Taking charge of your own health.
What’s the key to deep healing, lasting health, and abundant vitality? OWNERSHIP. Taking ownership of your health and wellbeing will lead to positive, lasting outcomes. Just watch TV for 30 minutes and you’ll see at least one advertisement for a prescription drug that promises to absolve you from that responsibility - just take this pill and you won’t have to make any other changes. Quick fixes and band-aid approaches don’t last. True healing and lasting health only come by addressing root causes, our behaviors, and habits.
This is one of the main reasons I have been drawn to yoga and ayurveda as my predominant health and wellness modalities. Yoga and ayurveda both require that I take an active role in my wellness journey, no one else can do the practices for me. Daily yoga practice and ayurvedic lifestyle have been my primary means of wellness care for several years.
It’s a common belief that life is just passing us by, happening to us. This thinking leads us to believe that our actions don’t really matter that much. Isn’t it the prevailing attitude that common ailments like high blood pressure, heart disease, etc., are just “part of life”? Instead of acting to prevent them, we’ve just accepted them and learned to “live with” them, taking pills and other therapies to mask and control them without ever really addressing causes like diet, sedentary lifestyle, etc. It’s like the saying goes, “if you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten”.
Yoga and ayurveda encourage us to wake up to the present moment, take loving action toward ourselves and others, let go of the outcomes and watch life happen for us. In fact, in his yoga sutra, Patanjali explains karma and samskara. He says all actions (karma) leave impressions (samskara) which arise later and cause further actions (karma). In other words, our actions create our experience in the world. Therefore, if the actions I take are toward health and wellbeing (physical, emotional, and spiritual), health and wellbeing will be my outcome. Pills, therapies, etc. can only mask and cover for so long, eventually, personal responsibility is required. My friend, health coach and yoga teacher, Laura DeMent, described this to me as the “layering approach” - pills and therapeutics are necessary for many, but layered with personal responsibility like movement, healthy diet, meditation, and mindfulness, health and wellness outcomes are vastly improved.
Ayurveda is all about taking personal responsibility. It doesn’t prescribe one set diet, it doesn’t promote one set of actions and routines. Instead, it teaches us to note our day to day experience and consciously take actions to maintain a state of balance and harmony in our physical, mental, and spiritual realms. With mindful awareness and self-responsibility you can enjoy abundant health and vitality throughout your life.
I can help you get started on this path! Contact me today.
