Somewhere inside the mind there is fear. And that fear is really causing more problems than actually not eating or anything, because with the again believes that your mind and body are intertwined, you cannot really separate them off. They are so close to each other. Both of them are too interdependent on each other that anything happens to one immediately you will see a reflection on the other.
You hear a lot about balance these days work life balance, a balanced diet. But according to some you can't find true balance or health until the physical, psychological and spiritual elements of one's life are aligned. This is random acts of knowledge presented by Heartland Community College. I'm your host, Steve fast. Today's guest is a doctor of Ayurvedic medicine, a 5000 year old practice that takes a holistic approach to health. We'll talk about this practice and how it fits in with our lives what you may or may not think about finding your own balance.
My name is Ashley shout, I'm MD In Ayurveda. So MD is a doctor of Ayurvedic medicine and not a doctor of conventional medicine. And I am practicing here in Bloomington Normal area. And I'm of course at Heartland teaching. Of course I read I mean in my class name is introduction to iron VEDA, I think
many people might not be familiar with iron Veda and I wondered if you could talk a little bit about the origins of it and maybe walk us through a few of the core concepts of this holistic healing approach.
Iron Vida is ancient medical system and the name are you read that itself actually suggest that it is something a science related to life and why do I say that because the word I read is in Sanskrit, Sanskrit is ancient language. And it is made up of two words, one is IU, and the other word is VEDA. So are you means life. And Veda means science. So in that sense, are your VEDA becomes the science of life. So anything which is from life, to death, whatever comes in between all is in a reader, and that's how I read becomes the science of life. But of course, it has all the natural remedies and all the medicinal aspects. So we call it as ancient medical science. And it may be the first medical science ever known to humanity. It was originated in Vedic Period of India. So which actually happens to be almost five to 10,000 years ago. So and the amazing part is it is still been in practice. So you would see as I'm here practicing, I read in, you know, my, my practices in downtown Bloomington, and there are so many other in all over us. So it is now getting popular in us as well.
With this being such an ancient practice, what are some of the things in our modern Western lives here? People might take a certain approach towards their health, whether they're thinking about eating healthy or working out or other pursuits. What are things that people are missing? That are your VEDA takes into consideration?
That's really a good question. So you basically, if you would see, the cornerstone of our VEDA, I would suggest is I mean, I would say if someone asked me that, okay, what is the real thing which we are missing, then the IRB that really focuses on basically three things, and very first is diet, right? You know, you are what you eat. So the diet is extremely important. And then after that comes the lifestyle. So not just the what you eat, but when you eat, that also matters a lot. And again, as I said, it's not only about when you eat, but again, how you prepare the food, how you cook the food, from where you get the food, how long that food, everything comes in that the way we say about food, it also applies to your other activities, for example, sleeping, you know when you sleep, whether only eight hours doesn't matter, but which those eight hours are that is also important. So in short, it is diet, lifestyle, and then comes the medicine and which is completely natural. or herbs. So, these are the three main factors are here with our users to basically give the health for the life. As I said already, that it is a science of life. So it is the main concept is not that okay, you know, you're not feeling well, okay, go to doctor and see that is not the main concept. In fact, the concept is how do you have your health enhanced, so you're, well, you're doing everything fine, but you want to enhance your health because you want to live a complete potential of your life, not just the longevity, but the balanced longevity. And that is the main cornerstone of IVF you know, what we generally Miss maybe in the conventional medicine, not much focusing on the lifestyle approach. And even diet. Now, people are now nowadays getting more aware of diet, which is good, but lifestyle is still been compromised many times and a simple example people who say okay, you want to do the exercise and anytime they just go into exercise, which is not appropriate, you may not get the complete benefit of it. So the lifestyle aspect is to be understood that not just doing the exercise is sufficient. But when you do exercise, what type of exercise you could do, all these things would be really, really important. And I think that is it does mean focus.
So you had mentioned earlier that your yoga instruction class got interrupted by COVID. And so many things that we have done in our lives have been disrupted by COVID and quarantine and self isolation and trying to change our lives around what kind of challenges have you faced or have you seen other people face in when everything is, you know, upturned when you exercise, when you eat, what you do, all of those things really kind of got twisted around when we have to change our daily routine because of this pandemic.
All the approaches, of course, you know, diet and lifestyle, and all these things are absolutely important. But one another major part of it is we also focus on mine. And I think in this pandemic, and I've seen this type of more clients in these days, somewhere inside the mind, there is fear, and that fear is really causing more problems than actually not eating or anything, because I read that again believes that your mind and body are intertwined, you cannot really separate them off, they are so close to each other, both of them are so interdependent on each other that anything happens to one immediately you will see the reflection on the other. So obviously, if your mind is become V weak, because of the fear, you would have start having all sorts of body problems, you might have seen this many times in life that people get upset and under stress and they have a breakout, or people have some kind of anger issues and their blood pressure shoots up, this is very normal natural, we see. Now on the body part nothing actually happens. But the root cause again, is into the mind. And with this pandemic, I think that fear aspect has really interfered a lot, ailments are definitely there and bodies, but mind weakness also been showing too much. So anxiety, depression, feeling insecure, all these type of clients, I will see more during the pandemic effect. And another thing actually what can be a good approach is like, Okay, you everybody is at home that way, you know, now we are opening, of course, but at least that much travel has been gone less, right? The traveling is not happening that much. Even schools are away from the home. So you should get more it's time for doing the exercises or even for doing certain meditative practices. This is a good time actually to practice it. That's what I would say
your routine is already disrupted. So maybe it's time to get out of some bad habits and start investing in more thoughtful new ones. I want to go back a little bit to what you were saying about fear and how fear can lead to anxiety and anxiety can affect you physically. A lot of times we do build up anxieties based upon things that aren't necessarily threatening. It's just stress, you know, stress by how we live our lives. But in the pandemic, you do have legitimate things to kind of be a little bit afraid of maybe getting sick or having a loved one at a higher risk of life threatening condition or being afraid of the economic impact and how it will affect Your family in your ability to make a living. Those are legitimate fears, how would you suggest people start to deal with those, so the fear doesn't take over them and affect their whole body as you say,
what you said Steve is true, that the fear is not unnecessary there is, you know, you would have absolutely certain things that we should think about that. But again, the reality that we we have to take all sorts of precaution right. And even after that, if you're just having a fear and then that is a stress, things are going to have already changed and we have to accept that to some extent, and get prepared ourselves. So, another extremely important point, from the Ayurvedic perspective, which I would like to share here is, I mean, I see this even in the college going students that okay, you are not going out, and you are stuck at some certain place. So, the whole daily routine goes completely weird, people get up very late, maybe sometime miss their breakfast, and eat maybe lunch or eat breakfast and eat lunch, really, and so the dinner goes further late, and then they don't sleep on time and again, they are in this whole circle. So they get a play then go and this goes on, which is really not a good idea. Because what I read, I suggest that you have to attune yourself with nature, if you see think about this, that why do we sleep at night and not in daytime? Right? Because our physiology is like that, that we have to sleep at night and not really in the daytime. And if you really do something, you know, stay late and then you will have those effects on your body. So, mean most importantly, things are of course, these things are problematic, we know economy, who knows about economy, what will happen and all these things are there I do absolutely accept that. But still, because that is been already in a problematic state, you cannot lose your health. In fact, you must have a good health because of this pandemic. Again, remember when we say infection, who will fight the infection of course your immunity will fight this infection. So your remain centered point should have been always that How should I make a strong immunity? How can sustain that whatever I have the immunity wise, the CELT, if I'm healthy at this point of time, then I should sustain that health. And if my immunity is stronger than it is easily possible. Now, how would you have a good immunity is again, a whole lot different question. And of course, I read a such as so many things for that. But focus, people just forget this main focus, and then they just lose the whole proper lifestyle. And that creates further problems. So you're already in a problematic state. And then whatever you have, you're you're losing that and really see that people eat at wrong time, it wrong stuff, because they're just sitting and that emotion, emotional eating happens there, and you're creating more problems. So that definitely is not a correct approach.
Let's talk a little bit about that doing things at the wrong time, sort of letting our routines dictate how we treat our body instead of letting our body do the other thing around. You mentioned when you eat and when you exercise as well. So it's finding the right times to align those things with the arithmetic method. The same for everyone? Or is it different to different people have the right routine of when to eat and when to exercise based upon themselves? Or is it all pretty much the same? For everybody?
That's a really good question. The main thing you have to understand here either is considered each one of us is unique. We may have two hands, two legs, no two eyes, but it's still the things the emotions be perceived differently from each other. So that uniqueness, which we have in each of us is considered very much being considered in Ayurveda. And that's why we believe in I realize that one size fits all doesn't at all apply here. And you know, I will give them a very beautiful concept here which is known as Prakruti or bio individuality. So, this bio individuality is again, aspect which gives that based on how is your genetic makeup, you should behave, or you should eat or you should sleep Whatever you should do, it's really becomes unit view. And this concept of, you know, we call it as a Prakruti in Sanskrit and you know, it is very popularly known as body types. So, what I read I believe that there are three main bio energies, which are known as water, delta and Kapha around these three energies, the whole physiology of your body happens. So, basically we believe that if BC energies are imbalanced it you will have a health and once they lose their balance, you are in ill health state. Now, when you were asking is it same for everybody, then the simple answer is no, because, what is your unique combination of these three doshas, we call the doshas, right these are bio energies, but in Sanskrit that is called as dosha. So, that particular unique combination, which you have that unique combination defines what you should eat, how much you should eat, then you should exercise when you should not exercise. And to give you a little bit more on this, let me give you an example. Let's say we have three friends, one is V, one is B and one is k, right. So, when you are saying V which means he has a dominance of water, bioenergy, right. And then B is a Pitta bioenergy and the K is a kapha, bioenergy to whoever is dominating, which dosha type is dominating, he's considered as v you know that name dominating. So, for example, be dominating is a water person then bit the dominating is a better person and the golfer dominating is a cuppa person. So, that's why I gave them the T names VPK. Right. Now, now these three people, let's say they do they are of maybe of same age, or maybe studying the same thing and going to the same class. So environmentally, they are staying same, everything is same for them. But because their combination of genetic makeup is different, they have to do three of them have to do differently. And let's say because we were talking about yoga, let's take that example. So, the hot yoga, maybe you have heard about this hot yoga, it is absolutely not good for water person, which means the in our case it is V Mr. V cannot handle that at all. Whereas Mr. K can absolutely handle that. And P is you he cannot even stand back. So it's the same waterpolo same yoga poses, but which type and how they should do that difference. So forget about only time and eating I'm telling you about even the exercise part or even the yoga part, doing yoga asanas or yoga postures back to even the same thing applies for diet also, Mr. K cannot really eat too much of carbs there as Mr. P need to really have, you know, rather than carb I would say yes, more of the vegetables and some cooling things where as Mr. V would definitely need more bread, more pasta, more carbs. So how do I define them this way because of their genetic makeup and how do we understand that genetic makeup? That is based on what type of dosha they are and which dominance in their Prakruti or in their physiology, if I can, you know explain you further on this point is how would we understand this V p and k alpha gives a very, very simple simple thing like think about the bio energies, what you see in the universe, the universe gives us the three main energies and one could be sun to sun and moon. So, sun energy is always heating energy and then Moon energy is cooling. Whereas the restore energy which is wind energy, you definitely see these three things in the universe right. Now, think about the same these three energies are there in us also. So, the wind energy is considered as a water, the sun energy which is he is considered as a theta and the moon energy which is cooling is considered as a Kapha. So these three energies are there in you, me and everyone and their combination will make that difference between how how you should live your life or what time you should eat or even how long you should sleep. So talking about sleep, the water dominating person or Mr. V really needs a long more complete eight hours of sleep where as golfer dominating person is still okay even if he slips for the little less duration of time, lead will not create a big change in him. So that's how those normals can be different per person. So,
how do people go about identifying these energies that they have, because you might not necessarily know what what your
type is what your type is, you know, there are many things have you could know first of all, nowadays, there are many websites which will have this Bucha quizzes and you can just give that quiz and then you will have some rough idea of course, not the exact idea, but the otherwise it could be you know, go and see your ayurvedic doctor, a wider IoT physician, and we will be able to tell you by doing your pulse analysis, and by asking you a bunch of questions and observing you and then arrived with methods how to do that, and will not only tell you that, but again, that I will talk to can explain you what is good for you, you know, in the respect of eating, not just like food and knowing when to eat, but what type of food you should eat, or what type of spices is much more good for you, or what type of vegetables are good for you that those all these things can be explained and learn from that. But as I said, if you have just a curiosity want to know, then there are many such websites that where you will get this dosha quiz. And you have a rough idea, okay, this is what it is.
If some people are looking to get a start on providing their practice for themselves say they've they've identified what type of they have person they are and want to start getting in the right mindset to change things around in their approach. You know, it's one thing to say, Okay, this is when I should exercise, it's another thing to say this is when I should eat some of the thing to say this is how much sleep I should get. But sometimes getting the start on those things and building that routine is difficult. Is there anything you would suggest that people do to start implementing any of these practices into their lives?
Whilst I would suggest that really try to understand which type you are, that is really the first step. And once you have that identified that which type you are, then we can either use a very complete daily routine, that what what are these things which you should do and when you should do that is been completely recommended. And by the way, we cover that also in our class to return these type and how do you be balanced the lifestyle with albida. Again, for the whole focus is for achieving the good health. It's not only simple one thing, which I could tell you, there are really these lifestyle points, or at least 10 to 12 things which you can easily do it easily. And it starts from right away from your morning admin time when you should actually get up so early, before sunrise, just before little bit time before sunrise, if you can get up, still your whole body system can change, things can definitely be much better, you would have your whole nervous system, kind of like well rested, your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system can be in a good state, just by getting up early in the morning. There are so many such things. That's what I would say. I mean, it's not just the Early to bed and early to rise. But it is more than that, that once you get up then there are some other things which you could do. And that can very potentially helpful. Just not for your only digestion but also for your cardiovascular system, your nervous system, your muscular system, skeletal system, many all all systems which we have on our body.
Thank you for taking some time to talk to us today about our Veda and in this whole entire approach to this ancient science for life. I appreciate you working this into your daily routine today.
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. And I definitely look forward everyone to actually you know, incorporate these things and that's why we do teach this introduction to
isolation route is Director Ayurveda for healing in Bloomington, Illinois, and she teaches meditation, Yoga and Ayurveda for continuing education at Heartland Community College. If you're interested in hearing more interviews about lifestyle, personal care or other topics, subscribe to random acts of knowledge on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you found this. Thanks for listening
