Well, 7 hours of yoga later, I am back.

Actually it wasn’t 7 hours—but my noon workshop class went waaaay overboard and lasted a solid 3 hours! Never have I done yoga for such a long period of time. It was great though! The class was focused on balancing vata, and it was one of those classes where you hold crescent moon and warrior one for, like, 10 minutes. The class was very slow but sometimes the slow classes are the ones that work you the hardest!

I had a veryyy early lunch at 10:30 of this:

With a half cup of cottage cheese (gotta keep eating soft foods!):

Yummy and it did a good job of holding me through such a long practice!

I didn’t get home until 3:15 and had to be back at the studio for a lecture at 4, so needless to say there was no time for blogging, let alone a shower! I did manage to throw together a quick smoothie though—

This is a combo of a 2% fage, a whole mango (minus the pit of course) and a big squirt of agave. After all that asana, I needed a major boost!

Smoothie in hand, I rushed back to the studio for Kishan’s three hour lecture. Now, he is actually a philosophy and Indian studies teacher at UCLA (as well as in training to be an Ayurvedic physician) so listening to him was actually just like being in college again! He spoke for almost 4 hours on Ayurveda and he had me the entire time.

Here are some notes I took during the lecture. Now please keep in mind that you can agree or disagree with what he says. Its definitely very “out of the box” for us westerners to hear and its good to be open to what different people have to say. I’ve been interested in Ayurveda for awhile actually and after hearing him talk, I think I’m going to see an Ayurvedic doctor for my migraines since clearly traditional medicine doesn’t work for me!

Ayurveda is the science of life, way of being, looking into the body, mind and spirit—a holistic system of living and medicine

• Primary goal is to keep the healthy “healthy”—- Food IS medicine
• You are what you eat.
• Keeps the healthy healthy by helping us maintain balance with diet and lifestyle
• Like increases like. We need to balance everything.
• Some people aren’t meant to be vegetarians. We are meant to eat to our body type and keep it in balance. In Ayurveda, meat is sometimes even used as medicine. Depends on our activity level and our metabolic rate. ANYTHING can be medicine. Depends on your body.
• Shift your diet and lifestyle toward your imbalance
• Prakrati and Vikruti—–our states of health
• Prakrati is our current state of health. Vikruti is where we want to be!
• Prakrati often depends on our parents and their imbalances when we were born. Looks at internal state of the mother’s womb even as well as seasonal factors, food we’ve been eating, ect. Ideal setting would be for both parents to get really balanced and then conceive so that the child is born Vikruti instead of in a Prakrati state.

• The Universe is made up of 5 elements—-space, air, fire, water, earth. If there is a decrease in one, we need to pull another one to balance it off.
• From these 5 elements, the doshas (intelligence in the body) hails. When they are in a place of balance, they are invisible. When there is a weakened tissue in the body, they have the ability to manifest in the body in some sort of form

Your pulse is really the only way to tell what dosha type you are. Quizzes are sort of bogus. Only a certified Ayurvedic doctor can tell what you truly are.

• Ayurveda says allergies do not exist. Something is imbalanced. We need to look at the root of the problem. Western medicine covers up the problem yet does not heal it from the inside out. Stop bandaiding your symptoms. Find the root cause.

• all disease processes come from low digestive fire (agni)

• NO COLD DRINKS —-causes the stomach to contract and shiver
• ice water shocks the stomach and creates toxicity in it. Food cannot digest properly when the system gets shocked by cold. All drinks should be room temperature to hot.
• Ice cream at night is “the worst thing ever”.
• Also only warm foods at breakfast and no fruit because fruit is heavy and more difficult to digest in the morning. Cold milk and banana is NOT the right way to start your day in balance!

He went on to further elaborate on the different doshas and creating balance so we have zero health problems. I always thought of myself as a Vata but after talking to him and the Ayurvedic physician there, I think I have more of a Pitta imbalance. Very interesting. It lasted almost 4 hours! Afterwards he led us through some seated meditation and chanting.

I was STARVING by the end of the lecture (it didn’t end until about 7:30). Ryan was still in St.Pete and all this yoga made me really crave Indian food so I stopped at this tiny hole in the wall place only about a mile away from the studio that one of the girls in the workshop told me about. Turns out I wasn’t the only one with the same craving—I ran into Stacey, a girl I met in yoga, there!

I ordered channa masala with naan:

Ahhhhhhhhh it was amazing!!!!!!!! I was so hungry and even though I’m not supposed to eat bread for a week because of my mouth (bleh), I demolished the entire thing in about five minutes flat (well except for the veggie salad thingy…..no crunchy things right now!). Don’t worry. I was careful and chewed the bread slowly on the opposite side of my mouth. It was freakin’ amazing. The best naan I have ever had. Hot and buttery and chewy.……….so good. The channa masala was great too. I asked for a little bit spicier (you can get it mild, slightly spicy or HOT) and it was perfect. I’m so glad I found this little place and will definitely be back in the very near future!

Ryan just got home and we are relaxing on the couch. I actually cannot even move after so much yoga but tomorrow is the final day of the workshop and class goes from 11-1:30. Phew! I wish yall could be here and do this with me—its so interesting!

Have a wonderful evening and I’ll see you for breakfast! =)

ps—Kishan recommended this website if you interested in learning more!