My Love/Hate Relationship with Ayurveda

It wasn’t until I was deep into all this meditation stuff that I started getting hints of this thing called Ayurveda. An no, it wasn’t Aveda, the fancy store in the mall back in the day with the really expensive shampoo. I was at my teacher training, and I started noticing some of the people doing odd things, like, why were some of the women eating only milk and rice a week each month and what was the deal with that one roommate coating her entire body in oil at least once a day? And why, oh why, is everyone carrying a thermos? Turns out these were Ayurvedic practices meant to align them with nature, something our western habits and patterns ignore completely.

Why I love Ayurveda

As I started learning more and more about this branch of Vedic knowledge, I fell in love with how intuitive it is. And of course it is, it follows nature. No matter how many Netflix binges in which we’ve partaken, deep down, our bodies hold the intelligence of natural rhythms. I fell in love how what was right for one person, wasn’t right for someone else as opposed to the one-size-fits-all, mass-marketable-and-therefore-profitable health methods we’re used to. I fell in love with how I felt when I ate the warm, comforting Ayurvedic foods and got rest at the proper times and yes, even the feeling of coating myself in layers and layers of weird-smelling oil.