Lean on Ayurveda

Ep 20 - Inside a Community Ayurvedic Reset: 5 Life Lessons We’re Carrying Forward

• Vytaute Liutkeviciute • Episode 20

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In this episode of Lean on Ayurveda, I share five fresh lessons that emerged from guiding our latest Community Fall Reset. Over 10 days together, we set aside caffeine, sugar, alcohol, and other agitating habits while nourishing ourselves with simple Ayurvedic practices—including a three-day kichari reset.

Whether you joined this reset, or you tend to do seasonal cleanses on your own, these reflections will help you integrate your experience—or inspire your next one.

Here’s what we explore together in this episode:

  • Lesson 1: What happens when you truly see your relationship with caffeine (and why withdrawal symptoms are more than “mind over matter”).
  • Lesson 2: Detoxing the senses and rethinking our relationship with screens and devices.
  • Lesson 3: Remembering that “nature is as pitiless as it is beautiful”—and why not every difficult moment needs fixing.
  • Lesson 4: How ritualizing even small acts of self-care (like oiling the skin) can change the way you live your life.
  • Lesson 5: Why resets reduce cravings over time and how this helps you create a more intentional relationship with food and drink.

Along the way, I share participant experiences, Ayurvedic wisdom, and my own reflections on how powerful—even magical—these practices can be.

✨ Resources mentioned in this episode:

🌿 If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to rate and review the podcast. It truly helps others discover Lean on Ayurveda and join this growing community of seekers.

Speaker 1:

Hi and welcome to the Lean on Ayurveda podcast. Here we explore how the ancient wisdom of Ayurveda can help us gain a deeper understanding of our body and open the gateway to finally feeling better. Hello, this is Vitote, your host, and I am really happy to welcome you to episode 20 of the Lean on Ayurveda podcast. My community and myself are just just emerging from the community fall reset that I started guiding about 10 days ago. So all together we have done about 10 days without processed sugar, without caffeine, without alcohol, and in the middle of our 10 days we had a three day long Ayurvedic mono diet reset planned, which consisted of eating kichari multiple times a day. And many of us also have chosen to take a break from social media and from, let's say, habits that agitate our senses, because that is also part of a reset experience. Right, and as we are emerging through the other side and some of us are still digesting our experience. But I already wanted to share five main lessons learned that were very much applicable to this cohort, but also, to an extent, we could draw very similar lessons from past Reset cohorts that I have led in the past three or four years, and the reason why I really want to share these lessons with you today is, first of all, if you are a participant who took part in this reset and you're listening, this might help to kind of integrate some of what has come up for you. But also if you are a listener who is used to doing resets on their own, like seasonal cleanses on their own, because that is a path that is very common in the Ayurveda world. There are many Ayurvedic service providers who offer the opportunity to purchase self-based or DIY seasonal cleanses, and so if you are used to going through this experience on your own, it might be very interesting to listen to this episode and see how much of this is also applicable to your experience. I have also spent the last couple of days really having bilateral conversations with most of the participants. My resets tend to be small groups, which is such a privilege because it really this bilateral and communal back and forth, and so you know, the participant's experience is still very fresh in my mind. My own experience is still very fresh in my mind, so that's why I'm recording this today. First thing, so that it can go out into the ethers as a freshly baked bun of reset wisdom that we have all baked together in our little community. So let's get to it. The very first lesson that feels the most prominent this time around is that people have no idea how addicted they are to caffeine. So this is something that I definitely see repeat itself in every reset cohort, every cleanse cohort. This time around it felt particularly prominent, particularly relevant, possibly because we had more intense coffee drinkers participating. We had more intense coffee drinkers participating.

Speaker 1:

Before going into any kind of detoxifying experience, ayurveda always teaches us to, first and foremost, pacify Pacify our bodies, pacify our minds, because when we step into something that requires considerable effort on behalf of our bodies, if we step into that agitated, it will give an agitated result. If we step into that effort, which is detoxification, if we step into that pacified, we have more chance of having a smoother transition and more lasting, more sustainable results. And Ayurveda, as yoga, have various tools for pacifying, but the ones that we during the pre-reset phase are definitely the removal of agitating substances, which includes caffeine and sugar, and when we start phasing these substances out, I always teach that we need to do so gradually. There might be this desire to go all in straight away and like cut everything out, cut out all the agitation, and you know, there might be that enthusiasm to want to do that because we want to believe that we're capable and that our mind is strong. But the issue with some of these substances, such as caffeine, is that it's not only a mental thing, right. It's not only a question of whether I am strong enough mentally to say no to a cup of coffee right, that kind of comes later. But what really counts in that kind of situation is the dependency that we have created for our body on these substances. And so what can happen? If we don't give enough space, right? If we jump all in and we cut all the coffee out without having a transition, a gradual transition, so that our body can wean off right and adapt chemically and biologically, then we will inevitably run into pretty heavy withdrawal which are not fun. They can look like heavy headaches, pain around the shoulders and neck area, pain around the eyes, fatigue, nausea. I mean really, really unpleasant stuff, really unpleasant stuff.

Speaker 1:

Caffeine is a drug because it alters chemical reactions in our brains. If you are interested in diving deeper into this whole question of caffeine and how it affects your body, I really recommend the book by Michael Pollan which is called this is your Mind on Plants that he really goes into the scientific evidence of what happens when our bodies are accustomed to receiving a certain amount of caffeine and then when they are deprived of that, what happens in our brains and our bodies develop a tolerance for caffeine really, really quickly. So there comes a point when we are like if we are having a just a daily cup of coffee, that will already be the baseline for us to feel normal, right. That's why I am a big, big fan for anyone who is working with balancing vata, but also pitta, but especially vata to take periodical breaks from caffeine altogether. Okay, so they don't need to be like 10 days long, but already, if you know your body is accustomed to having one cup every morning, what you could do is, you know, twice per week morning, what you could do is, you know, twice per week, don't do a coffee, do something else, right. Switch it up with a green tea or switch it up with a matcha or with a cereal coffee alternative that has no caffeine in it. So there is an opportunity to get creative around it.

Speaker 1:

Caffeine in it. So there is an opportunity to get creative around it. But it's very beneficial to kind of give our bodies an opportunity to go back to the original baseline every now and then. Right, because with caffeine, our bodies just get used to it so, so quickly, and that's why so many people have no idea how much of an attachment they actually have with this beverage, unless it is removed from them. That is when they realize that they're actually heavily dependent on it.

Speaker 1:

But, as one of the participants who experienced a bit of this discomfort wrote to me, that there is magic on the other side, and I think that is so, so true, because there is gift in every experience, if we choose to see it, if we choose to notice it. There's, there's a blessing in every hardship, and the blessing of going through caffeine withdrawal, if it happens to you, is that it's a fresh opportunity to reassess the relationship you do want to cultivate with the substance going forward, something that you would not be able to consciously decide if you were not, if you would have not broken that pattern. And another participant shared that once she has felt such steadiness that she was not able to feel before. She had not realized to what extent she used to be anxious, right. So this is a beautiful example, example of the blessing that can come from experiencing and going through caffeine withdrawal when it does happen.

Speaker 1:

Again, if there is a way to avoid those physical withdrawal symptoms, that is great. The way that it can be avoided is to really go as progressively as possible. And the more addiction, the more attachment you have to caffeine, the more time you will need for that phasing out period before you allow your body to function without it, right? So if it's two cups of daily caffeine right that your body is used to receiving, then you might want to consider going to one and a half or one cup per day and then do a couple of days where you only have like half a cup. So the more progressive you make it, the easier the transition will be. And if you are a very heavy coffee drinker, like if you consume more than four cups which is, by the way, above the scientific safe dose for adults but I have seen it in this cohort, so it does happen, and black tea counts as well, by the way Then you would really benefit from a much longer transition phase because you need to acclimatize your body, allow your body to acclimatize to a lesser and lesser dose. So you really need to see how you divide that up, but making sure that if you are a regular coffee or black tea drinker, making sure that you give your body a chance to remember what it's like to function without the caffeine and doing this on a regular basis. Maybe you know, in micro ways during the week, or maybe you want to take like a longer break every month, or maybe you do it in a form of a seasonal reset where you have like a 10 day break that can really help build, over time, a healthier relationship that feels more intentional with this particular substance.

Speaker 1:

All right, let's move on to lesson number two. This cohort, more so than any other cohort I led before, felt like there was an extra need to emphasize resting the senses and detoxing the senses, and for myself and for most of other participants, what that looked like was questioning our involvement and our use of our devices right, and the way we engage with screens on a daily basis and what we consume through the screens, and I myself really felt like time was ripe to take a break from my social media. So my I know that some of the other participants as well were having a rethink about what kind of relationship they would like to have with their device and what feels sustainable for them and what feels sustainable for their senses. Right, to make sure that they're not overstimulated. And so some of the conversations that I was having with the participants of this cohort was about, again, like not realizing to what extent certain behaviors that have to do with our devices right, picking up our devices and looking at them, how much of that behavior has been automatized, how much of that behavior we're doing on autopilot. So that's again another blessing that comes out from, you know, disrupting a pattern and thinking about it, because it empowers us to take more deliberate decisions about what we would like for ourselves.

Speaker 1:

Right, and certainly for myself, I felt that, in you know, in the weeks leading up to the reset, my own relationship with my device was no longer supportive to my own well-being. Because when a lot of that behavior of picking up a device and entering the ethers quite literally, you know, in an instant, by touching the screen suddenly we're taken to like different realms, the ethereal realms of the internet, and suddenly our presence is somewhere else. Right, and if we do that constantly over and over, this creates a pattern that is very destabilizing for Vata Dosha, right, because when we are working with Vata, we really want to come back to the body as much as possible, as often as possible, and create as many moments in the day that we're able to do that and we remember to do that. We remember to check in with our felt sense, with the sensations that we're able to do that and we remember to do that. We remember to check in with our felt sense, with the sensations that we're feeling. We remember to feel our feet on the ground, to feel the texture of the floor, that which brings us closer to the ground, right, because otherwise we really end up living our lives in this virtual and expensive Vata world, which is a very chaotic world when it is not given limits. So, that being said, I am still on my social media hiatus and I will probably stay there for a little bit longer. I didn't give myself a clear deadline this time. I guess I will see you know when I feel ready to come back. I will see you know when I feel ready to come back. But again, you know the use of the devices, of the screens, and you know what we feed our senses, how often we feed our senses, the content of what we feed our senses. We feed our senses, the content of what we feed our senses. All of that is an important thing to consider and a very important conclusion to draw if you ever participate in a seasonal reset.

Speaker 1:

Okay, let's jump into lesson number three. So another beautiful lesson that came through during this cohort is that nature is as pitiless as it is beautiful, and this phrase actually comes from an oracle card that I pulled right before the opening session. I do this every year before each cohort and it was so interesting for me because it's exactly the same card that I pulled for the spring cohort this year. So I feel like it's the same message coming back, you know, to kind of be reintegrated and to be heard again. And this card is about it's from a nature deck and this card is about an oak leaf in autumn, which is the symbol of necessity, and one of the things that it says in its guidance is that we too are part of nature, which is as pitiless as it is beautiful and awesomely indifferent to our longings and cries. And I kind of had this on my desk during the whole reset process and I was coming back to it. As you know, I witnessed some of the participants going through some withdrawal-like symptoms and that, simply, that can be part of the process. So I have also and I say this every time that I have also experienced resets where I physically felt unwell, right.

Speaker 1:

So there's not to say that you know that something has been done wrong or you know you didn't do enough of something or you did too much of another thing. Sometimes it really is just our body's way to tell us to take the time and rest so that our body can do its thing right Not always, but a lot of the times. Sometimes it's an indication that we have not weaned our body off properly substances like caffeine or sugar but what I am thinking of in this lesson in particular is that not everything needs to be fixed and polished. If we're noticing that we're having a day where we just feel really moody, like that is also okay, right, that is also part of the spectrum, the wide spectrum of human experience, of emotions. Right, and what I'm getting to here is that there isn't anything wrong with you, like inherently wrong with you, or there isn't anything that needs to be fixed. If you're having a bad day, right, you can later take stock of what happened and have agency over the future decisions that you make. That will hopefully reduce the number of bad days that you have, but, as the card says, nature is as pitiless as it is beautiful and being able to hold that paradox, that on some days it's like this, you know it's part of living a balanced lifestyle and allowing ourselves to have a bad day. You know, and have compassion for ourselves when we are going through that, or if our body is showing symptoms of unease, like fever or headache and this also applies for outside of reset experiences. Right, just in life, it's also okay. Right, and if we give that self-compassion to the body to properly recover and not be so focused on wanting to make these symptoms go away as quickly as possible, right, because there can be that tendency sometimes to want to really fix things fast. Right, this usually comes from the conditioning that we get from our environments, from our society, that there's something wrong, like if you're sad today, like let's make you happy, or if you have a headache headache, like we need to make it go away right now. Right, so just remembering that there is space to hold it all. And if you are experiencing things on both ends of the spectrum, that just means you're human, right, and you're living a human life okay.

Speaker 1:

The fourth lesson is probably my absolute favorite one, and this particular lesson was brought to light by one of the participants, uh, who was sharing her experience in in our sharing circle at the end of the reset, and this lesson is ritualizing your life will change your life. So, as part of this fall reset cohort, I had some guidance for those who wish to include ayurvedic self-oiling rituals into their day, and several participants have taken this up. I provided different options. You know what you can do if you have like five minutes per day, if you have 10, if you have half an hour, having like different oiling rituals and practices, that will kind of meet you where you are in terms of your schedule and what this is. That for her, this self-oiling ritual suddenly added an extra layer of meaning to tending to her skin. So something that she used to do automatically with a body lotion, now she started doing with oil, but with intention, and so something that was on autopilot before, a part of her self-care that was automatized, now became ritualized and that ritual has also spilled over into other areas of her self-care.

Speaker 1:

Right, and we were speaking in our call about how, when we ritualize our life, we give meaning to things that we do anyway and suddenly our level of awareness changes 100%, because now we are doing things with intention and this is something that, if you really integrate this message, this is something that really has the power to change the way you experience your life as a human being connected living experience where you feel connected to the elements, where you feel connected to the divine and to, you know, universal intelligence, where you feel connected to the food that you eat, to the herbs that you consume. And none of us are able at least not in my circle, and certainly not myself, none of us are able to get to that place 100% of the time, right, because then we would be walking the earth like elevated beings. But if you only remember three times a day, that's already pretty great, right. And you will remember more and more. The more you cultivate this ritualistic aspect of your life, the more often you will remember and that's the only goal just to remember as often as you can, right that you are living in this intricate manifestation of divine intelligence and you also have divine intelligence within you. And when you remember this more and more often, the decisions you start taking in your everyday life, whether it's to do with your health, whether it's to do with your relationships. They are going to be more and more aligned, leading to a completely different way of experiencing your day-to-day.

Speaker 1:

And finally, lesson number five. This one's also one of my favorites and this one I see a repeat of with every cohort that I lead, and I mean by this is that when we emerge from a reset experience where we have spent a significant amount of time without nervous system, agitating substances, and we were eating a very nourishing but a very easily digestible ayurvedic diet, we usually emerge, and after every reset that you take part in, you will see that this becomes more and more true and applicable to you. You will emerge with less and less cravings. So I remember the very first reset I did. I could not wait for the reset days to be over so that I could again have, you know, chocolate. I can't even remember what it was, I think it was chocolate. Um, now that I've been doing this for a while and my body is used to these patterns, these seasonal patterns, when I emerge from a reset, I have, um, I feel like I have. I feel like I have, in an event, so much more clarity in my mind than I had before entering a reset, and there's also clarity about what foods are intuitively good for my body.

Speaker 1:

I think of resets as cutting out artificial noise, right. So we spoke about social media, we spoke about protecting our senses and looking after them, but there is also the noise of the tastes that we consume and the intensity of these tastes, right. So, for example, if you're used to, like me, tasting things that are very sweet, if you're a sweet tooth, consuming sugar, so, whether it's chocolate or I don't know, candy, whatever it is that you enjoy consuming, that also just like caffeine. That, also just like caffeine, creates a certain tolerance in your body, right. And our taste buds are registering the intensity of taste that you're consuming. So, if you are used to tasting really sweet stuff, if you eat chocolate on a daily basis or candy on a daily basis sweet stuff, like, if you eat chocolate on a daily basis or candy on a daily basis, it's not going to be hitting you the same over an extended period of time, right, it's still gonna give you that dopamine hit, but it's going to be very short-lived.

Speaker 1:

And when we have kind of cleared our palate, when we have taken a break from intense tastes and this applies to, you know, sweet taste. But also if you are somebody who is really attracted to hot and spicy foods, right going through something like a reset experience can really reset your relationship with that taste. So, for example, even though you know in theory today I am no longer in the reset right and I could have a cup of coffee, I could. I actually have like a really, really nice chocolate tablet, like a gourmet chocolate, in my tea cupboard and it's been sitting there for, I think, about a week and I had zero drama about it. And today, even though I like could have had some with breakfast I had done it before that I would have like a couple of squares of chocolate after my breakfast I have like zero plans and zero attachment to whether that chocolate bar is still there.

Speaker 1:

And as somebody who does have an interesting relationship with the sweet taste I am a sweet tooth and I did an episode on my journey with, you know, attachment to sugar. I think it was episode number five I feel so good and steady and clear-headed about not feeling like I need to rush back and invite processed sugar into my life. I feel the same about caffeine. Now I know I can have it. So, for example, this morning I did have my first caffeinated drink, which was a cup of Earl Grey tea, which I enjoyed very, very much Earl Grey tea, which I enjoyed very, very much.

Speaker 1:

But for me, that's it today, and I don't feel compelled by these substances, right to return to them. I don't feel like they're calling me, I don't feel like they have control over me. I feel like I get to decide and it's a wonderful, wonderful feeling as somebody who has felt in the past that, you know, sugar had more control over me than I had over sugar. It feels very freeing to be able to feel this way and to be able to say that. So this is also my invitation, in case you are feeling called, to explore any of your attachments or you know attachments to a particular substance or a particular taste, participating in resets regularly, whether you do them in community, whether you do them on your own, but really clearing your taste palette right and focusing on slightly blander foods. So we're not talking about tasteless foods, because when we participate in a mono diet, we still use spices, we still use salt, you know, we still bring in different vegetables. So it's not a question of like consuming something tasteless and bland, but I would say it's about consuming milder tasting foods on the taste spectrum right, which allows your palate to reset, set, and then that allows you to re-evaluate, reassess and take the reins of your relationship with that taste right and walk in that direction. So this will be it for today.

Speaker 1:

I am really grateful for this fall reset cohort.

Speaker 1:

It's been a lovely, lovely group, and I am also very grateful for the opportunity that participating in an Ayurvedic cleanse has allowed me to head into this next season with more clarity and feeling like my energy has been uplifted and with more joy in my heart. And I'm wishing you the same, and I'd love to connect with you and hear what's important to you. If you want to reach out out, you can get in touch with me at the following email address hello at leanonayurvedacom, or you can sign up to my newsletter. I will put the link to sign up in the show notes and you can also find me on Instagram, even though my account is not active at the moment as I am on a hiatus, but I will come back to that space eventually. And finally, if you enjoy my podcast, I invite you to rate it and leave a review. It really helps other people like you discover the show and get value out of it. Thank you so much for being here and I look forward to reconnecting with you in the next episode. Bye.