Ayurveda is a 5,000 year old holistic healing science and one of the world’s oldest medical systems that, once applied to modern day living, can truly expand our perspective of what it means to thrive and cultivate lasting heath. It is an ancient holistic healing science that enables us to unlock our body and our mind’s true healing potential allowing us to experience a profound state of wellness. Ayurveda places great emphasis on what we eat, how we eat and when we eat, but nutrition is only one part of an enormous framework of healing and health. Ayurveda places just as much emphasis on balancing our emotions, surrounding ourselves with earthy pleasures that delight our senses, making sleep a sacred ritual, cultivating wholesome and healing relationships, and developing an intimate connection with our unique mind-body type and what we each require as unique individuals in order to enhance our experience of wellness. It is my belief that when we apply Ayurveda to our daily living that we will cultivate a whole other level of enjoyment and depth of vitality. In having witnessed the incredible power that ancient systems such as Ayurveda and Chinese medicine can offer us in helping us return to a state of ease and true health, it is my great joy and pleasure to be able to invite others to explore this healing science which offers a variety of tools that teach us to honour the mind, body and spirit and enrich our lives

We will work together to understand the root causes of your health conditions, help you become familiar with the habits that might be contributing to imbalance and gain valuable understanding and knowledge of how your own mind-body system functions, and I will recommend that you implement certain lifestyle habits, appropriate dietary changes into your daily routine, whilst cultivating gentle awareness towards managing your emotional wellbeing in order to start witnessing positive change. If you struggle to implement these changes, then we can always do a follow-up consultation which will allow me to support you in making these positive changes towards healing and creating a routine that caters to your needs, so that you are eating and living in a way that truly unlocks innate intelligence and vitality within your body. Please understand that healing the body and creating new habits is not a process that happens within a week or even a month. Therefore being gentle with yourself and celebrating every small change you make each day is absolutely essential in order to build momentum. It only takes fifteen minutes of doing something different every single day to begin the process of creating lasting change.

Whilst more traditional forms of nutritional therapy might urge people to focus primarily on making adjustments to diet, Ayurvedic practitioners focus first and foremost on enhancing certain functions of the body such as digestion, elimination and managing stress in order for food to be better metabolised and absorbed. For this reason, Ayurveda puts a great deal of emphasis on the importance of having a strong digestion (in order to fully assimilate both food and sensory experiences) and eliminate what is unwanted, whilst developing a consistent routine so that we can maximise our body’s healing potential. An Ayurvedic practitioner might also make far deeper inquiries into the nature of the person they are advising, in order to build an accurate picture of who the individual is, and how best to help them.

One fundamental difference between Ayurveda and other holistic forms of treating a patient is that Ayurveda helps people to understand their unique constitutional needs. For example, we regularly hear about the benefits of juicing, raw diets, and the importance of incorporating fresh, whole plants into our diet. Whilst a diet that consists largely of raw foods and juices might be of immense benefit for some individuals, for others, eating raw can be absolutely detrimental to their digestive health. Ayurveda understands that every person requires very specific treatment in order to return to balance. The foods, herbs, habits and practises we might advise one person to implement into their daily routine will radically differ to everyone else we treat because every single person possess a unique ‘blueprint’ which represents their physical, mental and emotional constitution, therefore every person requires very different treatment to support their unique blueprint.

When we lack digestive strength (or as Ayurveda would put it, ‘agni’) we can be consuming the very best organic produce and still feeling pretty unwell. In Ayurveda there is a saying that we are what we digest. Another common Ayurvedic saying that describes the importance of digestion is the following : A person with a strong digestion can consume poison and turn that into nectar, whereas a person with a weak digestion can consume nectar and turn it into poison. Therefore what we eat, how we eat, when we eat it, and the quality of our digestion all create our picture of health. When we consume a diet that is not in alignment with our personal needs, it can greatly disrupt the flow of intelligence within us that creates health. To strengthen digestion, I would personally advise that you implement simple Ayurvedic practises into your daily routine to help strengthen your digestive fire, and ensure regular elimination of toxins. We will explore the six tastes of Ayurveda and why it is vital to utilise a wide variety of tastes in order to rekindle your digestive fire, and ensure that you are digesting is at optimal level.

During a follow-up consultation with a client, alongside building a dietary programme to support your individual requirements, we will explore how to use cleansing practises, good dietary habits to aid in the process of detoxification and proper absorption, and using certain herbs to help create greater digestive balance and reduce digestive disturbances. When our bodies are free of toxic waste (ama) our digestion can run smoothly, we absorb our nutrients well, and we feel lighter in our bodies and clearer headed. On the other hand, when the digestive tract is heavy with toxins its like a river that has been clogged up with mud. Once the river is unclogged, the waters are free to run smoothly and similarly, once our system is free of toxins, our life-force can flow and wellbeing is restored.

Our emotional wellbeing largely contributes towards our overall health. Everything we experience gets absorbed into our energy field and our body, imprinting on the subconscious mind and getting stored as an either ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ experience. Overtime, these experiences contribute to our wellbeing and our belief-system, and it can be very hard to make lasting changes if we contain overwhelming emotional imprints within our body which influence us to feel a certain way, and behave in a way that creates some form of imbalance. It is important to understand that emotions are stored in the body, and therefore creating the space for ourselves to feel whatever needs to be felt so that we can complete the cycle of emotional ‘charge’ that is arising in any given moment (in order to be fully processed and integrated) is a crucial part of healing. Learning to work with the nervous system by creating a calming environment, using various breath-work techniques and practises that help to balance our emotions is just as important as ensuring we eat a diet rich with nutritious foods. Neglecting our emotional needs is akin to placing a plant in the sun but never giving it water. One without the other is rarely adequate in aiding us to thrive. Therefore, it is the responsibility of every Ayurvedic practitioner to enquire about the client’s emotional wellbeing and teach them grounding techniques to help them manage their emotional wellbeing.

Our bodies are composed of the five elements : space, air, fire, water and earth. Ayurveda identifies three basic types of energy of functional principles that exist within everyone and everything, and these three types of energy are known as the doshas : Vata, Pitta and Kapha. Every living being is composed of these five elements, and without one of them, we would not be alive. The balance of each of these five determine our state of health. If there is an accumulation of the earth element (the kapha dosha) in someone’s constitution, they might feel sluggish, slow, moody and bogged down. If there is an accumulation of the fire element (the pitta dosha), we may feel irritable, impatient , become a workaholic and suffer inflammation in the body. If there is excess space and air (the vata dosha) we might feel scattered, agitated, nervous, ungrounded and experience chronic anxiety and an irregular digestion. So the balance of these elements within our bodies is crucial in order for keeping the inner intelligence within both the body and mind functioning efficiently. If there is disharmony within the body, then there is disharmony that occurs within the mind, and if there is unease in the mind, there is unease in the body. So it is of fundamental importance that we understand our body-mind type in order to achieve a lasting state of health.

Our general state of emotional wellbeing plays a huge role on how well we feel. Unprocessed emotions are often the main cause behind physical imbalance. Therefore, a huge part of the Ayurvedic lifestyle is bringing awareness to how you feel on any given day and practising restoring peace of mind with nurturing, loving, compassionate acts such as abhyanga (self-massage), using aromatherapy to invigorate, relax and rejuvenate, and using meditation and gentle belly breathing techniques to calm the nervous system. Many of us are unaware of just how much time we spend in a heightened state of stress, and common everyday stressors such as driving, navigating difficult relationships and challenging work demands all contribute to overwhelm which overtime results in the breakdown of our health. Just ten minutes of breath-work a day, along with meditation practice can swiftly reset your nervous system and take you from a state of fight or flight (sympathetic nervous system) and back into the parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest).

Absolutely. Ayurveda’s primary goal is to restore the individual to a state of health, and by combining nutrition with other holistic healing practises and incorporating these practises into your daily routine, you will be astonished as to how quickly you can lower inflammation in the body, reduce issues such as high blood pressure, and ease conditions such as anxiety and depression. The reason Ayurveda puts tremendous emphasis on gut health and keeping the digestive tract clean is because the gut is the seat within which health is either cultivated, or disease is born. Everything that we consume and experience either nurtures and supports the body to do its job, or disrupts the flow of life, eventually manifesting as decay and illness. Up to 90% of serotonin is produced in the digestive tract, so when there are imbalances in the digestive system, guaranteed this will give rise to a host of other health conditions such as inflammatory conditions and imbalances within the mind. Ayurveda aims to tackle the root cause of any imbalance by urging each person to make suitable lifestyle changes and adopting a routine that supports their unique dietary and constitutional needs.

If clients come to me with more serious conditions than I would advice looking into other forms of healing such as psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, EMDR therapy, EFT (emotional freedom technique), somatic experiencing (for trauma healing), family constellation therapy, energy healing such as reiki, and acupuncture in addition to any work that they might do alongside me. Scientific findings and research have confirmed that adversity experienced during childhood is linked to mental and physical health problems later on in life, (including those that appear undiagnosable). Ancient healing systems such as Ayurveda understand that our body becomes a storehouse for any unresolved emotional disturbances which greatly impacts our health. However, once we are able to uncover the root emotional cause of an illness, the original charge of energy that caused the illness is released from the body, and that particular energetic imprint that resulted in the illness, begins to fade, and the body has the opportunity to restore itself to a state of health. I am not claiming that all physical illness is a result of unresolved emotional trauma, but it is worth exploring the illness through therapies such as somatic experiencing and hypnotherapy which enable us to gain access to the subconscious mind which can provide us with information about what is happening within our own body that we might otherwise not be able to access. Healing modalities such as somatic experiencing, EFT, EMDR, and anything else that enables you to explore your body and emotions in a safe space can bring about tremendous healing.

When it comes to healing any long-standing health condition or minor health complaint, it is important to understand that more often than not, we need to work with several healing modalities for a period of time in order to help ourselves return to a state of wholeness. Ayurveda can take us a long way in terms of balancing and bringing harmony to our emotions, but if a person has a history of more complex or serious physical or mental illness, I would advise them to work with highly qualified practitioners or therapists that offer safe containers for healing and provide the appropriate support to aid in clearing emotional residue or imprints within the body that are disrupting the flow of wellbeing and resulting in physical, mental and emotional disturbances and distress.

That’s ok! Ayurveda is still a reasonably new concept to most people even though the system has been around for eons! What I can tell you is that regardless of whether you believe in it or not, you will definitely come away armed with a wealth of knowledge that will help you understand yourself, complex health imbalances you might be struggling with, and how to manage your health so much better. Ultimately, you lose nothing from familiarising yourself with how you own mind-body functions, and what you require personally to combat certain health imbalances. Even if you do not entirely understand the Ayurvedic system or it’s principals, just cultivating greater awareness of how your own mind body system functions will aid you tremendously in life. Although I use Ayurveda to help people understand their own unique blueprint, much of what Ayurveda emphasises is very simple and easy to understand and implement into your daily routine. For example, Ayurveda understands that food is an extremely powerful medicine, and when used correctly and consistently, it can literally build you an entire new body which in turn, can transform your life. Your body is the vehicle through which you experience your life. When we are vital, healthy, and calm, we increase our capacity to open and receive.

Much of what Ayurveda aims to do is to help people realign with their original state of being. By ensuring that we regularly eliminate (clearing the body of toxins and preventing build up of waste), support and nourish our system with the right diet and support our gut/digestive health (which plays a vital role in ensuring overall health), and prioritise movement and tending to our emotions to prevent the build up of stress, we help take care of our whole mind-body system. Although ayurveda is an ancient holistic healing science, it is still entirely relevant to the time we live in because the same rules that applied centuries ago to maintain and cultivate vibrant health, still apply today.