How This Goddess Guides Us to Roar With Sensuality. By Acharya Shunya The Goddess Lakshmi is pleasure incarnate. Discover 12 ways to honor her. The pursuit of pleasure is oft-neglected on the spiritual path, considered vulgar at worst and material at best. But we are spiritually built to enjoy all kinds of pleasure: sensual, carnal, material, and spiritual. In fact, the oldest wisdom tradition coming out of India—the Vedic tradition, first developed between 3500–1100 BCE—describes in detail a divine feminine deity known as Goddess Lakshmi, who, along with her chief incantations Durga and Saraswati, comprises "Shakti," the divine feminine mother goddess. While Durga represents courage and Saraswati, wisdom, Lakshmi is generally associated with wealth, fortune, beauty, and, yes, pleasure. What can Lakshmi teach us about pleasure, and how we may pursue it on the modern spiritual path? Goddess Lakshmi Is Pleasure Incarnate Goddess Lakshmi is said to be playfully present in every pleasure possible—be it through delicious food, the arts, or sex. Lakshmi herself is beauty incarnate, adorned with the finest silks, gems, and rubies. She is typically depicted in a lush red or golden sari with golden ornaments, surrounded by lotuses and butterflies. In fact, if not for Goddess Lakshmi’s unsurpassed and infinite blessings, it’s believed that you and I would not be enjoying any pleasures in life, whether small or great. Every pleasure we have ever enjoyed on this planet—every petal of every flower we have ever smelled with delight, every bead of every necklace we have ever worn with a smile, every tickle of spice we have enjoyed in food, every delicious sweet fruit we have bitten into, every puddle of rain we have playfully splashed in, every warm body we have ever embraced in joyful sexual ecstasy— is said to be a gift from Goddess Lakshmi. Lakshmi’s Four Hands In the Vedic tradition, pleasure-oriented faculties of human life are no less important than securing our life materially and advancing our consciousness spiritually. This includes finding a sexually satisfying partner, pursuing the art of lovemaking, and maintaining one’s love life at a high caliber. That is why it is said that Lakshmi’s four hands—an expression of her superpowers—represent the balanced quest for four universal goals of human life: Artha: seeking out material prosperity Dharma: cultivation of a personal code of higher ethics Moksha: spiritual liberation and divine consciousness Kama: pursuing worldly and bodily pleasures Goddess Lakshmi’s teachings are clear—the first three goals must not be secured at the cost of neglecting or sidelining the fourth goal of kama. Human pleasures such as singing, dancing, playing, and sex play an important role in the overall health and wellbeing of an individual and a society. In fact, if the sexual instinct is forcefully suppressed, it leads to mental perversions and countless physical diseases. A pleasurable life feels prosperous as well. When the mind feels pleasured, positive, and happy to be alive, research supports that our physical health and immunity soar as well. Enter Goddess Rati A goddess incantation inspired by Goddess Lakshmi is Goddess Rati, whose name means “to delight” or “to enjoy in.” Goddess Rati is the goddess of love and passion. She represents lust and sexual pleasure for pleasure’s sake—not pleasure “justified” by childbearing and motherhood. In fact, when you are truly aroused and experiencing your sexuality with abandonment, it is she, Goddess Rati, who is said to become awakened from inside you. It is she along with you who enjoys your orgasm. It is she along with you who surrenders in the sweet embrace of a lover, only to become the dominant one, seeking indulgence and fulfillment of her desire. With all this in mind, it’s no wonder that in her legends, Goddess Lakshmi demonstrates, again and again, the importance of unapologetically yet mindfully cultivating kama, or sexuality and earthly pleasures. She invites us to become comfortable with sensuality, delight in it, not sabotage it, nor suppress it, nor least of all shame it. 12 Ways to Please Your Inner Lakshmi Besides enjoying sexual pleasures without shame or obligation, try any of the following activities to cultivate pleasure in your life: Clean and beautify your home regularly and keep it lovely and serene enough for Lakshmi to come pay a visit. This doesn’t necessarily mean buying expensive items to decorate. Your intention to keep it vibrationally pure, clean, and organized matters. Adorn your home with store-bought or wild-picked flowers, burn incense, light candles (especially at dawn and dusk), and decorate with natural objects like rocks and crystals when possible. Pick up after yourself and share the delight of a spacious, uncluttered home with family members. If they don’t cooperate right away, start with your personal space. Even if you live in a cramped space, you can still pick up after yourself, mindfully. Pleasure your body by feeding it fresh-cooked foods, set the table nicely, and eat with pleasure and good company when possible. If you can invest in whole organic foods, grow them yourself, or even barter for them, that will give your body extra Lakshmi energy to shine! Take up a daily self-care ritual like gazing at the rising sun, meditating under the moon, self-massaging your body with warm oil, or beginning an exercise or yoga routine. Once again, this need not tax your budget or your time. Simple choices lead the way to pleasurable self-care. Wear clean clothes, made of natural fibers when possible. Even if you have few clothes, regularly wash, iron, and wear them with a goddess smile. Adorn your body with beads, ornaments, essential oils, and perfumes more often, suitable to your taste and budget. Try to grow flowers, vegetables, or herbs! Take care of them, like you would take care of your own children. When you are visited by birds, butterflies, hummingbirds, and bees, kama energy will exponentialize in your home. Savor music, painting, singing, or some other form of pleasure-giving artistic activity. Anything that makes you feel relaxed and uplifted will work. Spend time walking or meditating outdoors, listening to bird calls, and watching trees dance to the tune of the breeze. Spending time with Mother Nature is akin to spending time with Mother Lakshmi herself! Invite a friend or two who are respectful to your inner child—and fun to be with—for cozy meals and chit-chat. Plan picnics, camping, or movie marathons together. Open your heart and home to pets—dogs, cats, frogs, bunnies, hamsters, or reptiles. These creatures, representative of Lakshmi, fill our hearts with delight. All in all, don’t neglect having fun in your life. Surround yourself with pleasure-imparting friends, lovers, pets, hobbies, and activities, and make time to be sweetly indulgent of yourself out of sheer pleasure. This is one true way to worship your inner Lakshmi. This article is adapted from the forthcoming book, Roar Like a Goddess: Every Woman's Guide to Becoming Unapologetically Powerful, Prosperous, and Peaceful(Sounds True, 2022)

By Acharya Shunya In Sunny California, which is my home, we have become a little spoiled with expansive blue skies and a warm golden sun that sparkles and shines and adds a special radiance to our lives, year-round. And we especially look forward to summer with great anticipation. World over, we humans have developed an entire culture around summer. Its arrival is often greeted with great super sales of cooling cottons, designer beach gear, water sports, special juices and drinks to keep us cool and hydrated. Bottled water sales go up and sunglasses go on our noses, where they will stay perched for several months! Unfortunately, summer’s dry heat can also be trying on our system since the moisture in the environment reduces drastically, including from our body, causing loss of body fluids through sweating. We can also manifest conditions like sunstroke, dehydration, prickly heat rash, inflammatory skin disorders, bleeding from the nose, burning sensation of urine, muscle cramps and fatigue, etc. What Ayurveda Says About Summer Ayurveda-wise, the fiery hot sun in summer activates Pitta Dosha. Increasing dryness (of the wind) begins to accumulate Vata. There is reduction in Kapha Dosha within the body and a reduction of Rasa Dhatu (fluid nutrition of all the body tissues), and the Bala (strength) of the body are also greatly diminished. Hence, Ayurveda not only cautions external protection but also suggests inner replenishment, rejuvenation and restoration. Ayurvedic Ways to Replenish This Summer Ayurveda suggests not only enjoying the cooled interior versus the blistering outdoors in day time, but also actively soliciting the comfort of shaded gardens and forests filled with fragrant flowers and fountains or tall trees with thick foliage to soothe the intense heat. In no other season is a nap recommended apart from summer season. Ayurveda advises adequate rest (no over exertion or over heating of the body), and recommends daytime sleep to replenish lost Kapha. The Moon is a great help in summer, which is why Ayurveda suggests sleeping in the open (if possible) perhaps even bare skinned, or minimally clothed with the lightest cotton garments to absorb the cooling rays loaded with love! How to replenish the body: Anoint it with the paste of herbs usher or Chandan (sandalwood) – mixed in cool water and wait till dry. Then take a cooling bath or shower. The skin will become soft, moistened and ready to combat the sun. Coconut oil makes for a good sun protector (always apply slightly warmed) before you step out. The face can be washed with ground red masoor daal (red lentils), pinch of sandalwood powder and saffron (use a coffee grinder to make a powder). Mix tablespoon of mixture with cooling while cow milk to make creamy paste for a cooling and nourishing face wash that will remove redness from the face. What to avoid: Reduce exertion, heavy exercises, direct or excessive exposure to direct sunlight. Excessive sex / intercourse should also be avoided in this season, especially after a meal. Self care is a sacred ritual, thus, Ayurveda’s self care wisdom demonstrates a deep understanding of nature. The self care rituals laid out here not only deliver results but become potent ways to love ourselves and to step into a more conscious relationship with nature, the sun, the moon and the wind. Following Ayurveda’s recommendations, we begin to flow more and fight less with nature. This summer, the time we will take to choose appropriate foods and craft a season-appropriate lifestyle by virtue of Ayurveda wisdom will truly transform our understanding of nature and what it wants from us. With Ayurveda’s help, we do not need to only react to the escalating heat and dryness of summer with discomfort. Instead, we can choose to respond to it proactively by being prepared in advance. This will be truly conscious time invested in the self for a happy, cool and healthy summer! You can learn more about the study and practice of Ayurveda through Acharya Shunya's online course, Alchemy through Ayurveda. This blog is excerpted from our blog, "Summer Self Care with Ayurveda: Wisdom Teachings from my Vedic Lineage" originally published in May 2019. Acharya Shunya is a globally-recognized spiritual teacher and Vedic lineage-holder who awakens health and consciousness through the Vedic sciences of Ayurveda, Vedanta and Yoga. She is the driving force behind an online wisdom school and worldwide spiritual community, and the author of best-selling book on the Vedic art of mind + body + soul well-being and health, Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom (Sounds True, 2017) and her second book, Sovereign Self (Sounds True, 2020). Acharya Shunya is a keynote speaker at national and international conferences, and serves as an advisor to the Indian Government in matters pertaining to global integration and cultivation of Ayurveda and Yoga. Receive her free online teachings and browse her current eCourse offerings here or see more about her on Facebook and follow her on Instagram. Study Ayurveda with Acharya Shunya in her online course, Alchemy through Ayurveda.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT 10/17/2020 59.11 Minutes Note: Shadow to Self is produced for the ear and is designed to be heard. If you are able, we encourage you to listen to the audio, which includes emotion and emphasis that is not on this page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Namaste and welcome to Acharya Shunya’s podcast Shadow to Self, a show created to inspire you to step out of fear and darkness into a place of freedom and empowerment. In each episode, she'll explore humanity's deepest questions about your relationship with yourself and others, illuminated by the ancient and non dual wisdom of the Vedas, Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita, keep listening. Shunyaji-Welcome to my podcast dear friends. The journey from the Shadow to the Self has become very special for me ever since I began this podcast a couple of months ago. Because so many of you from all over the world have joined me in telling me and reinforcing this theme for all of us: that we deserve light because we are beings of light. That special Self that’s within each one of us (Atma, the boundless one) deserves to come out more and more in our daily life, and the Shadow, which is really our mental clutter, our worries, our doubts, our biases, our conditionings. We can set it aside once we know about it. It need not spook us. It need not make us bad people, sinful people, stupid people. We can understand the game. Somewhere perhaps we chose it: that we are going get caught up by our Shadow until we know that it is only the Shadow. And the interesting thing is that the Shadow does not exist only in our own mind, confusing us in discerning between reality and appearance. What is ephemeral and what is important? What is eternal (Nitya) and what is non eternal (Anitya)? What is right (Dharmic) and what is probably not right to do or pursue (Adharmic)? But the Shadow seems to be present in pretty much every area of humanity: in our professions, in our careers, in our politics. But then, believe it or not, even in the arena of spirituality, sometimes the Shadow can strike and then we can think that we have arrived, but we may only be in a state of delusion. We may think we are awakened, and we are ready to enlighten another but unfortunately we may nowhere be near that inner light. We may think we have found our master, our teacher, our guide, but we may be playing out some more of the co-dependence themes that need to be looked at and probably taken care of in therapy. So round and round we go in our mind: sorting out life’s puzzles, thinking we have got the answer. But unfortunately the answer we get is just one more circle. That’s it. We go round and round and round. That is why the term Samsarah, which comes from that which goes on and on in a circular pattern, that’s how sometimes we feel. And that’s why I thought Hey! Why don’t I talk about this? Why don’t we bring this discussion that perplexes us, confuses us, and frustrates us? And often we feel worthy only when that, "If I could have only known better. If I had only done some more research already. If I had only thought it through, I would have probably out smarted that circular Samsara in which we get caught up in our own mind. And taken a more discerned decision using the faculty of discernment, which is known as Vivekah in Sanskrit and detaching from what is no longer serving us, which is known as Vairagyam in Sanskrit." So Vivekah, Vairagyam are in a way like the pillars of the path of knowledge or the path of spirituality in which we want to be taking very conscious steps. We don’t want to be just led or told which is one way once we can surrender ourselves to the right person. But we want to, even before we surrender to a master, a guru, a tradition, a teaching. We may still want to think about it and discern Vivekah. And we may want to detach with any version of it that is not true. So if we really look at what is the real invitation here. Fortunately, this work from journeying from darkness to light, from confusion to clarity, ignorance to incite and ultimately, the Shadow to Self, living by the impulses, whims and ill conceived beliefs of the Shadow or the enlightened wisdom, intuitive knowledge and restfulness of the Self. This journey has been taken by many great teachers all over the world. In fact, if I have to give credit to any deep messiah, sage, yogi, teacher, professor, master I have to say that no matter what religion they belong to, what culture they come from; somewhere within them they have had this conversation that look: it’s not that simple. It’s not just a case of you know, you hear, you can make this journey, you can end up get there and everything will get fixed. It’s not that simple. We have to bring a greater cognitive evaluation into this situation because we have that faculty as humans. We are not just driven by our impulses. We have something known as a deeper mind, a thinking mind, a questioning mind, an analytical mind, a cognitive mind. Let’s use it. And when we begin using it, it’s really helpful when we can have teachers and masters shed light on that process and show us what ethical, responsible, thinking journey around spirituality can represent. Not only do they talk about it, but they walk that path and for the rest of us, they become light-showers. I am really fortunate that our guest today is one such person. I will like to introduce you to this amazing person, and we will have a conversation that might really reveal to you some gems about your own journey and help you along the way, as it has helped me. Because I read many, many years ago his writing in his bestseller book, The American Veda, and that really set the theme for me as to what kind of teacher I wanted to be in America, more than even a student. So he held my back, his knowledge, his illumination helped a teacher who came much later to the American scenario, in knowing what really is the Shadow here and how can I side more with the light than enable the Shadow in myself and my spiritual students. So our guest today is Philip Goldberg, also known as Phil Goldberg. He has been studying India’s spiritual traditions for more than fifty years as a practitioner, teacher and a writer. He is the author or co-author of over twenty books including some of his best sellers: Road Signs On The Spiritual Path, The award winning American Veda and its full title is The American Veda: from Emerson and Beatles to Yoga & Meditation, How Indian Spirituality Changed The West and then he has written an amazing book called the Life Of Yogananda: The story of the Yogi Who Became The First Modern Guru. In fact, this is a full scale biography of the Paramhansa Yogananda, the one and only renowned Yogananda. His latest book, which we’ll go more into later, and we will be sharing the link how to obtain that book, and I have been enjoying it, is his Spiritual Practice for Crazy Times: Powerful Tools to Cultivate Calm, Clarity and Courage. It is so fascinating that we will be talking to him at a time when our world is spinning with the pandemic right now. And he has mentioned how when he was writing this, there was so much more craziness was going on. He didn’t expect that when he will be releasing it to the world, this will be such a timely book for us because we all need right now to cultivate calm, clarity and courage. - Phil is an ordained interfaith minister, and he brings so much knowledge of so many varied traditions into his work and teachings. He is a spiritual counsellor and a meditation teacher. He is an entertaining public speaker who has presented at venues throughout the US and India. And I have to say that in my conversations with him, I have done nothing but walked away enlightened. But there is this lightness about him, this sense of humour that he carries, where it almost makes it easy to have discussions on grave topics. He blogs regularly on Spirituality & Health and Elephant Journal, and he conducts tours of India with American Veda tourists and co host the popular Spirit Matters podcast. And his website, which we will share again in case you missed it is philipgoldberg.com. And Philip, welcome! Namaste! Thank you so much for joining me. Philip- Namaste! Shunya I have to say that I now have a lot to live up to after that introduction. And you gave away my big secret. You know Spiritual Practice for Crazy Times came out recently, and everybody compliments me on my great timing, and you gave away the fact that I had no idea we will be in the middle of the pandemic when I wrote it. Shunyaji- I think your soul knew. What do you think? Philip- Maybe so; Well I didn’t. I knew the times were crazy when I wrote it. They were crazy enough to write up this book. And times you know can always be crazy; maybe my publishers knew it because they are the one who set the publication date. But true, the timing unfolded as it needed to. Shunyaji- You know, you have talked about, Phil, if I may dive right in because your time is so precious and I have so many questions for you. You know, you have talked about Samsara and you have talked about this like existential craziness that humanity inherits until it finds that non-crazy elements within themselves. Tell us more about it. Tell us more about your own reflections and what moved you to- because this book is not, I mean, I have been going through it, and I am recommending it to my students and disciples because I think it’s a book for every time. Yeah! Philip- Yeah! That’s when the pandemic hit: there was still time to make some changes for the best opportunity, and all I did was to add a short paragraph in the process. Because you know I took pains that the point of view of the book, the practical message that, I recommend, the guide lines, instructions all of that. These are perennial and I am drawing from perennial wisdom mostly from India and the Vedic traditions. But you know I brought in other insights from other spiritual traditions and from modern science to help people cope with crazy times, whenever you know- if we somehow emerge from this crisis into a new age of harmony and joy and happiness. Individual lives will still go through, you know, difficulties and challenges, just part of being human. And so people, you know at any time, life can be crazy for you regardless of what’s going on. At the moment we are going through not just a cultural crisis but a global crisis, and it’s heartbreaking to see what’s going on and the degree of suffering out there. So something dark and mysterious and in some ways understandable and discernable but you know, then the other aspects the pandemic is bringing out a lot of what you have been calling Shadow elements- individualized and collectively as well. And you know, maybe in the long run, would be a better offer for them having been exposed and maybe would take steps to make it better. I know since you are spiritual people who are convinced that this is that God or the cosmos is part of the design, that this is a collective cleansing of some sorrows and all that stuff. And I am not qualified to know whether that’s true or not, but my hunch is that whatever the cosmic plan may be, it requires our actions. And it may not unfold automatically; it may not be written if we don’t preordain. It may require us to do the right things to make the future better; to apply everything we have learnt individually and collectively; to bring out the collective into the light. Shunyaji- But that’s beautiful and I think that is why you will agree with me, Phil, that those of us who are holding on to spiritual practices and tools, by a way of any tradition. Of course we both love, you know, we have appreciated what comes from the Vedas, but be of any tradition, we are more assisting bringing in the light than just staying with the Shadow. So your book is very timely and also just easy to read. I mean there are these just sections which just make it, I would say even reading a section a day, kind of keeps the light bulb on. Was that intentional to write this, kind of you know, this soft landing? Philip- Yeah! This style I have developed. You know, writing is obviously my Dharma, and people often ask me why you decided to be a writer and I joke that this is the only thing I was good at. That I have enough passion for to do on a professional level. So the writing style- I am always pleased when people compliment it and say it’s easy to digest. I wanted to make the book user-friendly and because it's a very practical book it’s meant to be applied and understood. But I didn’t want to make it over simplistic either. A lot of self-help books, a lot of books on spirituality are just too simplistic. I wanted to acknowledge, as you were saying in your introductory remarks, how complex and nuanced the spiritual path is. I want to compliment you for speaking about the need for discernment. And I wanted my readers in this book to exercise their discernment: to think clearly, to make the proper choices. Because the spiritual path in the Upanishads; it’s called the razor’s edge. It can be difficult to traverse at times. It can be confusing. And we need to use both our intellects to discern and analyze and think clearly, and to know that deepest wisdom within our self we call intuition. And to use the combination and not make automatic decisions because someone told you to. Shunyaji- That is why I wanted to chat with you, because whatever I have read of yours and I have heard your podcasts you know, we can’t separate this discernment faculty from your teachings. So you are not just a teacher who teaches a feel-good meditation. There is this constant, almost like an underlying narrative going on which leads a person, like say even when you start with meditation and it’s so easy to start a chapter on meditation. And here is how you do: it close your eyes and then you go- Philip- Yeah Shunyaji- And the first line you say is public discourse on meditation is muddled. And then you go on to explain, teach classifications, sort out, help people figure out their way through this the muddle, if I may say so. So kudos to you too! Philip- Thank you I appreciate this. Shunyaji- Yeah! For really like daring to say it because people need that because if every teacher starts teaching their version of meditation, you know soon as many as plastic bottles we will have as many methods of meditation and no clarity. Philip- It’s getting to that. Shunyaji- Getting to that. Philip- And it’s one of the reasons I felt I should do it. I have been meditating with an authentic lineage-based traditional method for more than fifty years, not to make myself feel too old. I have seen over time meditation becomes so mainstream and so recognized by the medical community, the psychology community, the spiritual community. It’s advocated everywhere; even my health care provider tells me I should meditate for stress. So that’s great, but over time it got more and more muddled to the point where people think they’ll make up some meditation, you know and present it as if the thing they made up carries the same weight, has the same power and beneficial effect and the same data. As you know, the methods that have been used for centuries and have been studied in scientific laboratories, they are not all the same and the media often presents it, as meditation is a thing and you know they are all the same but they are not, as you well know. So thank you for singling that out. Shunyaji- Yeah! Because I am a teacher of that tradition too, because as you know that Ayurveda is also one of my sciences that I promote. And in Ayurved,a when you go to a Vaidya, a healer, they give you two things: Pathya and Apathya. Pathya is what you should do, and Apathya is what you should not do. And if the Vaidya has less time, we are told to just tell them what not to do. Don’t harm yourself. That’s more important, and a responsible teacher brings both those portions. I have seen you this guidance for the American, for the Western I would say beyond America, for the Western spiritualist, who is interested in the teachings from the East. How did you even, I know you took like years observing and then writing, but I do want to hear from you about your blockbuster book and what a contribution to society when you wrote the American Veda. And you look at this whole culture of how we are very much living out themes and echoes from what came from India long ago. So much so that Time magazine talks about how Hinduism or the Vedas have influenced, and the Newsweek has done that and many of them quote you. So tell us about this desire for the big picture that you gave the whole gestalt you kind of opened it up. That’s a big journey you took there and that took all of us, Phil. Philip- Thank you, it gives me great pleasure, especially when people whose heritage is from India, acknowledge the contribution that the book made and that they have learnt from it. I am actually teaching a course, a ten week course, I am starting for the Hindu University of America, taking them through the whole history of how the traditions have affected America. And the effect is so subtle, that lot of people even well-informed people, don’t realize the extent of it. But it started for me back when I set foot on my own spiritual path when I was a young seeker in the 1960s, and I found myself drawn to the philosophy of Vedanta, especially certain Buddhist teachings and to the practices that come from the Yoga traditions. And they transformed my life. That I mean, there was a radical shift in my life as soon as I took up these practices and started studying the tradition of wisdom. And then I saw it changing many other people’s lives, and they became my friends and my spiritual buddies and my community. And over time as I grew up and my life evolved, and I started writing professionally. I kept seeing it happen. I saw that these teachings were influencing psychology and influencing medicine and influencing neuro science. I saw it coming out in the voices of famous people and musicians and artists, and I said, you know, this stuff is filtering into our society. Why? Because it makes sense. And because it changes people’s lives for the better, and there was always better coming up. So time went by and I just became a professional writer and started writing books. And sometime in the mid 80s I thought, well this is really a phenomenon that is affecting the culture! So I wrote a book proposal and no one was interested. And- Shunyaji- Oh! I didn’t know that. Philip- Yeah! And so you know this is the mid 80s- late 80s and I thought, that’s disappointing. But maybe this is one of those occasions where I am ahead of my time (usually when you think that is not really true). But this turned out to be the case, and so I felt, well may be one day it would be other people will see what I am seeing and it will be at the right time. So I kept gathering information. I would clip things from newspapers. I would do interviews and all this stuff, thinking one day I will write this book. And then finally, twenty years later in the mid 2000s, an editor- what was then the double day books- ended up with Random House, had a similar insight and happened to mention it to my agent to put us together and then I said okay! Now I have a book contract. This is real. And so I embarked on more in-depth research because what I thought in the 80s was now in twenty years later- much more of it happened. And that’s how it came to be. It was a result of my own experiences and of my own observations and some impulse that said you should write about this and tell the story. Shunyaji- Phil, what was fascinating to me, as a teacher because when I read this, I was not you know so to say in America teaching as a spiritual teacher, so it’s more looking as an onlooker. And what I saw in your writing was that, like a lot of lineages or teachers individuals or collectives began with a lot of enthusiasm but sooner or later some Shadow would creep in. Philip- Oh! Yes. Shunyaji- And this is more a sign of our times, not so much about an individual faltering. But you know, because the Vedic tradition, as you know and I have been telling our listeners about it, has been here for millennia. For thousands of years there have been gurus and for thousands of years there have been students. There has been you know this Paramapara, this tradition. What do you think is going on right now that Shadow inflicts the gurus, the masters and they seem to topple? We have the era of the top linked teachers and then we have students who seem to exhibit like they don’t exhibit a lot of emotional intelligence in who they’re attached to and how they become enslaved or how they lose their power. I mean, it takes two to tango in a dysfunctional relationship: we can’t just blame the masters. So at a big level ,so that our listeners can, this is really a practical thing because every genuine seeker deserves a genuine mentor. What do you feel people can do so that they stay away from the Shadow because you have looked at the whole deal? Philip- Yeah! I had to cover up a lot in writing American Veda because I wrote about all the gurus who came to America, who want to have a sizeable following. And it turns out that almost all the ones who came here and became popular in the 60s and 70s had some kind of scandal or fall from grace, at least they were accused of it you know. We can say everything was almost true. And it should be said that there are many many gurus who came here and attracted followings who lived highly ethical lives. There was no scandal, you know. Nothing erupted around them, and we should honor that. And there had been false accusations but there’s also been Shadow stuff that came out and it was usually around sex, sometimes around money or power. Many of the gurus just turned out to have something in the psyche that was not complete. And they fell prey especially in the 60s and the 70s, when the culture was just very different. It was very different from when Swami Vivekananda was here in the 1890s. Even different from when the Yogananda was here in the 20s and 30s. The 60s and 70s were a different time, and some of the gurus succumbed to sexual temptation and the truth is, you know, there are very noble gurus. Even the ones who had scandals around them at the same time brought you know terrific benefits to most of their followers lives, otherwise they would not have become so popular. So it’s a complex picture and they are all human. And one of the things you learn when you delve into the surface, that no matter how brilliant and even spiritually evolved a human, a person can be, no matter how skilled a teacher, they are human. They are human in a lovable way, and they also can have their flaws and their shortcomings and their personality quirks. I wrote a whole biography looking into the human story of Yogananda: person of fame of all the gurus who used to come here. He used to love people thinking that he is such a perfect human being. But his human stories showed very human qualities, and I came to admire him even more because he worried about money, and he had to deal with this and you know all these stuff. So people need to recognize that the gurus they come in contact with, despite the trappings and the authority and their intelligence and lovable personalities they may have: they are still human beings. And if we have a need to put a teacher upon a pedestal, we have to be prepared for the pedestal to crumble at some point. And we have to be very discerning and in taking on a teacher. Do not necessarily succumb to this notion that a disciple must surrender to the guru, if by surrender you mean turn off your power and give up your independent thinking and your judgement. There may be a place for that close guru-disciple relationship, especially in a monastic setting, but for most of us, we are not in a monastic setting. We are functioning in the world, and we have to remain empowered to think for ourselves and to have a clear understanding of what kind of a relationship we want with the guru. Do we want somebody we completely surrender to? Well, if you do, you better be very careful about who that person is and how you do it. Do you want somebody who is a mentor? Somebody who just knows more than you, like a good, skilled teacher? Do you want a friend, a spiritual friend? Do you want a counsellor? I mean there is many ways to define your student’s relationship to a teacher. And the best of the teachers will empower the student to have more discernment and to think more clearly. And one secret that I have learnt is that, I have been around you know too many Satsangs with gurus, where people just wanted to be singled out, for how much they love the guru and how much they can complement the guru. And what I found is that gurus really like people who ask hard questions and challenge what they say because it’s showing that they are evolving. They are thinking for themselves. They like that. They like people who ask that. Shunyaji- True gurus are not waiting for sheep to follow them around. And I have to say that the word in the Parampara, in the tradition between guru and shishya was not surrender, which is kind of some kind of a Western understanding of the relationship that might happen with the early breed of guru, saying rather than saying surrender your ignorance, it was like surrender to me. But the word was Vinay, and Vinay means bring your humility in the learning process. Because if you’re a know-it-all, you cannot learn new things. And Vinay also means Vinay not just towards the gurus, but the whole journey towards the teaching, the path, the tradition towards each other. It got more of into this surrender and typically, I also want to say, that the students who do surrender voluntarily or they think it is assumed of them, are often the ones who do not want to take responsibility for themselves. Philip- That’s right. And when something goes wrong and a guru behaves in ways they don’t necessarily like or display human characteristics, they are usually the ones who have the biggest backlash. Shunyaji- Exactly. Yeah! So it’s a big game, and why we were talking about it dear, dear friends of our podcast is, so that you would be aware that lights are being turned on. This is no longer the era where you just get caught up and then few years later you say, I didn’t know any better. Well I hope you heard our podcast. I hope you read Phil’s books. Philip- Well I also I think people- there’s a lot of wounds and scars and disappointment from the young seekers in the 60s and 70s. They now have children and grandchildren. They (the younger people now) are little less likely to succumb. Having said that, just in recent weeks there have been you know revelations about; in this case Western teachers who have been many years elders here and also in the world of Hath Yoga and celebrity Yoga teachers you know, sexual misconduct and abuse. It keeps happening. So there are always lessons to learn. It’s still happening to the point that in one of the chapters even in Spiritual Practice for Crazy Times, I have a chapter on how important relationships and other people are for bringing us to the life in crazy times. And I found it necessary to talk about the role of spiritual teachers even there, give people you know, a sense of learning. Shunya ji- Always. It’s always you are delivering that guidance or those tools, and you must be thanked for that, to play that role because it’s not easy to play that role. I am sure of that, but if the burden falls on some of us and that and we have to do that right thing. A change of theme. I want to go back to the times, you know Spiritual Practice for Crazy Times. I want to talk about how beautifully you have covered the different Yogas, you know, without like being preachy about it. But you talked about, you know, so it brings in the average person because many average people think that Yoga is really about Chitta Vritti Nirodaha- calming the mind. But then you bring in the Karma Yoga definition of Samatvam Yoga Uchaytay- an equanimous mind amidst difficulties is also striking Yoga. And you wrote, and I love your writing, and you said the promise is not. So when you practice being equanimous through acceptance in life you wrote, “The promise in not the absence of outrageous slings and arrows, but the presence of peace, perhaps even joy, in the midst of the inevitable madness. It’s a declaration of independence from the ravages of life, and it’s strictly an inside job." I think these lines are beautiful, Phil, and if our listeners are listening, so I would like you to read the book but even as a take-away that you want to take from this podcast, is that Phil and I are talking. We are teachers in this world. We are dealing with slings and arrows. Yoga doesn’t mean only sitting under a tree or a mountain top meditating. I let Phil talk more about it. He is very clear that the imperative for all of us is to bring Yoga, bring spirituality in the midst of our worldly life. So tell us more about it, Phil. Philip- Well, you know, that when I was first on my spiritual path I found the promise of higher spiritual attainment to be so appealing and I started to see glimpses of it right away, soon as I began my meditation practices and all that. And when I read the Gita, the Bhagwad Gita, for the first time there were a few passages that truly stood out for me. And one of them was where this promise is made that the Yogi will develop equanimity in gain and loss, victory and defeat, in pleasure and pain, and I said, man! I want that. Because I have been buffeted around by all the craziness of life, and I just want the thought of having the inner peace which was so appealing. I just wanted to have more of it, more of it. But somewhere in my little shadowy subconscious, I took it to mean that a time will come when there won’t be loss and defeat and pain. And so my life got better, and you know it was transformed and it does happen. I would be looking for a loop, and I would be upset, and my heart would be broken, and I would be crazy enough and I said what’s going on here? I thought I would be above all this by now. But then I realized: it doesn’t say that there won’t be any losses and defeat because life inevitably has its ups and downs. You could live the most blessed life in the world, but eventually you are going to get sick. You would lose loved ones. The economy will crash. Things will happen and they always do. And that the goal is to have that equanimity, that inner stability, that access to, what I call in the book, our inner sanctuary of peace that is our own nature- that is Atma. That is our core essence. It is our birth right, and we can access it. That’s what the whole book is about. Different methods for accessing what is deep within us at our core. The more we do that, the more likely when stuff happens in the world, in our immediate world, in our larger world, we can maintain some composure, some inner stability, some calm some presence of mind. Not only so we don’t get knocked for a loop and you know get sick and get all stressed out. Not only for our rooms of preservations, but so we have a way out to act more effectively about what’s going on in this world. This is the core message of the Gita and all the traditional teachings. Establishing Yoga for own action and so that’s really the centerpiece, the sort of foundation on which I wrote up to two hundred pages. But that’s, you are absolutely right. It’s that, how do we say maintain equanimity? You do that through regular practice or Sadhana, but you also do it by being available to you message that you can bring in when you need them when stuff happens. Now that’s essentially what I put in Spiritual Practice for Crazy Times. Shunyaji- Thank you so much because when we; when we teach Bhagwad Gita’s core message which brings me again to what we were talking about: the new era of spirituality with the Shadows. Where sometimes we go to a guru with a desire that it will all go away. All my problems will go away. I will be in the zone of joy and bliss, which is misguided as being some kind of a bliss that can exist by itself without its opposites. But we live in a kind of a Loka or a plain of existence, where duality is there. So dark is with light. Dukha (or sorrow) is with Sukha. Our Janama (or birth) is with Marana (death). We can’t separate these. And that is why when we go to the deeper teachings of the Bhagwad Gita, dear listeners, we learn to thrive despite the problems or be equanimous and not lose it. So you know, Phil, when I was growing up and I would lose it, maybe because my pencil sharpener I couldn’t find, or my geography homework was not done and my teacher would not like it. I was pretty young and once I was full of angst, I remember. I went to my father, and he just said “Oh! Shunya Dukheshu Anudigna Manah Sukheshu Vigatspraha he just said that and I was like; what but of course later I understood it. But now to lead that life. Philip- Could you please translate it? Shunyaji- Okay! What it basically means for the rest of us is that the one whose mind is not shaken up by adversity, and the one who in joy doesn’t get like, "I want more more more!" greedy Spriha. Because then that takes us away from what we have achieved. That person is known as Stithbudhi person, or a person of steady wisdom and so I remember. Philip- It sounds like something out of the Gita Shunyaji- This is the Gita, yeah. This is fifty-six, Shlokha 56, from the chapter two and it started from rejecting that. From wanting a fix as a young person, to having no option but to live with it, as a youth and then as an elder rejoicing in it, discussing it with people like you who live it and bringing it to the world. What a journey for me too, Phil, from wanting a fix to knowing this is the fix. Philip- And then that naive notion- Shunyaji- Naive... Philip- You know it’s very understandable. I succumbed to it too, and I saw millions of people do it. And then we mature and we evolve. And if we were lucky, we also we get to pass on what we have learnt to other people. And if we were wise, we don’t pretend we have learned everything. Because life is still full of surprises and lessons to be learnt even for us elders. Shunyaji- Yes. And so as we say in the Vedas, that the true elder is not by age but by their maturity and how they handle their ups and downs. So this is an ongoing journey from the Shadow to Self and well said- that we can’t really sit on our lotus and say we have arrived because when we turn around there might still be more ways to go. So it’s an ongoing like a Yatra. It’s a journey. Philip- Yeah! And I would say getting back to most of the questions of the students and gurus. If you encounter a teacher who claims that there’s no more growth for him or her to have, I would start to be very suspicious. Be very careful about that! Shunyaji- I would too. I also wanted to bring up the topic of sexuality and spirituality, and I wanted to say that while monasticism is a choice and there are great monastic sages, it’s also good to look at your teachers and Sangas, where sexuality is something that is comfortable. You don’t have to do too many heroic things with it. So in the Grihasta way, or the way where you are a householder, was the way of the Vedas. Krishna was married many times. Arjuna had several wives. I am not- I don’t want to say it’s the only way. That would be irresponsible because there comes a time when sexuality doesn’t feel that important. But I do want to say that if you are a beginning seeker probably integrating your sexuality with your spiritual life may be okay. What are your thoughts on that Phil? Philip- No I agree. I think one of the difficulties we have had, especially here in the West, was that the prominent gurus who came here were monastics. And they had a monastic, you know that for most part of monastic orientation, most of them knew that they were teaching householders for the most part. But they themselves not only were monastic they were swamis. They were ordains. They were Brahmacharis. But they came from a culture that became very conservative around sexuality. And especially in the 60s and 70s they came to the West, at the time of this, you know, the great sexual revolution as we called it. And so I have sympathy now for some of these men, but some of them were very conscious of the fact that the traditions have become very monastic-oriented. There are a lot of historical reasons for that in Indian history in a way, but the teachings for householders had been neglected so you know, there was a lot of the advice and the framing of these precious teachings were monastically oriented. There was too much about renunciation. Too much about the material world being illusionary and turn away from it. Sex was not even discussed. Because I remember being around the gurus and asked about sex and everything, and he was a monastic and he said, "This is not my area of expertise." I’ll never forget him saying that. So it’s an issue. Now more and more because people grow up and people in the West become teachers and some of them are also them are also trained in psychology. And so you know, the integration of the traditional teachings into modern lives and all of the aspects of householder’s life- sex of course- but also dealing with money and dealing with family and dealing with the commitment of marriages and all these. These too will have to be integrated into the life of the teachings and is very important for people to realize. I said this is important in the book with ,especially in the last chapter where I talk about the importance of spiritually grounded people or before you mention all the Yogas. The Karma Yoga aspect of this and doing something of service to help to heal the world is a terribly important component of this fullness of living a spiritual life in the context of a crazy times and context of being a good citizen and a good family member and so forth. And you know it’s important for us to realize that the greatest book on spiritual development, the Gita, the advice wasn’t to Arjuna to go live in a cave, he had to believe in his Dharma and his Dharma was in this world fighting battles. Shunyaji- As is our Dharma to fight the battles that we can with the right knowledge. This is wisdom for our times. These teachings from Phil come not just from a person who went to India, came back and came back illuminated. He has been teaching this for fifty years. He has been spending time with the top teachers, the top gurus, the top swamis, the top lamas and I am so happy, I mean you know, I really sometime feel that as a Vedic teacher, a feminine Vedic teacher, a householder, I get so alone in a corner saying, wait can we talk about sex? It’s not a bad word. Wait, can we talk about Artha and Kama too, you know translated again as money and pleasure too? Along with Dharma Moksha, which is good stuff and you know Self realization? So it’s really good to have somebody with your expertise, knowledge and depth to come back and endorse and say for our listeners, "You know what? You are not leading any lesser life because you have a boyfriend or a girlfriend or a partner. You are paying your taxes and a bulk of humanity is asked to fight their battle like Arjuna with Krishna which is your higher consciousness behind you." These are all metaphorical, and say you were to go to the cave you might have more battles to lead there too. Philip- That’s right, I always keep joking, go to the caves and leave the world but you have to go into the town to get some food and you might find that the Sanyasi in the next cave was a pain in the neck and- Shunyaji- Hilarious! Philip- -makes noise when you don’t want him to do that! Shunyaji- Or there could be a big black spider in your cave and you have to battle your space there. Philip- Scorpion! Shunyaji- So basically the battle is not an option. How you choose to battle, how you respond is what it’s all about. And you know as a last plug-in for the Spiritual Practice for Crazy Times, I am not doing this because I have to, but I really would like that you enjoy these crazy times with the spiritual practices and see the difference, that’s what I would say. So before we close this podcast I would like to know if there is something you want to share with my listeners anything, any gem in their journey. Philip- When you were speaking earlier about the presence of Shadow and darkness, one more line that I quoted in the book I wanted to mention. So I would do it now. Was the great song writer Wellman Coleman had a line in a song that’s become famous ,and it says, "There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in." And I want people to remember that because we have, despite the darkness- in the midst of the darkness, we have this sanctuary of peace, the source of light within us. It’s what we are, and there’s always a crack. There’s always a way into it. The best way is regular deep Sadhana on a regular basis, but even in any moment we have access to the light. We are light seeking beings. Shunyaji- That’s so beautiful. That is so beautiful Philip. And I want to tell our listeners who have joined this Satsang that you and I are having, that, there is a very special invitation in Philip’s work. All of it, which is about using your mind, using your thinking, using your discernment to find that crack and enjoy that light. He always shows that and I encourage you to check out his work and his teachings at philipgoldberg.com. Philip, thank you so much! Philip- Oh! Thank you Shunya. I enjoyed being with you. Please I have a great admiration for the work you are doing. You are making a great contribution and I wish you continued success with it. Shunyaji- Thank you so much! We are now going to go off and do our own things, fight our own battles. Make sure and tune in to our next podcast, and thank you for making this podcast in such a short time so successful. Please share this podcast if you like what I and Philip had to talk about. Your reviews, your comments, it’s just creating this beautiful synergistic community worldwide and I will keep bringing these wonderful inspiring friends of mine to share with you. And until next time thank you so much. This is Acharya Shunya. If you loved this episode, there is a way to show your love. Just go to acharyashunya.com and make a donation to support the production of this podcast. You can also rate, review and share this episode with others. Browse her online Wisdom School for her latest course offerings and thanks for listening. Subscribe and listen now! Acharya Shunya is a globally-recognized spiritual teacher and Vedic lineage-holder who awakens health and consciousness through the Vedic sciences of Ayurveda, Vedanta and Yoga. She is the driving force behind an online wisdom school and worldwide spiritual community, and the author of best-selling book on the Vedic art of mind + body + soul well-being and health, Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom and Sovereign Self. Acharya Shunya is a keynote speaker at national and international conferences, and serves as an advisor to the Indian Government in matters pertaining to global integration and cultivation of Ayurveda and Yoga. Receive her free online teachings and browse her current eCourse offerings here or see more about her on Facebook and follow her on Instagram. Subscribe to her YouTube Channel where she holds live Global Satsangs once per month. Study Ayurveda with Acharya Shunya in her online course, Alchemy through Ayurveda.

No matter which hemisphere of the world you live in, when it is January 14, you are in luck! It's a great day (24 hours) to jump-start your health and make soul commitments towards better eating, sleeping, meditating, and yogic-exercise regimens. Soul commitments mean making resolutions to honor and love yourself, treat yourself with loving kindness, and to always give the struggling parts of you a hug. As per the Ayurvedic oral tradition, Health Plans initiated on Jan. 14th tend to bring good luck and good health as a rule. In fact whatever activity you begin this day, especially if is positive in vibration, and is good for you and good for the world, then it will be especially successful and bring you great peace and inner joy in long term. January 14th is an auspicious vibration day! It marks the Vedic festival of Makar Sankranti, the exact day on which the Earth begins to travel in a northern direction around the Sun, called Uttarayan in our Ayurvedic texts. On this date, it is said that the earth, oscillating around the Sun, makes a U-turn and and starts moving towards the Sun for the next 6 months. This causes the coming warmer days to be filled with more light and more warmth - rather than the shadows and darkness of the cooler months. Days notably begin to lengthen slowly and steadily, and the dark and cold loosens its hold too, by and by. This is a time to celebrate the influx of spiritual light, and therefore Sattva (positivity, purity, potential)! Shall I share a secret with you? This is not just an outer event in the outer universe. In your inner universe too, your mind becomes activated towards its hidden potential to flip towards light on the 14th (at any time in the 24 hr period) and start moving towards your inherent (but forgotten) Soul Truth, Soul Light, Soul Health and Soul Power. You want to be ready and conscious for this cosmic inner event, right? Does this excite you? What To Do On This Day Simply expect to be more cheerful, upbeat, clear and alert and you will find that you are. As a teacher of classical Ayurveda, who dares and cares enough to teach an Ayurveda that is still connected to its Vedic spiritual roots, this is why I so like sharing about this day and inviting my growing world family to connect with the outer and inner Sun on this day. In all my courses too, including my latest Alchemy Through Ayurveda course, I teach mantras to chant on this day! For everyone else, even if it is evening when you read this (but it is still the 14th), go ahead and remember the Sun shining in your heart and chant. If you cannot chant, simply say to yourself ----- "O great Sun living in my heart as my undying eternally healthy and Peaceful Soul, help me manifest abiding Health." Simply be with this great presence in your heart. Let light emerge in your heart and flow to every part of your body. If you can wake up on time, go outside and meditate on the rising sun. You can also take water in a clean vessel and pour it while facing the sun (you are pouring out your darkness and taking in the light) as you chant or call out to the Sun. If you know the Gayatri mantra - chant it this day. It is also traditional to eat Khichadi as a purifying food. That is why in parts of north India, this festival is simply call "Khichadi." My teacher and grandfather, Baba, from India, would donate hundreds of pounds worth of khichadi this day to the hungry. Traditionally, inside Vedic lineages, this is a great day to begin the study of Ayurveda too. That is why if you have been thinking about signing up to study Ayurveda with me, today may be a great day to sign up! My students and I have celebrated Makar Sankranti ourselves, retouched our souls, and realigned our commitment to service through disseminating the most authentic knowledge: awakening humanity to its true potential. I am so excited. Happy Inner and Outer Sun Shining Day (that is what I call this day)! 🌞Love, Acharya Shunya Acharya Shunya is a globally-recognized spiritual teacher and Vedic lineage-holder who awakens health and consciousness through the Vedic sciences of Ayurveda, Vedanta and Yoga. She is the driving force behind an online wisdom school and worldwide spiritual community, and the author of best-selling book on the Vedic art of mind + body + soul well-being and health, Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom and Sovereign Self. Acharya Shunya is a keynote speaker at national and international conferences, and serves as an advisor to the Indian Government in matters pertaining to global integration and cultivation of Ayurveda and Yoga. Receive her free online teachings and browse her current eCourse offerings here or see more about her on Facebook and follow her on Instagram. Study Ayurveda with Acharya Shunya in her online course, Alchemy through Ayurveda.

Ayurveda, the ancient system of health and healing from India has been more and more in the news lately! Apparently, it has been delivering health and correcting so-called “incurable” or “chronic” disorders of the gut. Many receivers of Ayurveda’s goodness are surprised at the immense and far-reaching benefits reaped from even minor lifestyle changes. Inducing health simply through living a mindful lifestyle inspired by Ayurveda appears almost too simplistic to be medicine. One of my students, Brittany Barrett, who suffered from ulcerative colitis, an autoimmune disease of the large intestines, is a testament to Ayurveda’s gut-healing properties. I shared her story in my book Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom (Sounds True 2017) because I think many people are suffering unnecessarily. Many feel hopeless and desperate when they are diagnosed with an illness. Instead of being prescribed medication or feeling like their health is doomed forever, there is an alternative. Her personal struggle brings hope and shows the beautiful, but pragmatic ways Ayurveda can awaken one’s health, even when the prognosis is grim. In this post, I speak with Britt in real time regarding her illness and how Ayurveda’s wisdom has changed her life for the better. Me: Tell me about your illness and when you were diagnosed. B: When I graduated from college I started getting diarrhea multiple times per day. One day, I noticed blood and mucus in my stool. My dad, who was an ob-gyn, told me to contact a gastroenterologist. When they did a colonoscopy, they found the ulcers and inflammation in my colon and diagnosed me with ulcerative colitis, an autoimmune disease where ulcers form in the colon and cause inflammation, bleeding, mucus and frequent diarrhea. It was a devastating diagnosis because they told me I would never be able to heal fully. I was prescribed medication where I had to take 15 pills per day. Me: What was a typical day like with ulcerative colitis? B: My life was awful! I had to use the bathroom urgently eight to ten times per day, so I could never be too far from a toilet. I was also very depressed and had a lot of anxiety. I couldn’t hold down a regular job because I needed to use the bathroom all the time. At that point, I was determined to heal, so I started researching various forms of alternative medicine. It was five years later when I stumbled you're your workshop on Ayurveda offered at the bookstore near my parents’ house. That’s when my life changed forever. You opened my eyes up to the concept that my body wasn’t broken, it was just out of balance… and for that I am forever grateful. Me: What’s your life like now after practicing Ayurveda? B: If I described my body as a house, before Ayurveda it was a house falling apart. The floors were creaking. The pipes were leaking. The shutters were missing screws, and the light bulbs were broken. Ayurveda is like a home tool kit that fixed the leaks, painted the walls, and changed the light bulbs. My house now looks and feels amazing. It’s not that I am one hundred percent perfect. Just like a house our bodies need repairs on a regular basis. The difference is that I know what to do to fix what needs fixing. It’s empowered me to take control of my own healing. Me: What would you tell others who are unfamiliar with Ayurveda as a gut healing lifestyle? B: Start small. Try a few things that resonate and see how it makes you feel. If you feel better, expand on those. Change doesn’t happen overnight, but it has to start somewhere. Whatever you choose to adopt, do it with love. Even if it’s just sipping one cup of hot water in the morning before you leave the house, the impact it can make on your day can be huge. Me: Could you share one practice that I have taught you, that’s been helpful to you? B: Above all, I would recommend noticing how you feel after you eat. Do you feel dull or lethargic, energized and light? Start really paying attention to your body and it will tell you what it needs. Overeating is one thing that can create a lot of disturbance in the body, so I suggest starting there. Never eat until you are full. Instead, fill your stomach with 1/2 food, 1/4 warm water and leave 1/4 empty so you have some room for your stomach to do the work it needs to do in order to digest your food properly. Thus, the Ayurvedic path of reclaiming lost immunity and health begins with restoring normal digestion and healthy eating habits. I go into more details of Britt’s story and the digestion-friendly daily routine she adopted in my book, Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom. Refer to Chapter 6 for Ayurvedic recommendations for a healthy digestion and food rules. Acharya Shunya is a globally-recognized spiritual teacher and Vedic lineage-holder who awakens health and consciousness through the Vedic sciences of Ayurveda, Vedanta and Yoga. She is the driving force behind an online wisdom school and worldwide spiritual community, and the author of best-selling book on the Vedic art of mind + body + soul well-being and health, Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom (Sounds True, 2017) and forthcoming second book with Sounds True to be released in 2020, Sovereign Self. Acharya Shunya is a keynote speaker at national and international conferences, and serves as an advisor to the Indian Government in matters pertaining to global integration and cultivation of Ayurveda and Yoga. Receive her free online teachings and browse her current eCourse offerings here or see more about her on Facebook and follow her on Instagram. Subscribe to her YouTube Channel where she holds live Global Satsangs once per month. Study Ayurveda with Acharya Shunya in her online course, Alchemy through Ayurveda.

I always look forward to summer with great anticipation. Unfortunately, conditions like heat exhaustion, sunstroke, dehydration, rashes, nosebleeds, and burning sensation in urine can manifest in the summer. By good fortune, I was born into a traditional Ayurvedic family in India, which taught me how to counteract the blazing summers in India with practices that I still follow today and now teach to others. With Ayurveda’s help, I do not need to react with discomfort to the escalating heat and dryness of summer. Instead, I respond to it proactively by being prepared with diet and lifestyle modifications to meet the raging summer heat head on. What Happens To Our Bodily Energies During The Summer? According to Ayurveda, we are each born with a particular prakriti, or physiological constitution, which consists in varying proportions of the three doshas: Pitta, Vata, and Kapha. When one or more of these doshas go out of balance, our health and wellbeing begin to diminish, and disease can follow. The traditions of Ayurveda work to bring our bodies back into balance. If you are unfamiliar with the technical concept of doshas in Ayurveda, look at it this way: in the summer, the sun's rays become more potent with each day and pull moisture from everything. Invariably, the earth’s soil, vegetation, animals, and our bodies, too, come under the spell of the sun. We gradually become heated up (a Pitta increase), dried out, depleted, and easily exhausted (a Vata increase), ultimately losing precious moisture and strength (a Kapha decrease). What Can We Do To Offset Health Challenges? Ayurveda advises following a summer regimen (called Grishma ritucharya in Sanskrit), which includes recommendations for external protection, inner replenishment, rejuvenation, and restoration through specific dietary and lifestyle choices. An Ayurvedic Summer Diet During the summer, Ayurveda suggests increasing your intake of moist, sweet, cooling, and slightly fatty and fragrant foods, such as rice cooked with ghee, milk, sugar, and fragrant spices like cardamom. All food should be allowed to cool down before consuming. Below are specific summer food suggestions, recommended for their intrinsic moist, slightly oily, and sweet, Kapha-enhancing qualities, as well as their ability to reduce Pitta and Vata: Grains: Stick with wheat, oats, rice, and fresh sweet corn. Lentils: Green and yellow mung are the easiest to digest of all the lentils; perfect for this time when our digestive fires have naturally cooled down. Dairy: Ghee, cow milk, sweet butter, and yogurt lassi with sugar are helpful for increasing Kapha during summer. Ghee is especially important as it is essential in helping to counteract the harsh effects of summer sun and wind on the body. Fruits: Enjoy sweet summer fruits, such as mangoes, pomegranates, dates, coconuts, nectarines, plums, raisins, limes, honeydew, and cantaloupe. Do not eat fruits if they are sour or unripe. Vegetables: Cooling and mild summer vegetables like cucumbers, beets, carrots, summer squash, opo squash, green beans, white onions, mint, okra, snake gourd, yam, wax gourd, cauliflower should be consumed. Meat: Some fish, such as rohu (grass carp), is okay. Or enjoy minimally-spiced soup of chicken or goat meat. Cooling spices: Be sure to include these cooling spices: cumin, fennel, coriander (seeds, leaves, or powder), mint, cardamom, and turmeric. Use rock salt (Sendha namak) only. Foods To Minimize During Summer Ayurveda says to avoid dry, heavy, greasy, overly-spiced meals, like barbecue chips or typical Indian restaurant fare, such as Butter Chicken. Ayurveda also recommends staying away from the following food and drink because of their tendency to increase Vata and Pitta: alcohol chilies eggplant garlic papaya peanuts peppers pickles pineapple red meat red onions tomatoes Hydrate Properly Natural drinks, such as fruit juices and coconut water, are best for summer. Avoid aerated drinks and wine. For over-heated bodies, especially those showing signs of heartburn and heat exhaustion, Ayurveda recommends a coriander moon water recipe, as follows: Coriander Moon Water Recipe Soak 2 tablespoons of semi-crushed coriander seed in one gallon of water. Expose all night to the moon. Leave it outside or put it near a window. Drink this water throughout the next day. The cooling effects of the coriander and the moon will be imparted to the water. An Ayurvedic Summer Lifestyle Massage With Cooling Oils Ayurveda recommends massaging the body daily with sesame or coconut oil to lubricate and replenish dry skin. You can also lightly cook petals of a lotus, rose, marigold, or water lily in coconut oil for the additional cooling benefit. Take A Small Nap If Possible In no other season is a nap recommended, but daytime sleep helps to replenish lost moisture and bodily strength in the summer. Ayurveda suggests napping in a semi-reclined position or lying down on the left side. Wait at least an hour after eating and nap no more than 30 minutes. Sleep Under The Night Sky Take advantage of the cooling effect of the moon during the summer. Ayurveda suggests sleeping in the open (if possible), perhaps even bare-skinned, or minimally clothed with light cotton garments to absorb the moon’s cooling rays. Reduce Exertion While exercising is great, in the summer, you need to back off a bit, as any kind of motion generates heat and air, which can exacerbate Pitta and Vata. Avoid heavy-duty exertion or activities, such as biking under an open mid-day sun. Yoga asana practice that incorporates cooling, relaxing poses and pranayama (breathing exercises) such as Sheetali and Bhramari, which cool the body and mind, are best. Sex should also be moderated this season. Perhaps every other week, and especially not immediately after a meal. The goal is to conserve natural body fluids and avoid over-heating. Make It A Self-Love Ritual Ayurveda’s self-care wisdom becomes a potent way to love ourselves and to step into a more conscious relationship with nature. By following Ayurveda’s recommendations, we begin to flow more and fight less with the changing seasons, the heat, and the fiery summer sun. Acharya Shunya is a globally-recognized spiritual teacher and Vedic lineage-holder who awakens health and consciousness through the Vedic sciences of Ayurveda, Vedanta and Yoga. She is the driving force behind an online wisdom school and worldwide spiritual community, and the author of best-selling book on the Vedic art of mind + body + soul well-being and health, Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom (Sounds True, 2017) and forthcoming second book with Sounds True to be released in 2020, Sovereign Self. Acharya Shunya is a keynote speaker at national and international conferences, and serves as an advisor to the Indian Government in matters pertaining to global integration and cultivation of Ayurveda and Yoga. Receive her free online teachings and browse her current eCourse offerings here or see more about her on Facebook and follow her on Instagram. Subscribe to her YouTube Channel where she holds live Global Satsangs once per month. Study Ayurveda with Acharya Shunya in her online course, Alchemy through Ayurveda.

The human body, by nature, is transitory, impermanent, fragile, a house of distress and disease, and always in any given moment vulnerable to death. Anyone, at any time, can become a victim to any disease, and often the body collapses before the soul’s work is finished, or even before the allotted time is up. Such is the collapsing, shuddering, weak, tentative, and ephemeral nature of the human body. According to Ayurveda, it is natural for humans to crave happiness and bodily comfort. In the same manner, it is quite natural for humans to shun pain of any kind. Rishi Charaka declares, “Although activities of all creatures are directed intuitively towards happiness, the good and bad course they adopt depends upon the knowledge and ignorance (of each creature) respectively.” Living Fully And Happily To live and live fully and happily is the most natural instinct of any living thing. This is what we dream about, this is what we pray for. Scratch the surface of any heart, and we find hidden deep within the desire to have health, possess vitality, and have longevity. This is why even the mere thought of a chronic or fatal illness strikes such terror in our heart. An extra growth, or some strange symptom can give us sleepless nights. When we see a physically or mentally unfortunate person, we feel numb and nervous at the same time, and we quickly shift our eyes away, trying to suppress our own inner fears. This urge to prolong life, avoid bodily harm or injury, and live life ‘fully’ has been acknowledged by all Indian scriptures and statements of authority. This ‘lust for life’ or jijivisha is intrinsic to the journey towards moksha (spiritual freedom), or else the game plan would fail. All creatures, big or small, wish to live and live happily. The Course Of Action In Life But again, all creatures under the same sun do not meet the same fate. It is the sum total of intelligence that any creature possesses in any given moment that decides the course of action the creature will embark upon and, more importantly, the consequences of such action that the creature will have to live with. Based upon the given intellect, Charaka has divided humans into the wise and the ordinary ones. Rishi Charaka says, “The wise, after examining, emphasis on (use of) wholesome (regimen), while the ordinary people, covered by rajas and tamas (vitiating factors of the mind causing attachments), prefer the liked objects (blindly follow likes and dislikes without any consideration to wholesomeness or unwholesomeness of activity or object). The wise is endowed with learning, intelligence, memory, dexterity, restraint, regular use of wholesome regimen, purity of speech, serenity of mind, and patience, while these qualities are not found in the ordinary people, full of rajas and tamas. That is why they (the latter) suffer from various somatic and psychic disorders caused by them.” Further, Rishi Charaka advises, “One should not use the food articles from either attachment or ignorance. Rather, he should use the wholesome one (food item) after examination (through analysis) because the body is a product of food.” Blind Indulgence Of Senses Thus, according to Ayurveda, those who blindly seek to satisfy the senses, and run to please every craving, run here and there to satisfy every impulse, and do what it takes to feed each and every mental frenzy, will suffer sooner or later. One may be born with good health and even good genes, but slow and steady abuse of the body through consistent intake of detrimental foods, and indulgence in self-destructive mental and social thoughts and activities results in slow and steady depletion of the good health. It is only a matter of time. No amount of health supplements, visits to the spa, or vacations will restore what is depleted and destroyed on a daily basis. It is the moment to moment decisions, which we make under the spell of our own attachments and aversions, that take a heavier toll. This is why Ayurveda teaches an entire lifestyle that promotes health. The Ayurvedic path is not a 1-3 month intensive. There are no off days in Ayurveda, no calories to count, and no points to add up. Ayurvedic wisdom is unfoldment of wisdom as a continuous way of life. Ayurveda is an everyday application of intelligence, a spiritual and inner decision to reconnect with the flow of life, a resolution to make decisions after due consideration, a move to reclaim our right to think for ourselves, and a celebration of the fact that our higher Self will always guide us wisely in any given moment – if we so decide. Ayurveda will guide us to our cherished goal – a healthy, happy, full life! Acharya Shunya is a globally-recognized spiritual teacher and Vedic lineage-holder who awakens health and consciousness through the Vedic sciences of Ayurveda, Vedanta and Yoga. She is the driving force behind an online wisdom school and worldwide spiritual community, and the author of best-selling book on the Vedic art of mind + body + soul well-being and health, Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom (Sounds True, 2017) and forthcoming second book with Sounds True to be released in 2020, Sovereign Self. Acharya Shunya is a keynote speaker at national and international conferences, and serves as an advisor to the Indian Government in matters pertaining to global integration and cultivation of Ayurveda and Yoga. Receive her free online teachings and browse her current eCourse offerings here or see more about her on Facebook and follow her on Instagram. Subscribe to her YouTube Channel where she holds live Global Satsangs once per month.

Ayurvedic tradition associates the rise of disease amongst Vedic sages with when they descended from the Himalayas to live in settlements in the valleys populated with humans and their domesticated animals. Sage Charaka explains this phenomenon of escalating diseases as a consequence of the evils of “domesticated living.” One must admit there would be a stark difference between the complex life in the villages and the free-flowing, simple existence in the jungles atop the Himalayan Mountains, surrounded on all sides by pristine nature and the call of the Spirit. This disparity would not only be a major paradigm shift for the psyche, but the body, too, becomes vulnerable to a host of disease-causing factors. Not to mention how the Spirit may feel stifled and perhaps even lost in the world of material objects, to say the least. Once the sages began to lead more sedentary lives as householders, they began to consume food that indulged the sense of taste – convenient and processed (fermented, germinated, refined, dehydrated) –versus food that is a product of nature, fresh, in season, and as is. Charaka writes that the sages began to consume an excess of sour, salty, pungent (spicy hot), and alkaline tastes with an abundance of dried vegetables, animal meats, sesame, preparations of rice flour, white flour, along with germinated or leguminous cereals. This domesticated food was considered, by Charaka, as the root of disease, as these foods are highly refined and difficult to digest. If that were not enough, they let their standards slip, consuming antagonistic, rough, alkaline, and channel-blocking substances, foods which were often not so fresh, even a little rotten (putrefied), and proved heavy for digestion. The sages quickly degenerated under the influence of wine, women, sleeping during the day, performing irregular and/or excessive exercise and, just as community life tends to impose the stresses of society upon us, the sages, too, were inflicted with fear, grief, anger, greed and, of course, an existential confusion. The sages who once roamed the Himalayas totally free, in communion with nature, were now reduced to petty creatures, eating all they could chance upon, poorly digesting most of it, fighting each other, and fearing each other. What a life? This analogy is too close to present times for my comfort. But read on, gentle reader... A life led where the tongue dictates what food we eat and the ego dictates what thoughts we think and the mind rules what we do, is but a prelude to the time when health fails, disease sets in, and the spirit is crushed within. Thanks to such a life, before long, we develop relaxed or loose joints, marrow does not mature in bones, semen does not manifest, and ojas, our immunity factor, deteriorates. Thus, people, subdued with malaise, depression, sleep, drowsiness, lassitude, lack of enthusiasm, dyspnoea, incapability in mental and physical activities, loss of memory, intellect and luster, become resorts of illness and do not enjoy even normal lifespans, and self-destruct. A Return to the Himalayas The sages, hermits and mendicants, realized what domestic life and its inherent chaos had done to them. They, who had become fat and heavy with slowed down movements, deeply unhealthy in body and mind, realized the folly, and chose to give up “everything.” That is, they gave up domestic life and its pleasures, and moved back to their previous abode – the pure and wholesome Himalayas. The movement of the sages back to their abode of health and abundance is symbolic of the movement of all of us back to the space where true abiding health is a possibility again, and is awaiting our discovery. We too are like the sages: toxic, corpulent, and rigid outside, and mentally fragile and oh-so broken inside. What has our life done to us? We have to see what is happening to us, understand what choices we have made and why we made them, and then return (symbolically) to the Himalayas. When the sages returned to the Himalayas, they received all that is pristine, pious, propitious, noble, favorable for the growth of intellect, the source of celestial centers and plants and herbs, the source of the Holy Ganges, and more. Here, it was none other than Indra, the "King of Gods" himself, who imparted the teachings of Ayurveda to the realized sages. Indra further taught them about Rasayanas, or Rejuvenative therapy, and elaborated upon the celestial, life-giving herbs growing in the Himalayas, such as Brahmasuvarchala, Brahmi, Shatavari, Jivanti and others. It was by virtue of the divine Rasayanas, Ayurvedic rejuvenating agents, that the sages were able to reclaim their health, intelligence, and spiritual essence back. The sages attained immeasurable lifespan by using these godly Rasayanas. After attaining longevity and health, the Vedic sages did not have an all-out party, nor did they start a huge franchise, nor did they create an infomercial to sell what they knew was the best way to get and stay healthy. Instead, the sages devoted their long lives to self-growth via penance, celibacy, and self-meditation. The sages had now regained what they had lost previously through their mindless living. This secret of regaining lost youth, lost health, and lost peace of mind is shared by Ayurveda to all those who deserve to know. The sages decided to spread the word of Ayurveda so that more and more people could escape from the clutches of the medicated, domesticated, numb and choice-less existence that we lead in the barren jungles of urban existence. Thus, the knower of Ayurveda is encouraged to spread the awareness of Ayurveda. "Understand, (and) propagate the sagely knowledge (of Ayurveda), which is the holiest, prolonging life span, alleviating senility and diseases, producing energy, nectar like (knowledge), propitious savior, and noble (medicine) for the welfare of all people with friendliness and compassion towards them and to earn for yourselves the best, holy, noble, and immortal duty (concept of Dharma or Karma merits)." - Charaka Samhita Acharya Shunya is a globally-recognized spiritual teacher and Vedic lineage-holder who awakens health and consciousness through the Vedic sciences of Ayurveda, Vedanta and Yoga. She is the driving force behind an online wisdom school and worldwide spiritual community, and the author of best-selling book on the Vedic art of mind + body + soul well-being and health, Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom (Sounds True, 2017) and forthcoming second book with Sounds True to be released in winter 2020, Sovereign Self. Acharya Shunya is a keynote speaker at national and international conferences, and serves as an advisor to the Indian Government in matters pertaining to global integration and cultivation of Ayurveda and Yoga. Receive her free online teachings and browse her current eCourse offerings here or see more about her on Facebook and follow her on Instagram. Subscribe to her YouTube Channel where she holds live Global Satsangs once per month.

The Science of Life, Ayurveda, incorporates detailed instructions on exactly how to live this life, on a day to day basis, so that this life is at its healthy best. These teachings are classified as positive behavior, or Sadachara, and social/moral/ethical hygiene and mental practices called Sadvritta. In the world of Ayurveda, we are the creator of our own life. We get to carve out our body and mind, food by food and thought by thought. We get to make choices and we get to enjoy the happy and pleasurable consequences of those choices. Life’s script is in our hands and there is no need to stay fixed in the messages of powerlessness and helplessness that we are constantly bombarded with, every second of the day. Today, many disease processes and autoimmune disorders are being traced to negative thinking and stress in life. This is not a ‘modern’ realization, but as Ayurveda demonstrates, quite an ancient one. The ancient Vedic sages understood that ultimately, the quality and type of life we lead depends upon the quality or conditioning of our mind and what direction or path it chooses. The sages also comprehended that behavior has to be changed first, before underlying mental states can be addressed, or before negative emotions be transformed into positive emotions. Hence, the visionary Ayurvedic doctors composed a brilliant code of conduct called Achara Rasayana, which is really an exhaustive list of positive attributes, behaviors, actions, attitudes, and life rituals that any human can mindfully cultivate and reap the consequent benefit of a purified, transformed mind leading to a high vibration life experience.[i] A Conscious Life Before it prescribes the medicine, before it performs the surgery, before it teaches a method, before it employs an advanced emergency measure, first and foremost, Ayurveda teaches how to live your life consciously on a moment to moment basis. This conscious life comprises an attitude and life perspective that is psychologically sound, ecologically well-intentioned, socially approved, morally superior, ethically grounded, demonstrating civic awareness, compassion toward others who are in need (physically or mentally challenged, animals, the poor, etc.), political correctness, wisdom in personal relationships (who to court and who to shun), and understanding of the laws and rules of life and this universe. A Pure Life A pure body leads to a pure mind, as the body is the home of the mind. For a pure body, Ayurveda recommends bathing daily, washing at least twice a day and cleaning excretory passages and feet frequently. Bathing is especially important before a meal, as a pure body and mind are a prerequisite to good digestion. Further, sage Charaka recommends applying skin-nourishing herbal pastes and face masks to the body and face before bathing to ensure skin health. All bodily hair should stay well groomed, and nails should be cut three times a fortnight. One should always wear well-groomed clothes, use natural perfumes and flowers for fragrance; massage oneself with warm oil daily and not forget to apply oil to ears, nasal passages, feet, and head. All of this ensures a healthy, clean vibration on a daily basis. An Honoring Life We are all aware the havoc dishonoring minds can wreak upon society and, of course, upon personal well-being. Such individuals often end up having fallen behind in life, isolated, or even worse, locked up behind bars or even mental institutions. The opposite, an honoring mind, is a state of mind where the individual regards all things as venerable and important for the health of the self and the planet. A deep regard, a sense of responsibility, a realization of worth and appreciation, a sense of interconnectedness are born in an honoring mind. Ayurveda, as a preventive medicine, expressly tries to inculcate an honoring state of mind in each and every human being. One should honor and respect those who are worth our respect, such as elders and teachers, including our parents, and even animals, such as the cow, which imparts its own milk to us humans. The cow is likened to a mother or mother principle. A charitable and human-friendly animal like the cow, whom generously provides us with life-giving dairy products, such as wholesome milk and ghee, and medicines that are manufactured from her milk, urine, dung, etc., deserves our respect and appreciation, and should not be taken for granted or abused, to say the least. Honoring Cosmic Principles Ayurveda recommends honoring inanimate, cosmic principles, such as fire. It is through the agency of fire inherent in every thing, every cell, and in each and every phenomenon, that transformation of any kind can take place. Hence, this fire, which represents the cosmic laws and principles in operation, is worshipped on a daily basis, either ritually, or in the mind. Sage Charaka says that in deference to the honorable entities – both cosmic and human – one should control the urge to pass gas, stool, or urine in the open, as it will violate the principles of air, water, fire, moon and sun. Honoring Ancestors Ancestors are also respected, as they represent the blessings offered by a continuous tradition. Acknowledging continuity helps remind each one of us that we are part of a whole, and not merely a fragmented floating piece, rudderless and rootless. Charaka writes, “One should not give up the traditional practices excessively, nor should one be in a habit of breaking rules.” Worshiping ancestors helps instill in us a sense of responsibility toward our young ones, and toward family and community life in general. And then, an honoring mind cannot help but honor itself, too. Honoring the other is a celebration of the Self. Hence, Ayurveda teaches the crucial lesson of honor. Ayurveda warns men against ever dishonoring a woman. According to Ayurveda, leading a healthy life includes the decision to never abuse or exploit the aged and the infirm or the weaker, nor ever insult noble people (with noble traits), national or community leaders (as they may represent a higher cause), and teachers (as they impart wisdom and knowledge, a highly venerable profession). In fact, one should demonstrate honor towards ‘knowledge’ as an entity and cosmic presence by never sitting down to study with an unclean body or an impure, reluctant mind. Our devoted study should be an act of honor, no less. A Positive and Balanced Life Ayurveda recommends developing a cheerful frame of mind that is positive in its outlook. Rather than drawing back in the woodwork, Ayurveda recommends dropping shyness and initiating communication. The advice is to slowly develop self-control, use different situations to practice presence of mind, mindfully shun negative emotions, like jealousy and fear, work upon underlying anxieties, and as a conscious choice, adopt in every fearful situation, fearlessness. This will nurture natural courage. To develop a state of mental equipoise, Ayurveda recommends practicing our responses to life’s ups and downs by displaying neither impatience nor extreme exhilaration. Why be so ruffled? To not get under the sway of addictions and compulsions, Ayurveda recommends keeping a safe distance from excessive drinking, gambling, and unsafe sex, such as prostitution. In fact, it is necessary to examine our everyday friends, because whom we choose to hang out with daily do influence our mind, and from that angle, our life, on a daily basis. To develop balance in all areas of life, Ayurveda recommends neither accepting everything naively, or hastily, nor unnecessarily delaying the process of taking decisions. In the same vein, one has to neither become a slave to one’s tyrannical senses, nor does one have to walk around with an over-controlling, rigid mind. Either is an extreme state of affairs. A Compassionate and Peaceful Life Ayurveda says, “One should behave like kith and kin to all living beings, pacify the angry, console the frightened, help the poor, be truthful, peaceful, tolerant of others’ harsh words, remover of intolerance, should always look towards the qualities of a peaceful life, and should develop detachment.” Ayurveda recommends not initiating quarrels, and not insulting or ever disrespecting women. To inculcate this peaceful vibration, Ayurveda recommends practicing a speech that is “useful, measured, sweet, and contains meaningful words.” Modesty, courage, devotion, and positive outlook towards life and always maintaining an auspicious (beneficial) conduct, are traits that Ayurvedic texts suggest are worth developing. To develop the spirit of charity, Ayurveda recommends making donations, as well as religious oblations and offerings. A compassionate being is a healer of all that he or she encounters or interacts with. This compassionate behavior manifests best in the practice of self-control. A self-controlled, self-virtuous, and self-restrained being restores harmony, accord, amicability, and empathy. Such beings, by virtue of being in control of their minds, serve as consensus builders, sharing freely their spirit of benevolence and kindliness. Enmity, hatred, non-truthfulness and stealing another’s possessions are emotions or acts that humans indulge in at some time or the other in the course of this life. Be it the habit of telling white lies, be it feeling revengeful, or perhaps even actually stealing. No matter how big or small the mental event or actual behavior is, these episodes ultimately leave us drained and plant the seeds of ill health. Hence, Ayurveda recommends watching within our own self the habit of lying, and rooting it out by self-observation. Desiring illicit sex, seeking another’s possession or property, indulging in enmity and revenge, enjoying gossiping and offering criticism are acts that are to be studiously avoided for abiding peace in life. Or else, the cauldron of life is stirred too violently, and what comes forth is turbulence. In Ayurveda, we find the suggestion, “do not be vicious, even to the sinner.” What profound psychology is applied here by the ancient sages! Why, because when we harbor negative feelings even towards the obvious wrong doers, it is our own health that is impacted. Victim consciousness is ultimately a life-ruining and self-defeating experience, not to mention the energy spent in holding on to the cluster of ill feelings towards the so-called sinner. Releasing the sinner from his sin, is akin to releasing the Self. I am the Universe When one thinks himself spread in the universe and vice versa, and has the vision of the great and the small (mundane affairs), his serenity based on knowledge is affected. –Charaka Samhita, Sharirasthanam, V, 20 Ayurvedic sage Charaka explains that seeing the entire universe in the self and vice versa gives rise to true knowledge. On seeing the entire universe in his Self, one realizes (the truth), that the Self alone is the agent of happiness and misery, none else. All fear and negativity is naturally dispelled by the knowledge that the person is equal to the universe. Welcome home to your Divine Peaceful Healthy Self, with Ayurveda’s wisdom leading the way! Acharya Shunya is a globally-recognized spiritual teacher and Vedic lineage-holder who awakens health and consciousness through the Vedic sciences of Ayurveda, Vedanta and Yoga. She is the driving force behind an online wisdom school and worldwide spiritual community, and the author of best-selling book on the Vedic art of mind + body + soul well-being and health, Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom (Sounds True, 2017) and forthcoming second book with Sounds True to be released in 2020, Sovereign Self. Acharya Shunya is a keynote speaker at national and international conferences, and serves as an advisor to the Indian Government in matters pertaining to global integration and cultivation of Ayurveda and Yoga. Receive her free online teachings and browse her current eCourse offerings here or see more about her on Facebook and follow her on Instagram. Subscribe to her YouTube Channel where she holds live Global Satsangs once per month.

Practice makes perfect, so goes an age-old saying. The path of conscious living that is imbued with well-being, as exemplified by Ayurveda, is all about daily practice until we become one with the knowledge that is dictating the practice. Health does not come easy. Especially if we have squandered it away over the decades in the bazaar of life – where sensual delights and dizzying experiences insidiously entered our being and took possession of our mind and rocked our lifestyles and robbed us of our inner peace; and where foods of all shapes, sizes, colors and varieties and some even of dubious genetics and questionable cultivation have deposited toxins in our body that declare coup inside of our delicately balanced bodily systems. But the Ayurveda sages calmly reassure us that with daily health-promoting and disease-preventing practices that are mindful and dedicated to our higher Self, slowly and steadily, with commitment established in knowledge, we can regain well-being and enjoy good health. We have to begin the journey back to health by beginning to see the connections between our life and the current status of our health. We cannot get away forever with blaming the pathogens or claiming bad luck. We have to see that the buck stops with us; because even pathogens and passive genes become lodged or activated in a body and mind corrupted with negative thoughts, adulterated with hard to break down foods and precipitated with lifestyles that are prescriptions for strokes and other dramas of the ER variety! The Tree of Our Life The tree of our life draws its health-giving ingredients from our lifestyle, our food habits and from our day-to-day social, relational, professional experiences. These inputs can be either flung into our body “unconsciously,” as in living a fast life, eating fast food, chaotic and jam-packed schedules and conflicted interpersonal interactions OR these inputs can be offered into the being as flowers would be offered to an altar – with mindfulness, loving care, fine attention, discernment and sense of responsibility. Our life then dictates the foods we eat, where we obtain them and how we cook them. Here are some questions we can ask ourselves: Are the foods I eat more often natural and organic, freshly cooked, inspired and complex? Or are they more often from a restaurant, canned, frozen, preserved and simple? It All Begins with Choice It all begins with choice. Consciously or unconsciously, we engage in making choices about what we eat, what we choose to pay attention to, what we smell and what we hear and what we touch. All of these stimuli enter our body to be digested at various levels. What is important to understand is that our health is a product of well-being, and that well-being in turns depends upon the quality of our life, and whether we choose to remain conscious in it or not. Ayurveda asks for personal responsibility and becomes so integrated that you begin to actually crave the appropriate lifestyle, rather than conforming to a system that externally tells you how to be. Eventually you know it and want it from a deeper place. Well-being is Hard-Earned Thus, our well-being is a precious ingredient indeed, not to be found on supermarket shelves, or inside beautifully-designed jars and bottles, certainly not waiting for us inside pharmaceutical manufactured “state-of-the-art” drugs and, least of all, present in chemically-synthesized vitamins and supplements. Our well-being is right inside of us, ready to sprout forth with our calm and nurturing choices tempered with wisdom; like a tender first flower, fragile to the abuse of wrong foods, chemically-manufactured drugs, and havoc-raising lifestyles; Well-being cannot and will not thrive in flooded body’s, stuffed digestions, and stressed minds. Well-being will come forward spontaneously in a life lived consciously, peacefully and in harmony with all that one sees, thinks, does and is. Ayurveda’s spiritually-grounded science understands the rather unfashionable hum-drum, old-timer word Santulan or “moderation.” Yes, this word does not set fire to our imagination, it certainly will not fund millions of dollars in research and clinical trials, and it will not spawn industries of canned foods and infomercials. This word, moderation, will do nothing of that sort mainly because moderation is a spiritual choice that lives in the realm of the individual’s personal field. This choice is ours to adopt or abandon. Moderation and adaptability to the unique constitution is the scientific contribution of Ayurveda to this world. One who follows Ayurvedic science listens to wisdom within and learns to seek moderation in everything one eats, thinks and does. Our Personal Choices and Our Health In any moment, when faced with a myriad of conflicting choices, we can decide if we want to go overboard and follow some short-lived logic, fad, connection, hunch or even so-called clinical proof that fails us in time, or follow the good-old middle path of sanity, moderation, and memory. Why memory? It is for us to remember the truth of human existence and the truth of our eternally-healthy spiritual essence deep within, buried under the external wrappings of material facts, information bits, fragmented parts, and jagged, and disconnected material science. Deep within each of us is the spiritual womb of the Self, and from there emanates a profound wisdom to Self heal. More than 5000 years ago, Indian sages gave this wisdom an external manifestation - the science of life, Ayurveda - so perfect and so complete. I invite you to explore my online course, Alchemy through Ayurveda, where I dive deep into wisdom passed down to me from my 2000-year-old Vedic lineage. Watch the intro to the course today and get started on your journey to true wellness: bit.ly/Alchemy-Intro. Acharya Shunya is a globally-recognized spiritual teacher and Vedic lineage-holder who awakens health and consciousness through the Vedic sciences of Ayurveda, Vedanta and Yoga. She is the driving force behind an online wisdom school and worldwide spiritual community, and the author of best-selling book on the Vedic art of mind + body + soul well-being and health, Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom (Sounds True, 2017) and forthcoming second book with Sounds True to be released in 2020, Sovereign Self. Acharya Shunya is a keynote speaker at national and international conferences, and serves as an advisor to the Indian Government in matters pertaining to global integration and cultivation of Ayurveda and Yoga. Receive her free online teachings and browse her current eCourse offerings here or see more about her on Facebook and follow her on Instagram. Subscribe to her YouTube Channel where she holds live Global Satsangs once per month. Study Ayurveda with Acharya Shunya in her online course, Alchemy through Ayurveda.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT Note: Shadow to Self is produced for the ear and is designed to be heard. If you are able, we encourage you to listen to the audio, which includes emotion and emphasis that is not on this page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Hello friends, welcome to the fourth episode of my podcast Shadow to self. Today I want to talk to you about our thoughts and how our thoughts become that portal, that lead us either towards shadow where pain awaits us, doubt awaits us, disempowerment awaits us, all towards our true self, but we can truly touch something divine within us, experience joy despite life’s curve balls and experience a special kind of power, not the power that makes us conceded but the power that makes us compassionate, the power that makes us realise that we are here as representatives of a greater power, a higher presence and that we are here not to suffer and to give suffering, not to abuse and to give abuse, not to experience powerlessness, sounds pity and victimhood or to impose it on another but to truly experience our divine expansiveness and those kind of thoughts are special thoughts, these thoughts are related to our true self and i have already mentioned to you in prior episodes that the true self has a unique word in Sanskrit, in the Vedic literature known as ATMA and Atma literally means that which is boundless within you, limitless amazingly ,infinitely creative, joyful, a kind of light that doesn’t require anything else to light it up, it is the source of all light. That Atma has another name in Sanskrit known as Satyam and satayam comes from the root word SAT and sat is that which is real, which is eternal, which is changeless despite all the changes happening in the body, in your thoughts, in the world around you, in your relationships, there is something that’s constant, a constant witness perhaps of all this change and to witness what is changing you yourself have to be an unchanging presence and that is YOU. So therefore you are that satyam, another word for satyam is truth, you are that truth and you can have thoughts that lead you towards this truth and you can have thoughts that lead you away from that truth, that means it brings our thoughts to the centre stage of this journey that we want to make from shadow to self. Welcome everybody, let’s make it happen!! Let's get more knowledgeable about our thoughts and in this and a couple of more episodes coming up I am going to be telling you all about thoughts and why it may not be enough to simply think positive thoughts. I know it's become this big deal. Think positive, think positive, it’s going to solve all your problems or I want to talk about why positive thinking alone cannot solve all your problems? In fact, we may not want to think positive thoughts or negative thoughts. We may want to think reality thoughts, truth thoughts, satyam thoughts; thoughts that enlighten us as to what’s really going on? And what is transient here, in a given situation and what is eternal? And this journey alone is worth investigating because it is in the realm of our thoughts and nowhere else that we get lost and it is in the realm of our thoughts that we have an option to find our own self. It is in thoughts that we become weak, depressed, dejected and we conclude that we are unwanted and that we are a burden on earth, nobody likes, nobody wants us, we may even slash our wrists, uh! Is it worth it? So how about we learn how to have thoughts, not just positive thoughts, they have a role to play, definitely, if you are thinking way too many negative thoughts we may want think some positive thoughts but how about we think reality thoughts, Vedic thoughts and what i would like to term as truth thoughts, Satyam thoughts so that we can find a way back to our own self. We can find peace within. Would you like to take that journey with me? Then come on along... Hello again, if you have not met me before i am as you know Acharya Shunya, i am a teacher of the non dual wisdom of the Vedas. I also love to teach and live the Vedic sciences of yoga and ayurveda. I have a lineage that has blessed me with this knowledge and then i have my own internal heritage ,my own journey, that i have completed that i feel has made me so fulfilled, so blessed and so supported from within that i can on this podcast, simply put aside all scripts, close my eyes and talk to you and then whatever flows from my heart i know is going to help you because one of the ways that i bring this knowledge in the 21st century as the first feminine leader of my lineage and as one of those rare female leaders, spiritual teachers, who bring their own journeys, their own vulnerabilities, to the forefront to show that human teachers are not separate or made of something special. We are just the same people ,we just know how to make that journey from overly positive and overly negative thoughts that can possibly create unrealistic scenarios, to more realistic thoughts and go down the journey of truth, towards light and towards what is. Therefore, i would just like to say this that ,if you have began to listen to my podcast, if you are already following each episode, then let’s roll up our sleeves because this and the next couple of episodes you are going to get really deep and you are going to know i believe really going to help you to take stock of your own mind because there is no right way to think or wrong way to think. There is just one way to think ,and that thinking is that we don’t tamper with the truth in any direction. We don’t mask it with too much positivity nor do we hide it from dealing with negativity. Bottom line, we don’t think or say to ourselves anything that requires us to pretend to ourselves, isn’t that special!! Why should our thoughts require artificial coloring or additives just like we want to eat organic food? Can we dare to think organic thoughts!! Do we have to dress them up just because the reality thats in front of us are too tough to deal with? I understand that there are times when the reality in front of us is hard to swallow, but instead of putting a positive spin on them which is taught so ubiquitously why not break it down with a filter of reality organically and then consume it bite by bite, so that, that incomprehensibly tragic or difficult, insurmountable difficulty becomes more, palatable to swallow, digest, metabolize and convert into something into better and beautiful bite by bite. If you agree to what i am saying, then, just close your eyes wherever you are and if you can’t close your eyes, then at least become aware of your body and become aware of another reality another truth that’s bearing upon you all the time, its gravity, let your body be supported by gravity whether you are sitting, lying down or standing; even if you are working your hands are moving maybe you are chopping vegetables, maybe you are typing while you are listening to me, maybe you are walking your dog and you have a leash in your hands, be aware of this gentle movement downwards where earth, mother earth is actually supporting you and as you relax into this, just let your mind also relax into the real existence of the mother earth and become essentially ready for this. I am not going to no longer lie to myself. There is no reason to put a positive spin on anything. I am going to allow what is to become present in my mind, and then with this easiness i am going to look for a color of truth in it, even if it is negative because in that negative color of truth something that's hard to digest right now is going to become the door through which i will pass through and find something beautiful and worthy for my soul. I can do this and relax into the easiness(unclear), i could totally you know deny where i am right now but instead beyond the opposites of negative and positive lies truth. This is where true potential creativity lies; the ultimate journey lies in accepting this easiness(unclear) and I am going to develop a whole new relationship with this. I hope through this quiet more experiential connection with easiness you are feeling more ready to receive my teachings on organic thinking, not positive thinking not necessarily negative thinking. I invite you into not taking sides, to see this is what our shadow does, the shadow, i have described in my previous episode the Sanskrit word is jeeva, it is made up of things that are not permanent like our thoughts, like our feelings, even our body keeps changing, and so we don’t really know if we are young or old, everything keeps changing. Are we distressed in our mind or are we joyful? So this constant changing persona which is the ego in English but it is known as jeeva in Sanskrit is what i am calling the shadow; and what the shadow likes to do is that first and foremost instead of dealing with the easiness of the situation, the first thing it does is it likes to take sides. So what does that mean? If you find when you are faced with an obstacle or difficulty or a situation, maybe you know you are bossy all that, maybe a friend said something you didn’t like, maybe an unexpected situation arose in your workplace or in your neighborhood or in your intimate relationship that you don’t really like. Our shadow our ego self likes to take a side, and the side would be either it’s all bad scenario or its all good scenario. We definitely don’t have a meeting ground, so you know whatever is happening we like to put it in the black or white container of our life. If it is a white container in our life, we are fine, then we don’t think too much about it, because the shadow doesn’t like to really dwell upon what’s working for itself, okay. It likes to dwell upon what’s not working and typically say we were to drop something in the dark container, in the container which is for us according to us all bad, it is going to be then all bad for us. And we don’t remain open to any suggestions thereafter. And after we have done this we have taken sides, what does the shadow do? The shadow then begins to filter, so what does it do; it tends to think one negative thought after another, even if say, someone like myself were to introduce a positive thought or a friend were to introduce a positive thought or say you came across a movie or a book that introduce a positive thought, it will say yeah yeah yeah, but then it would again filter back and go back to the lump of negative thoughts. So it just filters out the positive thoughts, so it tends to want to create its own collection, a designer collection of well censored out negativity, that’s what it does, okay. Then after taking sides then filtering out all the positive and holding on to the negative then what does the shadow do? Well the jeeva then likes to magnify the situation. If i have sixty bits and bytes of negative thoughts i am going to turn them within the privacy of my own mind into sixty billion bits and bytes of negativity. This is magnification, this is; we are capable of magnifying joy, we are capable of magnifying health, we are capable of magnifying unconditional love, we are capable of magnifying our light, we are capable of magnifying our ability to write poetry, write amazing books, have break through communications. But what do we do? We magnify what’s not working for us. We take that one thought and we magnify it a trillion times. Say you’ve had a great day and you have had beautiful conversations, a healthy eating you know, you made plans to eat well and you ate well, you didn’t break your own rules, you had a beautiful walk in nature, you heard some good news from your family, you had a friend who said you are doing well. But then there was that one email, where there were a few words said that didn’t sit with you, and we magnify it to the points where that’s what fills us up. Welcome to the shadow factory of negativity. Alright!! Then after it has taken sides, filtered out what’s positive, magnified what’s negative here’s what the shadow does; here’s what each one of us does. Shadow identifies it, personalizes it, makes it all about you, you, you, you there is that constant stringing of everything that’s not happening okay, in your mind with you and you take stuff from your past, you take evidence from your present, you take some projections in your future and you become this suffering being in the middle of it and even if there is a tsunami going on which is effecting couple of million people, even if there’s a pandemic going on that could be affecting a whole bunch of people, but it really all collapses back to you. And then finally the shadow is ready. It has broadened all the elements it needs to predict doom and gloom. It catastrophizes your entire life. It creates a sense of calamity, urgency all those close to me scenario. You are always anticipating the worst, even if you get opportunities, you can’t see through them, wisdom comes your way and you reject it, a teacher may be staring into your eyes and you doubt them or your friend may lend you a helping hand and you may be suspicious. Because you have already decided that, I am going to be suffering and you ensure that all through the agency of up colored mind thanks to the shadow and this is thanks to negative thinking. So this is my own spin on negative thinking and there are many spins of negative thinking but i felt like these are some of the landmark convolution or waves that arise in our chitta or in our consciousness when it’s colored negative. Now, therefore, a whole bandwagon of teaching has manifested which is brilliant but I am not sure if it’s any more real than negative thinking. Just like negative thinking is a dark deluge in the ocean of your mind. We have this bright sunny colorful deluge of positive thinking in our mind and i am not sure if it is any real because then instead of taking, the shadow taking the side towards things being all bad the shadow started taking the side of something being all good. And even if the shadow is suffering from incest or sheer disrespect at work, discrimination for racial reasons, or sexual reasons or any other reason; we started being okay with it because we have the shadow filters on that you know what i am just going to find what is positive in this. So we overly started sugar coating even something that should not be sugar coated, it was like we were drinking high fructose corn syrup and saying after all it’s all made by god, so it’s fine you know; in a way drowning ourselves in n cups of coffee and we were saying well you know coffee is, actually i have heard that you know, bitter taste in ayurveda is an antitoxin, and so you picture something really positive in the whole bunch of what’s not okay with something ,and you find some better reason to justify it. That’s the shadow filter for a positive thought and then of course the shadow magnifies it and you see the really good and all the positivity in, people are not being fair with you, you are not being treated right, you have somebody physically, emotionally, psychologically, sexually abusing you and you are finding some positive spin to say, you know after all here she is very nice to me and they take me out, you know to expensive restaurants or they did gift me you know a ring with a big diamond on my anniversary, as if it justifies everything else, like you needed to take a hard look on your relationship, or your job choice or you know your business partner who was making underhand dealings and not checking in with you. But you don’t because you have a positive spin and you are taking sides and you are applying filters and you are magnifying it to the point where, you know maybe a counsellor or a psychologist or even somebody in law are telling you, you are not making smart choices and you are, you know what i know better. This is the problem with extreme negative thinking or positive thinking and I am wondering if you know my podcasts are helping you to say oh! My god, so this is not, i am not sharing all this for us to say oh! Man we were so crazy no because that's our universal heritage right? Spoken in my previous episodes about how Maya which is like a universal spell takes over our human minds and makes us invest in the shadow, and the shadow is a mere drop whereas your true self is an ocean. The shadow is a mere candle compared to a whole sun which is yourself, so how can your shadow really know, and that is why i am happy to have this podcast; and i am happy that i myself is informed by my teacher and by amazing transmitive Vedic teachings systematically which like broke it down for me to say you know what you don’t want to sugar coat or you know, or make everything too bitter or too sweet in your life. Just see what it is! That is self is known as VIVEKAH, the ability to see something what it is, that is itself is a spiritual, you know achievement you don’t have to have a halo, you don’t have to have a special light coming out of you, you don’t have to able to talk to angels and gods or fly to prove your spirituality. But can you call a wreck a wreck? Perhaps amazing it is such a grounding spirituality, and you know i don’t find it what are people talking about it, you know it is all about chakras and mantras, and you know and light going up and down and then something flowering here and blossoming there and all that is fine and nice, but at end of the day i wonder if that’s another positive spin to your spiritual journey, and despite all your chakras you know being fixed and moved to the right directions and color coded with the right yantras are we really leading our life from truth? That’s the question!! So after we have magnified the positive spin we can make it all about our self and become over conceded and think we are so lucky and we got it together and you know we may not be very realistic, we might take risky decisions because we think everything is going to work out, we don’t really go in there and do due diligence with our projects or investigate the agreements in our relationships because we put a positive spin on them, everything will work out! It always does and it’s all going to be okay and that is how it is. It just goes that way when we are misidentified too much with positivity. And then the shadow predicts happy ever after; when the negative mind predicts doom and gloom, the overly positive mind predicts happy ever after and both kinds of mental scenarios are not ready and not equipped to deal with reality. It is and when they are faced with what they were not expecting, they totally don’t know what to do with that and that’s why i want to say to you that both positive thinking over bright version of reality and negative thinking a very depressed, lopsided, sad version of reality is not where we want to add in our journey from shadow to self. We want unadulterated, minimally processed, minimally tampered with thoughts and meditation really helps with that, but if you are not used to thinking like that; hey what are my organic thoughts? What are my reality thoughts? What are my satyam or truth thoughts? What are my self thoughts? Then what’s going to happen is that even in meditation, we can start seeing all kinds of lights and create angelic experiences, so you know, watch out is just meditation alone without a context, may just be a mechanism that doesn’t really do it because in the past whether it was Lord Buddha, whether it was Shankaracharya any teacher, many of these esteemed traditions coming out of India, they always provided a lot of context. But how many people do you hear who say, I am sitting with the wisdom teachings of the Buddha, I am really looking at my thoughts and I am investigating how real they are. A lot of people are just doing the Buddhist meditation; I do the Buddha twenty minutes a day, twice a day, right, I do the Vedic meditation. But the kind of meditational journey that teachers like myself invite listeners like your cell phone is a 24 x 7 journey. Meditation is really like an invitation to meet your own true self and the only doorway to meet that self is through that mind of yours and is that mind and is that doorway and in that mind there is a lot going on, you want to make sure it’s not that overly positive and overly negative. That’s why I am very wary about all the positive teachings going out there. And that’s why my podcast may not be just the feel good, you can do this, no matter if you can get up in the morning and not even make your own bed, you can definitely make a million dollars ,if you chant this mantra, if you manifest this, if you think this way, you know just think of a Mercedes and you are going to manifest a Mercedes because that’s how positive thinking works, i am sorry, i am not going to do that. I have met way too many people whose hearts were broken with these kinds of teachings, I have wiped away too many tears. People felt it failed, their positive thinking had failed and I have had to remind people again and again; who were, who were broken into shambles by their own negative thoughts that they have more to them. They have not failed, their negative thoughts are making them think they failed. And it has been worth bringing these people back to ground zero, to reality. But it has happened every single time. Students who have for any reason hung around me and listening to me ultimately realize that they don’t have to believe the first thoughts that they are getting, and let’s, let’s talk about the opposites right like; for example when we have a way too much positive thinking going on, putting up a positive spin on everything, using positive affirmations to attract what we want etcetera etcetera. Can we talk about why facing reality even if it is a bit difficult may be okay, maybe i don’t have a Mercedes, maybe i will never have a Mercedes actually a confession to everyone here i don’t drive a Mercedes and i probably may not own a Mercedes because my mind doesn’t go there, if i have that kind of money will be probably doing more philanthropy that’s my kind of interest. I am not judging someone who has a Mercedes, i am just saying i don’t have a Mercedes, and i might choose to enjoy a Mercedes, if someone gives me a respectful ride in it, but i don’t necessarily have to own it, and if i am gifted one i don’t have to push it away. The thing is when you are in the middle ground you don’t have to make something’s presence or absence headlines. But that’s what we do. And the reason positive thinking got so popular especially in the west was because I found that we just didn’t want to have to deal with discomfort in life. So when you come from a country like India, where there is a lot of spiritual richness but material poverty. You do see how people don’t have this desire for a positive spin on everything, so i am not trying to say that Indians are better and westerners are not, because you know i can’t even go there, that’s not even true, that’s just crazy thinking, biased thinking. Well, all i am trying to say is that i have found amazing strengths in the western world and some amazing strengths in the eastern world. What I found in many cultures in the east , not just India, I have travelled through Thailand, Cambodia, so many countries where there is not so much comfort; and not so much certainty in achieving comfort, not even necessarily a future, not even, not only necessarily something called a plan of life. I found that the people there were just a little more okay with whatever was. But sometimes when we are used to thinking that we can just make this plan and every ten years we can be sure to arrive, arriving, there is something that is not normal or right with this picture because it’s going to surely let us down and then that creates physiological sorrow. So I see a lot more people emotionally suffering in the west, despite having everything going for them. The roads are working, the water is flowing, and you know the air is not polluted but there is a lot of suffering why? Because we decided, that we are going to have a positive life, and we are going to meet all our goals positively and then we are going to use our mind to positively think and we are going to find teachers who are going to tell us how to use the positive formula and positive plus positive plus positive is going to be all positive and somehow you will tell yourselves that negative doesn’t exist. But then BAM !! Aging happens, death occurs, betrayal happens and people stab us in the back. This is human nature east or west. We have to find it everywhere, humans are still evolving, and we are going to hurt each other. I don't know till when, till we understand, that we don’t need to hurt ourselves; then we will stop hurting each other. And to stop hurting ourselves we have to stop getting off, we have to stop being on this bandwagon of unreality or non reality shall we say and come to this beautiful ground zero and plant organic saplings of acceptance and willingness to face what is. We can instead of creating different interpretations or spins of the story of our life, we can create a much more dry, i am using the word dry, clean almost scientific; sorry to say these but non romanticized darker lights versions of reality. We have to do that in the beginning and that’s like number one reason why a lot of students might say oh! God Acharya Shunya is too dry. I am going to be told about my spiritual potential to change my life and convert it into this you know jazzy, special, glamorous journey, Sorry! ain’t happening; Yeah until we see through our own shadow and its insistence upon taking sides and either marking everything with doom and gloom or making everything look overly nice and positive and not being willing to look at what’s not okay. We are still guarding the shadow and sometimes in the spiritual world too this shadow is so dominant, we have even created a whole industry of positive thinking, the positive you know teachings, positive affirmations, positive books and don’t get me wrong, i mean it’s really helpful and all teaches some positive things too, but not without a foundation of ensuring that we are also dealing with reality. AAH! i wanted to share with you this verse from the Bhagavad Gita, it is from chapter six, you wish you can just close your eyes and listen - Bhagwan wacha - so Krishna who is the teacher says – uddhare datmanaatmanam na atmanam awasadaye atmaye whahatmano banduhr atmaye wa ripu atmanah......... now this is a beautiful verse, and i just simply love it. So in this verse, Krishna saying that- hey! in your own mind in the theatre of your own mind try to lift yourself, try to raise yourself by your own self; what does it mean? Try to raise your shadow from where it is operating right now in my eye now hypnotic spell which is all divided up between you know between negative and positive, bad and good, success and failure; try to raise its consciousness, how? Through your own higher self, so raise the lower self by the higher self, raise the consciousness okay not physically raising but raising the consciousness, raising the comprehension, the awareness, the understanding. Neither abuse yourself ,you know from a negative perspective nor overly alleviate yourself, i am talking about the shadow here because those both are unreal. And when you do that when you choose more reality this verse is saying then the self is your friend so then your shadow is not your enemy but then its your friend because then it’s like the shadow and the self have become ONE; you see then your self is your friend. Then you can truly be an awaken being in your daily life as, mom, dad, banker ballerina doesn’t matter what you do, you are beginning to live in the middle understanding when you face negativity you are able to remember the positive, when you see a lot of positivity you remember that negativity is not far behind and so you keep looking inwards and try to find more spiritual ways of looking at things. So you will neither get too depressed nor you will get too; you know in a Trans of over achievements and everything will be fine and crossing your fingers behind your back and wanting everything to work out. You know you would not be vulnerable in either way, okay. And the same self if you don’t, you know, if you don’t align it , if you don’t raise it to meet yourself , true self then your shadow self will become your ripu, ripu means it will become your foe, it will act like an enemy; why? Because your own evil will lead you down roads that you don’t want to go. I have met people who are prone to negative thinking as a result they don’t give themselves enough padding. They are unable to relax in their own skin, they are unable to believe that friendship, loyalty and good people exist because they have been hurt in the past so they have now projected a doom scenario that everybody will hurt them. And so they remain; caught in not just past sorrow but even in present and future sorrows, because they are holding on to that in their negative mind. And i have met people who had an excessive tendency to think positively and they were always smiling and they were saying bright things and they were often convincing themselves that all is well but then they were really poor judge of character, they didn’t see what they needed to see, they couldn’t make realistic decisions that could support them in the future. And you know they would invest in relationships, professions, and businesses that they shouldn’t have because of these positive spin that they gave, they kept drinking high fructose corn syrup thinking that they are going to be healthy but they wouldn’t because you know you, you cannot grow cherries on cactus and you cannot do that, you cannot pretend your way into enlightenment or happiness or peace and you definitely cannot just do a cover job and so then the shadow itself becomes our enemy, we don’t need anybody else. We take decisions that take us away. That is why in this beautiful verse Krishna teaches in Bhagavad Gita, Bhagavad Gita is a quintessential Vedic text, it is the essence of one hundred and eight Upanishadic texts . Upanishad is the creme de la crème . I don't know if i said it right, English is not my first language but it is the ultimate teachings of non dual wisdom of India. And if you are to summarize it in seven hundred verses or so that is the Bhagavad Gita. Well about six hundred and forty something because the other verses are spoken by the students in the form of asking a question. But if someone wants to go through these Bhagavaad Gita teachings they would really get informed about a journey to truth, a journey based on satyam. What is real? What is sustaining us despite negatives and positives coming our way? When a breath goes away from your being, go ahead and exhale yeah ummnnnh and when a breath enters your being .............. , then exhale again. There is that little gap between an outgoing breath and an incoming breath, for just a nano second there you have no breath in you but still you are alive. That means you are not alive because of the breath which is coming and going, you are alive because of that presence within you which is the deeper ocean of life and the breath is merely a superficial activity that’s happening. Therefore breath coming in and out is not the ultimate reality. The presence due to which the breath can play is what is the ultimate reality. That is why negative and positive thoughts are really only colors of your mind; but the true nature of the mind is beyond colors. And this is where we want to hang out, we want to know, we can enjoy colors, we can see them coming and going, but we don’t want it to be colored permanently. Because when we get colored permanently, we come into a stage of alienation from our truth and that’s not where we want to operate. I think i am leaving behind through this podcast several new ways of contemplating and how we want to proceed towards the self. We don’t want to hate our shadow or beat ourselves up for it because the shadow is universal. The small thing to do is to understand it so we can debunk it. So that, we can then start operating as if from beyond the shadow. So next time you feel overly optimistic and overly pessimistic you want to wonder to yourself; Hey! Is this real? And maybe as you quieten down and take a few breaths and remember that I am the self i don’t have to necessarily get married to any one state of mind that alone may be enough. I hope you enjoyed my podcast. It’s definitely turning out for me to be a place where I can speak my heart ,share those deeper teachings that have transformed me and helped me journey from my shadow to self and has helped countless students worldwide, feel somewhere more authentic in their own relationships with themselves. In the next episode and more coming up we will keep talking about thoughts and we definitely want to get to the bottom line here, reach that place where anything is possible, but we are not bound by any one state of mind, negative or overly positive. And we definitely don’t want to get caught up in this spiritual, pop culture of repackaging everything in fake positivity. So with those words that’s all for today. I am so appreciating your feedback and if you want to know a way to give feedback just go to my website and you will find a place from where you can communicate with me. I do get to read all your messages and sometimes i will respond to you in writing and more often than not i will be responding to your questions, right here on this podcast –Shadow to Self. Thank you so much, keep listening and I really appreciate the five star reviews you have started giving my podcast. It’s definitely a different podcast because I am daring to go different, go deeper and just speak and share and reveal to you my vulnerability, but then also the enlightenment that we cannot hold back ,once this knowledge becomes internalized in a way of our life. As I am feeling truly grounded with my organic thoughts today, I bless you. May you also enjoy your own organic true, beautiful and genuine authentic thoughts every day. Until next time, this is Acharya Shunya. Subscribe and listen now! Acharya Shunya is a globally-recognized spiritual teacher and Vedic lineage-holder who awakens health and consciousness through the Vedic sciences of Ayurveda, Vedanta and Yoga. She is the driving force behind an online wisdom school and worldwide spiritual community, and the author of best-selling book on the Vedic art of mind + body + soul well-being and health, Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom (Sounds True, 2017) and forthcoming second book with Sounds True to be released in 2020, Sovereign Self. Acharya Shunya is a keynote speaker at national and international conferences, and serves as an advisor to the Indian Government in matters pertaining to global integration and cultivation of Ayurveda and Yoga. Receive her free online teachings and browse her current eCourse offerings here or see more about her on Facebook and follow her on Instagram. Subscribe to her YouTube Channel where she holds live Global Satsangs once per month. Study Ayurveda with Acharya Shunya in her online course, Alchemy through Ayurveda.

Once I was cursed with afflictions of every kind. I was neither happy not healthy. Watching me today, online or in person, you won’t believe that in my youth, often, I was not able to walk or even sit with ease. In fact, many times for several months at a time, I had episodes wherein my entire body, every cell, every limb and every pore of my body would be stiff and swollen with pain and inflammation. It would be excruciating to even breathe as my ribs would hurt just moving in and out with the incoming and outgoing breath. I would scream with pain if I had to walk to the restroom, and each step was an ordeal. I had to use a bed pan many times, and I thought to myself, as I lay in bed, imprisoned by my own pain, urine and abject sorrow, that I would be completely disabled soon and I should die, right now. I saw no hope back then in my early to late teens (this lasted until age 21 or so). At times, I used a walking stick to hobble about my house and at other times, I would sit in a chair uncomfortably, feeling every nerve of my body scream with electric shocks. Yes, that is how I began my journey on this planet – compromised – humbled by genes, karma and circumstance, because all of this started, after my mother passed away unexpectedly when I was ten years old. An “unfortunate” prediction was made by medical doctors of India at that time. My father wanted to leave no stone unturned and explore what western medicine had to say about it. The earnest physicians told my father that his beloved daughter was going to soon need a wheelchair; and we should be mentally prepared for this as the disease was aggressive. They diagnosed me with a devastating immunological disorder that is relentless. They even found a gene in me through blood tests, that was causing this, and they looked mighty pleased with their ability to diagnose this and tag it to a gene (as genetic testing was relatively a new field back then). They also looked a bit unapologetic to me, that they had no cure for what they had diagnosed. They said my immune system is dysfunctional, and the inflammatory condition is because of it. It was attacking me to protect me and, in due course, inflammation would attack all of my main limbs and even organs like my eyes, lungs, and heart. The last time I talked to an MD here in the states, which was in 2o19, they still don't have any real answers except painkillers and inflammatory inhibition medicines that only control symptoms and come with grave side effects. My Indian neighbors clicked their head and said, “karma!” Apparently, bad karma had come to stay. What was I supposed to do? Give up and accept the punishment by genes and karma? My grandfather, my Baba, who was a seer no less, told me all along to not worry. He was the only one unperturbed. He spoke to me only when I approached him. He knew something none of us knew as well as he did. He told me, if I could not walk, I should plan on flying. He had meant, find your way out, when all doors are closed. There is always one door still ajar. We simply must find it in the darkness. That door was Ayurveda for me. It had been wide open for me, ever since I was born into my Vedic family. Now, the invitation was to totally surrender my life to living by its timeless wisdom. Thank you Baba, my Guru, for showing the way. He held my hand and showed me aspects of Ayurveda that are not ordinarily known – its spiritual, self-healing activating aspects, along with the food and lifestyle changes. I thank my soul for leading me through this door, and never looking back. When I was done with suffering, I plunged myself whole-heartedly into Ayurveda as a way of life - not just to memorize it or pass a written test - but to LIVE it with all my honesty, day in and day out. Now, 30+ years later, thanks to how I changed my daily lifestyle, foods and thoughts, I am leading a full life. I am walking, cooking, gardening, parenting, teaching, writing, traveling all over the world, giving lectures, and facilitating self-healing through my Vedanta and Ayurveda courses. I am enjoying my life to the fullest with my family and students all over the world, and appreciating my life opportunity to lead a spiritually-rich life. I owe all of this to the Divine Science of Ayurveda and to my Baba, who taught me to address the deepest cause of bodily disease which is always the mind; and then bring body and mind both into balance through a spiritually-infused art of living. I used Ayurveda psychology to heal my mind, Ayurveda pharmacology or food wisdom to eat an anti-inflammatory diet, and Ayurveda lifestyle wisdom to bring my being into alignment with the sun and the moon. Soon, Mother Nature was pleased with me. Why would she not be happy with me? From the foods I choose to eat (and not eat), to the friends I laugh with or the people I establish firm boundaries, to the mantras I chant, to the meditations I ascend into every morning, I am helping Mother Nature help me become not only pain- and inflammation-free every day, but also truly happy and healthy. I have energy, vitality, and optimism in plenty. I am helping others lead a life-welcoming life, too! This is no ordinary Ayurveda I now teach, of simply battling disease. This is a unique Ayurveda path from my lineage in which I awaken health. I no longer focus on minimizing inflammation. I focus on maximizing my feel-good factor, my truth factor, my authenticity factor, my joy factor, my dharma factor, my healthy and yummy recipes factor. Recently, after an unexpected traumatic injury around 3 years ago, inflammation acted up back again and my neck became super stiff. My arms were laden with pain and heavy like lead. I could not type for a whole year or drive my car. I had to hire someone to type my emails and students drove me. I did not give up thanks to what I know. I kept focusing on what I know works in Ayurveda. Naturally the pain had to go – it went away. I have typed two large 400 page + book manuscripts since then! And I am driving again! My neck is still somewhat stiff, but I am not giving up on it anytime soon. And even if karma got my neck, I got karma too, by its neck, no less! Thanks to Ayurveda, despite my neck still stiff and occasional pain here and there that shows up to perhaps remind me that I have karma and genes to meet with cultivated wisdom and equanimity every day, at least the discomfort, if any at all, is transient. It is unable to hold me back. I am experiencing a life of soulful wholeness, mental ease and physical health, way more than anyone could ever imagine. Perhaps only my grandfather and Guru, Baba knew I would cross over beyond my genetic and karmic destiny, and that is why he chose me to carry his Ayurveda, Yoga and Vedanta teachings forward into the world. I have folded everything I know about Ayurveda into my Alchemy through Ayurveda course. I have held nothing back. I have prepared this course for humanity with exhausting attention to details and care, after 20+ years of experience teaching it and transforming thousands of lives. In my first book, Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom (Sounds True, 2017), you'll find real-life case studies of people who recovered from even the most chronic diseases, simply by embodying the holistic food, lifestyle and spiritual practices I impart. I believe my Alchemy with Ayurveda course is no less than a live transmission of Shakti, from Baba to me and from me to the world. It has the power to do for you what Ayurveda did for me. It teaches what your soul needs to know and hear to awaken to health, and not simply become powerless in the face of ill health. Yes, our material bodies will decay and we will all die one day. Aging is a fact of life and a law of god. But let us not go down, without a fighting chance to LIVE and LIVE WELL thanks to the Ayurvedic art of living passed on from master to student - a beautiful wisdom chain of transmission that leads to true alchemy of body, mind, soul and divinity. When I am facing death, or say a fatal disease comes to grip me in the future thanks to karma and genes co-conspiring again, I know I will have Ayurveda by my side. Love, Acharya Shunya Acharya Shunya is a globally-recognized spiritual teacher and Vedic lineage-holder who awakens health and consciousness through the Vedic sciences of Ayurveda, Vedanta and Yoga. She is the driving force behind an online wisdom school and worldwide spiritual community, and the author of best-selling book on the Vedic art of mind + body + soul well-being and health, Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom (Sounds True, 2017) and forthcoming second book with Sounds True to be released in 2020, Sovereign Self. Acharya Shunya is a keynote speaker at national and international conferences, and serves as an advisor to the Indian Government in matters pertaining to global integration and cultivation of Ayurveda and Yoga. Receive her free online teachings and browse her current eCourse offerings here or see more about her on Facebook and follow her on Instagram. Subscribe to her YouTube Channel where she holds live Global Satsangs once per month. Study Ayurveda with Acharya Shunya in her online course, Alchemy through Ayurveda.