Ep 26 - Trauma-informed Ayurveda, Emotional Digestion and Healing in Community with Angela Perger

In this deep conversation, I’m joined by my beloved teacher Angela Perger, founder of Simple Ayurveda, to explore how ancient Ayurvedic wisdom can meet modern trauma awareness - and why, for many of us, healing requires more than food, herbs, and routines alone.

Together, we dive into trauma-informed Ayurveda, emotional digestion, and the role of community in healing chronic conditions. Angela shares her own powerful health journey, how she integrates German New Medicine (GNM) with Ayurveda, and why learning to live with paradox may be one of the most important skills on a healing path.

In this episode, we explore:

• What trauma-informed Ayurveda really means - and why it’s not a one-size-fits-all approach
• How unresolved emotional experiences can show up as physical symptoms
• Angela’s personal journey with autoimmune conditions and long-term healing
• An introduction to German New Medicine (GNM) and how it complements Ayurveda
• Why “doing everything right” still isn’t always enough - especially for Western nervous systems
• Emotional digestion and how the body processes unresolved experiences
• Working with health-related fear, medical anxiety, and chronic illness
• Ritualizing medication and medical appointments as a form of nervous system support
• The power of healing in community (and why it’s often missing today)
• Why sharing our stories in safe groups can be profoundly transformative
• Living in paradox: the wisdom of “yes, and” instead of “either/or”
• Creativity, improv, and joy as unexpected healing tools
• What it means to find - or create - a modern village for healing

About Angela Perger

Angela Perger is an Ayurvedic practitioner, educator, and the founder of Simple Ayurveda. With a background in education and decades of lived experience navigating chronic illness, Angela brings a deeply compassionate, nuanced lens to healing.

Her work integrates classical Ayurveda with trauma awareness, emotional digestion, ancestral inquiry, and German New Medicine - supporting people who feel they’ve “done all the right things” but are still searching for deeper resolution.

Angela is also the host of the Simple Ayurveda Podcast, where she shares grounded, practical wisdom for living in rhythm with nature and the body.

Explore Angela’s work:

🌿 Website: https://simpleayurveda.com
🎧 Podcast: Simple Ayurveda (available on all podcast platforms)

Her Programme Ayurveda Encompassed starts in February 2026!

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Transcript

Welcome And Episode Setup

SPEAKER_02 0:02

Hi, and welcome to the Linan Ayerbala Podcast. Here we explore how the ancient wisdom of Ayurvela can help us gain a deeper understanding of our body and open the gateway to finally feeling better. Hello and happy new year!

SPEAKER_03 0:25

Welcome to today's episode number 26.

Meet Angela And Her Path

SPEAKER_03 0:30

My name is Vitote, I'm your host, and today I'm sharing a conversation with you, which I recorded at the end of last year in December with my beloved Ayurveda teacher, Angela Berger. Angela is such a wealth of knowledge, and in this conversation, we dive into many interesting topics. We talk about trauma-informed Ayurveda. We talk about German new medicine and combining this modality with Ayurveda for trauma work. We also talk about healing in community and how to build that community as well as the pains and pleasures of living in a paradox. So this conversation is a deep one, and you might want to make yourself a cup of tea or run yourself a bath and enjoy it. Angela drops so many wise nuggets. So there's definitely material here that you can use for your own heating journey. And as always, if you appreciate this episode and if you appreciate the podcast, I invite you to subscribe, to leave a review, and to share it with a friend because that really helps the show. Alright, so let's dive in and let's welcome Angela. Welcome Angela to the Lina Nayarvada podcast. I am so excited to have you here today for our conversation. So I think you know many of my listeners will already be familiar with you because I refer to you quite a bit in my episodes and in my newsletters. But in case there is somebody who has not come across you in their path yet, um could you just introduce yourself briefly and perhaps um say a few words about your special lens on Ayurveda? What is special about the way that you teach it?

SPEAKER_00 2:54

First, I just want to say thank you so much for inviting me to be a part of this conversation

From Lifestyle Tips To Emotional Work

SPEAKER_00 3:00

with you. It really is such a dream to get to chat with you and be a part of your journey and see how it's unfolding in real time. I my name is Angela. I grew up in the States. I came to Ayurveda after first falling in love with yoga while I was an inner city teacher in Philadelphia. Um once I had my children, uh, the autoimmune conditions that I was diagnosed with in my early 20s that kind of just were pacified and I was able to live like a normal life in my 20s. Once I gave birth, they those symptoms came back with a vengeance. And that's what really led me to deeply study Ayurveda. And as soon as I started studying it, I just felt such a shift in my own energy and my own life. And I came to Ayurveda because of gut symptoms, but really just got so much more out of it. Like a deep remembering, uh falling in love with nature, like having the language to describe nature and the offerings that Ayurveda gives on how to live in flow with the sun and the seasons and all of that was just um like a welcoming home. A big deep breath. Uh, on my own path, though. All of the food and the lifestyle, while it served me in so many ways, there was more and more being asked of me, basically, through the symptoms in my body, which led me down the path of emotional digestion. And after doing a really intense 10-day panchakarma that had months of lead up and months of recovery from it, um, I was kind of like left with what's next. Then I went on a functional medicine journey and then finally realized like there is nothing left for me to do except for deep inner work and working through emotions. And so that's when I came across German New Medicine and started to apply some of the yoga tools and other nervous system regulators and things like that, like in a very nuanced way. Meanwhile, I love Ayurveda so much. I was an elementary school teacher, I have a Master's of Science in Education. Through the course of my journey, I was invited to be a professor of Ayurveda. I did that for a couple of years and eventually created my own year-long training program that's super small. There's just five to ten women. Uh, it runs once a year. And what I noticed in some of those consultations were the type of people that were drawn to work with me at this point in the last couple of years had similar situations where everything looked good on paper. They were already eating the food, they were already living a daily rhythm, and they were still experiencing pretty severe symptoms. And so that's where I didn't set out to teach German new medicine or infuse it in my work. I really came to it because it was like the next step on understanding my own healing process. But in the conversations of the people that I was working with, we started to link experiences and relationships and emotional patterns with symptoms. And so, of course, I love and adore Ayurveda for the food and the lifestyle. But for some of us on a path of really repairing relationships and um, yeah, like I don't even know how else to say it, but just like really deep karmas of, you know, and this is for a lot of Westerners, right? We do everything right, we do the yoga, we do the Ayurveda, and then there's still a nagging symptom coming from the body that's asking us to look at something even further. And so through my own journey, I came to specialize in this nuance, basically, because all the surface level stuff only got me, and it's not even surface level, but all of the lifestyle stuff only got me so far before I had to really deeply look at the inner landscape of my emotional world and all of the beliefs that I grew up with.

SPEAKER_03 7:15

Yeah, thank you for that. Um and and then you created this program, which I have also done twice. It's changed the way that I apply Ayurveda in my daily life and the way that I advise others as well. Um, and one thing that I remember from when you were introducing this program, you used the term trauma-informed Ayurveda.

Defining Trauma-Informed Ayurveda

SPEAKER_03 7:46

And I remember back in the day, for me, that sounded so new because it's not something that is discussed usually in the usually trauma, this sense of like conflict that we might have in German new medicine. Maybe we we will also go back to German new medicine and explain in uh briefly what that is for people who might not know. Um, but I remember what hooked me was this word association, you know, trauma-informed Ayurveda and how we can um apply ayurveda when there has been a disruption of some sort, right? Um, that is not necessarily like a cookie-cutter approach that we give a list of things to do that is the same, that looks the same for every person. And um, I'm curious, um, what what does trauma-informed Ayurveda mean for you personally?

SPEAKER_00 8:52

You just said like so much juiciness in there. Um I think for me it it personally means Ayurveda, lifestyle, life wisdom, the wisdom of life, that teaches us how to live in flow with nature. Acknowledging that there are underlying reasons why a person might not be living in flow with nature. It's sort of a baseline in the levels of learning to get information. And we all were at a point somewhere along the line where we truly didn't understand what to cook or how to work with spices or herbs or things like that. And we needed information. We needed to learn the gravatikunas, the qualities. We needed to learn that food digests more easily when prepared a certain way. That's information that like every human deserves to have access to. And I'm really excited to be alive in this time where it is becoming like commonplace knowledge for so many people. But there was a missing link in my own journey of learning and practicing Ayurveda where I didn't understand truly trauma because I thought of it as the big T, the one-time instance. And so I couldn't trace back a time in my life that there was this one thing that pushed me out of balance. And um, you know, now I understand it's like death by a thousand paper cuts for some of us that just grew up with various situations. And so it's really, you know, I was looking for, oh, it's a parasite. It's this, it's like all these things that just happened, uh, like one big thing that I could just clean up and and fix, basically, if I just remove that situation, like, you know, take the right herb or eat the right food or do the right yoga practice or whatever. Um, and that doesn't honor the complexity that a lot of us uh have experienced in our lives that is just now being talked about ice in my world anyway. And so I went through many Ayurveda practitioners and a lot of training and just really striving and trying to do all the things on the page, like the Dinacharya to-do list. And yeah, maybe someone might have referenced some little part of why uh the pieces weren't falling into place. But until I really looked at it through another lens, GNM, which I could just briefly explain, then things started to make more sense deeply. And I don't think that Ayurveda is at odds with this. I just think there are some conditions, especially for us Westerners, having been raised in a way that's not the village. I could speak for myself on that, that that contributes like an energy piece that wasn't necessarily embedded into that ancient Ayurvedic text because everyone did live in their village. Should I just briefly explain what GNM

German New Medicine Explained

SPEAKER_00 12:03

is? Basically, this doctor in Germany, which is why it's uh German new medicine, he wanted he discovered uh this pattern. He wanted to call it new medicine, and for whatever reason, they threw German on there just to differentiate because a lot of things are called new medicine, apparently. So, what it is is that um when something happens to us where we go into the fight or flay or free state, basically that experience our mind isn't um processing it fully, gets kicked into our body. And that's when we have a contraction. So, from an Ayurvedic perspective, this would be like that vata shrinking. When we resolve the conflict, the body begins to repair itself. So this is when symptoms come. In order for something to create a conflict, there are three criteria. It needs to be unexpected, so this isn't like the same old annoyances, as it doesn't necessarily cause dis-ease from this perspective. So it's unexpected, it's distressing, and we feel unsupported. So those are the three criteria to create the conflict shocked within the body. And where I see this link to Ayurveda that's been so helpful for me on my own journey, and then I just like poured out into the people that I worked with. Um, you know, for example, I had a client who had um, you know, like digestive symptoms, and we backtracked everything she ate. Everything was beautiful, it was organic, it was prepared with love, it was for her dosha. And I'm like, well, what were you doing this day? What were you doing two days before? And we got to a very emotional experience. So in the moment of the experience, we can contract, we can pull in, there's a frozenness that happens. Um, and so from an Ayurvedic perspective, we could say at that moment of the conflict shock, there is a stop in the natural flow. So maybe it's respiration, like breathing in, holding our breath, maybe it's clenching of the stomach, you know, all these signs. And in this moment, we don't necessarily experience the symptoms. You can, depending on what the conflict is, but for the most part, um, it's more of like a the body's like shutting down to conserve energy to deal with the situation at hand. Then once we resolve it, which could be through a change, like um, you know, we quit that job or we end that relationship or or whatever, we have a conversation and it resolves, then the symptoms come. And that would be the clean cut version. Like there's this incident, and then we resolve it. And that's the it's that is the way that um this doctor, you know, decades ago kind of worked with it, um a male medical doctor. Luckily, I've gotten to study with some women who have um experience and nuance and digging into emotional patterns. So for many of us, the conflict shock or the trigger is really could be a subtle experience in our life that is reminding us of something that we basically didn't deal with when we were younger because we didn't know. So sometimes it's helpful to know the exact experience that initiated it. But for me myself, it's been more about healing patterns and so going into the subconscious and seeing the beliefs that create those patterns, that create the conditions for that shock, and slowly, softly with like a mother's touch, reparenting.

SPEAKER_03 15:44

Yeah, thank you for this. And I'm just curious, because German New Medicine um can provide so much more nuance to vocabulary and to uh just the way we understand a traumatic event. Um, do you feel that um that had an influence the way that you viewed your own chronic condition? Because oftentimes um when um when there is a word trauma built into something, I think what tends to happen is you know, us being very human, we tend to start identifying with it, right? And that can come like in the form of whether you know something traumatic happened to us as a child or whether it um we're speaking of a chronic illness, like we tend to kind of um start feeling like we are it, right? We we are our trauma, we are our illness. Um and I know that you went through a journey of your own, and I'm wondering if um you could speak to that a little, how that evolved over the years and how that changed.

SPEAKER_00 16:59

Yes. Um, so I can just give a very example, a very like specific example of I was diagnosed with two conditions uh when I was 21.

Reframing Chronic Illness Identity

SPEAKER_00 17:10

One was ulcerative colitis, uh which is a colon condition, and one was primary sclerosincholingitis, which is a liver condition. So the initial conflict shocked was the colon, which in German new medicine is related to an indigestible morsel, so not being able to digest something about our life, and then the the liver, it is it's a territorial conflict. So the fun thing I think about GM that's like I like about it is that it reminds us of our primal animalistic nature because I can get lost in my head, and this is like coming back to these like primal needs that we all have, like digestion, territory, you know, like related to the parts of the brain that evolved. Okay, so uh with the liver condition, it's really rare. There's like hardly any information about it. Um, when I was 21, my doctor said I'd need a liver transplant within 10 years, I wouldn't be able to have kids. At the time, I didn't even know the word trauma. Like I never went to therapy after someone said that to me, you know. I just like carried on with my life. And uh so personally, I don't feel like I was over-identified with the word trauma just because I didn't come from a family that went to therapy. It wasn't, you know, it was the early 2000s. I barely had internet at the time. So it just wasn't in my realm. Um, and I would say that for me, not considering that those things would have been traumatic was almost like this barrier to dealing with them. And over the years, I was so um, I mean, my soul knew holistic health was the way for me. So my soul was like just drawn to, you know, all the diets and the food, and this is what eventually brought me to Ayurveda. But even my first Ayurveda practitioner, she said, like, oh, you don't need to worry about that. Lots of people have liver problems. And so, in a way, by not acknowledging that there is some piece of trauma that should be worked with that you need to process and work through, I was really down on myself when the herbs didn't fix it, when the food didn't fix it. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm like doing everything right, the to-do list, even the functional medicine journey. Um, and once I exhausted everything, you know, IVs and infusions and all sorts of stuff, there was nothing left to look at but the emotions. And then finally I came across GNM and a light bulb went off, like, oh, like there's like you have a little piece of trauma to work with too. And I know the word gets overused and we like over identify it, but. For me, it was like a sigh of relief. Like, you're not crazy. It's not because you didn't eat enough kichery or bone broth or whatever or beets. Like, um, there's like something really deep that's being called to work with. And so on the journey of looking into the energetic patterns that go along with the liver, you know, it said anger, it said from GM territorial. It could also be like a scarcity kind of thing. So I worked on healing my relationship with food, like letting go of all the diets and restrictions. I also worked on my own Ayurveda business to feel like more sovereign with money, like all these little aspects. And I can't say like what is the one thing that healed the territory scarcity wound there. But um, I hadn't been to a hepatologist in a couple of years just because I'd moved and hadn't found a new one. And a year ago, I finally got in with like the top doctor in my area, university specialist, and he looked at all of my stuff and he's like, You're in remission. I don't know why, I don't know how. And then I just, I'm like, can I just see you once a year to stay in your system? Just because my nervous system at this point feels better to like be in a computer system somewhere than to just totally disengage with it. And so we had our yearly appointment a couple weeks ago, and it was literally five minutes. He was like, Labs look great, everything looks great, see you in a year. So, you know, I don't know like what was the final like piece that put it together, but for me personally, just acceptance that um there was some trauma to work through, and it might have been subtle and it might have been less than other people, and all of that, but whatever for whatever reason, we each have our own little thing, our own piece of pain to work through in this life.

Working With Health Anxiety

SPEAKER_03 21:50

Yeah, absolutely. And um one thing as well that um I'd want to bring in here is um working with fear and moving through fear, especially like health-related fears, because often, you know, chronic conditions, and especially if we have like regular appointments with a specialist and like waiting on labs, and um that can be very anxiety-provoking. Um and um I feel like you know, Ayurveda and German New Medicine, to the extent that I know it, um, have been really helpful in um for for me in learning to like recognize that fear um and also moving through that. And you taught us um how to move through that process in that program. And um I'd be really curious to hear your own take on dealing with uh health-related anxiety and um like from the personal perspective and also the way that you teach it to others.

SPEAKER_00 23:06

Beautiful. I can give another like really clear example of something recent in my own life. So, you know, I've had 20 years of having to deal with the Western medical system, and I've really been um I've never liked it, I've always been resentful about it. I found people within it that I could work with that I respect, you know, even though we have different viewpoints on health in the body. But I would say that my symptoms, my gut symptoms, um led me to, they've led my body has led me to so many amazing things. So at this point, I can really um feel gratitude for this diagnosis. And that's not to say all the time, trust me, there's moments that I'm like, ugh, but right now in this moment, I can feel gratitude because of all the places that it's brought me. And one of the places it brought me after um doing all the stuff, you know, with the food and the herbs and the Ayurveda was going down the rabbit hole of my own ancestry and my mother line. And while going down that rabbit hole, I did this guided uh visualization where you ask your ancestors what's asking to be healed. And I felt like my ancestors shared that I am being invited to heal the trauma of the medical system. And so this goes, and I I want to share this in case anyone else like feels the goosebumps or the spark or like, yeah, because basically in ancient days, whether it was in India with your Ayurvedic doctor or whether it was in ancient Europe with your local uh matriarchal circle of grandmothers that healed you or whatever with the herbs that were growing locally, um, through the course of history, there have been predatory forces that took away that right for women to heal other women and put health care and spiritual care in the hands of a few. And now there are so many of us waking up. And for me, it it I always knew like I didn't want to be entrenched in this Western medical system, but I basically felt forced to. So it was very triggering and very activating. And along the journey this past year, like when the ancestors said, you know, you're here to work through this, I started to get so many, we could call them triggers, we could call them activations. I had so many issues with my health insurance. Like them canceling things, me having to make all these phone calls, me getting crazy bills. Anyone that doesn't live in the United States might not know. But in the United States, it's like the Wild West with medical billing, like they will just send you crazy bills for like $5,000, even though you had insurance and you have to make phone calls and all of that. And it so last year that just kept happening. Like I got multiple of these bills multiple times, and I was like, oh my gosh, like I have felt myself shrinking and just reacting with such like gritted teeth and like construction. And then finally I realized this is a call to step up, but I can only step up in the capacity I have. So it was a bit-by-bit process. I made a prayer bundle. I accepted that for whatever reason, like my piece of the collective trauma is working through the feminine being squashed when it comes to wellness and on a very personal level, you know, like I've got the bills coming in, I've got like the appointments being canceled. And I started to work with my nervous system. So I started to do a guided meditation before making the phone call. And it was like magic. I mean, I have goosebumps because I would be in a stressed state with the to-do list, like, oh, I need to email, you know, like other things, like not medical, just normal life stuff. I need to pay this bill. And then I would try to just go down the list and do anything that was medical system related, and it would never work out. Like I'd be on hold. So then I was like, okay, I have to. This is that awareness piece. Like I had I started paying attention and I realized, okay, that's my energy. So I started

Turning Medicine Into Ritual

SPEAKER_00 27:30

doing guided meditations, lighting a candle, like chanting sacred, like Sanskrit chants before I would make these phone calls. I started getting the most helpful people. Like, you know, it took time though. Like, for example, over the summer, I got a crazy bill. I um put it away. I took like a month, you know, and then I used AI finally. And this is after getting other ones where I was too frozen to think outside the box. But finally, I was my nervous system could see different possibilities. So then I asked AI, like, what do you do when you get a bill that they say is out of network and blah, blah, blah. And it gave me a list of steps. But then I wasn't ready. I was, I was still too constricted. So then I waited a couple of weeks. I lit the candle, I did the chant. I, my husband's very grounding, like coffee energy. He was home. So I had like another person for support. I'm like, hold my hand, I'm making this call. And this might sound like ridiculous, but it's not ridiculous when you think about this has been going on for thousands of years in some of our lineages. So like I'm facing something that my mother, my grandmother, my great-grandmother hasn't faced yet. And little by little, it it's like magic. I can't even believe it. Like, like, you know, I got the right person who was nice as compared to in the past where no one picked up, all because I learned how to work with my own energy and face it, but also not in a way that was forceful. Like I took my time. So I want to say that that it didn't happen immediately.

SPEAKER_03 29:04

Yeah, wow. Um, I I didn't know this bit. And um it's it sounds to me like you turned something that you dislike into a ritual, like almost like an offering, right?

SPEAKER_00 29:19

Yes, exactly. Like I needed to take a prescription for colitis because the symptoms were just so crazy. Um, and so I started to treat that like I would treat an Ayurvedic herb. That's another example. And I started offering that to my clients because I do get women that are in later stages of life. So they've there's long-standing patterns. And by the time, you know, of course, I attract people that think like me, we want to do everything holistically, we want the answer to be in an herb or a yoga practice. And sometimes the tissue, the organ, needs stronger support. But if we're swallowing that down with a clenched jaw, like we are, you know, it's like the only way out is through. And so it's for the time being, for however long we need the medication or the doctor's appointment or whatever, um letting it be a ritual and infusing some sacredness and some acceptance into it is the bomb I know I need. And so that's the bomb that I'm sharing with anyone willing to listen or consider it.

SPEAKER_03 30:22

Yeah, yeah. Like ritualizing the medications that you you have accepted to take, right? And might as well make it something not necessarily that you look forward to, but at least something you don't despise, right? Yeah, and this is pleasant as you can.

SPEAKER_00 30:40

Um so I kind of like begrudgingly gave in to take colitis medication right now, and I was like, okay, I'll take a break from getting the symptoms so I can continue to work on the emotional piece. And last week I went to go visit my dear um naturopathic doctor, Ayurveda practitioner specializes in GNM, and I did the bioscan while I was there. So I brought all my like herbs and things. And according to the bioscan, like there was only two things my body actually liked,

Listening To The Body’s Signals

SPEAKER_00 31:10

you know, and one of them was that prescription.

SPEAKER_03 31:13

What is a bioscan?

SPEAKER_00 31:15

It is like um it you put it on your fingertips and then you put the medicine on this uh or herb or whatever supplement, like on this metal plate, and it like scans the frequency to see how your body reacts. And I don't recommend like running out and doing this all the time. Like I do it like once a year, kind of just to see right now. And I hope to be, I hope to just do muscle testing in the future, but I'm kind of teaching myself muscle testing right now. Um, but yeah, the idea is like whether it's a bioscan with energetic frequency, whether you learn how to muscle test, the idea is to stop just assuming because a book or source says this thing is helpful for this symptom. And instead it's all about like our own energetic frequency and how we respond. Um, and I just thought it was like funny that this prescription medication that you know I I'm learning to love through ritual, but I look forward to the day I don't take it anymore, showed up to have like a high uh resonance frequency for me. You know, whereas like these other like gorgeous Ayurvedic herbs didn't show up right now. So it's it's just um, you know, I bow in reverence to the mystery, but I'm learning how to listen to the subtle.

SPEAKER_03 32:35

Yeah. Oh that is really like the next level of personal personalizing medicine, right?

SPEAKER_00 32:44

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:47

Uh I loved that you brought in ancestors into the conversation. Um and um in general, community as well. Um, I feel like, you know, for um for for a while now in our society, like healthcare has been a very individualized, individualized in a sense where like we are kind of on our own, right? We we go to our healthcare practitioner, we we get our prescriptions and off we go. And there isn't really um you know a sense of community when it comes to healing. So we we are, you know, many of us are looking for um for that community in various ways, right? Um, and one of the most powerful experiences I've had in your program is you take us through a journey of emotional digestion, and all of us um were working with a particular story that we carry that felt heavy. And there is a part

Why Healing Needs Community

SPEAKER_03 34:00

um in your program where we're encouraged to rewrite our story and then share it with the group. And um for me, and I know for several other participants as well, this definitely was like the pivotal part of this program because it felt like there was a huge energetic shedding. Like, you know, for me personally, um, it was the first time I had shared some parts of um my painful stories in the context other than a one-on-one professional context, whether it's a therapist or whether it's uh you know a Vedic counselor. Um, but here it was sharing um in a context of community that is that that we trust, right? And I found it so incredibly uh powerful, and I was very curious whether when you were creating this program, did you know this was gonna be like the pivotal piece, or was that a surprise for you?

SPEAKER_00 35:18

I knew it had to be included because I but I didn't know how it was gonna turn out. I didn't know how deep the participants would go in writing their story. Um so I'd say that it was a beautiful, joyful surprise to just get to witness. I think every single person like found a piece of pain that was hidden deep and was willing to work with it and willing to be seen and be a part of that alchemy. So I knew there I knew that we had to do something that was healing as a group, not just one-on-one work. But yeah, I didn't I don't know how people will show up or how far they're gonna be willing to go, you know. And I think you might have been like one of the first people. So I feel like when um someone does it and is brave, it's I know in in this last group, like one person wrote it but wasn't planning to read it, which is okay. But then once someone else read theirs, they were willing to read theirs as well. So um yeah, I that's the power of a group, like we can be way showers for each other.

SPEAKER_03 36:50

Yeah. Yeah, and what what do you think um is behind all this like pivotal change? Like when we share something in the group, something that we are trying to heal. Um what like can you put can you put your finger on it? Like, what it what is it that makes it so different and so powerful?

SPEAKER_00 37:18

Well, I think that it's no secret that modern society feels isolating, we feel lonely, we feel alone with our problems or our challenges or our conflicts. We feel I know I have felt like I'm the only one with this problem or this situation, and um that loneliness can just become like from the Ayurveda perspective, I see it as very tamastic, tomosic, like very heavy in an unpleasant way. And I think as soon as we really get to the true essence of that story that makes us feel alone and we speak it out loud and it's received by someone else, it just dissipates it. And everyone had their story and everyone's um details were different, you know, but the the details, whether it was this family member, that family member, this condition, or that relationship that made us feel like alone and isolated um by getting to the underlying uh feeling, going through the story, getting to the feeling, then using some of the practices to work with the feeling, and then rewriting the story to give it meaning. Because I think you know, there's a I've done a lot of study on storytelling and mythology and uh the hero's journey and the She Ros journey, and and really what is the what

The Alchemy Of Sharing Your Story

SPEAKER_00 39:20

are the people that are able to feel at peace with their life? Like what do they have in common is they can make sense of their stories. And I don't think we make sense of our stories by ourselves because we just stay in the loop. And when we look at indigenous cultures from all over the world, they come together to chant, to heal, to dance, to move around the fire. And I think this is removed from the Ayurveda world because it's not necessarily written directly into the text, because it was the lifestyle. The lifestyle was community, people living together. Mud huts connected to the earth, spending all their time, the women together in the kitchen or wherever. So, what was written was this guidance for the individual because 99.9% of your time was in community. And I'm not trying to romanticize the past because I know I need a lot of alone time for whatever reason. But but when we come to Ayurveda from the Western mindset of such isolation and such lack of a village or feeling of it, um I feel like this is the peace that's asking. And I feel like a lot of us are now like the pandemic showed us how we can work from home, how we don't want to do things that just are busy work. Like the the importance of being able to be home and make choices about our time. But now I feel like we're ready to come back together in community in new ways and take, as a society, our collective. Like we're ready to take what we've learned on um what's most important and bring it back to each other in heightened ways.

SPEAKER_03 41:11

Yeah. Um and Ayurveda does mention, like, for example, one thing that is like um coming to me right now is that for for example, Acharya, Acharya Rasayana, which is um um which is like the code of conduct that leads to a longer life, they mention things like spending time with your elders, right? So um there is definitely that supposed link that we would have, that close-knit sense of community, that we would be spending a lot of our time with our elders, and hence getting wisdom and um you know, um and and wise counsel from them. But it a lot of what we would read, it would sound very like individualized, like this is your medicine, that this is what is appropriate for like your dosha, your um your imbalance, right? And how would you envision in practical terms this um community aspect on uh you know for our health journeys? Like when if somebody is on on a healing journey and uh and this is speaking to them, like what practical things um could they do to find community or to create that if it's not out there?

SPEAKER_00 42:46

This reminds me of I I have to put a plug for improv. I started going to improv and it's so much fun. And one of the tenets is yes and so the IR, you're right, the Ayurvedic piece does talk about community. And also when you're looking for herbs or food, that's what you will find. So our minds are trained to go looking for the solution, and that's sort of like the lens that it's presented. But um, so I of course understanding yourself as an individual is invaluable, it's just that conflicts happen in relationship with other people, and so healing happens in relationship with other people. So I would say, like for me, the part of the healing journey has been recognizing my own strengths and challenges and being more at peace with that. So when I understand myself, I'm not, it's kind of like I can stop clenching my teeth because I have this quirk or this weird thing that I need, or you know. So understanding myself, put I put less expectations. So there's just a softer energy. So when I do come together with community, it's in a less forceful, striving, frenzied. So the more that I basically mother myself or really take care of these emotional needs, the less pressure I'm putting on my relationships, whether it's friends, family, my partner. It's like when we know ourselves and we're able to sit pause and be like, you know what, I'm actually feeling really overwhelmed right now. I'm not ready to talk about

Finding Elders And Wider Villages

SPEAKER_00 44:30

that. It's like, wow, that is such a soothing bomb for everyone because um when we can articulate that to someone else, it just like puts a pause on whatever reactive situation is brewing. So that's I feel like that's the work of going to the yoga class, practicing breathing, like gaining those skills to know yourself and understand your own capacity. And therefore, you contribute something different when you come together in group. Um, so I mean, this is one of the reasons I created Ayurveda Encompassed, not to put a plug or anything, but you know, to have a space where you can come together and heal. But I would also say that for me, the past year or two, looking outside of wellness for hobbies and connection and community and becoming friends, like through improv and things like that, with people that I mean, it's great to have a yoga studio and have yoga friends, but it's also nice to just be friends with someone that has a job that's totally different and a totally different lifestyle. And I think um my life has become so much more enriched. Like I purposely live in a smaller house that's walking distance to a downtown. And I have a Yaya, a Greek grandma on my street, and she chain smokes. I mean, you know, she can be like the farthest from yoga in Ayurveda, but she has a beautiful heart. She knows everything that's happening on the block. So I feel like for those of us um with chronic health conditions that are on this path of healing, being open to receiving love and support and being in reciprocal relationship from unexpected sources, that's been a big change in my life recently. And I would say that my experience from working with people is that many times when there's a chronic illness, there is some sort of route from childhood with difficult family situations and acceptance that certain people in our lives aren't on the same journey we are. Not everyone's a yogi, not everyone's wanting to face these difficult things and make changes in their life. And we might need to seek wise counsel elsewhere. That's not, you know, because that not only are we not like living with our wise elders, like a lot of elders haven't matured and gotten their wisdom. So just because you know, we're around an older person doesn't mean that they're giving us the wisdom uh that we need. So for me, that I remember a couple of years ago I was at Krapallo Yoga and I I was like, I said a prayer. I'm like, I would like wise elder women come to come to my life. You know, I said, like, asked God, goddess for that. And I was just checking my calendar because I was remembering that. And four months later is when I did meet my current Ayurveda practitioner who is 67 and lives a fight, like totally radiant life. And I was like, wow, you know, and um, so yeah, I feel like there's so many aspects. Be willing to have community outside of what you expect it to look like, yeah, be willing to receive and you know, do our part to clean up our own energy so that we attract the community that we want. And also doesn't hurt to say a prayer to the ancestors or whoever you connect with.

SPEAKER_03 48:02

Yeah, because that is also another aspect of community, just in a different realm.

SPEAKER_00 48:09

Yeah, I mean, I have to give one more like little quick example. There's this little art studio that's walking distance to my house. It was fine. It was just one of those like painting places where people have parties. And a couple of weeks ago, this yoga mom I know that's a professional artist, just bought it. She took down all the clutter, she hung up goddess and nature paintings. I'm like, oh my goodness, we have a goddess temple walking distance to my house. It's an art studio, but I view it as a goddess temple. But you know, it's like when we pray for community and village, we our like selfish need is also it's the greater good for all. Everyone wants loving community, even if they can't articulate that. So I'm not saying I'm responsible for her buying that business, but like I'm putting the vibes out there. I'm, you know, we're all a part of wanting that collective community. And so um, yeah, I was just amazed. I was like, wow, because I've really been wanting a central hub for connection that's like-minded in my town that I don't drive 30 or 45 minutes to. Yeah. And, you know, it just like happened a couple of

Practical Ways To Build Community

SPEAKER_00 49:20

weeks ago.

SPEAKER_03 49:21

Awesome. Um, yeah, one one other thing that um I took away from something that you said before about community um was that you know, we can have different groups of people that um, you know, help with different needs, right? It's not like um, because sometimes we we might kind of like put pressure and expect that our partner uh understands us spiritually and understands us like from all of these perspectives, um but you know, and like put all this pressure on one person or one type of community, but we can have you know a friend who we cook with, we can have a friend who we I don't know, talk about yoga and ayurvada, then we can have another one that we go, you know, and like carpool the kids with and and just talk like what I consider part of my village. We have um a pair of neighbors that we really love, and their the conversation is like it remains very basic, right? Um, so I haven't yet, even though we know each other for many years, I have not um been able to like reach more depth than I perhaps would like. But they remain part of our village because our kids are friends and they go to the same school and we live right next door, and so when we bake something, we we you know we share it and and they still feel part of the village, like the village doesn't need to be like catering for all the needs, right? We can get that from different places.

SPEAKER_00 51:11

Yes, yes, yes. I love this so much. I mean, this has been my own journey, and I think I had expectations of a fantasy that's just not the reality, and I've thought a lot about this of I've my pizza mind has chewed on, like, why are we like this? Like isolated, and you can look at all the um, you know, social experiments and the industrial age and all of that, but ultimately, like, what is the spiritual purpose? That's what I come to. And for whatever reason, we don't live with our blood relatives, most of us. Um, and I think you know, humanity is on this track of coming together in new ways and finding those relationships. And yes, I this is like that acceptance piece, right? Just accepting people for who they are and not expecting everybody to be your Ayurveda best friend or or like see things the same way as you. And also for me, the deeper I go in Ayurveda and studying my own like Celtic tradition and then coming back to Ayurveda, I just see like the through line of wisdom that is for all human beings. And I can see that whatever weird thing people like, like I'm not into sports at all, but I could see how that like activates a certain energy and that could be a spiritual release for someone. You know, it's like not judging that everything has to be what I find to be interesting or spiritual or whatever. I mean, that's just a constant process.

SPEAKER_03 52:48

Yeah. Um, let's circle back to improv. Um, because I um I love your improv wisdom. It has uh brought in a lot of creativity to our process for sure. Um, and I have taken some nuggets from from there. And one that you mentioned today was yes and and I love it because this is this is that paradox, right? Let's talk about paradox, living in a paradox. Um, because that's another thing that um I feel like you know, going through your program has really helped me be more okay in living in a paradox. Um, I was just laughing because today I read this article that in my home country uh there is a law in the making right now in our parliament where there is a cat amendment where you know the law is about giving the power to fire the director of the national broadcaster. Um and that amendment that came through through a filibuster is that a cat of a member of a parliament can decide whether the director will be fired or not. So um, I mean, like I was I was reading it and I was sharing it with my husband. I was just like laughing. Like, who can say we're not living in a paradox? We totally are, right? Um, and then there's like uh there's levels of it. So there's the external paradox. I mean, what the example that I shared, it's um it's it's a bit of a like it's an anecdote, but um where like more seriously, um paradox is everywhere. Like we can be listening to a voice of somebody that we are really resonating with, and then find out that that voice also supports something ideologically that we don't resonate with, right? And like how how

Improv, Joy, And Witnessing Shadow

SPEAKER_03 55:00

can we be at peace with that and be okay with that? And um then there is also the internal paradox. I was just um sharing this with a client of mine who is who was born in a family of different religions, and so she is like living in this paradox of trying to you know be a follower of this religion and this religion, and the paradox is that she can't because both religions don't allow her to have other gods than the religion itself, right? So she was like born into a paradox, and I myself, like speaking of religion, is just another example. Like I was raised Catholic, and um, you know, in in the past eight years I have been deepening into Hinduism and finding a lot of answers there, finding a lot of answers in yogic philosophy, and so now I don't identify as Catholic nor do I identify as Hindu because that seems to me like culturally not appropriate. And like, how can I be okay by not by not fitting neatly into a box, right? So paradox is part of life, and um I feel like a big part of you know our work that we did was also around like being okay um in living in that space where there isn't a clear yes or a no. I actually have um this is why I I connected the dots when you said yes and from your improv. Um, I have the Atlas of the Heart by Brene Brown on my bedside table. And there she writes, there is a section on paradox in that book, and there she writes that we have a choice to live in um the tyranny of or in the genius of and I read this and I was like, yes, that I'm gonna live in the genius. So um would you like to speak to the paradox and and perhaps like how you have like how um you know that experience of living in a paradox um has unfolded for you personally?

SPEAKER_00 57:35

Yeah, I mean a paradox is when two opposing things are both true, and another um like sacred truth that aligns with this that I worked with, uh still work with is the energy of yin and yang. Because um yin being the shady side of the mountain and yang being the sunny side, and I know that one of the traps of a human mind is we really like to fall into all or nothing. And I was trying to process some painful experiences in my life, and I was really like seeing them as all or nothing, like, oh, this situation was horrible or this situation was good. And I had a spiritual teacher who basically pointed out that yin-yang symbol, and it's like within every good experience, there's a little bit of shadow, and with every shadow experience, like you can always find the beauty. So when I'm visiting my mother in the hospital and ICU, I can look out the window and see a green leaf on a tree and find some beauty there, or I can connect with one of the nurses and find some beauty and humanity there. So I feel like as on a personal level, this is also the journey of understanding the yogic path because it's it's goes back to what we were saying about Ayurveda. There's what we need as individuals, and then there's what's needed for the whole. And I could say that on my own journey, it felt like either or. I get the rest I need, or I get the support I need, and therefore I'm not doing something for someone else. You know, it's like a journey many women are on.

Living With Paradox And Yes And

SPEAKER_00 59:30

And so I started asking the question, what is the greater good for all? And so, like a very concrete example, um, colitis is considered to be an indigestible morsel. And when you dig into the nuance in Gabor Mate's work and some other trauma informed doctors, there's a strong connection with a mother wound and for. Me that connection has looked like wanting to save or fix my mother since childhood. And so, in some ways, uh, you know, it's felt like, oh, do I sacrifice self for this other person's well-being that I love so dearly? And that's that indigestible piece. That's indigestible because I'm an organism that needs to keep living, but I have this strong devotional love for this person who I feel like I should be serving in some way. And the path of healing has been zooming out a little bit and working with that yes and and working with that paradox and looking at it from a feminine perspective of win-win, like what is the win-win? What is the good for all? And for example, I thought, you know, is the greater good for all that I sacrifice my energy of frequent visits, or is the greater good for all that I visit less and maybe meditate and send love more? So from the outside, my inner like my small child part is like, oh, that's mean. But the more expanded soul part is like, well, what is best here? Like meditation and love or gritted teeth frequent visits? And I'm not saying I have the answer. This is an exploration of a like something that's alive right now on working with yes and and paradox and what is for the good of all here. And then with improv, that's just brought so much joy to my life because you don't know what's coming. The director gives you some absurd situation and you just have to roll with it, throw on a funny voice, you don't know what your partner's gonna say. It's kind of like practice for real life, and it's helped me to just um it's helped me to understand mythology and characters and personas and the way we and shadow work and just you know, like to really embody these like kooky parts of us that like come out and like have laughter and like take on a little bit of witness consciousness by being able to try on these like weird parts of us.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:20

Yeah, yeah. Like this zooming out and like really turning to joy and and creativity, right? Um, that's been that's been um I know big in your journey, but um also that's something that I am trying to bring in more of. I love this. Okay. Um before we wrap up, would you like to say a few words about your program, which you'll be running again this February?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:58

Oh, thank you. Um, yes, Ayurveda Encompassed is a small group mentorship. So we had six people the first round and ten the second. I'm gonna keep it cozy so that everyone gets to know each other and feels comfortable and supported. And basically we go through six layers of understanding um with acceptance and curiosity and courage and um integration and wholeness. We just like take an issue which could be a long-standing pattern. If there is a chronic illness, then we'll look at I will help you uncover what German New Medicine says about that symptom to understand the conflict so that you can work with that and see the layers of the body's trying to communicate. And we go through the layers for ourselves for six sessions uh with a lot of somatic inquiry and just um ancestral work and gentle prodding to see like what the subtle messages from the body are really trying to tell us. And then in the second half, you can go through again for yourself, or if you are an Ayurveda practitioner, coach, Ayurveda health counselor, you can start to infuse this nuance and emotional digestion into your work. Um, so yeah, it'll run February through June in 2025.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:27

Awesome. I I can just say that I've done this program twice. And for me, it's been um it's given me incredible tools in self-understanding. And um in some ways, like I I can say that it has been like it has moved emotional stuff for me that I feel that was things that were stuck for many, many, many years. Like I really

Win-Win Care And Boundaries

SPEAKER_03 1:05:00

feel that that community and that sharing piece and you know all of the steps that you offer, like it's been incredibly powerful. So I am really, really happy that I did this.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:14

Thank you. It's so much fun to get to see just the shifts in your own energy, and also it's been such a joy to see how you've brought this into your client work, your questions and the way that you're able to get to deeper layers underneath what the perceived issue is with a client and really and take it deeper because all of us have blind spots no matter what. I have them, you have them. Uh, and that's why we do work with someone that knows us really well. And uh, when you've done this work for yourself, you can recognize it in others and take them to like a whole new level of self-understanding, which therefore infuses all of their relationships.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:58

So yeah. Thank you so much, Angela. And if uh listeners want to um find you, what is the best way to find you?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:12

SimpleIurveda.com, where the Simple Ayurveda podcast is everywhere podcasts are.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:18

Yeah, so I I will uh link up your website and your podcast as well in the show notes. So here we are. Thank you for listening to this conversation. I really hope that you enjoyed it and you found it useful and inspiring and relatable. And if you're feeling drawn to it, I really encourage you to explore Angela's work and most definitely her podcast as well. Um, because it's really transformational stuff. So I'm wishing you a beautiful day, and I look forward to reconnecting in a couple of weeks' time where we will have another special guest listening for being here.