Bodhimed

Do you, or someone you love, suffer because of a past trauma or a current addiction?  The two often go hand in hand with depression.  The healing involved in such profound life situtations is very difficult and, unfortunately, often temporary.  The powerful healing sciences of Ayurveda, yoga and meditation can actually change the mental, physical, and energetic patterns that keep a person in a state of post-traumatic stress, or depression, or addiction.  Here's some insight into how a holistic recovery program in Santa Fe that incorporates these mindfulness practices can bring about genuine growth and healing.

Do you struggle to align your eating habits with your ideals?  If you're like me, sometimes your taste buds take control and you find yourself eating something you know isn't the healthiest choice for your body and your spirit.  In this post I want to address the timeless question of whether or not to be a vegetarian.  At this moment in history where the environmental impact of every one of our choices, especially the 3-times-a-day ones, is so critical, it's important to examine how we choose what we eat.  The decision affects our health, the environment, the economy, and global society.  Personally, I am the kind of person who needs to gather a lot of information from many different traditions before I make big decisions.  So I've compiled a surprising list of unusual theories  about eating meat.  If you're on the fence about becoming vegetarian or if you go back and forth, the following considerations and anecdotes may help you finally decide what is best for you.

1.  Ayurveda might advise you to stop eating your favorite foods.

Ayurveda teaches that you are what you eat. Most people are in their current health predicament to a large extent because of their diet. Suppose you love spicy food and you pour hot sauce on your eggs at breakfast. You might also experience heartburn and tend to get frustrated easily.  Ayurveda would advise you to avoid spicy and greasy foods in order to decrease heat (Pitta) in your body. Who wants to be told that? Maybe people don't want to hear that they are causing their own suffering, but if you're really looking to get healthy, you have to acknowledge that your daily diet might have something to do with how you're feeling.

2.  Ayurveda tells you to stop eating at night.

I recently listened to an excellent tele-seminar with David Crow, a master Ayurvedic herbalist, aromatherapist and well-known author.  It was extremely illuminating and very much worthwhile. Thankfully, the whole thing was recorded.

David and his company, Floracopeia, have made it available for any of my readers to listen to and download free of charge for a limited time period. It's called The Dharma of Essential Oils and the Flowering of Spiritual Culture. It is a profound synthesis of medicine, ecology and spirituality and I highly encourage you to check it out.

You can listen online, download it to your computer and/or burn to a cd or put on your ipod. Click here to check it out.

A few months ago I also attended an evening lecture with David about meditating with and on essential oils. We sat with a dip stick of lavender oil, (then tulsi, then jasmine) and felt impressions of the plant. Then we observed the effect of each scent on the quality of our meditative state. It was fascinating. I learned so much about the plants themselves, as well as the benefits each plant offers to our meditation practice. David's oils are extremely high quality, and he oversees the cultivation of many of the plants he uses.

You can read all about his work here.

Since attending David's lecture, I've had a new appreciation for the power of plants as medicine and also as allies on the spiritual journey. Their fragrance is an offering to the whole of nature that deserves the utmost respect and conservation efforts.

I've told the Donut Story to dozens of my patients over the years. Sometimes I call it "Enlightenment in a Heapful of Glazed Donuts" because it wasn't until my teacher ordered me to admit and give in to this denied desire that I realized how blindly and foolishly principled I had become. It perfectly illustrates how feeling guilt and anxiety about eating certain things is far more unhealthy than actually just doing it with clear intention and pure joy...and then truly letting it go.

Shri Brahamananda Sarasvati was the founder and spiritual director of Ananda Ashram (1964) in Monroe, NY and of the Yoga Society of New York (1958) and the Yoga Society of San Francisco(1972). His previous name was Dr. Ramamurti Mishra M.D., and he was an Ayurvedic physician, as well as an M.D. specializing in neurosurgery and psychology. Lovingly referred to as Guruji, he left his body in 1993.

Shri Brahmananda Sarasvati was one of the first Indian teachers to come to the U.S. and teach yoga and meditation.  He was and still is regarded as a spiritual teacher for thousands all over the world. In addition to being a physician, he was an accomplished scholar of the Sanskrit language, which he viewed as a vehicle on the path to experiencing oneness with universal consciousness. Many curious seekers would come to sit with Guruji at the ashram, only to find themselves reciting Sanskrit grammar until the wee hours of the night.  Guruji explained that even if you didn't know what you were actually saying, the transformative powers of the Sanskrit syllables were still having their profound effects.

Guruji was also an expert in yoga psychology based in the ancient Vedanta tradition of India. His book, The Textbook of Yoga Psychology, is a definitive commentary on Patanjali's Yoga Sutras that blends traditional philosophy with modern psychology.  He is the author of Fundamentals of Yoga, Self-Analysis and Self-Knowledge, and many other essays devoted to meditation and self-realization.

Shri Brahamananda Sarasvati was a unique spiritual teacher who successfully merged Eastern and Western science and philosophy into a language Westerners could understand. His message lives on in the writings and recordings he left behind, in the meditation centers he founded, and in the hearts of everyone who experienced his grace and love.