Tibetan monk named Khenpo Kalsang Gyaltsen.  The first thing he said to me about meditation was, “Meditation does not mean think about nothing.  Meditation means tame your mind.”

Taming the mind means training the mind to be in harmony with the body.  A tame mind is thinking about what the body is doing.  A
tame mind can also become quiet enough to gain insights into spiritual matters, healing, and your life’s purpose.  Dream journaling is a wonderful meditative practice that can help to tame the mind through learning about underlying mental and emotional states.     

To practice dream journaling, keep a small notebook next to your bed.  When you wake up each morning, quickly jot down notes about your dreams from the night before.  Over time, you will be able to notice emotional patterns for yourself that show themselves in your dreams.  These patterns will let you know what dosha tends to be out of balance for you, and also which emotions you are likely  storing in your body.  Emotions are important to work through and let go rather than to repress and store.  Stored emotions manifest later in life as physical illness in specific body parts. For example, a woman who has a traumatic relationship with her mother can develop reproductive health issues.

Once you learn what dosha correlates with your mental patterns, you can take action to help balance that dosha.  Eating a dosha-balancing diet calms the dominant dosha and helps to balance both mind and body.  
       

As a health professional, I feel like I should respond to this.

Yes, diet absolutely plays a role in health. But losing weight is not inherently a healthy thing to do.

Our bodies store toxins in our fat cells and when we lose weight our bodies must metabolize and eliminate all of the toxins being released from the fat cells. This process makes the liver, kidneys, and entire digestive system work overtime. Imagine every chemical you have been exposed to suddenly being released into your system all at once. This is not a healthy scenario. Losing more than 2 pounds of weight per week can cause liver disease, gallstones, kidney disease, nausea and body aches.

The diseases in this picture are developed through environmental exposures, medication side effects, genetics and eating habits. Being "overweight" does not cause these diseases. Weight gain is often a symptom of disease and not usually the cause. We have to raise our expectations of scientific research related to obesity and health. Most of the studies on this topic begin with the assumption that obesity is a health risk and then draw conclusions based on that assumption. However, if data are analyzed from these studies it is obvious that what the evidence shows is that being sedentary increases the risks of the diseases listed in the above graphic. Unfortunately, most people have neither the interest nor the background necessary to critically assess the data. Most people just encounter media messages about obesity health risks.

It is our cultural association between laziness and being "fat" that creates this myth that obesity is a cause of illness. Scientists who should be analyzing data objectively are not fulfilling their obligations to do just that. They are looking at data and skewing it based on their assumed correlations between fatness and sedentariness, when the evidence does not support this relationship.
There are indeed "fat" people who are not sedentary, not lazy, and who are very healthy. I have known people who fit the BMI definitions of "obese" who have perfect lab results, better cardiovascular health than the average person, who exercise regularly, and who eat a diet of whole foods.

Eating pre-packaged foods full of chemicals, having a high baseline stress level, eating foods inappropriate for your body type and not exercising cause the channels of the body to become blocked. Then, poor digestion leads to an inability to eliminate toxins. Sweating is a major detoxification process for our bodies, so when we don't exercise regularly we rob our bodies of a natural detoxification process that needs to take place daily.

When our bodies cannot digest and eliminate properly, toxins accumulate and affect weak sites. Weak sites in the body are created through viral and bacterial illness, chemical exposures through personal care products/food/environment/drugs, injury, psychological trauma, and emotional issues. This interaction between genetics and life experience determines how each individual will react to a diet that is incompatible with their body type. For people who are born with a genetic makeup that predisposes them to inflammatory issues, channel blockages caused by poor diet will lead to illnesses such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, fatty liver, ulcerations, acid indigestion, heartburn, urinary incontinence, migraines, high cholesterol, sleep apnea, anxiety, depression, gout, and rheumatoid arthritis. In these types of people, eating an anti-inflammatory diet of only cooked whole foods can resolve these illnesses.

At the same time, channel blockages can cause weight gain due to high stress or poor fat metabolism. High stress alone can cause weight gain, even if someone is eating properly and exercising. So weight gain must be evaluated according to the individual person and their symptoms. By clearing channel blockages, excess weight will naturally metabolize and weight loss will occur.

Further, ideal weight is specific to the individual and should not be evaluated according to BMI. BMI is a standard of measurement developed by a Belgian mathematician 200 years ago. This man was not a health professional and he himself cautioned against using BMI to measure individual obesity.

We should be careful about promoting weight loss as good for everyone. It's just not true.

At the beginning of this year, I decided this was "The Year of Chill", meaning that I am going to continue simplifying my life and letting go of things without fear. I have recently realized that what I really want out of this process of letting go is to move forward in my quest to further align my daily life and work with my authentic nature. In light of these new revelations, I have re-named this "My Year of Fearless Authenticity". I am doing practices every day to help me uncover new truths about myself. I think it is important never to think we " know it all" and can stop looking for new ways to develop. Ego makes us believe that we have arrived at ultimate truth and can no longer learn from life and from one another. But humility allows us to accept that we will never know everything and that we can make life richer by looking for development opportunities in all things. When we are acting from the ego, we see each new social encounter as an opportunity to teach others the "right" way to do things and we take every chance to show how much we know. When we are not acting from the ego, we can be the teacher in a room full of students and feel entirely comfortable with knowing that each one of them can teach us something.

Today I am thinking about manipulative actions. How often am I trying to get what I want from others by doing something that is not authentic to who I am? I am noticing as I reflect on this that manipulation can be done in many subconscious ways. When we accomplish something to get someone else's approval, when we try to manage the eating habits of our spouses "for their own good", when we create our physical image based on getting others to perceive us in a certain way. By becoming conscious of the ways that I exhibit manipulative behaviors, I am allowing myself to become free to love authentically and show my true and beautiful self to the world.

I never thought about manipulation as being unintentional before. I don't intentionally do manipulative things, but I had a conversation with my new friend Anthony Quinata last week and it led me to realize that the definition of what we typically think of as manipulation can really be broadened. By looking deeper, we can uncover patterns of behavior that have built up from past experiences and that currently influence us on a subconscious level. I have had some really amazing insights since that conversation. As someone who thinks a lot more about others than about myself, it is a journey for me to realize how much I can enhance my relationships with everyone by learning more about myself.

Ten Reasons to Learn Ayurvedic Face Reading:

1. Face reading empowers you to see the early signs of disease in yourself just by looking in the mirror.

2. Signs of disease processes taking place in the body can show up on the face many years before symptoms begin.

3. Catching illness early makes treatment easier and increases chances of healing completely.

4. Face reading gives parents a powerful tool to keep track of the health of their children and catch problems early before they become emergencies.

5. Face reading gives health practitioners an additional diagnostic tool that can detect illness before it will show up in lab tests.

6. Face reading allows us to improve our relationships by providing a deeper understanding of friends and loved ones.

7. Face reading gives insight into financial spending habits, how someone handles multitasking, leadership style, and management preferences. Imagine how your work environment could benefit from this knowledge.

8. Being able to read faces can offer insight about coworkers and help to improve work interactions.

9. Knowing how to read faces can make retail careers easier by improving customer interactions. Also, it doesn't hurt to be able to discern the spending habits of a potential customer.

10. Face reading can improve communication with your physician by allowing you to more clearly identify areas of concern, and to communicate your symptoms and needs.

Learn the Science of Ayurvedic Face Reading!

February 26 at Tranquili-Chi Center, 1421 Clarkview Rd, Suite 206, Baltimore MD 21209

The Details:

Everything on the face means something to an Ayurvedic practitioner. All things from the shape of the eyebrows to every line on the face give us information. We can tell basic personality traits, if someone is grieving, if hormonal changes are happening, and if the liver is stressed...all just from observing the face.

The science of face reading is a valuable skill for healing professionals of all types...And for everyone else too! Knowing how to read faces improves communication with coworkers and helps us better understand our romantic partners. For health professionals, face reading gives access to a wealth of information that empowers us to help our patients and clients.

This February 26, I will be teaching a class on Ayurvedic Face Reading at Tranquili-Chi Center. All interested and curious people are encouraged to attend. Class is from 6-8 pm and your learning investment is $35. Register by February 25 by calling Michelle at 703-475-9642 or emailing [email protected]

Hope to see you there!

You all have spoken and I have listened. Over the years, the general consensus about most of the Ayurvedic massage oils out there has been that they are effective for dosha balancing but smell like they are medicinal. In response to those of you who, like myself, enjoy products that are both healing and pleasant to the nose, I have collaborated with Liz Minner of Healing Fields Whole Body Care to create Ayurvedic body oils that have medicinal and aromatherapeutic properties specific to each dosha. In other words, these are oils that smell wonderful and have healing actions. These oils are handcrafted locally in Baltimore from sustainably sourced ingredients. They are bottled in glass, so the containers are reusable and you don't have to worry about plastic leaching into the oil from the packaging. The Vata and Kapha oils are available as of this week.* I have tested both and can confirm their dosha-balancing properties. Pitta oil is coming soon!

*Oils are available for purchase in my space at Ruscombe Mansion for $22 each. Contact me to purchase and arrange pickup at: [email protected]

Ingredients:

Vata Massage Oil: Sesame seed oil, Ashwaganda root, Passionflower leaf, Triphala powder, Ginger root, Rosemary oil, Basil oil, Cedarwood oil (95% organic ingredients).

Kapha Massage Oil: Sunflower seed oil, Olive oil, Holy basil leaf, Ginger root, Mustard seed, Fir needle oil, Juniper berry oil, Black pepper oil, Eucalyptus oil, Manjistha root powder (98% organic ingredients).

Percentage of organic ingredients in each oil will increase with market availability.

Ayurvedic practitioners use dreams to tell us about the underlying psychology of a person. Dreams let us know what dosha is dominating the mental and emotional activity of an individual. Paying attention to your own dreams is one way that you can learn what dosha needs to be balanced for you. Here are some guidelines to help:

Unbalanced Vata causes people to dream about fearful situations and flying. Such dreams include: flying through the air, becoming a bird, being in an airplane, being alone, people chasing you, your romantic partner leaving you, betrayal, any dream scenario in which you feel frightened, insecure, or lonely.

Unbalanced Pitta causes dreams that relate to image, conflict, and career. Such dream scenarios include: being late for something, showing up to an event or place wearing no clothing or being inappropriately dressed, dreaming about your job, failing a test, fire, physical fights, arguments, war, and violence.

Kapha imbalances cause dreams that are full of water and indulgence. Unbalanced Kapha causes dreams such as seeing your own death, drowning, eating lots of sugary foods, or being unable to move quickly.

What are your dreams telling you?