Life Lessons: Spirit, Surrender & Hormones
It was quiet, dark and very early in the morning. I sat on a folded blanket, skin oiled, towel wrapped around my body, incense burning…a small candle lit. I was in a hole and climbing my way out with Ayurveda and Yoga as my guide and through the watchful gaze of my doctor, Vaidya Yash Mannur. The hole I was in came through the dizzying of divorce and the recognition that I had lost myself somewhere in there. I had lost myself and also lost my way. As much as I didn’t want it to be true and man, did I try to make it not so, it was the truth and I had to do something about it. The loneliness was hard. My heart hurt. I cried every day for almost a year which I had never done before. Vaidya Yash instructed me “make Ayurveda your companion” and so I did. This companion showed up in feminine form: a truth sayer, a beautiful and mighty presence with the ability to guide me through this dark and rough terrain. And so she did and I did too and together we did a thing. This thing we did happened in the early morning hours and usually involved engaging my senses towards a place of quiet. I started to see that something very good happened when my eyes rested on the soft light of a flame and my nose took in the aromas of dried plants and trees, my skin opened into the warm hug of herbal oil and my ears listened to the quiet of the flame.
One day in particular, a day when the hard felt really hard and I sat with eyes brimmed of tears, I felt something different. It was the kind of something that changed me in the flick of a light switch..well, actually, the flick of a light switch backed by A LOT of years of a lot practice. The voice was quiet and gentle as she ushered me to the edge, the edge of the hole that I had been trying to climb my way out of. Climbing my way with everything I had, everything I knew, everything I wanted. Do you know that edge? For me, that edge identified herself as surrender. Surrender was new for me. She was wild and overgrown, tender and kind. She asked me to soften through which she said I would strengthen. And over and over again, I did. My mind and body followed my spirit and every day she was there. Some days were loud and some days were quiet. They all taught me things.
Light the wick, swirl the aroma, offer, listen, oil your skin, feel the prayers, listen, open, offer. repeat. repeat repeat.
Ayurveda shares a series of practices I have come to know as Tan Matra Chikitsa or five sense therapies. This important philosophy shares that our senses create our perception which then informs our reality. If we spend time daily tending to our senses we can use that as not only as support towards focus, harmony and greater awareness but also as a platform that calls into the places where our senses originate. We can nourish, hydrate, support, soothe and calibrate our senses therefore change the way we perceive the world around us. As a result, our insides talk to our outsides (a message I repeat often!) and all kinds of things happen especially in our hormonal body which is the chariot leader of our senses (coupled with the mind). The senses are the horses, the practices are the reigns and our hormonal body holds on tight. When the senses receive the messages that feel nourishment, support, calibration and care those messages travel up the reigns and into the hands of our hormonal body which then, in kind, LOVES what is happening and sends back the messages that mirror this. It’s a beautiful feedback loop.
Seriously.
I know it to be true like I know the lines of my breath, it is innate. It is body, mind, spirit knowing and when it’s done over and over again we begin to receive these messages in unique and profound ways creating different stories and internal conversations that can be creative, expansive, self-affirming and wise. I believe it changes the way we connect to ourselves and potentially others.
Tending to our sense body daily in ways that call to you is an important step towards messaging our hormonal body what we want ourselves to know. I believe it is possible to have an internal dialog where we get to have this rich conversation with the deeper knowing that lives within. Using the portal of our eyes, ear, mouth, nose & skin is the messaging system that helps us with that communication. For more on Five Sense therapies you can read this article I wrote some years back which explains further . This is also a foundational pillar of a collective forming in April called Wise Ways of Menopause: A Six Month Collective. For more information on this, read here