Are You In a Hurry?

I have some time off from school and I am spending it on a biodynamic farm in Southern Oregon. It is so peaceful and quiet here, in deep contrast to my life in Oakland.

I have noticed that I believe all the hard work and rushing will have the eventual goal of landing me permanently in the environment that I am experiencing this week on the farm. The quiet, the community, the peace. Yet, even with so much unscheduled time I still wake up in the morning with a sense of haste.

Perhaps this will wear as I spend more time here and I will learn how to slow down again and to treat each endeavor with attention and presence. As I am an Ayurvedic practitioner I started to explore the qualities of my mental experience, in order to determine what might be happening within me.

In terms of the mental gunas it was very clear to me that I was mostly stuck in rajas. Rajas is often defined as the quality of mind that creates action and is prodding you to do more. As the mental gunas are so subtle, they are challenging to work with and so I then looked at my pulse and found the qualities of intensity, quickness, widening and tiptoeing. Then I choreographed a dance to music that expressed each of these qualities (that is probably why I named my business Rhythm of Healing).

The dance spoke to me of Vata and Pitta, otherwise known as wind and fire. The wind moves blood, thoughts, fluids and muscles in order to allow the body and mind to stay in motion. What I found is that the wind was in too much motion. Moving too quickly and without the ability to slow down or even stop. It had been blowing so fast for so long, it didn’t know how to stop on its own and was going to need some assistance to do so.

The fire of Pitta governs the transformation and metabolism in the skin, eyes, small intestine and mind. I had so much information, so much stimulus coming into my mind that I was not able to process it all. Normally I thrive with multitasking, but the desktop of my mind had too many tabs open and I couldn’t keep track anymore of what project I was working on and which tabs were relevant and so I needed to find an intervention.

Having practiced Ayurveda for the last 10 years I have seen this pattern in many individuals and it has been brought to the surface in my own life. The beauty of Ayurveda is that through the qualities of my vata/pitta/rajasic mind I was able to find a rhythm that met those qualities and helped to bring them into harmony. With twenty qualities there can be an infinite number of combinations that are found in the pulse. I found a combination of 4. Someone who is experiencing similar symptoms may have completely different qualities and therefore a different intervention. What worked for me is:

• Rubbing coconut oil infused with myrrh and lavender essential oils on my feet and then wearing old socks. I only did this once a day, but I am sure I could have done it more.
• Slowing down when I was eating. I eat a constitutionally and seasonally appropriate diet, but I was eating way too fast.
• When meditating in the morning I started setting a timer and staying on the cushion until the timer went off.

These were the interventions that were right for me, based on the behavior that I was currently engaged in. Personalized medicine is looking at what the person is already doing and making small changes in order to improve and optimize their lifestyle and dietary routines in order to help them achieve the goals they are wanting to achieve. If you think you could benefit from this approach, then set up a consultation with me.

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