DS: "I was having this thought of, I don't really want to go back to architecture and maybe I'll become a yoga teacher, because I was into that yoga, which I learned. I wasn't even thinking about yoga teacher yet until I read that book. It said two things. The way he explained it was to find your dharma or to live your dharma rather. You find something that you're talented about, you're absolutely talented and unique about one thing, and couple that with how you can serve humanity. That's it. Then I'm like, 'Okay, I'm definitely not doing architecture because it doesn't resonate, it doesn't feel that fulfilling and have much purpose for me.' I didn't know, then I was like, 'Uh, I'm going to be a yoga teacher.' My current girlfriend, at the time, who I was spending a lot of time with, her family, they were a pretty high-class family. They were both lawyers, and she was in law school. Soon as I started mentioning, 'Oh, I'm going to leave.' They're like, 'Oh! Really? You can't leave university.' My parents weren't as much like that. My mom a little bit, had a little bit of fear. But my father was very passive, and very supportive of any choice I made, and was very calm. But yeah, I read that and I expressed it to the doctors, and yeah, I felt strong about it. Then they said, 'Come learn with us. We'll teach you.' I didn't think much about it. It wasn't even such a click. It wasn't like a bing moment. It wasn't like that. It was just like, 'Sure, I'll do it.' Then he goes, 'Start reading this book, and come here.' And that was the beginning of that."

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:01:35] LW: Hello, friends. Welcome back to the Light Watkins Show, where I interview ordinary folks just like you and me, who've taken extraordinary leaps of faith in the direction of their path, their purpose, or their mission. In doing so, they've been able to positively impact the lives of many others who’ve either heard about their story, or who witnessed them in action, or who benefited from their work.

Today, I'm in conversation with a gentleman by the name of Dylan Smith. I actually met Dylan many, many years ago when he was just in high school. Since then, Dylan has become a world renowned Ayurvedic practitioner. Ayurveda is the ancient Indian form of health care using mostly natural herbs and remedies to heal the body. It often takes one year of study with one teacher in order to be considered an Ayurvedic master. Dylan was on a career track to becoming an architect when he accepted an invitation to join his mom for an Ayurvedic treatment in India. It was there that he had an experience that basically became a turning point in his life. Shortly after that, he pivoted from the architecture path to becoming an Ayurvedic practitioner under the tutelage of his master teacher, Dr. Raju.

Dylan eventually became a certified Ayurvedic practitioner and holistic health educator. His first treatment clinic was actually in his bedroom at his parents' house, because he was barely 20 years old. He has since then moved out of the bedroom and he now has a proper clinic, where he teaches patients from all over the world how to effortlessly integrate the foundational Ayurvedic techniques into their daily life so that they can thrive. Dylan has also become an expert at treating stress, fatigue, digestive issues, and back issues. We talked about his fascinating process of diagnosing exactly what's going on in the body, just using his three fingers. In addition to doing a deep dive into Dylan's origin story, we unpack the Ayurvedic perspective on many fascinating aspects of health. We also talk about how to find the right Ayurvedic doctor, why Ayurveda prioritizes the use of oils. We talked about the Ayurvedic perspective on sunlight, and why it's important to eat with the sun and not to eat out at restaurants too much, and a lot more.

If you ever been interested in exploring more ancient forms of healing, you'll find this conversation fascinating. If you haven't been interested, you'll still be inspired by the story of this young man finding a path that resonated, and being willing to give up a path that probably look more successful on paper in order to pursue one that felt more aligned with his heart. Get ready for another informative and inspiring episode as I introduce you to Mr. Dylan Smith.

[INTERVIEW]

[00:04:35] LW: Dylan, thank you so much for coming on to the podcast live from India. It's good to see you since yesterday, we actually recorded an interview on your podcast, and now we're doing the little switcheroo and I can get to ask you questions. I'm super excited about learning more about your story, and how it informed your current work in Ayurveda, which we'll talk a bit about in the second half of the interview. you. Thanks for coming on, man.

[00:05:01] DS: Thanks for having me, man. It's an honor to be here. As I said yesterday, I'm just so happy to connect with you on this level.

[00:05:07] LW: Yeah. I'm looking at you now on Zoom. You're very much a man, you got the facial hair, get your muscles and everything developed, because you're sitting there with no shirt on. We'll talk about why in a little bit. 

[00:05:23] DS: Is this is going to be a video?

[00:05:28] LW: But I met you initially, as a young man. You were I think 14 or 15 years old when I happen to be in Australia, and I had been seeing your mom around at some cafes. I think she invited myself and one of the other meditation teachers over to meet your family. There's a lot that's transpired since then. You kind of grew up in a meditation-centric household, but I'm not sure how early on that was happening. Just talk a little bit about your introduction to the vedas and all of that, as a young person growing up in Bondi, and how your parents kind of got into it, and how they introduce you have. Is it just you or you have a sibling?

[00:06:15] DS: I have a younger brother and a younger sister.

[00:06:18] LW: Yeah. How did they introduce you all to this knowledge?

[00:06:21] DS: I learned to meditate when I was six. It actually happened, I fell off a tree, I was climbing a tree, and I fell off, and I hit my head. I fractured my skull, and I was in the hospital and I remember it very well. I remember being in hospital, the kids' hospital on my birthday. They had the people dressing up and coming into the hospital. It was pretty severe, but luckily, nothing at the moment happened badly. 

But then, my mother was scared, obviously. She was meditating then. She went to her meditation teacher, Thom Knoles and suggested what can we do to help. Thom said, "Look, usually we don't start them until seven years old," I think it was at that time, or seven or eight, the kids meditating. But he said, "This will really help." But I wanted to do it with my brother as well, who’s one and a half years younger than me. That was another exception. He must have been four at the time. We both learned to meditate together.

I remember very clearly going to the meditation teacher's office and giving him a drawing, which he still has. He tells me all the time, he says, "I've still got your thing. I don't usually keep them, but yours I had." Because children, when you learn to meditate, you don't pay, you give art piece or something like that. That's how I learned to meditate. Then, it went on. I didn't grow up in such like a meditation household where they were very intuitive. My parents still aren't like – it's not like a Hare Krishna household, which I see other people like they're fully into it and doing all this other stuff. But definitely, we honored our parents in their meditation times. Me, and my brother, and sister, we knew like, "Mom's meditating. Okay, we don't disturb her." That was always there. 

As a child, I didn't meditate twice a day, even as a young teenager. I didn't like sit down to meditate so much. Sometimes it was on the way to soccer. My parents would be, "Guys, meditate. You'll get better at the game." Me and my brother would sit and do it. But it was always having that word of wisdom, which they call it was always there to pick up on in times of stress. It's not like, "Hey, I'm stressed, I got to pick it up." But it would just come spontaneously as a kid. For example, I remember things like getting a vaccination at school, don't be stressed by the needle, I would just pick up on it automatically. Or putting my feet into a hot bath when it's really hot and I needed like, ease myself into it. I would pick up on my mantra. In retrospect, I'm very grateful for having that.

Then kind of as a teenager, it died off. I didn't use it as much. I then went to India when I was around 19 or 19, 20 on a gap year, like most of us do in Australia after finishing high school. We generally work for six months, and I was laborer at a building site, and then we'd go traveling for six months, I spent all that money. I went to India. I traveled Europe for two and a half months on a real shoestring budget, like malnourished, not eating well, not consuming toxic substances. Then I met my mother who was going to India regularly annually, at least once a year for her breast cancer. She went there to heal through Ayurveda. Ayurveda is one of the branches of the Veda, of that body of knowledge which governs the laws of nature of which you teach Vedic meditation. This was like the Vedic medicine. She like invited me to go spin, and it was so good because I came from Europe being malnourished to like being so nourished in this Ayurvedic center.

That kind of introduced me, but still, I didn't really take it on. I remember after the panchakarma, which is an Ayurvedic detox and rejuvenation program that I did with my mother. We both went to Rishikesh. While she was doing other stuff, I would go and find the sadhus and want to smoke chillum. That's not a good thing to do straight out to panchakarma when my system is so clean. I still wasn't into it. But then it was the next year that my girlfriend at the time wanted to try this panchakarma, which my mother was always talking about. Let me round back. The first one, I learned yoga. I learned yoga asanas and pranayama breathing exercises. After learning that, I was really hooked, I was practicing two hours a day in the morning while traveling India. I was still doing other toxic-stuff-like substances, but I was doing this two-hour yoga. I loved it. It's the first time I've done it.

Then, when I got back to Australia, I said, "Okay, I'm ready to learn to meditate again." I went to our local teacher who you know, [inaudible 00:10:52], who's one of the teachers in Sydney, Australia. Okay, I'm ready, and I did it, and I was hooked ever since. Since then, as anyone who experiences meditation, and I'm sure you see, Light, in your students, just gradually, the toxic habits and substances start diminishing as the light prevails. I started doing less of the things, and toxic relationships, everything started fading away. Then again, went to India with my mother and I didn't know what to do. I was studying architecture; I didn't like it. I learned about Dharma for the first time, what the most evolutionary thing you can be doing in one of Deepak Chopra's books. I said, "Okay, I definitely don't want to go back to study architecture, because I want to do something more meaningful." I expressed that to the doctors there at the clinic. They said, "Oh, come study with us. We'll teach you." I didn't really think much about, I just did it. That's kind of how I got into it. Since then, I was studying.

[00:11:51] LW: I want to go back to your younger years. You learned with Thom Knoles, initially, when you were a kid? What was your impression of Thom? He's an older man, at the time you were six-year-old, what was that like for you?

[00:12:04] DS: To be honest, I don't really have much of – the memory didn't stick of him as a person. It was just this like, quiet, old man in a room, a very quiet and peaceful room who just gave me this word, and then gave me some instructions. From memory, it would have taken 10 minutes or less, and it was out. I was just like – and it was a very neutral memory. It was a very neutral impression. But I think it did, in retrospect, it went in on the subtle, because I used that technique on the subtle. It was more about the technique. I don't think I had such an impression of that teacher, specifically.

But as a kid growing up, when Thom would come to Australia annually, we were kids and well, I was hanging out with his kids. All these people were like, kind of worshipping this guy, and really into him. It was just really fun hanging out with him and his kids. He just seemed like a really cool guy. He was surfing, he would let his kids do whatever they want with their skateboarding and listening to jazz music. he was just like a regular dude for me.

[00:13:16] LW: What was your impression of the meditation technique that you had learned? Was it something that was really different from what you were used to, or was it kind of like, "Oh, this is interesting, but I'll do it when I feel like it. But it's not really delivering anything particularly profound in my young life?”

[00:13:34] DS: It wasn't profound. It was something that my parents gave me. I wasn't in so much gratitude or value. I didn't have much value for it. It's just, I had it, it was like another curriculum. I used to do soccer, I used to do basketball, I used to do all these different stuffs, swimming lessons. It was like, that's it, that's one of the things. And yeah, it's kind of a bit different, and weird, and it's kind of nice. I get to sit quietly, waiting on the car. It's cool, but it was more subtle implementation of it. 

[00:14:11] LW: Your dad's an architect, right?

[00:14:12] DS: Yes.

[00:14:13] LW: So were you being groomed to be an architect or was that something really you were pursuing?

[00:14:18] DS: Yeah, I was pursuing. I definitely wasn't grooming. My parents were never like that, thankfully, especially my dad. He's very easygoing. His dad was also an architect. I kind of chose that because I didn't know what else to do as a teenager.

[00:14:46] LW: Your mom got diagnosed with breast cancer. What was that like in your family? Were they, "Sure, okay. We'll just go to Ayurveda, sort it out," or is it like a little scared, did their meditation practice really get tested at that time? Do you remember any of that?

[00:15:00] DS: I was around 16, 17, and they didn't tell us much as kids. I wasn't into medicine at the time, so I wasn't – like now, I'm very involved in her medical treatment. I really didn't know anything. I didn't know anything about chemotherapy, radiotherapy, surgery. I really didn't know. I didn't even that much about cancer at that time. I guess, even then, it was not as well-known as a kid would know now. It wasn't very strict. I mean, she chose to not do chemo, and radio, but rather just to do surgery, double mastectomy, as well Ayurveda. That's, I think a great choice now, and that's something that I work a lot with cancer patients with any intervention that they choose. But common thing is that choice of surgery only in terms of the allopathic treatment and supporting with other modalities.

[00:16:01] LW: Do you remember as a teenager, around that age, do you remember your parents indulging in Ayurvedic lifestyle growing up? Did they introduce you to any of that or was it just like these weird herbs and stuff that they were taking?

[00:16:17] DS: Yeah, they weren't doing that much. But when my mom got cancer, definitely it increased and mainly with the food. She was cooking a lot, that Ayurvedic food with the principles. Cooking the fresh food, using spices a lot, turmeric a lot. She had her herbs, which I think I would have tried – she would always bring back herbs for us that Dr. Raju, her doctor would give for her. She would look it up. He would look at our photo while he would feel her right pulse, her masculine side. Usually for women, we feel the left. But he would look at a photo of me for example, and feel her ripe pulse while she was thinking of me. It's called messenger pulse, and he would feel my pulse through her and prescribe herbs. She would bring back all these herbs for all the kids, and more so us, not so much my father, because he wasn't as much into that. 

Definitely, my memories are mainly in the kitchen, cooking a lot and giving us really good food. I've always loved my mom's food, and even more so than my brother. He was known as, not into the healthy food as much as I was. But I was just really, especially because I was a teenager, I was really grateful for the food I was getting. I would take them to all the places I would go and I was also proud of it. I was proud of my mom's food and other kids at school, whether they're eating out, they're getting the takeaway, seemed at the time a prestige thing. I have money, I can buy stuff. It's nice to buy. I got that pal. But I was really proud, and I was always the unique kid as well, of course, to them, but I enjoyed that.

[00:18:03] LW: You said your mom went to India at least once a year. What made this time different when you had your gap year? Was it purely just to have time on my hands, or was there something else that inspired you to join her, this panchakarma?

[00:18:14] DS: Free accommodation and free food? Namely, I was really on a budget and I wanted to check out – I think, yeah, that was probably the main reason I went to India, and then I'm like, "Okay, I'm here. I'll do some traveling myself after." I was always going to Europe, because that's the thing that my friend groups did. Mainly to Europe, and not even Asia as much, but I've been that kind of unique, different. I did want to go to Asia, like Southeast Asia, and that's why India. I didn't think about spiritual. I've always loved traveling, and I especially love traveling then.

[00:18:50] LW: All right. So you're in this panchakarma, you pick up this Deepak Chopra book, you're reading about dharma. How did that strike you? What do you remember?

[00:18:59] DS: It really strikes me strong. It shifted a lot, because I was having this thought of, I don't really want to go back to architecture and maybe I'll become a yoga teacher, because I was into that yoga, which I learned. I wasn't even thinking about yoga teacher yet until I read that book. It said two things. The way he explained it was to find your dharma or to live your dharma rather. You find something that you're talented about, you're absolutely talented and unique about one thing, and couple that with how you can serve humanity. That's it. Then I'm like, "Okay, I'm definitely not doing architecture because it doesn't resonate, it doesn't feel that fulfilling, and have much purpose for me." I didn't know, then I was like, "Uh, I'm going to be a yoga teacher." My current girlfriend at the time, who I was spending a lot of time with, her family, they were a pretty high-class family. They were both lawyers, and she was in law school. Soon as I started mentioning, 'Oh, I'm going to leave.' They're like, "Oh! Really? You can't leave university." My parents weren't as much like that. My mom a little bit, had a little bit of fear. But my father was very passive, and very supportive of any choice I made, and was very calm. 

But yeah, I read that and I expressed it to the doctors, and yeah, I felt strong about it. Then they said, "Come learn with us. We'll teach you." I didn't think much about it. It wasn't even such a click. It wasn't like a bing moment. It wasn't like that. It was just like, "Sure, I'll do it." Then he goes, "Start reading this book, and come here." And that was the beginning of that.

[00:20:38] LW: You mentioned Dr. Raju, who would read your mom's pulse, and see a picture of you. Did he have special powers or is his all purely scientific?

[00:20:47] DS: Both. The pulse diagnosis is the number one diagnostic method in Ayurveda. There are eight main ones. You can say like pulse diagnosis, urine examination, stool examination, tongue diagnosis, touching the body, listening to the body to the sounds of the body, just looking at the body. But pulse is the number one, because it has the ability to see very deep into the body, and see the whole physiology well before even diseases manifest. That's why it's so useful, because it's very profound in the preventative medicine process. Because a lot of the time like, I see my teacher and I tour different cities with my teacher around the world, and we see hundreds of patients. That's one of the great ways I've learned Ayurveda, is just sitting in consultations with him. 

He'll a lot of the time bring up something like lower back pain or lower back issues. The patient be like, "No, my low back is good." But he's like, "No, but that's awaiting. Take these things to prevent that." It's seeing on before in early on in the disease process, which Ayurveda is very good at. They see the disease process at six stages, and the manifestation is only the fifth stage. That's usually when the western medicine kicks in. It is scientific, it is actually a very technical way of pulse diagnosis. But also, yes, they definitely have CDs, which we call – which means divine human capabilities in reading the pulse, and things like messenger pulse.

Another example is, which I always give when I lectured policies. Once my friend came to visit me while I was studying in India. When we feel pulse, like I also do pulse diagnosis, but I don't have any CDs like them at all, not a fraction of it. But my friend came and we don't speak to the patient, we don't want to speak to them before, we just want to feel their pulse. Because we don't want them – what they say like, if I have a patient come in and say, "I've got back issues, I've got insomnia," then I'm going to be looking for that in the pulse. I just want the pulse to speak to me, because the pulse reveals what the body wants to heal. We can have 10 people in the room with insomnia, but why? One is called because of hormones. One is because they have too much energy. One is because they have not enough energy. One is because of the neck. The pulse reveals that.

My friend came and he just felt the pulse. He said, there are some eye issues on your maternal side. Take some herbs for that. His mother's side had eye issues. They can even differentiate between maternal history. There are so many stories about pulse, amazing stories as well. Yes, definitely, they have CDs. What's interesting, Light, is during COVID, they would see sometimes 100, 150 people in a day, because that's the beauty with pulse diagnosis. You don't need to talk too much because you feel everything in 10, 20 seconds, so you don't need to ask questions about them. You know so much. When they would have 200 people in a day, it's just pulse, write prescription, tell a few things, next. In COVID, they were doing all messenger pulses, because they can't see the person in person, so they were doing it through Zoom, through video. I've seen just from these three years, and during the also doing the Zoom sessions with them, how much they've developed this CD of messenger pulse specifically. It's just awesome to see.

[00:24:12] LW: I'm curious about pulse reading. I've had this done before. From what I remember, they had their first three fingers on my – what's this?

[00:24:21] DS: The radial pulse.

[00:24:23] LW: The radial pulse. If you had to give a layman's description, what exactly are they reading? Is it the frequency of pulse? How the blood is moving? Is it like thousand things? How subtle –

[00:24:35] DS: It's a thousand things. It's very subtle and it's thousand things. When we teach pulse, we don't say, "Okay, look for this, feel this volume, feel this level." There are so many levels of depending on how hard you press. We don't share so much, or what part of the finger are you feeling what type of pulse, with which quality, things like that. Really, the way to learn pulse diagnosis is to experience it. and then from what you experience, you reveal to the teacher what you're experiencing. It's not, "Okay. Now, look for this." It's, "Oh, I recognize this pattern, because I felt my pulse 50 times a day for six months. I noticed after when I wake up, I feel this. And after meditation, I feel this. And before I need to go to the toilet, I feel this. What does that mean?" That's how you start learning.

[00:25:26] LW: I'm curious. Are there any sort of self-implemented pulse reading techniques that a layperson could try out like in real time?

[00:25:33] DS: Hundred percent. During COVID, when people could not come to India for panchakarma, which is the Ayurvedic detox and rejuvenation process. We have a clinic here and a lot of people come for their annual health. People couldn't do that, plus they couldn't get herbs. This is when we couldn't receive shipments from India. I said to Dr. Raju, "What are we going to do? People, they're kind of suffering," because they were stressing out and feeling their health not being maintained by the Ayurveda. He said, "We have to teach self-pulse. That's the way they can improve their health." We're huge believers on teaching self-pulse. Feeling your own pulse is not so much itself diagnostic method, which it can be later, but it's more a self-referral mechanism. Because the pulse contains the knowledge of your whole Self, capitalist S, Self. It brings you back to that. We especially prescribed self-pulse with people with panic attacks and anxiety attacks. Because as soon as they feel their pulse, it completely brings them into their body. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi once said, "One of the ways to unity consciousness, to experiencing that state of consciousness of unity is through self-pulse." It is a profound thing, and it's the basis to learning pulse diagnosis. It's very, very easy, and pulse diagnosis is very, very easy.

[00:26:52] LW: Is there like a party trick technique you can walk us through right now for self-pulse?

[00:26:56] DS: I mean, I can do it. Okay. I'll do it.

[00:27:01] LW: Totally understand. It's like when people ask me to teach him to lead a meditation, it's like the last thing I ever want to do on a podcast. I get it, if you don't want to do it. I'm just curious.

[00:27:11] DS: Well, I better not, just because there's some things to go through a little bit. But it is very easy, and it can take five to ten minutes. It's much easier with a camera. But I will leave it, but we do have a course on our website with Dr. Raju who've taught it. That was the one during COVID. We made it very affordable, because we just wanted everyone to do it. It was amazing and to do it within the collective. That was a real thing that they emphasized, like they wanted everyone to have even their videos on in the Zoom that they could see. It was an amazing collective experience. We did feel our own pulse together, like it's very simple. It takes less than five minutes to learn how to feel your pulse, but then it's kind of how to use that, usually. 

We did play certain pieces of sounds, or music, or looked at certain things while we were feeling to experience different fluctuations, and then understand the patterns of how our environment and experiences can influence our pulse, and then that influences us.

[00:28:11] LW: We'll put some links to that in the show notes to the course. All right. Let's look back to your story. Talk about the early days of being a protege. Now that you've identified that this is something you want to take seriously, what was that like? Did you spend more time in India or – I know you studied in Australia as well, but walk us through the sort of montage of how that came together?

[00:28:32] DS: Sure. When they said to me, "Come study with us." They also said, "Don't study anywhere else. Just study with us." I ended up studying in Australia to get certified for legal reasons and things and it was good. But I did have to do some unlearning, which is one of the reasons they said that. I went after this course, which was about one and a half years to get certified on. I went there and I just showed up. I used to spend half of the year there for the first few years of learning, especially the first time. Because it's really interesting, and this lasted for a few years of – these guys, they've been healing for generations. There are very few families that have that unbroken lineage of knowledge that have been healing for many generations. They start learning at three years old, seven years old, and they're learning every day. Every morning, they've been woken up by their parents before sunrise because that's the time to absorb knowledge more profoundly, and they would learn that things.

For me, it was really interesting because like, I can't spend seven years full time here. There's a need in Australia, there's a need in the West. I need to learn and I was very, very thirsty for knowledge. I was so thirsty. This is my nature as well. I'm like that pit type, that fiery type that wants to learn. For example, first year I was there, I was there for six months. I was getting five to 10 minutes a day with a doctor. That's also because they're extremely busy. They have a very busy clinic, but that's what I was getting. It was a lot of testing as well on my devotion to the knowledge and to them. But those five to 10 minutes was so amazing, like so much better than months at my Ayurvedic course, or hours, and hours, and hours of reading books. The answers, all the questions I had, and it was so amazing. They were testing me. They're very kind, and very pacifist people, and very minimalistic in their words, especially my main teacher, one of the doctors there, because there's a couple brothers, and a couple sisters.

But yeah, it was just that little bit, and then every year, they would give a bit more. There were other people who came to learn as well. I remember one German lady, in the early days. She also was similar age to me. She also wants to learn, but she didn't last. She couldn't take the lack that they weren't giving enough attention. They weren't giving us time, but I kind of hung in there and made use of my time by reading, and doing other things, and practicing what I learned. Then it just got better, and better every year, and it keeps getting better, and better every year. I would be doing this probably for the, really, for the rest of my life or until at least they're there to teach me.

[00:31:32] LW: Talk a little bit about that approach to teaching and to learning in that sort of eastern ancient Indian fashion with the student, and the teacher, and them having to show deserving power, et cetera.

[00:31:45] DS: Yeah. Look, I can't say too much, because I wasn't in – and I'm not really in –well, I do teach people, but I'm not like them. It's checking how worldly this human is for the knowledge. But a big thing was, how much are they doing the work themselves, how pure are their vessel? It wasn't like, "Okay." I was thirsty for knowledge, definitely. They could see that. But also, the big thing was, how well you're doing your inner work, essentially. When I was more physically sick, I had a chronic skin condition, and it's still there to some extent. When that was worth, then they will give me less. But when I was physically well, and definitely mentally, emotionally, they would give you more. It was a lot about – a lot what I've learned with them is not so much intellectual knowledge, but getting capabilities to heal. We call it in Ayurveda, Dhanvantri, which is like healing capabilities. That's what I do now in my initiations more than intellectual knowledge at certain practices to enhance capabilities to heal.

As you said, it's checking they're worldly there and ready. The sister was always more gentle, and calm, and more generous, like a mother. She would always say like, "Krishna is so proud of you." I'm like, "Whoa, I didn't know that. He doesn't say anything to me." It made me feel so good. Then another thing would be, when they would get angry, they are these kuffaar which means like, their big, friendly, oily – like people say this Krishna Dr. Raju laughed more than Maharishi Mahesh Yogi did. His real name is Ananda Vhardan, which means increased amount of bliss. He is the most blissful person you will meet. His giggle, he laughs so much. He's like never negative. Then the more I kind of got closer to them, and the more they trust me, and the more they gave me knowledge, sometimes he would be strict with me and tell me off. That would be amazing in many ways. It was very hurt – like it fully touched my heart and made me very upset at times, because I love him, like a divine love, a guru love. It's hard to explain. It's not like any other love, not like a romantic love, or a love for even a family member. It's different. 

When he would tell me off it would really – but it would also show to me that he can do that because we're close enough. I saw someone else who he did it too would be really hurt, and scared, and would leave. It's really nice when he does that. But also, when he does that, I'm like, "Okay, I really have to behave" and it really teaches me to shift my behavior or my actions significantly.

[00:34:39] LW: You ended up opening up this clinic a couple years later. Did you know that that was going to happen? Or on those initial days, were you just thinking, I'm just learning, and healing myself, and I'm just sucking up as much as possible? Did they anoint you as like, "Okay, you're ready to go help people" or how do you know you're ready?

[00:34:59] DS: It was always there. When I chose, like that first time when they said, "Come stay with us." I'm like, "Okay, this is going to be my profession," because that time for me, that was an important part. It's career, how do you sustain yourself financially. It was always there. I guess, as soon as I finished my degree and I was certified, I was practicing, and opening my clinic in my parent's house in a room, in my bedroom – not my bedroom, my old bedroom. They didn't really ever – because I was always – I always started practicing, but they did anoint me with adding things. You could add certain things and practice certain things on patients.

[00:35:38] LW: How are you financing all these trips to India?

[00:35:41] DS: I was not paying rent for my clinic, because it's at my friend's house, and I was living in my parents' house as well. I'm pretty sure in a different room. I've always been a good saver, and still today. We live Ayurveda. Now, my wife and I, my clinics always, mostly always been in our home, because we're preparing herbs the night before for the next treatment till late at night. And we have to wake up early to prepare the herbs for that treatment. We see patients all day. Sometimes we have people for seven days of treatments, so they have to come on the weekend. It's much easier always. That's the same with my teachers. I mean, they do it to the nth degree. It's always easy to work from home. So kind of our life, because we're always doing – our trips to India is for work. It's kind of like, we live with the business financially. That's kind of always been. It's just in the beginning days, it was more tighter budget, and they would support me as well, the Rajus with that and its different aspects.

[00:36:40] LW: By the end of your initial apprenticeship, because you still go back and study with them, what you're doing right now. Had you gotten more face time with him? Beyond the 10 –

[00:36:48] DS: Yeah, absolutely. Increased, and increased, and beautiful. Yeah. Now, there's a lot of good stuff, which happened in a lot of time. They come to Australia, I bring them there, and that's like a lot of time as well, but that's also work.

[00:37:04] LW: You consider them to be your guru or is there one of them that's your guru?

[00:37:09] DS: I consider them, and that's something also that I'm dancing with. But yes, there's even more, there's three siblings now. One passed. The oldest brother, who's 20 years older has three children who are Ayurvedians, who are Ayurvedic doctors. I consider them all to be my guru. But there is one who has definitely spent the most time, who's the head of the clinic, the other one, we're traveling a lot, going to Europe. Yeah, he's the main, but I touch their feet, all of them when I see them. I would give a lot for them and do a lot for them.

[00:37:48] LW: For the listener who's unfamiliar with that type of dynamic, the guru-student dynamic, or disciple dynamic, or devotee. I don't know how you characterize yourself. But can you just talk a little bit about that, because I think to Western ears, it can be a little bit bewildering, that you submit yourself to someone who's your guru.

[00:38:09] DS: That's something that I – the feet thing is something which I did later. We'll talk about that in a bit. But look, I understand that guru-student relationship is not common, especially in the West, and I'm very grateful for it. I think it's just – my nature is, it just happened that way. I fully wanted them and I got attracted to them like a magnet. I just wanted to be like them, I wanted to learn from them as much as I could. I wanted to work with them in collaboration and in alliances. For me, to have – I'll use that word, guru, but you could say, mentor, or teacher, it's very supportive for my journey, for both my personal inner journey, as well as the work that I do. Because I don't have to make as many decisions, and there's also a dance of listen to your own inner guru or your own inner self. But it's like, for example, buying a house, which is something we want to do. It's me and my wife, we had some disagreement about a house, I wanted one, she didn't want that one. We just asked him and he decides. Kind of it is like that. 

It's just, yeah, someone that I see, just want to respect as much as I can, and honor, and give back to him, and him is essentially giving to people. That's one thing my teachers are. They're the most about dharmic people. They just want to work. They have very unhealthy lifestyle, because all they do is see patients, and prepare herbs, and sleep at ridiculous hours, even miss meals. I don't want to be like that, so I don't want to be everything which they are. Even they recognize these bad things, like they don't want to pass it to their children who were like 12 years old who are becoming doctors, because they're afraid that their children going to not want to do this because of how unsustainable their life is. There's a whole dance there. But yeah, it's just, the teacher is like that.

The touching the feet thing is something which – I like tradition, and I like culture. I love India. I've spent so much time here, and I love indigenous cultures, indigenous Australia. I kind of learned these things. Then I learned the essence of them. The touching feet, it's a common thing in India, it's a sign of respect. The feet have the energy of the person, it goes out through the feet, energy goes out. Some gurus even, they don't let people touch their feet, because it kind of they take the energy away, like Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is your teacher's teacher, my teacher's teacher. He would never let anyone touch his feet. Because for him, it'd be like a draining of his energy. Even my – the old Dr. Raju, he doesn't really like people touching his feet, but I still can luckily sometimes. Sometimes, you got to play with it.

But I touch with of my three my fingers, which of the three fingers which we feel the pulse, which kind of gives the energy. Then, I touch that on the center point of their top of foot, which is the heart of the foot, it's a vital point, which we call Marma point. It's where acupuncture points come from, and I cross. It is an exchange of energy. When I touch the feet, I'm receiving their blessings. Even the sister, she'll always say – well, I touch feet, "Bless you. God bless you." But it's receiving this energy, and this flow of energy. It's kind of like making love, but through a different form of touching. It's that circulation of energy between the teacher and the student. I don't do it a lot. I do it probably for example, I'm here for two months with them, and I'll probably do it two or three times when I see them first, when I get initiated by them, and when I leave, maybe, something like that.

[00:42:00] LW: You got into all this very young age. You're from Australia, Bondi specifically, heavy drinking culture. I'm just curious, this is for all the young listeners who may aspire to do things a little bit outside of the box. How did you integrate into your life with peers who were interested probably mostly in going out and getting drunk, and pursuing those kinds of more superficial outlets for fulfillment? Was that a struggle for you at all? Or you just kind of hung out with probably older people, who I imagined, people who are like into the things that you were into?

[00:42:36] DS: I was still hanging out with people my age, but it wasn't so much a struggle with me, because I was always the odd one out. I was always owning that. I wouldn't be scared, like I would own it. Even though my friends would kind of tease me, although they were my friends, they still would make fun of me that I'm doing weird stuff, like not wearing shoes at school, or whatever it was. I didn't care. I'm that kind of person. I'm an Aquarius rising. I'm just like, "I'll do what I want." But I stopped drinking like abnormally early for my culture, like 19 years old. I just never liked alcohol. I was doing drugs until much later. I was using quite a lot of drugs regularly. It was the meditation without a doubt, as I said earlier, like I started learning to meditate, and it just slowly, naturally. I didn't try make it go away. I just started doing less drugs. 

The relationships, the friendships took a bit longer to leave. But naturally, also, I started going away from that. There was definitely a point where, and I see it a lot in young people who learn to meditate particularly of, I feel lonely as my friends, but I don't really want to be with them, because I don't enjoy that so much. I want to find my crew. But luckily, Sydney community also has a wonderful conscious community. Now, it's much stronger than it was probably over 10 years ago when I kind of made that transition to a more conscious community. I mean, now I don't know about – I'm sure you're into them, but it's amazing seeing the communities now in Sydney and Australia. I go to these conscious events, like for example, monthly drumming circle we love. It's like a meet up in the bush. It's 150 people dancing like crazy, partying like crazy. We see people who come for the party, and they're into drugs and alcohol. Sometimes they even bring it. It's not allowed, it’s drug and alcohol free, but they're like, "Wow!" They're really amazed, and they're really inspired, and they take it open too. I think now it's a beautiful thing that's possible

[00:44:56] LW: My early experiences Ayurveda was, I wouldn't say it was traumatic, but it was very laborious, and wasn't simple at all. You say that you teach patients to effortlessly integrate these techniques into their daily lives so they can thrive. Can you just give a synopsis of what Ayurveda is in a nutshell, and how you approach it, compared to – I think a lot of doctors, they give way too many things for people to do. I had a whole schedule of things that I had to do on a daily basis to supposedly make it work, but talk about your approach and first of all, what is Ayurveda in your understanding.

[00:45:39] DS: Ayurveda is a Sanskrit word. Ayu means life and veda means knowledge or science. Simply Ayurveda is the science of life, and is a very broad, and holistic body of knowledge, which is governed by natural law. So how nature operates in the sense of life, human life, but all creative life. Ad it teaches how to live life with the most bliss, the most happiness, the most freedom, abundance, and pleasure, because these four things in Ayurveda – and health, of course, is particularly related with the with wealth and abundance, aspect, but health is there. The essence of Ayurveda is through recommendations, through knowledge, which is really the knowledge of how nature operates, and how – as we are nature, the human physiology is nature, how that operates. How can you align your physiology with nature, to live your human nature, because it says that every human, every person has perfect health within them. It just has to be enlivened. We have to remind the body of that.

The way to do that is to align that human with nature, so that you wake in the human nature. That's through various ways like – you can simply say, aligning with the seasons, aligning with the day, with the sun. This is circadian medicine. Various ways according to where the person is at. That's how I recommend certain things for them. All these recommendations – Ayurveda is universal, so it can be integrated to anyone, wherever you are in the world, whatever climate you're in, whatever religion you practice, whatever diet you choose to eat. It's principles of how nature operates, and how nature should be operating in the human physiology. For example, it's like the sun. You look at a day, the daily routine. As you said earlier, you've been waking up before the sun because you're jet lagged, and you're feeling good from it. That's what it says. It says, before sunrise is the time of air and space element. If you wake up with that, you invite that air and space element to your life, which is creativity, and clarity, and lightness of being. But the more you sleep in past sunrise, it becomes earth element, which we call kapha. That sticks with you for the day. You get that heaviness, that sluggishness, that slowness of the earth element. That's one simple thing, is to wake up before sunrise or with the sun. 

From those listening, I'm sure you know, when you do that, maybe you had to go to some appointment, or you had to exercise, class booked or something. You feel a lot more energy that day when you wake up with the sun. But the more you sleep in, even though in the bed for longer, you may think you're getting rest because you're in the bed, but you actually feel a lot more sluggish, and slow, and dull that day. That's kind of an example of living in tune with natural law, and there are so many things. It's mainly through – I mean, the three pillars of Ayurveda is food. Food is a huge aspect, how to eat in tune with nature. Basically, local, seasonal, and eat with the sun. Then there's the second pillar is sleep, and the third pillar is called – the Sanskrit word is Brahmacharya, which means the regime of creation. That's how to attune your regime with creativity, which is involving the daily routine, the seasonal routine, as well as sexual energy, that creative energy, how to align with that. 

This is through, I say through food, through lifestyle, through herbs, and through body treatments is kind of an advanced stage. If you can want to do more, delve more. It's easy to take herbs, it's very easy. It's a bit more to shift your diet and it's a bit more to do lifestyle, but it's definitely more to go and take time to whether it's going to your Ayurvedic clinic and get some treatments.

[00:49:36] LW: I've seen people and had prescriptions of, "Hey, you just need to spend 10 minutes breathing in this way" or someone else may say, "Hey, put pepper in some warm milk, and drink that before you go to bed at night." Someone else says. "You have to hug four people throughout your day tomorrow." It could be all over the board like that in terms of recommendations and prescriptions.

[00:49:56] DS: Absolutely. Yeah, it's so many things. It's, "Put oil on these seven parts of your body before you go to sleep" or "Look at this." It can be, yeah, as you said, certain foods, so many things.

[00:50:10] LW: I do find that oil application tends to be one of the foundational treatments that gets applied or used with Ayurveda. Can you talk a little bit about why that is the case? What is it about oil, and the body that leads to better, more balanced with better health?

[00:50:29] DS: Absolutely. I love oil, for sure. We are currently facing epidemics of dehydration and dryness. You ask most doctors, even the top doctors who studied the hydration, proper hydration I'm talking. They say, 100% of people are dehydrated. Furthermore, in Ayurveda, we see, there's a theory of the five elements. I kind of said some of them earlier, but space, air, fire, water, earth. These elements are dominant on everything, every human, every plant, every animal, every object, everything. We have a dominance of the air and space element, which is dryness in our life. A lifestyle of very air, it's like movement, it's a lot of movement. Air and space is movement. We move a lot with doing things. We're on the computer, we're on screens, screens dry us out through our retina, they dry our brain out. Lights, artificial lights dries out, they even dry our skin. Air conditioning, heating, tap water, like bathing and tap water for the chemicals. We're facing everything to dryness. That can look like many things. Of course, dry skin, dry hair falling out, but Alzheimer's, dementia, neurodegeneration, these epidemics, it's becoming normal.

We think it's normal for our grandparents or our parents to enter old age home. Like, "Ah, yeah. That's fine. He's losing his memory because he's 80." But that's not natural. It's becoming the norm and it's not natural. What it is, is dry brain. That's what neurodegeneration is. It's when the when the myelin sheath is dry, the neurotransmitters can't move well, and that person can't think or gets Alzheimer's. In the gut, it can be experienced as bloating, or constipation, hard stool. In the joints, it can be experienced dryness in the joints, as joint issues, osteoporosis, degeneration of the joints, degeneration of the bones when the bones become dry. It's a very prevalent thing. Even in Ayurveda thousands of years ago said, this dry quality, which we call the vata dosha, which is air and space element is the most common. Secondary is the fire element, which we call pitta. That's things like imbalance state that expresses as hyperacidity ulcerative colitis, anger, all this frustration, eczema, dermatitis, so many things. Then there's the kafir, which is the earth, which is the earth and water element. 

Vata or this dryness is very dominant, and vata is also the nervous system. For example, putting oil on the body like giving yourself a massage. In Ayurveda, I mentioned daily routine. One of the things of daily routine is bathing yourself. Thankfully, most people do that daily. Some people don't, but it's actually very important thing to be doing daily, to be bathing yourself. But not only should we wash our skin, and put water on our body, and scrub it, we should also lubricate our skin. We should put oil on our body before a bath or before bathing. The biggest effect is you feel the pacified nervous system. Your skin has more nerve endings than any organ of your body. It's the biggest organ. When you put oil on your skin and give yourself a massage, you feel completely grounded and pacified. People feel it very tangibly that day. You feel this strength of nervous system. That's one thing you can do, especially those with anxiety or overactive mind, and stress, it helps a lot with that.

[00:53:49] LW: Why before the bath? Because I know, 90% of people moisturize after bath including myself. Should I be doing both or just before?

[00:53:58] DS: Definitely. You can do both, but the first time you apply oil to your body, you have to wash it off after. Because oil is lipophilic, which means it pulls toxins out of the skin as well as even the lymph in the blood, and even deeper tissues, especially when you're using Ayurvedic medicated oils, it pulls toxins out of tissues, especially the skin and the blood to the surface and you have to wash that off. Then once you've done that, you can put on as much as you want in the day. But the first time that you moisturize or even just moisturize, but especially if you give yourself an oil massage, definitely you have to wash it off. You'll feel it, Light. Have a go and let me know. You might feel – people, if you leave it on, it's like a bit cloggy, it can clog some energy, and some sweat pores, and things like that. That's what the reason we do it before bath. 

The nervous system is one thing and lymphatic drainage is a huge thing. We've got twice the amount of fluid of lymph than blood. The lymph is the plasma is what eats up toxins like Pac Man, takes toxins all throughout our body and bring it into the toilet to be eliminated out. Also, the lymph carries our killer T-cells, our immune system. So having good lymphatic circulation and lymphatic drainage optimizes our immunity. When you give yourself a massage, especially with oil, it really helps move that lymph. Helps blood circulation. It's the ultimate anti-aging. Dryness is degeneration, degeneration of brain, degeneration of joints, dreams of bones. When you see elderly people, as well, as you see cancer patients, especially with their terminal, they're very dry, and eventually they dry and shrivel up, disintegrate into the next realm. It's very good to maintain.

Ayurveda is primarily about prevention. It prioritizes to prevent disease, or it says, maintain health in the healthy. Secondarily, it treats the sick. Because if we can maintain it, put more energy towards preventative medicine, we're going to have a much greater disease-free society, than if we just treat sick people. One of the key preventative methods is what we call abhyanga, which means Ayurvedic oil massage. That's one thing people can try. You can go to my website, download a free poster on how to give yourself an oil massage. You can use coconut oil in the summer, or sesame oil in the winter, or coconut oil if you have sensitive skin, and just do it before shower. I've got the short version as well. If you don't have time, it just takes one minute to put oil on certain parts of your body because oiliating these vital points is what's going to maintain that lubrication in those areas of the certain orifices, the Zen. That's one oil. We can go through other oils also if you want, other ways of administering oil.

[00:56:43] LW: On your website, you said that the most important aspect of treating a patient is the position. Next that's important is the herbs, and the staff, helpers, then the patient, and their ability to surrender, and adhere to the treatment plan. Can you talk a little bit about that sequence?

[00:56:59] DS: Yeah. That's based off of a shlokas. What is shloka in Vedic system? It's like a hym, or a hymn, or a Vedic verse. I'm really passionate about having proper sources of knowledge, especially with Ayurveda, a lot of Ayurveda is being lost in misunderstood. When the moguls came, they took a lot of the knowledge. When the British came, they were chopping off physician's hands because they were doing the pulse. I'm into adhering to the shastras, which are the classical texts, which have these verses, as well as my teachers who have an unbroken lineage of knowledge. I like shlokas or verses, and one of them is – I can chant it if you want. It's "[Inaudible 00:57:38]." It labels that. The first is the bishop, which is the Veda or the Ayurvedic doctor, second is the herbs, the [inaudible 00:57:48], third is the technician and the fourth is the patient. That's the order of what's most important. You need the doctor, you need the physician to have the treatment. That's the most important.

You can have the herbs, you can have the patient, you can even have a technician or a staff member that who gives the treatments. But if you don't have the physician guiding, that's what's the most important. The herbs are a secondary most important. Recently, in my journey of learning, I'm really learning more about how powerful herbs are, and they're very advanced, and intelligent beings. There are other shlokas, which say – there's one which says, diseases from past life are rectified by and it lists all these things. The first one is herbs, and the next one is doing what's called yajna, which is like a sacrifice. Then one is doing meditation, one is doing mantra repetition. But the first is herbs. That's secondary.

It's not really one is more important than it is in that order. But it's saying these are the four things required to treat. You need those four things, you need a physician, you need herbs, you need a staff member to help, and you need a, the veda, the doctor can act as a staff and you need the patient. Not only you need a patient, then it goes into the four things of what each of those need. For example, one of the things that the patient needs is to completely surrender. That's a huge thing to not think about. We ideally don't want patients thinking about their health, and analyzing it, and Googling and like, "Well, why give me this?" It's really, just focus on your health rather than your disease, enjoy your life. Go out and let me take care of you. 

That's what's the beauty of having a physician who you can just surrender to and trust, and not need to think about your health, not need to think about your disease. Someone he can just not even question, you just do it. That's a big journey I learned, because I'm very intellectual, and I was learning with the doctor while receiving treatment at the same time, and my time in India. I'm here to really teach me like, I could not ask questions about myself. I had to just – [inaudible 00:59:51] I do. I don't question. I don't think about my own. I don't analyze myself. It's very clear in Ayurveda for the physician to not heal themselves. They have to give it to someone, another Veda.

[01:00:11] LW: If someone doesn't have access to you or Dr. Raju, how do you identify Ayurvedic doctor who you would potentially surrender to, and let them kind of take control of your healing?

[01:00:23] DS: Good question. Well, everyone does, because you can do it online consultations. But if that's still inaccessible, it's a really interesting dance, because healthy skepticism is required. For example, certainly in the allopathic medical system. Because if you just surrendered, then the physician would be saying, "Chop off your leg, or let me take this, reconstruct your shoulder." Rather, you could practice skepticism and say, "Actually, do I need to get shoulder reconstruction and surgery? Or if I just do some massage, and change my diet and lifestyle, and do some physio, and things, maybe I can fix it?" Because a lot of the time, there's inappropriate medical interventions, a lot of the time. It is required, definitely in the Western medical system to practice that.

But if you can find a doctor that you can surrender to, and I guess it's – you have to use your intuition somewhat to see if you can. I mean, it's a practice anyway to do with all physicians, I think. When I see other practitioners – occasionally, I see a chiropractor. In the past, I've dabbled in other things, and I've had that approach of swayed, like, "I'm here." You can kind of tell, are they coming from a good place, are they genuine. I guess, it requires a bit of intuition to tell, should you be surrendering or should you have a bit of skepticism?

[01:01:49] LW: Yeah. I say the same with meditation. You have to feel a connection, you have to feel inherent connection, kind of like what you described with your teacher. You had said that being in their presence, it excites your nervous system, and makes you feel at peace, and all of that. I think that there's an element to that where your body will tell you, "Okay. This is who you need to be working with at this point in time." You mentioned earlier eating with the sun, and I just want to spend a little time talking about the sun. What's the Ayurvedic thinking on sunscreen? Is the sun dangerous? How do you eat with the sun? Talk a little bit about that.

[01:02:27] DS: Sun's not only dangerous. The sun is a divine being. If we can learn to harness the healing power of the sun and commune with it, then we can live in harmony and greatly benefit from the health benefits that it has to offer. Yes, the sun can burn you and cause skin cancer even. Which is by the way, very rare. Most skin cancers are not caused by the sun. First of all, let's talk about the skin and the sun. Sun exposure is very important. It's part of the daily routine. Vitamin D is very, very important. We know this from modern science. You have vitamin D. There are only two hormones, which are in every single cell of the body. One is vitamin D, and it's actually a hormone, and the second is thyroid. 

Vitamin D, you can see studies linking vitamin D to everything. It's really interesting, with me working a lot in India, and with a lot of lecturing in India, and Indians are very scared of the sun. They don't want to get their skin darker. As well, it's harder to get sun exposure in India due to the modesty of clothes on and stuff. But we need to be getting sun, and you need to gradually – according to your skin type, shift and habituate to that. Because for example, me, I can lie in the sun for six hours without sunscreen or anything and not get burned. But a Scottish man who's very white and pale can only last 10 minutes. I've worked with Scottish. I've got one particular patient who I'm very proud of. He was so white. He couldn't go for more than five minutes in the sun, and he got a beautiful tan. Tans are healthy, because you have like some calluses on your skin, like skin calluses but for the sun.

How much does it affect you? If you're getting red and burning that's too much. But if you're getting pink, that's positive. It means your red blood cells and your porphyrins are coming to the skin service to absorb the UV light, which gives you energy. You are like a plant. We are like plants. We are photosynthesized. We are 99.92% on a molecular level. We are bodies of water. We get the sun shining on us, on our skin, in our eyes. It charges us up with energy, with prana, with cellular energy. It's important to get that for so many reasons, vitamin D for energy, for the water structure in our body. We know water loves light. You purify water with UV light. It does a lot to our system. It's really important to get sun in a safe, moderate way. If you are sensitive, you can start in the early morning, or the late evening when it's not so strong in the middle of the day, if it's summer especially. But generally, we want to be increasing it. Ayurveda kind of says, it gives a general thing of 48 minutes a day to be precise, but about 15, 45 minutes is a healthy amount. But of course, if it's summer, you're going to burn after five minutes, then you slowly bring.

Sunscreen is generally not recommended. First of all, most of sunscreens have chemicals. Second of all, even the natural sunscreens, they will block the UV. Whenever we start blocking UV, we start getting an altered spectrum of sunlight hitting our skin. We don't want an altered spectrum of sunlight hitting out skin. We want a holistic spectrum. The sun is such a complex spectrum. It has so many frequencies, and we want that in its wholeness hitting our skin, then we're going to absorb its wholeness. But as soon as we start using sunscreen, or even a window, that's going to block UV light, we get this altered spectrum that is not as harmonious with our skin, and that's going to cause some reaction. The cause for skin cancer and melanoma is impaired skin physiology. How does your skin metabolize whatever it gets, whether it's sun, whether it's a chemical, whether it's a lotion, whether it's pollution? How does it metabolize? We have to have good skin metabolism. One way is what we talked about earlier, abhyanga. Ayurvedic oil massage is very helpful to improve your skin physiology, so you don't burn, and so you metabolize the sun well.

I wrote an article called: Why are some babies still vitamin D deficient? Something along those lines. I was looking at these sun bathers who are still vitamin D deficient that were getting a lot of sun, they had great tans, but they weren't metabolizing the sun rays into cholesterol, which converts to vitamin D. That's the skin physiology. We call that pitta in Ayurveda. It's the fire element that lives in us in our skin, which transforms and metabolizes. Rather than using sunscreen if you are sensitive, use clothes and shade. Then you can deviate throughout. If you are working in the field, and it's very hot, and there's no shade, and it's too hot for clothes, then sure use sunscreen, or good one without chemicals. Coconut oil is a great thing. People kind of fear coconut oil. They think they're going to burn more. But no, it actually has SPF and protects the skin. That's the skin part.

The eating part is huge. We have this thing in our gut called digestive fire. It's the center of our body. The home of our body is our gut is, our intestines, and that has a metabolic fire. That not only processes foods, but also water, and drinks, and air. Things that are in the air. Even sensory impressions is metabolized by our fire. How do we see something if we're watching a horror movie together, and you're really scared, you're freaking out, but I'm like in bliss and euphoria? It's the same movie, we had the same vision, but it's how you're metabolizing it, it's how your fire is. We have this inner fire, this digestive fire, and it's really a key factor in Ayurveda. It's how we metabolize everything in life and how we transform it. That fire is regulated by the sun. When the sun is the strongest, our digestive fire particularly is the strongest. So midday or lunch should be the main meal. Dinner, when our fire is down, when the sun is down, we should have the lightest meal. That is because when we sleep, our body is regenerating. We know sleep is important, right? It was the second pillar of health in Ayurveda. 

Sleep is for detoxifying the liver, it's for regenerating liver cells, it's for regulating hormones, it's the main time for hormonal regulation, and it's the main time for production, and absorption of micronutrients, things like vitamins, minerals. It's not for digesting food. If you like have a big steak and chips that night, your body's like, "Why giving me this to digest? I meant to be detoxifying the liver, and making melatonin, and regulating hormones?" 

When I consult in New York City and Mumbai in India, just that simple recommendation of shifting the biggest meal to lunch shifts their health conditions, and their symptoms, and their complaints, because their body can actually process the things which are going on, and stop getting more influx of toxins. Because if you're going to be eating a heavy light dinner, you're filling up the trashcan more and more, you're not getting time to empty it. Eating with the sun is important. Then, you can go into the divinity of the sun is home. Leave it at that.

[01:09:34] LW: Right now, sugar has been equated to the devil, but you say something is worse than sugar that we all consume. Especially we eat out a lot.

[01:09:43] DS: Where did you see that? How do you know I write that?

[01:09:49] LW: You talked about oils, rancid oils.

[01:09:52] DS: Yeah. Rancid oils, which you find in takeaway foods, even high-quality rest trance, seed oils, smoked or heated above their smoke point, they become rancid, which congest the liver, and they stick in the liver for a long time. Whether the sugars, for example, candy, chocolate, jelly beans, like the worst sugars you can think of, they're bad, but they cause an insulin spike in the blood and they'll stay there for a few hours, and then they'll leave. They're definitely bad for diabetics and can cause serious issues. 

But these oils, they can stick for months, they can stick for 10 months, they can stick for a year. They're much harder to get out, and they also contribute to dryness. Because when we're eating, for example, a deep-fried sashimi, or deep-fried vegetables at your high-class Japanese restaurant. These oils actually dry out the body. When the body is so dry – we're seeing a big thing right now have epidemics of fatty liver, non-alcoholic fatty liver. We're now going up to the grade two and grade three.

People are getting fatty liver when they're not drinking alcohol. This used to be unheard of. But it's because of these oils. And when they're deprived of proper – they're not only putting these toxic oils in them, but they're becoming deprived of proper lubrication. One of the things of lubrication, which we didn't mention earlier is proper internal fats. For example, ghee is the best, or coconut oil, or certain animal fats. When you're not getting that, your liver has to produce its own fat, and that's when it gets fatty liver. 

There's a lot of issues with these takeaway foods, restaurant foods, and it is hard. Look, I love eating out also, I do it occasionally. I love pizza, but it's occasional for me. If you're doing it even three times a week even, it's a lot, especially if they're not using oils. Some restaurant – it is possible to find restaurants with good oils, but it's really not easy. If you can get food which doesn't have oil, but make sure you're getting good fats in your diet if you're going to do that, if you really eat out.

[01:12:00] LW: I actually eat out quite a bit.

[01:12:01] DS: Yeah, I'm sure you do.

[01:12:04] LW: So get good fats, try to avoid rancid oils as much as possible, self-massage with coconut oil or some other kind of Ayurvedically prescribed oil. You've mentioned sipping on hot water. You wrote about sipping on hot water. What's the deal with that?

[01:12:23] DS: If anyone had to take anything home from today's podcasts, it's sip hot water. It's such a powerful purification technique. When you wash, grease off dirty dishes with hot water, it comes off much easier. Similarly, in the intestines, when you sip hot water, it scrubs the intestinal villi and it flushes it. If you have some, for example, pizza, and you feel a bit of indigestion, maybe some bloating, or you feel some hardness, just sip hot water, you probably feel that go. Or if you have a headache, just sip hot water and it should go. Because not only does it kind of scrub toxins, and flush it, but it also dilates channels, which means it opens them. That's why you have a headache, sip hot water. It opens the capillaries; it releases that pressure. If you have menstrual pain, sip hot water. It will help dilate the reproductive channels. It's a very powerful technique. It's also a major important way to hydrate the body. 

As I was saying, we're not getting properly hydrated, and the answer is not to drink more water. It's not to drink more water, that's just putting water in your gut. We need intracellular hydration we need to get water from our gut, into our bloodstream and then into ourselves. Even if we're very dehydrated, we go to hospital because we're very sick, and they give us the IV of saline water to hydrate us and still only in the blood. We need to get it from into the cells. One good way is sipping hot water because it opens that channels that delivers that water more effectively. 

[01:13:45] LW: Does tea count, or coffee or is it just plain hot water?

[01:13:48] DS: Tea counts, but plain hot water will do the whole body. Like you're drinking green tea now, so that might go specifically just to the liver or to the pancreas. It helps with that helps with the insulin and the pancreas. Or lemon in hot water will go to the liver, or ginger and hot water will go to the digestive system, which is great, and it has its applications. But primarily, if we stick to hot water, plain hot water, it has a beautiful wholesome effect on all the channels of our body.

[01:14:19] LW: Beautiful. Then eat the largest meal of the day. Well, what's your thinking on intermittent fasting? That's a big trend these days as well.

[01:14:27] DS: Yeah, there's a – I'm a shlokalogist. Let's put in some Sanskrit for fun because I love some Sanskrit. It says, “Langanam Parama Aushadam.” Langanam means light, like lightening therapy, so fasting. Parama is supreme. Aushadham means medicine. So it says, fasting is the best medicine, or the most supreme medicine, but it's how you do it. There are so many different levels of fasting. What are you fasting on? Are you doing only water? Are you doing dry? Are you doing fruit only? Are you doing liquids only? The general, I guess the most important principle for fasting is for it to be doing in a rhythm. For example, if you're going to intermittent fast, so maybe you're doing lunch and dinner only, and you're missing breakfast. Do that regularly. Don't sometimes have breakfast and sometimes not. If you're going to fast, do a juice fast a day, or you're going to do water fast. Do that regularly. 

In cultures, you look at Judaism, they have the Yom Kippur one day a year. The Muslims, they have the Ramadan. The Indians, they have the Ekadashi, which is the 11th day of every moon cycle, twice a month. It's all in rhythms. For me, I fast every Tuesday. In a rhythm, I get to choose. My body knows it. It does not crave food, and my digestive acids know. There's no secretion today. Rhythm is really important. 

Intermittent fasting, I read it says, the ideal is two meals a day. Three is for sick people, or for people who want disease. Because when you start having three, you start getting too much toxic buildup of undigested food. Two doesn't mean you can have for example, a milk, or a coffee in the morning if you wanted to miss your breakfast. Fasting should be comfortable. You should not strain. Move towards it. For example, you want to fast maybe one day a month, or one day a week, forth night. Start with maybe fruit only, and then eat after sunset, or start with liquids, and don't go too radical. You can slowly move there. It's always better when adopting new habits and try new things.

[01:16:29] LW: Final question about this. Why should you not taste your food while you're cooking?

[01:16:29] DS: There's two reasons I'll give you both the more spiritual reason and the digestive. The spiritual reason, first of all, is when we're cooking, we're offering something to a higher self, to a higher divinity. Whether that is most of the time within ourselves, especially if we're cooking for other people. It's a very beautiful act of, we call it in Ayurveda, yagya. It's like a surrender of our energy, and our resources to a higher self, whether it's our friend we're cooking for, especially if we're cooking for a newborn, someone who just gave birth, or for our mother, or four ourself. We're offering this to someone, and we want to give it in its fullness. We don't want to kind of take away from it. It's like when we do puja ceremonies, we don't smell the flowers before we offer it to the God. Similarly, we want to we want to give it in its fullness.

Also, digestive wise, you can imagine someone cooking and they're just tasting the food as they go. It's starting the digestive process, it's already like – it's confusing it a bit. It's like a bit of acid here, and a bit of digestive enzymes here. We want to just stop after we've cooked. Sit for just a little bit, whether it's five seconds, do whatever you want, say a prayer, feel your pulse is a great time before you eat, because it completely activates your parasympathetic nervous system, which is your rest and digest. Rather than the flight or fight, which is probably active, especially if you're cooking in a rush. I used to cook in a rush all the time when I have food in my clinic, and I had to quickly cook. I could feel my fight or flight activated. I had to stop before my meal and I had to take a minute or less and turn on the rest and digest. Leaving that full digestive strength to the meal when it's mealtime, not kind of having it in little bits, then we won't have proper digestion and proper appetite.

[01:18:27] LW: I always like to sort of wrap up with this question, and really curious to hear what your response is to it. Which is, how are you thinking about success these days as an Ayurvedic practitioner, who's very much living in alignment with those principles?

[01:18:46] DS: It's becoming less about serving masses, and more about finding a bit more moderation in my own life in terms of how I enjoy myself and my time. But at the same time, giving people, as many people as possible, but even, it's more about the quality of the healing. That's for me success is. To what capacity and what extent can I support people to heal themselves, and support them to shift themselves into a more happy and healthy person. That's what success means. The more I can do that for people, that goes beyond the body, that goes to support them in their spiritual expansion and spiritual evolution.

[01:19:33] LW: Talk about some of your offerings. I know you have an Ayurvedic course, 30 something module. A lot of this is covered in that course. People learn how to self-pulse, and other principles.

[01:19:43] DS: Yeah, self-pulse is fine. It's actually by my teachers. We just offer it on our website. That's just teaching that technique. The nutrition course is called The Essence of Ayurvedic Nutrition, because it shows, Ayurveda is not eat this food, or not that vegetable, or eat that grain. It's, eat with the principles of nature. It's how can you – my kind of intention for that course is for people to come across any food substance, and know by understanding the food, in its qualities, and its elements, how to apply it therapeutically. Pizza is heavy, congesting, damp. Like cheese, I mean is heavy, congesting, damp, cold. Those are the qualities. If you have a cold, if you have a cough, if your baby is sick, you don't want to give cheese, it's going to increase that. You give more pungent, like black pepper. It's going to burn it up. Stuff like that, and eating with the sun, and other principles of any nutrition which you can apply to any diet you choose.

I think those are the main on the course. I offer online consultations as well, where my aim is to make people self-sufficient in their health. Typically, you don't stick around. We don't do too many consultations. It's sometimes one, two, three, then four. Checking later if something comes up. That kind of gives you things that – about effortlessly integrating things, like Ayurveda is the science of life. You should do this for life. It's not something which you don't, it's a strain, or it's like a discipline, which is hard. It may require some discipline in the beginning, but it's a way of living, and understanding how nature operates within nature, and within the human physiology allows you to create your own lifestyle, your own diet towards perfect health. That's kind of what I aim to do in a consultation. We got clinic in Australia, and we tour, and we'll be doing some cool stuff next year, some international courses in Australia.

[01:21:38] LW: I want to thank you for coming on, and acknowledge you for just – all the leaps you had to take to get to where you are today, and all the studying, and all the passing of the tests, those old school tests that your guru placed upon you. It definitely shows not just in your knowledge, which is obviously very profound, but just in the way you are. Your energy, and your presence, and I can feel all that coming through the Zoom. I look forward to crossing paths with you again very soon, hopefully. Yeah, man, keep spreading the wisdom and shining the light. Thank you again for your service.

[01:22:20] DS: You too, Light. Thank you for spreading that, and having me on your show, and sharing this journey together to support and enlighten this wisdom and knowledge within everyone. Even though we're separate, and hardly speak, like we're doing this together with everyone else. Thank you, brother.

LW: Beautiful.

[OUTRO]

[01:22:43] LW: Thank you so much for listening to my interview with Dylan Smith. For more information about Ayurveda and inspiration, make sure to follow Dylan on social media @vitalveda. Of course, I'll drop links to everything else that Dylan and I discussed in the show notes on my website, lightwatkins.com/show. If this is your first time listening to the Light Watkins Show, we've got incredible archives of interviews with many other luminaries who share how they found their path and their purpose such as Ava DuVernay, Yung Pueblo, Ed Mylett, Steven Pressfield, and many more. You can even search the interviews by subject matter in case you want to hear more episodes about people who've taken leaps of faith, or who've overcome financial struggles, or who've navigated health challenges. You can get a list of all of those episodes at lightwatkins.com/show. 

You can also watch these interviews on YouTube. If you want to put a face to a story, just search Light Watkins Podcast on YouTube and you'll see the entire playlist of past episodes. If you didn't already know, I post the raw, unedited version of each podcast in my Happiness Insiders online community. If you're the type who likes hearing all of the mistakes, and the false starts, and the chit chat in the beginning and the end of each episode, you can listen to all of that by joining my online community, which is called The Happiness Insiders. It's at thehappinessinsiders.com. Not only will you have access to those unedited versions of the podcast, but you'll also have access to my 108-day meditation challenge, along with other challenges and master classes for becoming the best version of you. 

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Thank you very much for that, and I look forward to hopefully seeing you back here next week with another story about someone just like me and you taking a leap of faith in the direction of their purpose. Until then, keep trusting your intuition, keep following your heart, keep taking those leaps of faith, it's very important. If no one's told you recently that they believe in you, I believe in you. Thank you so much. Have a great day.

[END]