SHE Asked Podcast

How Ayurveda Remedies Addiction: A Holistic Path to Recovery | Anna McBride & Rima Shaw

• Anna McBride

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Welcome to She Asked: Tools for Practical Hope.
In this episdoe, we sit with Ayurveda expert Rima Shaw to explore how Ayurveda intersects with addiction recovery in mind, body + spirit.

🌀 What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• How Ayurveda defines addiction & dependency as a mind-body-spirit disorder
• The three Ayurvedic causes of disease and how they relate to addictive behavior
• Dosha-specific patterns in addiction (Vata, Pitta, Kapha)
• Gentle detox & cleansing (Shamana therapy) practices you can begin now
• How Ayurvedic tools (diet, lifestyle, breathing, sun & moon exposure) integrate with Western recovery approaches
• A simple diaphragmatic breathing + pranayama practice to begin healing the mind


Timestamps
00:00 Intro & Anna’s story
05:10 How Ayurveda views addiction
12:30 Dosha patterns & addiction
18:45 Detoxification: Shamana therapy
24:50 Integrating Ayurveda with Western recovery
30:15 Breathing practice for healing
34:00 Closing & next steps

Resources & Further Learning
Rima Shaw’s Ayurvedic programs & offerings

Recommended books by Dr. Suhas Kshirsagar

Related podcast episodes from She Asked

Guided breathing & meditation resources

Remember: Addiction is an imbalance of the mind, body, and spirit. Ayurveda offers a framework to guide ourselves into alignment.

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SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to She Asks: Tools for Practical Hope. I'm your host, Anna McBride, and I'm so excited you're here. On today's episode, we're going to be diving a little deeper into Ayurveda and showing how it intersects when it comes to the topic of addiction. To go into this, I'm going to be sharing space with my good friend and Ayurveda expert, Rima Shaw. I'm so excited she's here. And we're going to be talking about ways in which we can provide some context as well as some understanding on how Ayurveda again is showing us a way through. So welcome, Rima. I'm glad you're here.

SPEAKER_01:

Nice to see you.

SPEAKER_00:

Great to be here. Thank you. And so I want to start again with a story. It's a story that you're familiar with about me and that I've shared in previous episodes before, and it has to do with my own addiction story. I grew up in a household where addiction was everywhere. My parents were both alcoholics. There were other addictions that weren't as obvious to me at the time. There was food addiction going on, there was drug addiction going on in my sibling area as well as within my parents. And there was mental health issues. And I think that as addictions go, sometimes they just show up as a way to cope. I myself cultivated a coping mechanism around food. And I began an eating disorder around age 10 as a way to help me through this dynamic, this dysfunctional dynamic within my family upbringing. That went on without any care, meaning I wasn't getting treatment for it. And it just got deeper and wider in my life. As I left my family home and began living outside the home, I delved into other things such as drugs and alcohol, and they became a part of my addiction story. And then I got married at a young age. And all along within my family of origin as well as in my marriage, there was this big thing called codependency. All of this language I didn't have at the time. I just knew these things weren't, it wasn't healthy. I didn't feel healthy. I didn't feel safe. And I didn't know what to do about it, other than to hide it. And I thought I was doing a pretty good job of that. About 10 years into my marriage, I knew I was unhappy. I knew in one way or another that it wasn't a good fit for me, yet I didn't know what to do about it, still hadn't gotten treatment for any of the challenges that I had. Yet I somehow found my way to mind-body practices. I started studying yoga, I started studying meditation, and eventually I ended up finding my way to Ayurveda, which, along with eventually getting treatment, meaning with a therapist, a certain type of therapy to help me break through my disordered eating pattern, I was able to start my way on my healing journey. So, in a sense, that I am a recovered version of myself from back then. Now, this is 30 years later, and I have faced all of the addictions that I held so tightly and so secretively that ultimately impacted my marriage, it impacted my parenting, it impacted my family relationships, meaning with my siblings and with my parents. Most importantly, what it impacted was my relationship with myself and the one that I have with what we describe in recovery as a higher power, but just with my spirit, with God. And although I was raised in a religion, I never really adopted any practices towards it till I found my way to yoga meditation, Ayurveda, and then recovery. That gives you a view of my path. And I know that everyone who's in a recovery program or dealing with addictions is different. However, our roots to it are very similar. And yet, what I wanted to ask you right off the bat is how does Ayurveda define addiction or dependency?

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you for sharing, Anna. Your story, I know it resonates with so many people because it impacts you, it impacts your family, it impacts the way you show up in the world. So I love that you started like that. Ayurveda views addiction as a mind-body-spirit disorder. And the fact that you said that through your recovery, you realigned with spirit. It's a huge aspect to addiction. It's not just the mind, it's also the body and the spirit because a lot of times we're focusing on the mind. And if we take something just like normal anxiety, somebody that's not dealing with addiction, you feel it in the body. You can feel butterflies in your stomach, your sweat glands can start to produce and you're feeling sweaty. So it's long understood in Ayurveda that your emotions are directly going to affect your body. And we have to acknowledge that because what you're feeling the mind will express itself in the body. And then there's a lack of spirit because there's another important thing that we can just lead right into. Ayurveda says there's three main causes of disease. Number one is parinama. We just decay due to time and age. That's just who we are. We are not here as immortal beings. We are here and we will slowly decay, and we will soon come to a point in our lives where we will let go of this decayed encased body and we will move on, and our lifetime is over. So one cause of disease is parinama. We will just decay due to time and age. The other two are so related to the mind. Praja pra crimes against wisdom. That's one of the three main causes of disease, which means with addiction, deep down that it's crimes against wisdom. Because there's so many underlying factors that come, especially with substance abuse, that are playing like a game inside of you before you're ready to bring it to acknowledgement and awareness. And we can see this in such little levels, like when you're in school and you're afraid to ask the teacher to go to the bathroom. That's crimes against wisdom. When all your girlfriends are telling you that they're worried about the relationship that you're in and you deep down know it, but you're making excuses, that's crimes against wisdom. When you feel like you can't function without the use of a substance, deep down that's crimes against wisdom.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. We call that in recovery the denial. Yeah. Yeah. Where we, or even a fantasy where we make up a story, which I certainly can relate to, in order to rationalize or make it palatable within ourselves. When you're right, deep down inside, there is a knowing that what we're doing is not doesn't feel good between the body and the mind. There's a disconnect.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

So crimes we call it intellectual blasphemy because we actually have a very strong intellect. So it's intellectual blasphemy like we know because our mind is so good like that. So that's number two. Number three is unwholesome conjunction of your senses with objects of affection. Meaning we are all can relate to the doshas. And the more you dive into this, the more you discover what your doshic makeup is. You're ruled by certain dominating elements. And if you let your untrained mind just be in this space, you can run away with those cravings. Because in Ayurveda, it's opposite cures like a Vata person is a great example. Take an eccentric artist. They build their kind of career and their image on this eccentric artistry. But with that comes so much of the imbalances of Vata, the kind of erratic lifestyle and flying to the seat of your pants, but not having routine and putting away actually daily habits for the sake of worrying about harnessing your creativity. So we can run away with these parts of who we are. And a big part is learning how to balance. So, for example, because we're talking about the mind, unwholesome conjunction of your senses with objects of affection, a vata person who's already feeling anxiety, already sort of feeling worried, and doesn't say no to their friends, telling them to go to a concert that starts at 10 o'clock at night, can go till two in the morning, and there'll be a lot of loud music. And this person might just be like, Yes, I need community, I need friends. I'm gonna say yes, not knowing that your senses are not going to be able to function well with that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. I know that lately I've been focusing on just feeling safe in my nervous system. And the version of me pre-working recovery would have been so worried about displeasing my friends that I would have said yes to those kind of invitations that you're describing. Yeah. Even when I knew, like my experience, like I had friends that wanted to go to concerts late at night. And I would say yes to that. And I was never a night person. I've always been early to bed, early to rise. I was the kid that got up at four in the morning and wanted to be in bed at eight o'clock at night. And that's when people are going to concerts. So I would go out with my friends to that teenage fun, right? Yet I was still going to come home at whatever hour and get up at four in the morning. And that is what you're describing, I think. Absolutely. I was betraying my senses by saying yes to them.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. And that third cause of disease lends a lot to addiction. We can actually say unwholesome conjunction of your senses with objects of affection. An extreme version of that is like an addiction to pornography.

SPEAKER_00:

Or what we would even call, I think, in one of the rooms that I go to, around love addiction, is really having this distortion. And that's what we call or I describe addiction. It's a distortion of the mind around what we desire versus a craving. And a craving is an extreme version of that. And we will act out against what we sense, feel, or know on a much deeper level when we're conscious of it. That is a balanced form of that desire. Yet certain ones can get easily out of hand, particularly if we're using it to cope.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And I think this lends there's an amazing Ayurvedic doctor in America, Dr. Suhash Shir Sagar. He's actually an incredible author. He's wrote some wonderful books, and we can put those in the notes. One of his favorite sayings that I love is he says, Your genes load the gun, your lifestyle's the trigger.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh genes load the gun and your lifestyle's a trigger. So tell me more about that. What does that look like?

SPEAKER_01:

So let's just say that you know that your grandparents had diabetes and your father had diabetes. Your genes load that trigger. You have a propensity to possibly have symptoms of diabetes. And if you choose to not exercise, have a diet that is not conducive to really balancing yourself. And that could absolutely load the trigger. But if you are very mindful of what your family health history is, very conscious about your diet and exercise and lifestyle, your lifestyle is not going to be the thing that's going to trigger that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And that's actually the essence of epigenetics.

SPEAKER_00:

That's interesting. So, like both of my parents were alcoholics. So participating in a lifestyle where alcohol is prevalent, whether you're going out to bars or going out to dinner, or just even entertaining people, and where alcohol is the center of that is a behavior that's setting me up to possibly fall into a disease as they did. I'm predisposed to it. Here's the question, though, because there are some addictions that are difficult to understand, I think. For example, a love addiction, right? Or version of it would be like pornography and it'd be one of the behaviors of it. Certainly could be dating people or picking people up, let's say if you're out. And yet love is something that most people think is essential to life. Certainly, it's one of the key qualities and feelings that we all want in life to be partnered, to be connected. And in fact, connection is the opposite of addiction. So this is where it gets a little hard to fully understand for me, and how Ayurveda can help me sort this out, is that when I'm dealing with something that confusing to understand that because of reasons that I'm still understanding from my upbringing, where love wasn't clearly defined, love wasn't clearly or healthily practiced or demonstrated, that I created a distortion of it in my mind. And it looks like I don't feel like enough. Or I feel like I have to be taller, thinner, smarter, prettier, sexier in order to achieve or arrive at love.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely, because truly you're bringing up something so important. There's a distinct difference between substance addiction and behavioral addiction. And we do distinct this in Ayurveda. We look at substances as a deeper issue because we know we're going to see underlying factors. But the behavioral addiction will also show underlying factors. It just might be more insidious or it might take a long time. At the essence of Ayurveda, and you brought up such an important point because I think addiction does a lot for your self-esteem. Yeah. It does a lot for your value of yourself. And in a negative way.

SPEAKER_00:

The addiction works against those things.

SPEAKER_01:

Against when you're dealing with addiction, I think it affects a lot of your identity. And you start to look at your identity in a lot of negative language. And one thing I want to remind is that when we're dealing with self-esteem or issues of lack of self, we're using a medicine that is steeped in self-awareness.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. That's what Ayurveda is, steeped in self-awareness. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

So we're taking like the our self, not in the capital S, like not seeing the higher version of who we are.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And we can apply the medicine that truly is based in self-awareness.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, I love that. Yeah.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

I think like in order for me to recover, I had to get to know myself. In fact, part of the 12-step process is a practice around personal inventory and understanding on a much deeper level the parts of ourselves that we might consider defective, and the parts of ourselves that are whole and fully able to be accessed just need to be more developed and practiced that would lead more towards a balance. And behavioral addiction is, I understand, is one of the harder of the two because you can go to a treatment program for both. However, a behavioral addiction is something that takes longer and is more difficult to get to because it it apparently makes it harder for us to see ourselves clearly.

SPEAKER_01:

I think so, because I think it's something you can live with and function for a long time. Yeah. Yeah, it's easier to hide. But now I think we're all like bringing in the language of trauma, like trauma, we're all wanting to be trauma-informed because we realize these things inside of us that we can't fully heal or bring more healing to. We are realizing it's trauma inside the body, mind, and spirit. And it's a universal issue that we're all facing, no matter what degree. So, as a collective, it's also all of us taking on the responsibility that we want to be happier, healthier people. And the aspect of that, it's also dealing with the pandemic of loneliness. We do feel lonely, and a big part of our loneliness is that we start to have these behavioral tendencies. It's a restructuring of how we are in community and what community means to me. I think it's a big aspect of the healing on a greater level.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. Now let's talk about it from the perspective of the doshas.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Vata, pitta, kava. How do they show up in different patterns in terms of the imbalances?

SPEAKER_01:

Yes. So for addiction, vattas, pittas, and kafas are all going to manifest and show differently. So for vatas, because the air and ether is so present in them, that is going to get disturbed. And you're going to see phobias, paranoias, like crippling fear and worry. That's going to be big issues that lead to an addictive personality where they might choose substances to just, I almost want to say, freeze their mind because they're so scared of the movement of their thoughts that they're looking for substances to just dull that all. The thing about phobias and paranoia, though, is that it's so strong, that energy of fear, that even through addiction, it's a lingering thing that's there.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm visioning uh a vata as somebody that might be more prone towards a substance addiction as opposed to a behavioral because it's something like that would help them detach. Although disassociation can happen in many different forms. So I don't need to pin it down. Now, what about pittas?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and vatas too, they like smoke because smoke has got air in it. So vatas tend to like things taken in through smoke, but they also are attracted to psychotropic substances because they have so much space in their mind that they can aggravate that even further. And that could be cocaine, heroin, opioids, could even fit into that category a little bit. Okay. Wow. What does and pittas they get attracted to smoke? And we actually say if any dosha could actually get away with smoking, it's kava. Oh, okay. Because they have so much earth and water. In fact, if we put a kha person on a detoxification program, a lot of times we give them an herbal cigarette afterwards. So, like the essence of smoke is actually used in Ayurveda with herbs. But if anyone was going to have a habit, a kava person would fare the best. Vatas and pittas, that aspect of whatever smoke you are choosing will absolutely aggravate your doses. It's going to dry you out very fast. So I just wanted to bring that out that even in certain dosic types, you can see the substances that they're attracted to. Okay. Pittas, a lot of OCD, a lot of aggressiveness, any kind of anger behavioral disorders, like for example, Tourette's syndrome. A big aspect of somebody with Tourette's is outbursts of anger. So there's certain psychological imbalances that absolutely one of the symptoms is anger or violent bursts of the symbol. So like rajaholics, for example. Rachelics. Right. They also have a tendency because pittaus, even if they have addiction, they don't want to have it affect their lives. Like efficiency in production is extremely important for pittas. So actually, they're the ones that maybe can hide it for longer because they're still showing up at work. They're still doing it. They're high-functioning addicts. So again, they could be attracted to alcoholism. I think that's probably extremely common. Also, alcohol affects the liver. Pittas have a real personal relationship with the liver because it's a hot organ in the body. So I feel like that's one that can get imbalanced easily in pittas. And I do think I've seen in my career that a lot of pittas have displayed alcoholism. And also severe addiction is actually addiction in general is tried. It can be vata pitta and kaffa caused. But because of pitta's intensity, some of the Ayurvedic texts actually say that Pittas have a propensity to have a very addictive personality. Okay. They want to be addicted at doing the best. They get addicted to competitive sports. They get addicted to learning a new craft and they want to perfect it and they want to show the world that they just know this.

SPEAKER_00:

These are pizzas. Yeah. Yeah. I can understand. I can predict being a pizza myself.

SPEAKER_01:

I know. We can see this. That's the beauty. And see, this is the beauty of self-awareness. Right away, we're not analyzing ourselves like, oh, there's something wrong with me. I've just had anxiety ever since I can remember. It's putting language to it. Wow, I have anxiety because I have a constant motion, and that's a lot of air in my mind that I am having a hard time controlling. I think Ayurveda allows you actually to not define yourself by your symptoms, but define yourself by, of course, this is how I am, because this is the elements that make me up. Right. It makes it seem more natural, right? Yeah, like you don't judge yourself as harshly. One thing that I say a lot in class to students, I say we tend to judge that couple that has like a violent fight with each other, and both, and you hear like of friends or somebody or college people, and you hear this couple, and then they have this violent fight, and there might have been even been a physical alteration. And we want to judge that and say that they are so screwed up. How can that happen? But in Ayurveda, we can see, oh, they're both pitta. And if they don't control themselves, you have that ability to have rage. Always bring that up because I think we see people's behavior, and I'm not saying that we sit there and we condone behavior, but we see people's behavior and we want to do uh use cancel culture. Oh, they are no way. Yeah. But we're just really showing the growth that we need to do. And it's so prevalent. Once you learn the doshas, you see this and you're like, of course that's what happened to that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it helps us understand it and make sense of it. Yeah. Yeah. Did we cover what Kafka? Kafa.

SPEAKER_01:

So Kafka is suicidal thoughts, but I do want to say suicidal ideations can cross all three doshas, 100%. Because when you have lack in spirit, when you don't have that essence of your spiritual connection, it can cross all three. But because khaffa is made up of earth and water and it's very heavy, addictive tendencies, you're dealing with suicidal thoughts because they feel like what's the point? Why it's not worth it, and because they have such deep sadness and depression that they can't see the light, and they start to say to themselves, I don't see why I should try.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, they're more prone to depression.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. So just I would say the biggest thing is depression. And of course, it's such a huge symptom across the world and in our culture, depression, and it's absolutely coffic in nature.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. So thinking about healing the mind and returning to balance, how do we uh what is the ama, the toxicity in the mental or emotional sense, and how do we clear it? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

So the thing about Ayurveda is you said it so perfectly. Here we are. We're talking about addiction, we're talking about the mind, and it is showing us that there's toxins. We say that is ama toxins. So we do what we would do with anybody who came with a physical issue. We would need to detox the body, the mind, and the spirit. Detoxification is essential to clear the channels. So I wanted to talk a little bit about detoxification on a deeper level. In the I ancient Ayurvedic texts, there's a lot of literature on detoxification. It ranges from really gentle and palliative detoxification to really deep cleansing therapies. And I want to sit with the gentle palliative cleansing for a moment, because I think this is really simple yet profound. Paliotive gentle cleansing is called shimana chikita. Shimana is paliation therapy, literally means palation. And that word, some of you might know if you're in the medical profession, because you sometimes hear palliative care. Paliative care we can really define as mild reduction therapy or gentle detoxification therapy. We're trying to help somebody, but we're doing it on a mild level. Because sometimes when somebody is so steeped in disease, they are not ready for deep cleansing because they could have what we sometimes call a healing crisis. So we have to look at them and bring them to the place where we think that they're at. So I say there's seven limbs to shamana therapy. Number one, we look at the state of their agni, their digestive fire. It's essential because we talked last time that the root cause of all disease starts in your digestive system. So we really look at the agni and what we prescribe, what we say is a dipana. And a dipana enkindles your agni. It's basically a digestive aid. And that will tackle issues in the digestive system. It will be a good start. And also, like I said last time, that's how we start treating somebody. We start in the gut, in the core, in the manipura chakra. We start at the center. So that's number one. Number two, we assess the ama. We look at your tongue, we take your pulse, we question you, we observe you, and we determine what toxins, what ama we see. And we start to prescribe things to tackle that ama. And very much something as simple as ginger is a great detoxifier. So I want you to remember that the first two limbs of shamana chiquitsa are actually really quite easy. Like we could actually go into our kitchen and pick a few things and start off that process. Number three, we want to put somebody on a monodiet, or we want to simplify the food so we can start to see what's going on. And we say monodiet because it's really common in Ayurveda to say, for three days, I want you to eat this, these only these foods. Right. We also observe thirst, truth nigraha. That means observing thirst. There's this language in holistic medicine where they just tell everyone drink a gallon of water. But in Ayurveda, we don't do that because every dosha is different. And there's actually can be such a thing as like water toxicity. A kafa person actually has a lot of water. And many times drinking a gallon of water is not what they need. And when we do spiritual practices in India, when we're fasting, we fast from all substances, including water. It doesn't mean I'm telling clients to fast fully, I'm telling them to observe. And I'm telling them to also take a step back.

SPEAKER_00:

I want to just take a pause here because I think this is an important component of understanding addiction, is that we stop listening to the body and the mind and the effect that the behavior or the substance is having. Doing something like this invites the person to get to know themselves and how their bodies are actually handling the digestion of these simple foods and even thirst. It's probably going to be the first time that people get to know themselves on that physical level, as opposed to just drink, as you said, a gallon of water, assuming that's the right way to do it, or eat a particular food, or take a particular detoxification process, thinking that one size fits all. And it doesn't.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

You just said it perfectly, Anna.

SPEAKER_01:

The ancients really understood this. Fasting was a huge part of all ancient cultures. It was understood, again, bringing it back to the monkey mind that at some points of the year we must abstain from everything and reset. And that this also leads back to epigenetics, too. It's like pressing the reset button. These are the ways that we do this. So that's number four. Number five is Marutseva. We want, we need fresh air. When we're having experiences of mind challenges or even feeling like we are just imbalanced, we must breathe fresh air. It's so simple. We know this, but we live in cities, we live in pollution, we think we get out in nature, but really we need, and you know this from being in the El Camino. Right. When you're breathing that fresh air.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, there's a big difference.

SPEAKER_01:

So that's number five. Number six is exercise. You must have exercise that must be part of a palliative therapy. And that's what it's a particular type, right? Of exercise. Yeah, we don't want extreme vigorous exercise because let me tell you, one of the big addictions I actually see in people, there's two. I see food addiction, but I also see exercise addiction. It's a huge thing. I have so many Vata clients that come to me and they're addicted to exercise, and they come to me with all these pains. And I say to them, longevity medicine of Ayurveda does not promote vigorous exercise for your whole life.

SPEAKER_00:

That's fascinating. I had an exercise addiction. I and I think it was coupled with my eating disorder that when I couldn't control my body through food, right? I turned to all the athletics that I was doing as a way to get the results that I my distorted mind thought was right for me. And yeah, it's interesting. Like we could take something like exercise and extreme it, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and bottas because they're afraid of how much their mind is thinking all the time. I have so many clients that have told me if I don't exercise, I will lose my mind.

SPEAKER_00:

And it's a particular type that matters, so less vigorous and yet maybe just some more mobility or yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

So walking on actual dirt paths versus concrete. Maybe instead of running on concrete, maybe go take the trail by the river and actually be on earth, earth and soil. Maybe cooperative sports instead of competitive marathons. Maybe swimming. If you're a pitta person, I can't express enough how much swimming is good for a pitta person. So we want to think of ourselves as exercise should make you feel cleansed, but also restored. Okay. Should have a restorative aspect after you exercise. Yeah, it's a different outlook. Yeah. And then, of course, yoga. That is why yoga is the sister signs of Ayurveda, because it is a perfect pairing for every dosha because you can customize your yoga practice and it's perfection because a vata person could do more twists, more forward folds, which is so good for their digestion and their variable appetite. Pitta people can do chest openers, heart openers, they can do inversions to get their ego out of the way. And then Kafa people could actually do 12 rounds of Surya Namaskar, so they build sweat. Okay. Wow. So is there something else besides exercise? And then the seventh limb of Shimana Chiquitsa is exposure to the sun and exposure to the moon. Oh, so we always talk about sunbathing, but I love moonbathing. And it's really profound. It's what we talked about with the last podcast when we were talking about hata, the union of the sun and the moon. When we look at a relationship with the cosmos, two of the most important aspects we have with the cosmos is the sun and the moon. Those medicines are available to us every day practically. And we've talked about how the first light in the morning, the first morning sun, it activates your cells. It's basically the turn-on switch in your body to tell your body to start to get things going and how profound that is. That if we could switch people from looking at their phones first thing in the morning to just going outside and maybe just taking even three breaths out in the sun could be life-changing. And it would be life-changing, honestly. But exposure to the moon. It is amazing for us to lie down and to capture the moon. We want to moon bathe for a pit to person. I've said this so many times, go sit out in the moon. We can also make medicines with the sun and the moon. I love to tell clients to take a tea or a water and set it out in the full moonlight and then bring it in and use it. Or even I tell students, take your facial rose face spray and set it out in the full moon, and then the next day, spray it all over yourself all day long.

SPEAKER_00:

It's a great daily practices to do.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, absolutely. But when you're finding yourself out of balance, when you're finding yourself feeling issues, the mind, especially like when people know that they have mental challenges, the thought of starting a program to address it feels so overwhelming. Imagine somebody that's dealing with like addiction and they know it, they've brought awareness to it. But the thought of doing all this stuff seems so overwhelming. This shamana chikitza is such a beautiful way to bring self-awareness back into your daily life.

SPEAKER_00:

Wow. I really think these are, along with some of the practices that we discussed last week, was how would be like rituals that you could do to help bring your body back into balance. Yeah. And detox, the exercise, certainly understanding the necessary exposure to both moon and the sun in order to do that.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Fascinating ways of looking at this. Now let's talk about integration and modern relevance. How can Ayurveda complement Western recovery paths, whether it's 12-step or therapy or somatic work? What do you think?

SPEAKER_01:

At the essence of all this, which we talked about last week, it is bringing sattva back into your life. Because at the end of the day, and I feel like it just lends so well to any program out there, at the end of the day, we talked about that Rajas and Tamas, those two gunas, have a big impact on the mind. Rajas, by the way, is like pitta energy. It's a little bit fiery, but I don't want people to confuse it and actually say that Rajas is like pitta. I'm just saying that when you think about fiery aspects, that's Rajas. But let's remind ourselves that the three universal forces are just universal forces and not compare them to the doshas. But I also know that it's a hard concept. So I want people to think that Rajas is actually pretty fiery in nature. So if somebody has Rajas, you are dealing with obsessive, compulsive behavior, a lot of anger, a lot of overstimulation, violence, like all the things we talked about. That's Rajas, and then tamas is a lot of the Kafic tendencies we were talking about, the ignorance, the conservatism. Somebody can be very conservative in the mind to the point that they don't allow progressiveness in themselves and in people around them. And then, of course, a lack of action, like it's almost like over-sedation is tamas. So at the heart of it all, we must bring in sattva. All mental challenges is a lack of clarity. And that truly is sattva. Sattva is clarity, purity, holiness, divinity, sacredness, nobleness, regalness, our higher self. So the ways to do that is diet and lifestyle. And it comes back to Dr. Suhash Shirga Sagar's saying your genes are the loaded gun, your lifestyle is the trigger. So it absolutely comes back to diet and lifestyle. And of course, we could put herbal remedies in there, but I think it's really important for people to understand that these two concepts can bring so much sattva into your life.

SPEAKER_00:

So what I hear you saying is that the way that it can complement the Western approach to these practices is by giving real tools that through diet and exercise to enable or help assist, because often we hear this thing going cold turkey or having to really break a pattern, and people go into programs that are impatient and then they go home, and that's where they struggle to live the day-to-day without their whatever they were addicted to. And I feel like these practices that come to us from Ayurveda, we talked about some of the diet stuff. We talked about some of the exercise practices that can help them to really stay connected to their body and stay connected to the present moment. Because that's the other thing that addiction is really about, the distortion where we're going away from this present moment, whether we're obsessing about past, we mean we're definitely overthinking about things that happened that we feel shame over or guilt over, or we're worried about the future. We're not really here. And then we have this disconnect between what our minds are thinking or craving and what our bodies are needing or feeling. I know for me, most of my addictions were born out of a real fear of feeling and a desire to avoid that. And what Ayurveda has helped me to do is again to trust that it's okay to feel. Yeah, that's the only way to feel.

SPEAKER_01:

And that brings it back to the mental subdosha of the mind, that's pitta, sadhaka pitta, the seat of the sadhaka pitta, the location is in the brain, but the seat of consciousness resides in your heart. And that is really lending to the fact that we as human beings were not brought onto this existence to not feel our feelings.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Our society could use some help in catching up with that idea, right? Because we've already created problems for people to feel their feelings. And who knows, maybe that's where addiction came from. If addiction is a form of self-abandonment, okay, then how does Ayurveda guide us home?

SPEAKER_01:

I love that. It brings it back to the word sattva, which I brought up before, which translates as perfect health, but it also means sva, like sattva, yourself, your home is your abode. This is your temple. And our job is to know our temple, to spend our entire lifetimes entering our temple, fixing the temple, making the entranceway sacred, moving through that temple. And the more we learn and gain awareness and bring consciousness to our everyday life through practices, we start to bring the sacredness into the other rooms of the temple.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I love it. Yeah, I think like I knew or learned that in order to the real purpose that we're all here for, and this is written into a lot of the ancient texts that I come across, the Bhagavad Gita being one of them, is our main purpose is to rebalance or to heal ourselves. And that takes a real knowing deep down of who we really are at our essence, all of the sattva aspects. And then where when we are in the world, what throws us out of balance and being able to identify that could be the distortions that we're talking about. And as our process towards healing, which could be honoring our temple, taking care of it, really connecting with it, all of it, then we can do our other real purpose, which is to love and love.

SPEAKER_01:

To find our dharma.

SPEAKER_00:

Right.

SPEAKER_01:

And to find our dharma. What is our God-given purpose? Because I think people fall into the abyss of mental disorders when they feel like they don't have any true purpose.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I think not knowing why you're here or what's a better motivator, it's easy to get lost. I know I did. I grew up not knowing why I was here. And yet somehow I'm ending up here having a great conversation with you about one of the many purposes or healing practices that help me find my way towards home with myself. Yeah. So let's wrap up by just I want you to share one practice that you recommend for someone beginning their healing journey from an IS point view. The mind, would you say? Did you want that to be that? Or both? Whatever sounds right to you, what do you recommend for someone beginning the healing journey, let's say, to the mind?

SPEAKER_01:

To the mind. Yeah. One thing I want to also bring up too is that I it's nice to talk scientifically too about this because the thing about Ayurveda is that the textbooks are all written. They're very much spiritual scientific texts. And we know that brain chemistry is going to change. We know that's part of the problem of mental disorders, that brain chemistry changes. A lot of substance abuse affects the white matter of the brain. And when you start to affect the white matter of the brain, which is like this beautiful, like lubricating protective layer, it's very easy to understand how these things become deeper imbalances. So I just wanted to bring voice to that because we can absolutely talk about this in more scientific levels, and it makes sense of why these deeper imbalances stay locked in. The beautiful thing is that brain chemistry is something that actually changes quite fast through meditation, through pranayama. So the first thing that I would say is I really think diaphragmatic breathing, becoming walking into the vast science of pranayama is probably one of the first things I would say for the mind. And it's diaphragmatic breathing. Because once we get into that yogic breath, that is one of the biggest aspects that yoga and Ayurveda say that really brings the mind, body, spirit into one beautiful convergence. Diaphromatic breathing is really hard for a lot of us because modern birth care practices, a lot of times a baby's first breath is done because there's like this rush of the hospital setting. And many times umbilical cord is cut before the pulsation of the umbilical cord is done. And when that first cut happens, many people's first breath on the planet is one of almost of fear. Because the skilled obstetrician, the skilled midwife that followed the practices absolutely knew that you would never cut the cord before pulsation stopped because so much oxygen and blood is still being transferred from the mother to the baby. And the baby is still feeding via the mother ship. Well, I really want us to take that in. Many people's first breath is a breath of almost, I have to do this right now. And we don't know how to breathe properly. So it's like trauma. It's trauma breath. And I have been at beautiful births where we've watched the pulsation stop and I've seen a difference, and I've seen these kids grow up, and I feel like they had that beautiful aspect of being given time for your first breath. So I think a lot of us don't know how to access true breathing. And I want to bring it back to diaphragmatic breathing because you can lie down in makrasana, right? Alligator pose, which you're lying on your belly, just lying down, and you can't help but be in diaphragmatic breathing because your stomach is on the floor, and your stomach has to work really hard to have you breathe because you're face down like that. And what you're accessing is diaphragmatic breathing, yogic breath, deep belly breath. And we have to retrain ourselves. I think that's the first step is to really be able to train ourselves to breathe. To take a deep breath.

SPEAKER_00:

Deep breath. Okay. Because that's the breath of life. That's so fascinating in terms of the way you describe a healthy first breath versus one that sounds traumatic. And yet when you think about people who are facing or dealing or going through addiction healing, so much of it's been informed by trauma. And which would reinforce a more shallow breathing, a gasped breath versus one that's slow and deep and cleansing, grounding. Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

So I think that's a great first thought for people when they're thinking about Ayurveda and yoga for the mind.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And when we think about how to breathe, our meditation teacher taught us a lot about how to do that for like a box breathing, right? Where we breathe in for four counts in a slow way, hold it in for four, then exhale to a count of and then hold that out for four as a way to really expand and slow down the breath and let it go down deeper and slower. And I find like just learning how to slow down, period with breath is a great practice. One that we don't typically do. So I want to thank you, Rima, for joining us today. This has been a great conversation, as always. Your wisdom, your deeper understanding of Ayurveda is just so incredible to me. And I really love these kinds of conversations. I trust that the medicine will eventually catch up and abide by this ancient practice. So thank you again for joining us today on She Ask, where practical hope meets healing. And this has been a great conversation. Thank you again, and until soon, we're gonna say to all of our listeners, be well. Take care,