Ayurveda for Seasonal Shifts: Aligning Mind, Body & Spirit with Autumn Energy w/Sasha Bershadsky

Have you ever noticed how your body and mind shift with the changing seasons? There's ancient wisdom in that awareness, and it's the foundation of Ayurveda—a 5,000-year-old healing system that's more relevant than ever in our fast-paced modern world.

In this soul-nourishing conversation, we're joined by Sasha Bershadsky, clinical Ayurveda specialist and founder of Ojas Oasis Ayurveda. Sasha shares her remarkable journey from New York City art director to Ayurvedic practitioner, following what she describes as an undeniable divine calling that came first as a whisper, then grew to an unmistakable resonance "that hit the walls of every cell in my being."

As autumn's crisp air settles around us, we explore why this season is considered Vata time in Ayurveda—characterized by cold, dry, mobile qualities that can leave us feeling scattered, anxious, or physically depleted if we don't adjust our routines. Sasha offers practical, accessible wisdom for staying balanced: the power of warm oil self-massage, the necessity of consistent daily rhythms, the importance of slowing down our exercise routines, and why protecting your sleep becomes even more crucial during this transitional season.

What makes this conversation truly special is how it weaves between philosophical depths and practical applications. We discuss how Ayurveda views disease as simply misalignment with our true nature, the profound connection between emotional processing and physical health, and why understanding your unique constitution is the key to personalized wellness. Sasha's compassionate insights remind us that even when life feels chaotic—like when your storage unit gets broken into during a stressful move—there's wisdom in allowing yourself to fully feel and process those emotions rather than stuffing them down.

Whether you're new to Ayurveda or a seasoned practitioner, this episode offers a warm invitation to align more deeply with nature's rhythms and your own inner wisdom. As Sasha reminds us with her powerful parting words: "You deserve to heal."

Episode Links:

• Listen to Ojas Oasis Podcast: Apple Podcasts & Spotify
• Connect with Sasha on Instagram @sashabershad & @ojasoasis

Thanks for listening to The ModernZen Collective Podcast.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Modern Zen Collective
• 2:11 Meet Sasha: Ayurvedic Specialist
• 6:31 The Divine Calling to Ayurveda
• 16:11 Core Philosophy of Ayurveda
• 26:13 Motherhood and Life Transitions
• 42:29 Processing Life's Challenges Authentically
• 1:07:09 Understanding Vata Season
• 1:12:37 Practical Ayurvedic Rituals for Fall
• 1:25:07 The Importance of Sleep and Routine
• 1:35:26 Seasonal Exercise and Self-Care
• 1:45:54 Finding the Right Ayurvedic Support

Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:13

Hi, I'm Lizzie and I'm Nikki. Have you ever felt that your life was missing purpose, joy or deep connection? Welcome to the Modern Zen Collective podcast, where we embrace holistic living for a joyful, purpose-driven life.

Speaker 1: 0:29

In this podcast, we'll explore holistic practices, consciousness expansion and spiritual alignment. We will dive into personal development practices that connect mind, body, spirit and share secrets that ancient cultures have known for centuries. Together, we aim to guide, educate and connect individuals eager to transform their lives.

Speaker 2: 0:49

Join us weekly on the Modern Zen Collective podcast and elevate your mind, body and spirit. And now on to today's episode.

Speaker 3: 1:11

As the air shifts and the days grow shorter, nature whispers a simple truth that every season has its own rhythm and so do we.

Speaker 3: 1:22

This September on the Modern Zen Collective podcast. We're leaning into the season of harvest and release. Together, we'll explore how to gather the wisdom and blessings we've cultivated this year, gently release what no longer serves us and align our lives with the deeper cycles of nature. From deep conversations on the seasons of life to interviews with holistic wellness practitioners, to practical with holistic wellness practitioners, to practical rituals for letting go, each episode this month is designed to help you move with a natural flow, not against it, because when we honor the season we're in, life unfolds with more clarity, ease and purpose. So welcome and let's get going. So welcome and let's get going. You guys are in for a treat. Today.

Speaker 3: 2:12

I just had the pleasure of interviewing Sasha Bershadsky, who is a clinical Ayurveda specialist, founder of the Ojas Oasis Ayurveda and the host of the Ojas Oasis podcast, and it was absolutely incredible. Sasha graduated from Syracuse University with a BFA in communications design. She completed her first 200-hour yoga teacher training in 2016 while working as an art director in New York City, and it was there that she first heard about Ayurveda, the science of life, and the rest is history. Sasha received her clinical Ayurveda specialist certification at the California College of Ayurveda in 2021, and she's currently in her final year of Ayurvedic doctor program at the Kerala Ayurveda Academy, working remotely with health seekers around the world. You guys are seriously going to love this episode. We were planning on spending way more time on talking about the fall, but you know, as conversations go, we just like to go where the energy is taking us, so I was so happy to have her on today. You guys are going to be hearing more from her as we go through this podcast journey on the Modern Zen Collective, and I know you're going to be hearing more from her as we go through this podcast journey on the Modern Zen Collective, and I know you're going to love this.

Speaker 3: 3:29

So sit back, relax, soak it all up. It's a long one, but it is worth a listen to the end. So thank you again for pressing play today and enjoy. Welcome everyone to another episode of the Modern Zen Collective Podcast. One of your hosts, lizzie Sutton, here with a very exciting practitioner interview to share with you. Today. We have Sasha Bershadsky here, who is a wonderful Ayurvedic coach and guide, and we are going to be talking about all things Ayurveda and fall, so I'm really, really happy to have her here. This is our first time speaking together. So you guys are getting all the juicy goodies of like people connecting for the first time on something that they both really care about. So, Sasha, thank you so much for agreeing to be a part of this today and sharing your wisdom with our listeners.

Speaker 4: 4:29

It's my pleasure. Thank you for having me Very excited.

Speaker 3: 4:31

Absolutely, absolutely so. I believe you met my co-host and co-founder, nikki, at Yoga Six. So how did that all go?

Speaker 4: 4:41

Very organically, as a lot of magical things happen. They happen more and more frequently when you just are tuned in and finding Yoga 6. I hadn't known that there was that studio in my hometown until I saw a girl with a yoga mat walking down the street, basically, and I followed her and I stumbled upon this studio and then I just started going to the classes regularly and the community was lovely and that is where I met Nikki and it all just came together very easily.

Speaker 3: 5:19

It did, it did. So are you based in Chicago right now? I?

Speaker 4: 5:24

am, although I will say I've been very nomadic and continue to indulge in my love of travel. So I am here, you can consider this my home base, but I frequently travel to New York, California, Austin and also India.

Speaker 3: 5:47

California, austin and also India. Yes, yes, oh. I'm I'm so excited to talk all about that because, like just going to the home of Ayurveda, I can't even imagine what that was like. What that was like, and I'd really, you know, I would really be interested in finding out. You know, I want to hear about your story, like behind your journey to Ayurveda.

Speaker 4: 6:04

What was this defining moment that shifted everything for you and you were like Ayurveda doing my first 200-hour yoga teacher training and that was where I first really learned about what Ayurveda was.

Speaker 4: 6:29

And at that time, I think, when I first started the program, I was 27, and I was still working in corporate advertising and I was about to start my Saturn return, which, for those of you who don't know what that is, it's a fun transitional time where, basically, if your soul is not aligned with your mind and body and physical 3D reality, saturn will ensure that it is and will move you internally to the point where you will have you, sort of like forced to figure out how to align everything, forced to figure out how to align everything and going along with that which I knew intuitively I would have to do. At that point in my life, I knew I had a divine calling and that it would be best to just not resist that calling. And then everything changed honestly, I mean physical, geographic location, a relationship ending, career ending or career transitioning, I should say but I consciously decided to lean into it instead of resist that inclination.

Speaker 3: 7:38

How did that show up for you, like how did you know that this was your divine calling? Like how inspiration or that instinct, that inner divinity that we all have, how did that speak to you and how did you know that this is what I should be listening to?

Speaker 4: 7:55

First it was a whisper. It began as a whisper and then it started getting louder and it was undeniable. It really did feel, and it's a challenge to describe an experience that is somewhat intangible to other people who have not had a similar experience. Or you know, just my experience with a divine calling might be different than how someone else might experience it, based on my openness, my ability to allow that voice to take up more space in my consciousness, and less fear and less resistance allows for that vibration to resonate a lot more deeply. So it was a very deep resonance that hit the walls of every cell in my being and beyond. You know, and I, just at a quantum level, knew that it was exactly what I was supposed to pick up from a past life.

Speaker 4: 9:02

And how do I know that knowing? How does anyone know anything? You know it's, it's like it's, it's beyond the mind. It's not a logical or practical decision to upend your life and start, you know, studying, something that is still quite unknown in the West. But there is a space beyond the mind that is very clear, very simple, and if you can get there, if you allow yourself to get there, you just know it's what you have to do. You know it's where you have to go. Whatever it takes, you reach this. I would say a clarity actually the word would be clarity that is very important to make a big decision like that. You don't want to make a big life decision like that in a state of panic or desperation or confusion. You want to make it in a very calm way and in order to do that, you have to get into a state of consciousness where you know this is going to be really freaking hard and crazy and insane. And here we go, buckle up didn't fail you on that.

Speaker 3: 10:27

You know, nikki and I we met during COVID on an online membership community and have been connected ever since. But we both had the same thing happen. Where I was in corporate America, worked for transportation over the road, like trucking, I mean, something that I never would have done. I just kind of fell into it and it was just so soul sucking. Like I was just so soul-sucking. I was legitimately exhausted at the end of every day. I stopped cooking for myself, I stopped doing anything because it was my first office job.

Speaker 3: 10:54

Like you, I was very nomadic. I went to school for Parks and Recreation, so I lived in nine different states. By the time I was 23 and just ended up in Texas and fell into this job and worked there for eight years. And you know, when you've worked there for so long, like you can do it with your eyes closed by the end of it. It's like so easy. You're just, you're just going through the motions and the flexibility was great, the pay was great, all this stuff was so great. But I had just no passion for it and like no interest in it. And, funny enough, the same thing for me Yoga, teacher training, 200 shifted everything.

Speaker 3: 11:34

And, following those little breadcrumbs, to even get me into the yoga teacher training with the specific teacher I had at the specific time. Like all of that just shifted everything and I think those of you who do yoga you understand that it's, or have gone through yoga teacher training, which is not just for teachers, it's for personal practice too. It's a, it's a lifestyle. Yoga is a lifestyle. It's not, it's not an exercise. It is something that changes how yoga teacher training and those like 10 simple habits that she gives to like kind of shift yourself into, like living with more ease. But I would love for you, you know, for our listeners who are new to Ayurveda, like how would you describe its core philosophy?

Speaker 4: 12:40

Well, ayurveda's core philosophy is that every human being a full lifespan is 100 years, and we should all be able to live our full capacity and potential when we are aligned with our true nature.

Speaker 4: 12:58

So the presence of disease is nothing more than misalignment with your true nature, and so going on the path of Ayurveda is the path of aligning yourself and figuring out what is my nature, first of all, and where am I right now? How did I lose my way right now that is causing these symptoms to show up, or these conditions or diseases, or this chronic anxiety, this chronic constipation, this chronic immune response, whether it's allergies, it could be digestion related, it could be so many different things, skin related. So, yeah, it's important to note that Ayurveda sees the mind and body as one system, not two separate systems. This term psychosomatic keeps popping up in a lot of places, but it's not a new concept, it's just a new. You know, sometimes they rebrand an ancient concept. You know sometimes they rebrand an ancient concept, but it's been around. We know that somatic behaviors and psychological behaviors have always mirrored one another. Now they're saying, oh, the gut is the second brain.

Speaker 4: 14:16

We always knew that in, ayurveda is the ancient medical system that stems out of India and it is the sister science to yoga. It's been around long before it was written. It used to be an oral tradition passed on from generation to generation, usually within the families. So one Vaidya would have a child and pass it to them as they were growing up, and that was how Ayurveda was preserved throughout the centuries. And then they started writing it down. People's memories weren't as strong and we also just wanted to protect and preserve the knowledge. And it's managed to survive against all the odds, which tells you something about its efficacy, because certainly we know many, many health fads have not stood the test of time. If something has lasted thousands of years, there's something there, and it's really a deep way of understanding not only yourself but everything around you every person, plant, animal, star, blade of grass how to interact with those things in a way that brings you closer to your true core essence, which is bliss.

Speaker 3: 15:41

I feel like that can be such a foreign concept for people that, like we are meant to be blissful, joyful, aligned, abundant beings. And I feel like a lot of people in this day and age see like it's always win, lose, like somebody wins and somebody loses, but I feel like in yoga and Ayurveda it's like everybody wins, like everything there's enough for everyone. There is an infinite abundance available to us, and we are the ones that limit our access to that. I don't know if you feel like that too, but that's kind of how I feel about it all.

Speaker 4: 16:56

I love that it's. Also Ayurveda sees this incarnation as a continuation of a soul that's traveling through many different lifetimes. Sometimes the limitations that we're perceiving are the very samskaras, which are the assignments that we incarnated in these particular circumstances to transcend. So it's important to see the opportunity in every obstacle, in every perceived limitation. That's exactly why we're here meet those challenges and break those patterns and have fun in the process Although sometimes that can be its own challenge to have fun when you're tumbling around in the tornadoes of life. But those tornadoes start to not feel like tornadoes anymore. Yeah, Just like a downward dog starts to not feel so hard after the 10th yoga class.

Speaker 3: 17:27

Yeah, I think I was listening to one of your episodes and I believe you said that yoga was the practice to help us build resilience. And it's so interesting because when I first started my yoga journey, I took a few classes here and there when I was little with my mom, but I was actually in college and I signed up for a yoga class for like a credit. And it's so funny, it was on Tuesday nights and sometimes I'd be just all caught up with my friends and I'd be like, oh my gosh, I'm going to be late and I would grab all my stuff and I would run down this hill. I mean, I'm going to be late and I would grab all my stuff and I would run down this hill. I mean I was going to the University of Utah for my junior year on exchange. I went to University of Wilmington, north Carolina, but I was just there for the year to do all the adventure outdoor things and I would run to yoga and I would get there and I'd be, like you know, all huffing and puffing and all like intense.

Speaker 3: 18:23

And I learned that it would take me like half of class to just calm down, to like get to be present and focused on the mat when I was rushing there, but when I had the time to just walk there and then get there, it was like I could just get to that place of being present and focused and in my body right away, and just that it taught me so much about how I was operating that I was always I've always kind of been one of those like high energy people.

Speaker 3: 19:00

You know, I just wake up with all this natural energy and when I was in high school it felt very spastic, like, very spazzy, and I almost like I look back and I'm like how did I even have any friends, like how could they be around someone that was like so on 10 all the time and it was just so crazy because yoga taught me how to slow down, like, how to even be in like a very chill, calm space when that's not how I naturally am.

Speaker 3: 19:37

It was so interesting and even like being an athlete my whole life, the stuff that I learned in yoga about my body and how to like send breath places and how to understand what was available to me that day in that moment and what wasn't. You know, some days I had better balance. Some days I had better able to focus on my breath as I moved. It was just. It was very interesting about. The connection that I was able to make between my mind, body and yoga was unlike anything I'd ever been taught or had experienced, even being an athlete, from three years old all the way into my 20s.

Speaker 4: 20:23

Right, you're still getting from point A to B, but the journey looks very different and it feel. Most importantly, it feels very different. It's not just an endless. Let's get there so that we can get to the next thing, so that we can get to the next thing. It's this, is it right now, and how you do one thing is how you do everything. So, yes, it does start to show up the more you practice.

Speaker 4: 20:50

You can't unsee and you'll notice when you're falling back into the old patterns. If they pop back up. That's not abnormal. We shouldn't shame ourselves or feel like we're digressing in any way. Those old patterns, like, for you, for example, the frenetic energy that sounds like Vata energy, right, like very excited, enthusiastic, all over the place, bouncing around, that can be exacerbated, especially during Vata season, right.

Speaker 4: 21:22

Or the Vata time of day between 2 pm and 6 pm, or 2 am and 6 am, which is when some people note having insomnia, waking up at 2 am they don't know why. Well, that's Vata time of night, right. And the Vata time of the menstrual cycle. Women are lunar beings, men are solar, we're lunar, so we look to what is the phase of the moon, what is the phase of our current cycle. If we're in that vata stage where everything's moving very, very quickly, we're also going to start feeling anxious but also that can be anxious to start projects. You really just want to get going on things, but then another tab opens. You want to start another one, and then another one, and then before you know it, you've got 50 tabs open and you're overwhelmed because you were so excited you didn't realize you signed up for 50 things and they're all due at the same time because you got so ahead of yourself. Right, that is textbook Vata.

Speaker 3: 22:28

Vata Psyche, because you got so ahead of yourself. Right, that is textbook vata, vata psyche. It's so interesting that you like immediately picked up on that because when I went through my yoga teacher training and we took the little quiz, you know, on what your dosha is and all that kind of stuff, and your prakriti versus your vikruti and all that kind of stuff, I was looking at all my ailments, like you were saying, all my chronic conditions from growing up Eczema, like severe eczema, severe allergies. I mean I would wake up with blood under my fingernails because I would be itching, you know, like the cracks in my arms, the backs of my knees, my neck, and I would be doing it in my sleep. You know I was like I got teased, like people would call me alligator skin, like alligator legs and stuff, because my skin just looked like scaly on my legs because it was so dry. And when I took that quiz and I like put all my ailments on there, I was like holy shit, these are all connected. Like these are all vata. This is like my vata was through the roof and everything else was way down, like there was no kapha to be seen anywhere. You know, there's like there's some pitta, like I'm a vata pitta. Like I'm a vata body, pitta mind, but like my vata was so thrown off. I'm a vata body, pitta mind, but like my vata was so thrown off.

Speaker 3: 23:46

And here I was, as a child, being dosed up with steroids on a regular basis. Like I was on steroids for an entire summer one time plus steroid shots, because I was a camp counselor and a lot of my allergies were like environmental as well as food allergies I was doing so I was on like a steroid cream. I just had all these medicine, western medicine, things to try and help me deal with what I was going through and I felt so uncomfortable in my own body, just like itchy, fidgety, sneezy, just like just uncomfortable all the way through my 20s and, honestly, like I found this company here in Texas that's called ID Life that does natural supplementation and I took this quiz and they recommended based on everything like diet, lifestyle, all these different things, and it recommended this, these supplements, and I took them like am and pm. You know it was very much based off of when your body could absorb fish oil. I was taking fish oil in the morning all the time, had no idea it wasn't doing anything for me, because your body only digested at night, you know. And so I got on this and this holistic way through nutrition healed me Like I have. I don't have eczema anymore. I don't experience my allergies, like seasons change here in Texas very crazy in fall and spring where, like everyone gets sick, for a few weeks I don't get sick anymore, like I very rarely get sick.

Speaker 3: 25:22

And it was just that is kind of what started me on this holistic view of how we can heal ourselves. And if I would have seen someone that was versed in Ayurveda when I was younger, all of this could have been figured out much earlier for me in my life, rather than me having to search as an adult, search it and just happening to find something. It was so. You know, like you said, everything happens for a reason. That was obviously one of the things I needed to learn. You know that we can heal ourselves in a holistic, nutritional mind-body-spirit. Everything's connected. These aren't individual ailments, but they're all one thing. I am just so high off in one category that all these things are showing up. It's the symptoms. So I'm like I'm super excited to talk to you about, about what's what we're stepping into right now, with autumn as the vata season, because for me I'm always so high vata that I have to focus and make sure that I'm doing other things to like. Bring that back into balance with my pitta and kapha.

Speaker 4: 26:38

Can I jump in and just say I want you to know that you are not alone at all with your like. Your story reminds me of many people, I think, in our generation who are all searching for answers and not wanting to rely on habit forming medicines or just symptom maskers or things that just are, you know, like topical steroids. That will sure it'll make it go away for that season, but it'll come back the next season and then you'll have to and and diversify and get harder and harder to treat, the deeper the imbalance goes into the tissues. And one other thing I wanted to say was you said a really good word, which is holistic, but I don't know if everyone it's a very. It's a lovely word seeing you know treatment as a whole in a holistic way. But I want to be clear about what it means to be a holistic science, which is that we are seeing not the disease or the symptom. We're seeing the human being being with, for example, with the eczema, the human being. What's going on in this person's family? What's going on in this person's work environment? What is when they, what is their commute like on the way home? How far are they? How like, what are the? What's the context of this incarnation, that's that is coming to me for healing.

Speaker 4: 28:25

And to go back to the one of the first questions you asked, like what made you resonate or what made you really want to go into this work. Hearing stories like yours, I hear, I can envision, I can visualize this little girl being teased at school. It breaks my heart, like it absolutely. I am very sensitive, I'm an empath, very sensitive to the suffering of others and when I hear that, I just think that I can't have that. I have to do something like I have to help.

Speaker 4: 29:00

You know I can't just that. That's not okay, that shouldn't be. You know, a the bullying is not OK, but be just like chronic. You know, itching, bleeding, waking up with blood, all that for like a child, to be suffering like that. You know, and we have the information, we have the knowledge and it's time to empower ourselves and help the next generation so they don't have to spend so much of their 20s or 30s, early adulthood or even later in their lives studying, looking for answers, digging, doing all this research. I think we have that covered and it's such a dharma to step into that responsibility and to realize my training. A lot of the things that I've done yes, they have in tandem. They've helped me in my healing journey.

Speaker 4: 30:02

But making your life about something bigger than yourself, I think, is also a really important distinction in what's happening in the state of consciousness right now on planet Earth. I do feel that more people are wanting a deeper sense of purpose and seeing all the suffering that's going on in the world and really wanting to be part of the healing that needs to happen to stop not just the war here or the fight there or the, you know, the daily. It's not so much that as it is, we have this pattern of history repeating itself, like the school shootings that just happened, again in another town, in another school, in another, just over and over. So what is that pointing us toward? It's pointing us toward a much deeper imbalance in the consciousness of our society. That wouldn't be happening in a healthy society. Why are kids doing that? Maybe we need to be talking to kids about why they think that's happening Right, so not to get super, super duper serious, but all of it is connected. Trusting your calling leads you inevitably to being part of the solution.

Speaker 4: 31:31

And if you hear a story like yours for example, lizzie is about a child with chronic eczema and being bullied about it I mean kids are being bullied all the time for all different sorts of health issues, whether it's emotional or academic or physical or something like acne or some other skin condition. Kids can be really, really cruel and it just perpetuates more and more of the same types of it just perpetuates more and more of the same types of behavior later on in life. So I just wanted to draw attention toward you know, when we say holistic, it's not just your skin. It was also. You were, you know, traumatized by the way that your classmates treated you.

Speaker 4: 32:24

Because of that too, there was a double whammy there. It wasn't just a, it wasn't, it's not. It's never as simple as one dimensional, it's never just one thing. And now I'm not saying you do have a lifelong complex of skin or fear of anything, but it can turn into that if all we're doing continually is masking symptoms and numbing and not talking about it and not facing it head on. We have to, we absolutely have to look at the full 360, like you said, and that word holistic. I wanted to go into many detailed examples of why that's important.

Speaker 3: 33:14

Yes, yeah, it's so true. And it's funny because even though I feel very comfortable in my skin now, I feel great. That kept coming up for me as I grew up At camp. In at camp we would do like funny skits for the kids and like pretend to be each other. They would like throw their leg up and start itching their legs, you know, like to pretend to be me and stuff like that. And then later in life I was in Sedona for my first time at a bachelorette and cosmically we ended up in this guy's front yard in his camper doing a tarot reading the first time I'd ever done one.

Speaker 3: 33:48

That's the don't for you. Yeah right, and he drew, we drew an animal medicine card and I love the animal medicine deck, like I just feel so connected to it. And he, I drew the alligator and I wanted him to like tell me what it meant. And he's like he's, before we got into it he goes what does the alligator mean to you? And I like told him that story about when I was on the playground and this girl was teasing me about like my alligator skin and all this stuff and he was like wow, he's like thank you so much for sharing that with me. And then, based on my experience with that animal, that word, that thing that popped into my head, it was just so personal what he got from that and what I was able to get from him and how I was able to then change how I see an alligator now. You know what I mean. I don't think about my legs or any of that when I see an alligator now. You know what I mean. I don't think about my legs or any of that when I see an alligator now. But it's so interesting how these things can kind of follow you through life and it is like a trauma, you know, in a way to where I had to learn how to like, transmute it, you know, and turn it into something else. So, yeah, it's I.

Speaker 3: 35:08

One thing I was looking at before Sasha and I got on here was her podcast, which is wonderful. It's like all things Ayurveda, you guys. She goes into detail about every single little piece you could even think to want to ask or know and she has so many world-renowned, amazing master teachers on there that she interviews. So we will 100% be linking her podcast for you guys to check out. But I saw this three-part series that she did on Ayurveda and kids.

Speaker 3: 35:51

Um, on Ayurveda and kids and being a kid that had issues in the home, issues in my body, just anger issues like all these different things.

Speaker 3: 36:00

I feel really passionate about changing things early, like getting people while they're working with kids, like getting to the kids and helping them work through all this now, instead of having to be 20, 30, 40 years old and realizing that that subconscious programming is like affecting every single thing and having to work so hard to like, undo and then relearn. Like healthy habits, you healthy habits and healthy ways of dealing with this. I'm so excited to listen to those three-part series, especially now that I have kids, I want to be the best teacher, the best mom I can be for them and, like you said, once you know, once you see, you can't unsee, and I know that Ayurveda is the way for me to make sure that they are individually taken care of and healthy in a whole person way. And so I'm actually very excited to dive into that three-part series that you have and learn more about how I can be that person for my kids.

Speaker 4: 37:13

And because you have that son called Belizzi, you already are a great mom. You know. Just so you know, it starts with that deep-seated intention of the way that we approach a role, whatever that role is, if that's to be a mom, if that's to be a friend, if that's to be a teacher, and it is coming from your heart, rest assured, you will be, you will and you already are, because that pure of an intention comes from the purity of truth itself. So you're resonating with that because it's already within you.

Speaker 3: 37:56

Thank you, I love that. Thank you for saying that. Yeah, I honestly felt like it was just when I said yes to having kids, or yes to like having my son, my first one. It was like the number one thing, like everything else has to become lower on the totem pole, lower on the list, like things have to drop down, and the decisions I've made since having kids are not the decisions that I thought I would have made as younger version of me. And it's really interesting because I feel like you don't know what you're going to do until you're there, until you're in it, and you're like everything has shifted for me now that I've had kids, like my brain's changed, my body's changed, everything's changed, and I'm not the woman I was before. I'm not the maiden anymore, like I am this different person. I'm the same but I'm different.

Speaker 3: 39:11

And like allow being flexible enough to allow your plans to change and your mindset to change and allow the choices you make to change. I think is just so important because we get, we can get, and I have, in the past, for sure, caught up so much in this plan. I'm going to do A, b, c, d and E and it's going to get me to this thing that I've wanted you know, and being more flexible with how that path takes you to that thing that you're wanting to create. And maybe it's not the thing that you end up manifesting, maybe it's the feeling that you wanted to have, because you thought that thing was going to bring you that feeling Right, exactly. You know, it's just so. It's so interesting how you just we need to just let go of the reins.

Speaker 4: 40:04

You know, the truth is is that we're all winging it. We have an idea of what we anticipate will likely happen, and then life happens. So, whether you've anticipated the current moment or not, it's here and we want to allow that to occur with as much ease. We certainly don't want dis-ease, consistence to the moment. That's lack of ease. Everything becomes hard. Moving with life becomes hard because you're closed, rigid and you think you have a better idea of how things should go Right.

Speaker 3: 40:50

Yeah, that last piece is totally key, Like we know best, Right, Like fuck all y'all and all the plans you think we have. Like I know how this is going to go and I'm going to make sure it goes that way.

Speaker 4: 41:03

Mm-hmm, yes, yes, and instead I'll invite you to entertain the possibility that the universe wants way better for you than you could possibly imagine. So if you loosen the grip and allow some magic in, you might be surprised. It might be better than anything you could have planned yourself.

Speaker 3: 41:26

I love that, I love that and that that's so funny. That's actually my word for this year is magic. That was like my word for 2025, magic. And I totally feel that this year I do.

Speaker 3: 41:37

I like, I really do feel that I might forget sometimes, but then I feel like that, that practice of gratitude and like taking a moment and being like noticing the beauty in what's happening around you, whether that's the environment or the interactions or just where you are in that moment, like that always kind of brings me back to this is magical.

Speaker 3: 42:05

Like this moment right here is something that I've always wanted for myself. Like being out here on the land with my kids, dirty as hell, swimming in the mud, naked. You know, like you're just like, oh my gosh, this is what I've always wanted. You know, a life of freedom that I can create for them to just have as much fun as they possibly can right now in nature. You know, and you're like man, this is it, this is what. I didn't know how I was going to get here, but I'm here and this is happening. So, thank you, thank you. You know, it's like thank you to the, to the divinity that's all around, to source, to universe, and thank you to that, that inner divinity that has guided me to this moment me to this moment, and what a perfect topic for the fall equinox because, or the upcoming fall equinox, because you mentioned the word change a few times.

Speaker 4: 43:09

How much life can change. Your plans can change. You've changed since becoming a mom your sense of self, the way that your brain is working, the way your body feels. A lot of things change when you step into different initiations of life. That's going to look different for everybody.

Speaker 4: 43:28

Certainly, the people who become parents feel that super like, immediately, like even when you, you know, find out that you're pregnant. It kind of starts in that moment of okay, we've got nine months, the clock has started, you know Now, what? Now, what are we doing here? So we laugh, but we know, we all deep down understand that this concept of always having to feel like you're ready for things. I don't know how real that is and I think what yoga teaches, what Ayurveda teaches, is that flexibility of not always, especially for those pittas out there who feel like they have to hit the mark every time and be perfect A plus student, a plus mom, a plus lawyer, whatever, whatever you, you know your profession is, but you feel like you need to show up with all the edges, refined, polished, looking perfect all the time, have it, have it together, and that's exhausting and it's not sustainable. And you don't necessarily have to push yourself to that extent to meet every single moment in what you perceive to be perfection, because that can also drive disease, like 100%, that will lead to burnout, that will lead to resentment, that will lead to all different kinds of mess. So, as the responsibilities of life continue to accumulate or shift and a lot of change is happening at once, which it normally when it rains, it does pour for a lot of us. I'm in it right now. Mm, hmm, yeah, it's a season and we're about to go into an eclipse and there's just all this complex energy that is invisible, but we feel it, but most people don't have the language to articulate or understand it deeply enough to make peace with it.

Speaker 4: 45:33

And I think that's the beauty of having podcasts and that's why I do, as you've mentioned, have a podcast that is all about relaying Ayurvedic wisdom in a way that's actually going toi in 2025 in the United States of America, with the current conditions as they are, you know, and the answer is yes, but you're going to have to be okay with reality every single moment, which is a very, I mean. And that includes when you do feel like a mess and you are showing up like a mess, but guess what? You're still showing up and that's the only thing that matters. And you can cry and you can scream, but what I don't, what Ayurveda teaches is do not repress your natural urges, don't stuff it, don't pretend like everything is fine. You need to be fully authentic with every moment and not accumulate or repress the energies that are coming up for you.

Speaker 4: 46:54

And if you feel anxious and scared and overwhelmed you said another really great word transmute. Another version of that is alchemize it. How can you transform, use that energy directed in a way that's actually going to get you somewhere productive, and sometimes that productivity is leading you toward the bed, leading you toward the bed. Lay your ass down, take a few deep breaths, put one hand on your heart, one hand on your belly, take five minutes and just center yourself in all of it and let yourself feel the insanity that is life sometimes. And if you can laugh too, like laugh at it, have a sense of humor, that will save you too.

Speaker 4: 47:38

That always takes the edge off because it's there. They've they've created some amazing memes out there on social media about when you, when you're on the spiritual path and you're working on yourself and you're doing the healing, and you thought it was going to look all glamorous and easy. And then you're out there and the waves are flipping your boat over like again and again and again, and you're just like this is this can't be right. I thought I thought I was on the heat like the zen healing yogi. What do you mean? I don't know. That's exactly what it looks like. Don't worry, you're doing it right.

Speaker 3: 48:14

That's what it looks like I love, I like seriously love that we're having this conversation right now, because that has been like my past like three, four days. It has just been so hard and kind of like you're saying, I've been experiencing some things that have hit me in some ways, where I wanted to cry and I didn't, or like I started to cry and then I kind of like you know, like sucked it up and I was like I'm just not in a good place right now to cry or like not like the environment, you know, or it's not a good, it's not a good time right now to cry, and we had our storage unit broken into the other day. We had just sold our house, moved out of our house All of our stuff is in the storage unit into the other day. We had just sold our house, moved out of our house, all of our stuff is in the storage unit. It was a few days ago, it was Monday we went there, or Tuesday, it was Tuesday, it was two days ago.

Speaker 3: 49:15

My husband sent me the video. I'm literally in the most yogi thing right now. I was at a cold plunge place, I was at Sweat House, I was doing cold plunge and red light therapy with my friend and all this infrared sauna. And I watched this video that my husband sent me of our storage unit with everything all over the place, all the boxes ripped into all the stuff, and I just started crying and it was just like everything kind of hit me at once and I go there, we call the police. I end up sitting there at the storage unit for five and a half hours waiting for the freaking police to come to take Like I've got two kids under three with me, they don't care, nobody cares. I cried off and on Like my husband took the kids while I sat in my car and waited for them to come for the entire time. And then I got home to our in-laws' house because we don't have a home right now and I cried myself to sleep and I was sobbing. I mean this was like an uncontrollable cry and I let it all come and I let it all out and I was trying to tell my husband I'm like I know this is stuff. This isn't just about this, this is about all these things that have been piling up and I'm finally able to like release it, to release all these things that I've kind of been holding onto over the past month. We're also putting down one of our dogs tomorrow, so like our oldest dog. So it's kind of like you're saying when it rains, it pours. It's like all these things kind of stacking on top of one another.

Speaker 3: 50:51

And my husband's so funny, Like you know, we're into all of this. He lets me do my thing. He, he like I tell him things. He's like yeah, yeah, he doesn't understand probably half the stuff I'm telling him. But he's like can you just take a deep breath? And I'm like no, and he's like just take.

Speaker 3: 51:09

He's like now, don't be doing your tiger breath, but do your butterfly breathing. You know. He's like kind of like you know what I mean. And like they're like not anything. I'm like that's nothing, you know, like those aren't breath works.

Speaker 3: 51:21

But like he's heard me talk about like lion's breath or different things, because I did like a whole thing about that for 8-8 Lionsgate and I'm like it, just like it made me laugh, like you said, it like kind of made me laugh. And he's like you need to work on your Zen. And I'm like you're right, babe. I'm like thanks for holding down the Zen right now, because I got none in me in this moment today, like I just don't have it, you know. And it's so funny because I feel like, even though we can be these people who are on this path, who have done the teacher trainings, learned the things we help people with, the things, we can forget the tools too when we get caught up in it. And like the only thing that I could do that I knew to do, was to let myself feel what was happening and just sit in it and let it all come and let it all go. And I did feel better the next morning, not great. But then by the afternoon, like yesterday afternoon, I'm like smiling and kind of like bouncing. You're like I'm. I got the bounce back, you know, but I don't think I would have been able to get it back in 24 hours if I didn't just let myself cry for four hours the day before. I had not had a good cry like that in a. I can't even remember the last time, but it was just like so fully like body consuming and just like.

Speaker 3: 52:50

I remember driving home from the storage unit by myself. It was like 940 at night, everybody's already sleeping and I'm just, I'm like why I'm like, seriously, I never really talk out loud to the universe, like it's normally like an internal dialogue, and I actually was speaking out loud and I was like what are you trying to teach me right now? Like what am I? Why am I experiencing this in this moment? What do you want me to learn? What is it? What is it? Because I'm here, what is it? You're listening? And then I just kept driving. I wasn't in a place to hear, I really wasn't in a place for it to tell me. I was trying to be in a place to tell me, but I really just wanted to be like what is it? What is it, what is it? And so I just went home and I I cried myself to sleep and and and I haven't given myself, I think, the stillness and the silence yet to hear what it has been what, what I'm supposed to be learning right now, what I'm supposed to be learning right now.

Speaker 3: 54:01

But I think, even in that, like interaction with my husband, it's like it's okay to not always have yourself together and even though you may be a teacher, you're always learning and you're never going to have it all together and you're going to revert back. Like you said, it's not backpedaling, I'm not going backwards, because I couldn't catch myself in these moments to give myself the healthy 4-4 breathing practice, or 4-8 breathing, that I've been trained to do with other people. It's like leaning on somebody else can sometimes be the thing that we need to do, and they may not be someone you normally would think that would offer you that wisdom.

Speaker 4: 54:47

It's definitely not linear and we don't live in a monastery. We live in a world where storage units get broken into and we have to stay at our parents-in-law's home and we don't like everything you're describing. That's not an ashram, that's not a monastery, that's not a temple like this is lots of flux, lots of change, lots of movement, displacement, things are being taken, I mean unexpected things are being thrown and I think the grace is the fact that you felt safe enough to feel all of that. Sometimes it's as simple as wow.

Speaker 4: 55:37

I am so blessed that I because if you didn't feel that absolute core sense of root chakra, home, safety, family you wouldn't allow yourself to have a day of crying, you would power through it, it would destroy you over a long period of time and it would keep driving itself deeper and deeper into you and you wouldn't know why you were always angry all the time or why, like, little things bugged you, you wouldn't have as much patience. But because you do have that basic, fundamental, core sense of safety, which is grace and actually fundamentally, that is what a home is, that's that's and having things taken, but the things, that things can be very sentimental, especially when they represent things like home and family. So it's not just stuff. That stuff has energy in it. You lived with it right.

Speaker 4: 56:56

So it's very difficult to accept. Wasn't our choice right? That was not your choice getting rid of those things? It wasn't a garage sale, it was a violation. So that feels like a major disruptor, major major shock to the system. And it's so sweet that you have a partner that is supportive and will do their best, even if they don't know all the terminologies, but they know you, he knows you well enough to know what you need to hear. And even just his presence right, letting you fall apart, that's the divine masculine, allowing the feminine to break open, to feel all that and emerge even stronger once she's done with that. Now you're fine, right? I mean it's not like you're all everything's perfect and roses today, but that's taking okay. You felt all that. You let that energy move and here you are today and it's another new day and you feel better. And now it's like a rebuilding process or like a reassessing. Now what needs to happen? Now you can like, handle, but if we don't allow emotions to move, they stay stuck. And when they stay stuck, that's not good.

Speaker 4: 58:31

That's real crisis. The body will start letting you know it's in crisis mode because it's now. It's.

Speaker 4: 58:37

Nothing is ever supposed to stay stuck that's the major lesson of vata is movement is important, uh, but we need to ensure, especially during the season, that we're not over drying and we're not you you know overly cold. When we freeze up, everything constricts, the blood vessels constrict, all the channels close right, so the blood flow isn't happening properly and digestion isn't happening properly, metabolic functioning hormones, all that Everything starts to get disrupted. So, looking at life as like you're participating in a much bigger play and you don't need to know why your storage unit got broken into play, and you don't need to know why your storage unit got broken into, but you can integrate the bigger lesson of life just keeps going. Life just keeps moving. The sun keeps coming up in the morning and then setting, and then the moon, and then it just changes constant. Death is constant, transformation is constant.

Speaker 4: 1:00:00

So some of it we anticipate, some not never in our wildest dreams, but also sometimes never in our wildest nightmares. You know it's like. This is quite the nightmare being, you know, holed up at a storage unit waiting five and a half hours with two babies and a car for the police. You know all the it's not a dream scenario hold up at a storage unit, waiting five and a half hours with two babies in a car for the police. You know all the it's not a dream scenario, but in that moment, in those nightmare moments, the grace is knowing that it's grace. Like okay, how is this grace? How can this also? This is also the divine loving me. How is this the divine loving me? How is this supportive in any way, shape or form? Right now this doesn't feel very nice.

Speaker 4: 1:00:45

It's not a warm hug, but it's an opportunity to practice detachment and it's an opportunity to practice awareness of that which does not change, because if there's so many things that change, there must be something that does not. And if there are so many elements of the home that can be taken, there must be certain elements of the home that cannot be taken.

Speaker 3: 1:01:10

I love that. I would have never thought about it in that way. I'm so glad that you said that.

Speaker 4: 1:01:19

And this is what an Ayurveda session looks like. By the way, this is exactly what it is. It's the integration of the knowledge and disciplines, of the elements, their qualities, and then real life, because it's not very valuable if it's just theoretical, but as soon as you're able to integrate it and live it and see it and have these eureka moments, it's a lifeline and it's meant to grow. This knowledge is not supposed to stay in ancient India 10,000 years ago. We need it right now. We need it to work for us today. So it's growing because, look, I mean, it's in the United States, it's not in India anymore, you know, it's not just in one country anymore, it's spreading, which just goes to show that which is needed will find a way always to reach the people, to reach the people, and sometimes we realize, some of us may realize, oh, we're conduits for it. Like I don't even.

Speaker 4: 1:02:28

Sometimes I go into these, you know, podcast conversations or sessions with my patients. I'm not even really sure who's speaking. I'm like who? Who is this sage coming through? I don't, who is this person? I forget, I, I, I don't even. It's not me. I mean, maybe it's me, but it's part of me, but it's not the ego certainly. It's definitely the soul speaking, but it's also the soul joining, which is what yoga is. It's like this re reunion with this divine intelligence that just starts to connect everything in this perfect way. And I'm not overthinking what I'm saying and I'm not overanalyzing what you've shared with me. It's more huh, I can see it. How can I see it? Because I'm allowing the divine to tell me what's going on, and I think that is another thing that separates Ayurvedic doctors from all other types of healthcare practitioners, because so much of it is becoming an instrument for the divine to be the mirror for you to heal yourself. To be the mirror for you to heal yourself.

Speaker 4: 1:03:40

So we are a mirror. We're not here to abracadabra. Here's your bottles of herbs and here's your bottle of oil and here's your magic potions, and you're going to go home and everything in your life is going to be perfect. No, but it's a way of allowing you to see yourself very clearly, with compassion, which sometimes it's all you need.

Speaker 3: 1:04:16

Yeah, I've never had an Ayurvedic session before, so this is great. Oh, welcome, I love it. I love it so much. But I really like how you said you know we need to be able to bring this into our life, you know, in a practical way, and that's kind of what you've been sharing through your podcast and bringing it back to the United States.

Speaker 3: 1:04:43

I know you've made the trip to India what like four times, how many times, three times and studied with these Ayurvedic teachers and all this stuff.

Speaker 3: 1:04:51

So it's really wonderful that you're able to go over experience where it's come from, from the people, and bring it back here to us, because we do live a different life here in the United States than they do in India, in any country.

Speaker 3: 1:05:09

Every country kind of has its own culture, its own way that people move, its own way, that people think Even state to state here is different, think even state to state here is different. So I really I really like that you talked about like the practicality of Ayurveda in like modern times now, and so I would really like to get into that, because that's something that Nikki and I really like to share with people is we can talk about these things all day long, but if we don't give you any ways to incorporate what you're learning into your life, then, like we're not doing a very good job of helping you, you know, change what you're learning into your life, then we're not doing a very good job of helping you change what you want to change, what you're ready to change in this moment. So, before we talk about the practical tools, like Ayurvedic tools, that you would recommend for this season, why is fall or autumn even considered Vata season?

Speaker 4: 1:06:00

Because summer is Pitta season and summer is the aggravation of heat in the body because it's as without so within, so as within so without. So we are just mirroring what's going on outside of ourselves, in our environment and as the weather drops and gets colder. Vata is composed of air and ether and that's already a cold combination. It's already cold and dry, air and ether. So just think about, like when you wake up first thing in the morning and imagine just gulping like a liter of cold ice, cold water on an empty stomach and how bloated you would probably feel. Right after that. You wouldn't feel good because your metabolic fire is really, really vulnerable. It's very fragile first thing in the morning. You're just waking up, you're not very hungry yet, you don't have an appetite yet. You're just kind of warming up the body first.

Speaker 4: 1:07:04

So if you go from hot to cold, vata gets aggravated and all that heat of the summer also created a lot of dryness. Whether we realized it or not, being in the sun for the whole summer, heat sustained turns to dryness. So now we've got this cold, dry body and the weather is getting more cold and more dry and if we eat the same foods that we were eating in the summer we're going to continue to get more dry and cold because we can't really get away with the smoothies and the salads and the raw nuts and the chips that we were able to get away with in the summer. We can't really get away with that anymore. Cold out we want soup, right. We want seasonal vegetables, want those squashes and just warm, you know, milk lattes. Like in the summer, you're going to get an iced coffee more likely, right, cold-pressed juice. That's not what the doctor's ordering for fall.

Speaker 4: 1:08:12

It's a very very different time of year, so to support the body we have to balance the cold and dry and mobile. That's another thing is this time of year, so much is changing in the environment and I also believe the days are getting shorter so we have to fit a lot more into the day before the sun. We feel like we don't have as much time, so we feel like we have to do more. We're not on summer break, the kids are not home, a lot of things just start feeling crunched for time. So we start feeling busier and we're moving faster and we're cold and we're dry and this is when people start getting sick. Their immune systems are compromised because there is so much change and if we're not adapting to it, the immune system just gets weaker and we're more susceptible to viruses and bacterias because we don't have that same mucosal protective lining that we normally would. It's dried out.

Speaker 4: 1:09:21

So the best way to approach vata season is, honestly, all the things that you would. I mean that word cozy or haig that they use in Denmark, I mean in all those Nordic countries. Cozy is a really good word for the thing that pacifies vata, because vata is hard and it's a hard time for people with a vata predominant nature, whether it's physical or mental or both, or they just have a current imbalance that's vata driven, and you add more vata to it and all of a sudden everything starts feeling really overwhelming. It's just the perfect storm this time of year, storm this time of year. So think soft fabrics and blankets, and you know grounding earth tones in terms of what you're wearing, or you know you can swap out things in the home to reflect the season of what you're seeing outside, so you feel more integrated with nature and those earth tones also help you feel more grounded. Because another thing that vata season does is it makes you feel not grounded, makes you feel like you're flying around like a headless chicken all the time. So you really want to oleate.

Speaker 4: 1:10:43

Also is another one Cooking with ghee and spices, warming spices and doing as much skin oleation also. That's a big one. We have this practice in Ayurveda called abhyanga, which is self-massage with oil, and it's important to understand that the skin digests what you put on it, just like as if you were eating it. So you don't want to put chemical, like harsh, heavy chemicals on your skin. You really want to nourish the skin, thereby nourishing your joints and your other tissues and your cells with oil application every day, if you can, followed by a warm shower, but allowing that oil to soak in for 20 minutes before you shower it off. So incorporating that type of routine. Whether it's in the morning, which most people, their mornings are nuts. So the best time to do that would probably be the evening, about an hour before bed, having a nighttime routine.

Speaker 4: 1:11:46

Another huge cardinal rule for vata season is routine structure, because that is the number one thing that's going to help you feel grounded in your life is you wake up at the same time every day. Waking up with the sun is the best time for vata season, and vata people wake up with the sun and then start a winding down routine an hour before bed and you should be sleeping by 10 pm every night in an ideal world and we know life happens. But we have the structure at least to know what we're aiming for every day. We have our mealtimes at the same time every day. So breakfast, same time every day.

Speaker 4: 1:12:31

Lunch should be the largest meal between noon and one o'clock. That's your biggest meal. Your breakfast is your second biggest meal and then your dinner is called supper because it's a supplement to your lunch, so it should be your lightest meal of the day, because you're not out in the world working, doing a bunch of things at night. Right, you're winding down, you're starting to get gradually more relaxed, so you don't need as much fuel. At the end of the day, you actually really want to get your body ready for a deep sleep, which is. Another really important factor of balancing and grounding yourself in Vata season is ensuring that safeguard the safety rail of sleep is protected by the for like the love of God, you know, if anything's going to get you through, you need that sleep. Don't underestimate a good night's sleep. Your sleep is going to determine the following day how you're going to feel, how you're going to show up. If things are going to be done the way that you want them to be done, it will happen if you sleep well.

Speaker 3: 1:13:40

So what do you recommend, then? What do you recommend people do in order to help them get the deep sleep that they need?

Speaker 4: 1:13:47

they need the routine is really important because sometimes people be so physically tired but their mind is so restless, it's just running, it just can't stop. So you have to slow that activity down in the mind by making your life more simple. So that's why the routines are really important. The less decisions you have to make in a day, the better. You have to make constant decisions what's for dinner? What time is dinner? Where are we going here?

Speaker 4: 1:14:23

Streamlining it, simplify it. Simplify it and it'll start to feel easier because you know, okay, dinner's at five we're all going to get. I'm going to start cooking at four, whatever, like. This is an example I'm going to do the grocery shopping on this day each week. I'm going to do laundry on this particular day time, whatever you know.

Speaker 4: 1:14:47

And you don't want to be overly rigid because that can aggravate pitta, but you do want to give yourself a sense of flow and direction for that air. Otherwise the air is going to take you a million other places and then you're going to just be like I give up. So you're going to just feel very defeated if there is no structure in place. So you're going to just feel very defeated if there is no structure in place. And I also recommend to people to turn off their phones and the TVs and the computers, like as early as 8 pm would be wonderful. Like 8 pm, turning off all the screens and just read a book, meditate, do some yoga, nidra, do some pranayama, do some journaling, connect with the if you're living with people hang out with them.

Speaker 4: 1:15:47

You know like right now is also a really good time to reorganize your closet, because the clothes that you're wearing are going to change a lot. Now it's like sweater season.

Speaker 3: 1:16:00

Sweater weather. I love it, sweater weather.

Speaker 4: 1:16:14

Yeah, exactly for the season ahead getting your kids' clothes swapped out and making sure that your grocery list reflects the seasonal foods that are available near you.

Speaker 4: 1:16:24

What else for good sleep? Making sure that you have enough physical activity during the day to ensure that you will be able your body will be able to rest at night. Because if you are overly, if your lifestyle is very sedentary during the day and you're sitting a lot, you're going to have way too much energy to feel like you're ready to sleep and then you're going to end up staying up late and then you're going to wake up feeling exhausted, like you're ready to sleep and then you're gonna end up staying up late and then you're gonna wake up feeling exhausted. So there needs to be some form of exercise. I would say on a daily basis, but with vata season I would not have super intense exercise consistently. Maybe once a week you can do some like high interval training, but I would not recommend overly depleting the body and sweating too much, because you need all that rasa datu, that lymph, that vitality, that juiciness in your body. You want to preserve that and protect that as much as possible.

Speaker 3: 1:17:26

I never like I have thought about and I have done this is changing my workout routines based on where I am in my menstrual cycle, but I hadn't thought about it in terms of the seasons. And that's so interesting because that's me, I'm the hit girl.

Speaker 3: 1:17:44

I love me some F45 all day, every day, five days a week, like you know, like it's just a challenge. Yep, yeah, so it's. I was thinking today. I was like, oh, I should go for a workout this afternoon. But it's so interesting that you say that we should also think about switching up our workout routines based on the season Cause I think we can get. So.

Speaker 3: 1:18:09

I mean, I've been going to F45 since they opened here, so I've been like I've been going to them for four plus years, you know, and I'm like, oh, these are my people, I love this workout, this is the thing. And I think sometimes, because the way that memberships are set up, like we can get so hung up on this is the thing that I do, and so I'm going to do this. This is the thing that I do, and so I'm going to do this. And it's funny because when I'm doing it along my menstrual cycle, they won't see me for two weeks, you know. And I'm like, yeah, because I'm not supposed to be as a woman, I am not supposed to be doing this kind of exercise right now.

Speaker 3: 1:18:47

And so you and I was like Nikki, wouldn't it be awesome if we could create something where where gyms would do a two week unlimited membership for women and you could show up and your two weeks would start that day and then you could just go as much as you want for those two weeks and then, and then you could come back the next month. And I'm like I feel like, as women, we need to think about this a little bit more, like we need to not just decide. This is the kind of thing I do, and I do it like this every week. It looks like this many times a week and this is what I do all year, you know, and so I really like that you brought that up, because I never thought about it in terms of like a seasonal shift in how I decide to move my body, of like a seasonal shift in how I decide to move my body. So what kind of exercising or like movement would you recommend for?

Speaker 4: 1:19:38

vata season. I love a slow flow yoga class. I love just being able to hold positions for longer. And if you're going to do weight bearing exercise, don't power through it, just take your time. Build that endurance, that stamina with the weightlifting. Hold things Hang on something. Just feel your body weight hanging and be able to build a different kind of strength, because different kinds of strength are important at different times of year.

Speaker 4: 1:20:10

And I was actually going to say, just doing something as simple as going on a walk can be great. We don't always have to push ourselves to feel it's so wonderful to just go on a walk without your phone and look around at the foliage right now. It's so beautiful. And when else do we do that during the day? When are we just outside, being in nature on a daily basis? So I think walks are a great way to get out into nature and it's a really important daily practice, I think, to unplug and actually get into our parasympathetic nervous system and just like, okay, like nature's, everything's good, everything's okay. We don't always have to be accessible, checking our phone, checking the notifications and I was actually going to say one more thing for a daily nighttime routine, which I personally love to do during this time of year is to take a bath. Which I personally love to do during this time of year is to take a bath, even if it's just 15 minutes.

Speaker 4: 1:21:21

Lavender essential oil, sandalwood aromatherapy is incredible. Just using that as a nervine sedative, it's so effective. Just having yummy smelling essential oils burning in your home can be so comforting. Smell is powerful. So, and touch is also really important, like the way that you touch yourself, but also the hugs that you're giving. Don't speed through them. Like hold someone for more than you know three seconds. Like let yourself connect. Then you know three seconds. Like let yourself connect. Like really Hold the kiss with your partner a little bit longer. You know, just make that connection. Just feel a little bit deeper, a little bit more grounding, instead of rushing through Like you know everything. Everything can start becoming a lot more nourishing when we're more present and slow Everything can start becoming a lot more nourishing when we're more present and slow.

Speaker 3: 1:22:17

I love that. Yeah, I'm going to do that. That's a good one. I'm adding that in I'm going to slow down all the things, so if you're going to hug me soon, just get ready for a good one. Okay, oh, sounds lovely. I really like that. One thing that I did want to ask you about some recommendations for is because I love Abayanga and I know that there are different heats, levels of different kinds of oils. Like I was told. You know, use coconut oil in the summer because it's cooling. Use sesame oil, you know, in the winter because it's warming. Can you give some examples of some good oils, if people do choose to start Abhayanga, for them to use as we get into these colder months like the fall and the?

Speaker 4: 1:23:04

winter, to give a general answer in Ayurveda, because Ayurveda is, like you said, a holistic science which is all about the individual and what they need at that time is going to be so customized to exactly what's going on in their body. We don't know if this person yes, it's Vata season, but what if someone does have an eczema outbreak or rosacea or psoriasis or acne or some other some other thing going on, right? So, um, but I will say generally, as general as I can get, is that sesame oil is warming. So if you, you know, just look at that alone, it's very grounding for Vata, organic, unrefined, cold-pressed sesame oil, making sure it's warm, warmed, like in temperature. When you apply it as well, being liberal about applying it, you really want to feel like, you kind of want to eat yourself because you just smell good, you feel like a baked yummy pastry. You're just yum. This is like you know. You want to feel that yumminess. And yes, pitta, it's true, coconut oil is cooling and really I would only use coconut oil on the skin in pitta season. I wouldn't use it during vata or kapha season because it can be heavier and more clogging. And then for kapha, I want to say sunflower oil is generally the oil for kapha. But these are the umbrellas. I don't want people to feel limited to just an oil, because we also have herbal formulations in Ayurveda, so we have the classical body oil formulations that are written in the classical texts. There are also herbalists who make their own herbal oils and sell those. I'm an affiliate with two wonderful companies based out of India, kerala Ayurveda and Gary Sun, and they offer sometimes they'll have an oil with one herb. Sometimes they'll have like the legit classical. Like you know, mahanarayana, it's like okay, you want to get that from an Indian company who they've been making Mahanarayana oil for God knows how long. Like they know how to do it right. Or you know, dhanvantaram, tylam is a really great one. Ksharabala, like wonderful, wonderful, wonderful for Vata.

Speaker 4: 1:25:45

But you need to make sure that the person can handle that oil, that the person can handle that oil. And you really do need a proper assessment with an Ayurvedic practitioner for anything If you're going to start taking any type of thing regularly. Usually we say if we're going to put you on an herbal protocol for something, it'll probably be at least three months of you taking that consistently. So we need to monitor that and make sure it's working properly, otherwise we adjust it. That's what makes it a clinical practice. We're not just going to send you home after seeing you for five, you know like. It's not a Western medical model, it's a living breathing system of you. Know how does this work for you? Let me know tomorrow, after you try it for the first time. Let's make sure it works. Or I'll see you in a week. Let me know what may have gotten in the way of you doing it consistently and we'll figure out a way to make sure that you can.

Speaker 4: 1:26:49

And sometimes I'll say with my like super busy mamas, because moms will take care of everyone first and themselves last.

Speaker 4: 1:26:56

That's typically how it is, you know, and by the time it's their turn, they're exhausted and it's like nothing's left in the tank for them to do any type of self-care. So I'll say okay, if you can't put the oil on your entire body, let's just do the elbows, wrists and knees and hips, just like the joints, like places that get the most wear and tear throughout the day. Let's start there. And sometimes I'll just say, okay, just do the hands or just do the arms or just do the feet, something like that. Or just do the arms or just do the feet, something like that. But yeah, like you have to get creative when you're working with real human beings, because it's a behavioral science and people are complex and people have, people travel, and then people's everything. You know all the like what's happening with you right now. I mean there's just so many real life things that could make a routine more difficult, and so working with people where they're at is really important.

Speaker 3: 1:27:57

I love that because I'm definitely one of those people that consumes podcasts. That's why I have one, because I listen to them. I love them. It's a great way for me to get information. But I'll listen to Dave Asprey's biohacking thing and he'll be talking about creatine and now I'm taking creatine in my coffee every morning and I think it's. Sometimes we listen to things and we're like, oh, that sounds so great, that's going to help me so much and we just incorporate it into our routine to help me so much. And we just incorporate it into our routine and I've been doing it now for a month and a half and I'm just like, yeah, this is great, this is great, but honestly, it is so individualized. We can't just go and grab things that other people are doing all the time and be like plug and play it's good marketing.

Speaker 4: 1:28:51

That's what it is, yeah. It works.

Speaker 4: 1:28:54

It usually does. People are really good. The businesses that are crushing it are just incredible marketers. But the real, you know.

Speaker 4: 1:29:04

I think what sets Ayurveda apart from everything is that it's not a fad. It's an ancient modality and there is no shortcut with authentic Ayurveda. You really need to know like as an Ayurvedic doctor, you really need to know what is going on in that person in order to rightfully call yourself an Ayurvedic doctor. You need to recommend the exact right, or at least give them a couple options that are that's not going to aggravate their doshas in any way. So even sometimes when you're dealing with a patient or sorry, not dealing, I shouldn't say dealing but let's say it's a condition that's really difficult to treat and it's challenging, like it's like wow, because there's. So sometimes all three doshas are out of balance and you're're like how am I going to, how do we give, how do we pacify one without aggravating the others? And it's like having a bunch of kids that are all totally different personalities. You're like how they're all sleeping at different times, they're all want different things for dinner. That's what it is sometimes to treat somebody and it's just interesting. You have to get really creative and think outside the box, and so sometimes that means giving them a vata kapha pacic diet, so almost a monodiet, where they're just pretty much eating the same thing every day for a week, and usually that thing is kitchery, some form of kitchery.

Speaker 4: 1:30:54

The more experience you get, it does start getting easier to see patterns in what gets in the way of people getting better, because ultimately, what we care about most is healing people. It's so much more important to us that the people who come to see us improve in their health. That is the number one end game, that's the number one intention. That is the number one reason we're doing what we're doing. It's not to sell you some packets of powder, by the way, as monetarily viable as that option would be, it is not true.

Speaker 4: 1:31:34

Authentic Ayurveda, and through authentic Ayurveda, the name of that game is give people deep, lasting knowledge so that they can continue to notice imbalances and get themselves back into homeostasis and not ignore those early signs that something is wrong. So that's another reason why I started an Ayurveda podcast, because I do feel that knowledge is this ocean of wealth that's getting drowned out by this other concept of wealth. But without health we don't have the ability to enjoy any of the material forms, you know the material objects if you're chronically depleted and fatigued and have insomnia and have all these other conditions. And so the knowledge of what's really important and the not just the knowledge of health, but also spiritual health and relational health and knowing thyself. Importance of education, not so much dogmatic, systematized, like institutionalized education, but the life science of Ayurveda, really understanding what is the nature of this life, what is the nature of this body that I live in and how do I make the most of this situation.

Speaker 3: 1:33:09

Yeah, I love that, I love that. So I'm curious, then who are the kind of people that come and see you as an Ayurvedic practitioner? Who are the kind of people that this is just you're like, please come in yesterday, like, who are the people that you're like I'm right here, like please, please come, please come. I want to help, I want to help you heal.

Speaker 4: 1:33:41

Please come, please come. I want to help, I want to help you heal me. Piece in my daily work is knowing that the longer I'm at this, the more people, the more ripples, are getting the benefits of this knowledge. And who? Typically? The patients that have come to me so far in the last five years of my practice. Typically I get a lot.

Speaker 4: 1:34:10

It's funny because what you attract is so often what you are, your vibe attracts, your tribe, type of theory or mentality, like it's so true. They burn out. They're very career-oriented. If they are parents, they're so worried about not doing everything right all the time and they just get so anxious because every holiday has to be perfect and every gift has to you know every single thing that they're doing. They just have such high standards and expectations.

Speaker 4: 1:34:54

So that is typically the type of person I attract, and it's no surprise because it's like through them I'm healing myself, because I'm constantly having to remind people Pitta needs love and compassion and warmth and I'm like I need to hear this, you know. So it's funny. But yeah, I do get a lot of like type A, high earning, high achieving, and they never quite feel like it's enough. So I'm very comfortable working with these types of people because I understand them very deeply, as I am one of them, and we need. We need healers themselves, need healers, and teachers need teachers, and parents need parents, and on and on it goes. So it's good, on and on it goes, so it's good.

Speaker 3: 1:35:50

Yes, a hundred percent. I always tell people I'm like if the person you're paying isn't paying someone else to do the work with them, you shouldn't be going to that person.

Speaker 3: 1:36:07

If your coach doesn't have a coach, they're not the right person for you, and I truly believe in that, because if we're going to be teaching, if we're going to be helping others heal, we need to be walking a lot right along with them. We might be in a different place, you know, but we are still doing the work as well. So I totally believe in that, and I know that you are always constantly furthering your education and like constantly learning and constantly going deeper and deeper, so that's just such a great thing to like hear and see, because, you know, one of the things you said on your podcast too is like you need to find the right people, and that's like that was the core thing. That that why Nikki and I started Modern Zen Collective, like Practitioner Collective, was the reason why we even started it. That part, because, as people who are interested in this more Eastern medicine kinds of things, these more esoteric practices that aren't so tangible, how do I know which Reiki person to go to, how do I know which Vedic astrologer, how do I know which Ayurvedic practitioner, how do I know which person is worth the money? Because things are expensive, they're not covered by insurance, and so when we make this decision to spend the money that we worked hard to get on something like this? That is very much worth the money, like 100% it's worth the money that we worked hard to get on something like this. That is very much worth the money, like 100% it's worth the money.

Speaker 3: 1:37:36

How do we know that the person that we're going to is going to be able to affect the change that we're looking for, going to be able to give us the knowledge that we're looking for, going to be able to give us the tangible things that help us shift in the way that we're wanting to, and like?

Speaker 3: 1:37:52

That is why we have people like you on here, because we we already vetted them, like we already paid you guys, we already went through your programs, like we already know you, and so we can honestly say, if you go and give Sasha your money, she's going to get you where you're wanting to go, you know. And so I'm like I'm so grateful to have had this opportunity to speak with you, to get to connect with you in this way, so that we can help further your platform, like your voice, your ability to heal the collective, because, like you said, said the right people are going to find you and so just by like being able to bring your voice onto our podcast, even though you have one as well, like, hopefully we can funnel more people to you, because we're the resource, we're not the experts. Like I know about ayurveda I've learned about ayurveda, but I am not. I am not anywhere in any sort of like. You would be a good teacher for me.

Speaker 3: 1:38:56

You know, you'd be a good, a good person for me to connect with, and so it's like we're not here to be the ones. We're here to connect the people with the ones, and you are very clearly a one. So I'm I'm just so happy that we had this opportunity today and I'm so thankful we were able to find the time so that we could get this recorded and out there as soon as possible, because it's needed and, honestly, I feel like we're really just scratching the surface. I mean, clearly, we're just scratching the surface because you have a podcast with episodes and episodes and episodes about Ayurveda as the umbrella.

Speaker 3: 1:39:39

Like you said, we're just itching it right here. We are just introducing you guys to this amazing way of looking at your healing, at your mind, your body, your life as a whole, thing that is affecting, like how you feel in the daily, and that if you're uncomfortable, if you don't feel good in your body, there is a way to change that, there is a way to shift that. You have to be the one to make the decision, that you're ready, that it's time. If you're listening to this, you're meant to be listening to this, if you are resonating with what Sasha's saying, you're meant to, and like you need to click over to her stuff so that you can start following what she's going on on her Instagram, what she has going on in her podcast, what she's going on on her Instagram, what she has going on in her podcast, the incredible teachers and practitioners that she's bringing on that are able to go very deep, in depth in all these different aspects. You know, for me the first thing I saw was Ayurveda for kids, because that's where I'm at in my lifetime. But I saw, like I saw your whole series on every single different chakra. I'm like, oh, that's great too. I want to do that, you know. So I think the thing is is where we want you on here, like we need to do more. We're going to do more with Sasha people, okay, because, because this is this is just the beginning. I feel like I feel like this, this needs to be like one of those things where we just have you on every so often and like just see what's going on and what you can share, share with our listeners so that we can help further the healing, like you said, of the collective, because when we're each doing our dharma, when we're each doing the thing that we're meant here to be doing, when we're sharing what lights us up, we can't help but share that light with other people. Like other people get lighter, other people get inspired, other people feel better, and that ripple effect is just unending. It's unending, it just goes and goes and goes. It's like Pocahontas, you know, like when, when grandmother willow, you know, dips her dips, her little her, her willow tree bar, you know in the thing, and the ripples just go and go and they touch the other ripples and all the stuff. I mean that is what we're doing here, like that's what we're trying on an individual level, like.

Speaker 3: 1:42:04

I highly recommend visiting her pages, checking out her podcast. She actually has a really great deal if you listen to her podcast. So I'm not going to tell you about it because you need to go over there to listen to it if you want the deal on working with her one-on-one. So you know, I don't know people, if this is it like this is it, so just take the step, just click over and you'll be good.

Speaker 4: 1:42:41

I love that. And if we're ending this on the note of Mother Willow from Pocahontas, then I know we've absolutely aligned our souls in the most divine way possible, because that particular character impacted my childhood and probably my life trajectory in deeper ways than I probably even realized, because I resonated with Mother Willow when I was a kid in such a way that I mean you even describing that ripple that you were describing when she dipped her, you know roots into the water it's amazing, like we really have the ability to be impacted by things when we're kids that we don't even fully comprehend until you know much further down the line and we look back on our lives and we think you know, those movies I watched, those books I read, they did actually matter. And then we continue that on with. If we choose to have children, we're like, okay, well, this one book that I'm reading them every night, they might forget it for 10 years, but it's deep in their cellular memory of the type of person or the type of qualities that you want to instill.

Speaker 4: 1:44:07

Impactful, the ways that we expose kids to these deeper lessons, these deeper knowledge systems, like Ayurveda, and, like you said, lizzie, I mean the sooner we can get this knowledge to the kids. I mean, imagine teaching kids in school what their prakriti, their original constitution is, understanding if you're a pitta or a kapha or a vata, and then just being able to navigate your emotions and your developmental years in such an empowered way. Kids are so smart, so much smarter than we give them credit for. They will take that knowledge. They will apply it immediately. They will. We just have to give them the tools.

Speaker 4: 1:44:58

And the sooner we can empower ourselves with the tools, the sooner we can empower our children with the tools. So thank you for mentioning the three-part series on Ayurvedic pediatrics, because that series on Ayurvedic pediatrics, because that means more and more parents are going to be tapping into that, which means more kids are going to be exposed to that. And who knows, in 10 years where Ayurveda will be as a profession. But we might be seeing a lot more Ayurvedic health counselors, ayurvedic clinicians and doctors and coaches. And you know, this is where the ripple continues.

Speaker 3: 1:45:38

Yes, continues. It has not begun. It is continuing Always.

Speaker 2: 1:45:42

It is continuing.

Speaker 3: 1:45:43

So is there any like last thing, that you want to leave our listeners with Like a one-liner that just like feeds you, that you want to feed these people?

Speaker 4: 1:45:59

You deserve to heal.

Speaker 3: 1:46:04

Oh, I feel that I just got goosebumps. Awesome, and that's that. We're just going to leave you with that, so thank you so much again, sasha. This has been wonderful. It has, and you guys will be hearing from her again.

Speaker 4: 1:46:26

So thank you so much for having me on Lizzie. It has been a divine joy.

Speaker 3: 1:46:32

Absolutely See. Y been a divine joy. Absolutely See y'all next time.

Speaker 2: 1:46:43

Thank you so much for joining us today on the Modern Zen Collective podcast. If this episode resonated with you, we'd love for you to share it with a friend and leave a review. It helps more conscious women like you find our community, and if you're craving a deeper connection to your practice, we've created something just for you the Modern Zen Collective app a sanctuary in your pocket. Inside, you'll find guided meditations, soulful workshops, energy updates and intuitive channeling, all curated to support your spiritual and holistic wellness. Plus, for just $3.99 a month, you'll receive timely push notifications with astrological insights and gentle reminders to realign with your highest self. It's rooted in ritual, made for modern life and always within reach. Just head to the App Store or Google Play and search Modern Zen Collective to download the app and begin your journey with us today. And, as always, any links or resources we mentioned in this episode can be found in the show notes. Until next time, keep trusting your path and honoring your unfolding.