August 11, 2025 • 23 mins
In this episode of She Asked: Where Healing Meets Practical Hope, I share my journey of discovering Ayurveda, the 5,000-year-old science of life, and how learning to balance my fiery Pitta dosha transformed my health, relationships, and sense of self.
We’ll explore:
🌿 The Five Elements — Earth, Water, Fire, Air, Ether — and how they shape your mind, body, and spirit🌿What it means to live in alignment with your dosha for greater balance, vitality, and freedom
🌿Modern science that supports ancient Ayurvedic wisdom (circadian rhythms, gut health, personalized medicine)
🌿Simple practices & journaling prompts to help you reconnect with your natural rhythms and restore balance
💫 Have you discovered your dosha yet? Ayurveda teaches us that we’re all made of the five elements — Earth, Water, Fire, Air, and Ether — and our unique dosha (Vata, Pitta, or Kapha) shapes how we think, feel, and live.
In this episode, I share my own journey of balancing my Pitta dosha, letting go of what no longer served me, and aligning my life with my true nature. 🌿
✨ Comment below: Which element or dosha do you feel most connected to right now?
I’d love to hear your experiences and questions!
And always, reach out to me at anna@annamcbride.com
#Ayurveda #PittaDosha #DoshaBalance #FiveElements #AyurvedicHealing #HolisticHealth #MindBodyBalance
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Today's episode is a story of returning to your
nature through the ancientwisdom of Ayurveda and the five
elemental forces that live inall of us.
I'll begin by sharing mypersonal story of Ayurvedic
journey and how learning toembody my fiery pitta dosha with
(00:27):
balance and how it changed mylife, and then we'll explore how
you can apply this sacredsystem to align your body with
the life that you want.
So let me begin with my story.
So it was 30 years ago, alittle over 30 years ago, when I
realized I wasn't happy, not inmy marriage, not with my life.
(00:51):
I was a young mom of twindaughters and in a marriage that
I since felt new, I didn't fitin.
Yet I wasn't ready to doanything about that.
I didn't feel courageous enoughor ready to do anything about
that and, bear in mind, I washiding this secret of having an
(01:16):
eating disorder.
So, with all that going on, Idecided instead to explore
mind-body things yoga,meditation which were becoming
very popular, and I startedpracticing yoga.
I started practicing meditationand I did this for years and
(01:41):
eventually that led me to wantto deepen it by becoming trained
in meditation, trained inAyurveda, which is the life
science related to yoga, and itall led me to travel out to the
west coast of this country tostudy with a couple of prominent
(02:03):
teachers, one for Ayurveda andone for meditation.
And I remember having aconversation with this very
famous Ayurvedic doctor andasking him what should I do?
I want to study Ayurveda, Ithink, with you, and I want to
study meditation with this otherteacher.
What should I do?
And he said to me you should dothat.
(02:26):
And I said do what.
He said you should do what youwant to do, because to have
balance in life you need to becontent.
I didn't even know whatcontentment meant, I just knew
that I wanted him to answer thatquestion for me and I felt
perplexed by the fact that hedidn't.
(02:47):
So then I went to study with themeditation teacher and I fell
in love with the way he taughtand his life and what he was
doing for service.
And I approached him and said Iwant to be like you.
I want to help all these peoplethroughout the world.
I want to have this big lifelike you have.
(03:09):
And he said, okay.
He said yet I know you and Iknow your life and everything
involved with it.
What are you willing to give upto have this level of service.
I said nothing.
I want to have everything, Iwant to have it all right.
And he said, honey, it doesn'twork like that.
(03:31):
Life at this level of servicerequires you to let go of so
much in order to be able to beof this level of service.
And I was confused by thatanswer.
I was frustrated by that answer, and yet let me tell you that
conversation happened 12 yearsago, I think 11 years ago, and
(03:55):
in these 11 years, my life,because I had the intention of
wanting to be of service at ahigh level, intention of wanting
to be of service at a highlevel, wanting to be healed and
ready to help people with mind,body related stuff, ayurvedic
stuff that my life is pared down.
So much of what was big ortaking up my time, my
(04:19):
distracting me, in other wordsfell away.
I'm not a mother raising threekids right now.
They're adults.
I'm not married to the personthat I was so unhappy with.
I'm not chasing a career rightnow.
I'm not a business owner rightnow.
(04:39):
Not that any of those thingswere wasted, because that's the
other thing Ayurveda teaches usis nothing is wasted.
Everything is fuel for the firetowards what we're growing into
becoming.
In other words, I just didn'tunderstand how it all worked.
So that's my story, and I wantto tell you that letting go of
(05:05):
things like the addictions thatwere plaguing me, the beliefs,
the perfectionism, letting go ofthe relationships including my
marriage, others and to provemyself, that was what I had to
begin to let go of to be readyfor what I'm doing now, and all
(05:33):
of this is in alignment withAyurveda's lifestyle.
I now say with gratitude I lovemy life, I love my body, I love
my mind, I live in alignmentwith my Pitta Dosha.
I honor the fire and I know howto cool it when needed.
(05:55):
That balance is freedom.
Ayurveda is one of the oldesthealing systems in the world
over 5,000 years old.
Think about it Before we evenhad a word for science, there
were people in this world comingup with systems to help us
(06:20):
identify and create balancebetween our minds, our bodies
and the spirit within us.
They didn't have x-rays, theydidn't have any means of seeing
pictures, they just knew it.
And that just fascinated mewhen I first learned that and it
comes from India the wordAyurveda means the science of
(06:45):
life.
It teaches us that we are allcreated from the five main
elements Earth, which stands forstability, structure,
groundedness.
Water, which represents flow,feeling, nourishment.
Fire, which is abouttransformation, digestion and
(07:11):
action.
Air, movement, breath,creativity.
And ether.
Or space, which representsexpansion, intuition and silence
, which represents expansion,intuition and silence.
From these five main elementscome the three doshas that make
(07:32):
up what Ayurveda is based onVata, which is the combination
of air and ether, so it's light,quick and creative.
Pitta, which is the combinationof fire and water, which
focuses on focus, intensity andambitions.
(07:53):
And Kapha, which is thecombination of earth and water,
which is about being steady,nurturing and calm.
Now, each person in the worldis born with a unique dosha
construction, an elementalfingerprint, if you will, and so
(08:16):
we all have variations of theseelements in us and these doshas
within us, but they're uniquelyours, right, and when we live
in ways that match our dosha, wethrive.
Let's face it, most of us don't.
We don't live in alignment, andso, therefore, whether it's our
(08:38):
thought, our food, our routine,our relationships, we are
suffering imbalances anddis-ease, and so what Ayurveda
addresses is how to identifywhat your dosha is, and then
(08:59):
practices that will help youcreate balance or come back to
balance, restore balance inyourself, and I love the fact
that it's all based on somethingnatural.
It's not something in a lab,it's not something in a bottle,
it's something within us andsomething that we can naturally
(09:23):
attune to.
I remember my Ayurvedic teachertaught me that what we want is
ojas.
Ojas is that it's the sugary,sweet sweetness of life, and you
know you're in ojas when youfeel at peace, at ease and in
(09:45):
flow with life.
Then there is the opposite ofthat right.
There is the thing that is thebyproduct of agni and it is just
so toxic and most of us live intoxicity and we don't even know
it.
We don't realize it because wethink it's normal, right?
(10:06):
Particularly, I live in NewYork City and everybody's going
really fast in many differentdirections.
There's sounds like the sirensthat are going on all the time
and we think like this won'tcreate a problem within our
systems, and yet they do.
However, ayurveda teaches usthat you are living in the world
(10:30):
, so we need to be able to adaptto what is right in front of us
.
It's not like we're going to gooff and live in a cave like
some yogis did way back when.
It's just that we're going todo this lifestyle, real time,
wherever we are, and it ispossible.
You might be wondering is thereany science behind this ancient
(10:54):
system?
Actually, yes.
So let's take a look at threekey areas where modern research
beautifully aligns withAyurvedic wisdom.
So one area very simple isabout the circadian rhythms and
daily routines.
Way back when, before we hadelectricity and modern
(11:17):
technology around clocks andcomputers and even manufacturing
, which changed the way weactually have our workday, we
used to get up when the sun wasup and go to bed when the sun
went down.
That's known as naturalcircadian rhythm, in alignment
with nature.
(11:38):
However, we don't do that.
Ayurveda teaches us to followthe rhythm of nature, especially
the sun, in our daily lives.
It's called Dhanachara.
Modern chronobiology researchconfirms this.
Nobel Prize winning studies from2017 uncovered how circadian
(12:04):
rhythms govern everything frommetabolism to mood.
Think about that body, yourmetabolism, the way you digest
food, thoughts, feelings are inflow naturally with nature, not
(12:26):
with your watch, not with yourwork week, none of that right.
It's with nature, and so isyour mood.
So when we try to forceourselves to adapt to a schedule
that leaves us being tired andworn out, it's no wonder our
moods are crappy.
(12:47):
I know that when I don't getenough rest.
I am really anxious.
I don't know how you are inresponse to low sleep, but
that's my nervous systemresponse.
And I gotta tell you today,last night, was the first night
in a while where I have slepteight hours.
Eight hours that's amazing tome.
(13:13):
When I woke up and it was 5 amand I went to bed, lights out at
9, I was like, wow, something'sworking.
And I had been working on mysleep pattern because I noticed
years ago how off it was.
But anyway, disrupting thisrhythm that is natural to us is
(13:33):
linked to things likeinflammation, depression and
disease.
This is how important rest isProper rest, proper schedule
that isn't out of sync withnature.
So Ayurveda tells us thataligning with natural cycles is
essential for health, and I justwant to pause for a second,
(14:00):
because I know there are peoplewho have to go to work and
schedules that are off fromcircadian would be great if we
could all just readapt our workschedules to the nature.
I just want you to keep in mindthat if you are feeling off at
all, if your sleep schedule isoff at all, there are things you
can do that can get you asclose to a natural rhythm for
(14:24):
your body that keeps in mindnatural cycles.
I don't need to go into allthat now.
I just want you to know thatthere are ways Ayurveda is just
pointing the way towards.
Get as close to nature as youcan.
Scientific research comes outabout gut health and digestion
this thing called Agni.
So I remember when I firststarted studying Ayurveda there
(14:48):
was this quote that my teachersaid, which is in our culture.
We say you are what you eat.
From an Ayurvedic standpoint,you aren't what you eat, you are
what you digest, because if youcan't digest it, you're not
really benefiting from it.
And that took me a while tounderstand what that meant,
(15:10):
because I'm digesting things notonly in my body, physically,
because of the food I eat.
I'm digesting thoughts, I'mdigesting feelings, and there's
a lot of digestion that ourbodies go through, our minds,
our bodies, our spirits, and Idon't know that I really
(15:30):
understood that a lot of theimbalance I was experiencing in
my life is because I wasn'tallowing myself to digest.
If you're like me and you'resomeone who avoided feelings as
much as I did, or if you had aneating disorder or withheld food
(15:50):
or undernourished yourself,whatever the circumstances were,
that's a form of non digestion.
The other thing that I alsolearned through Ayurveda is this
concept of not eating whenyou're upset, because if you're
upset, if your central nervoussystem is upset, if your mind is
(16:12):
upset, your body is actuallyupset also and not ready to
digest.
So my Ayurvedic teachers taughtus, if you're upset, better to
wait before you eat.
Get yourself calm and groundedas much as possible and then
have the meal, even if it ishours later.
(16:35):
Do what you can to regroundbefore you eat.
And so recent research hastaught us that gut microbiota
and the gut brain accesssupports this, supports the idea
that your digestive fire, agni,is central to the idea of
(16:57):
digestion.
Poor digestion is said to be theroot of most illnesses.
Think about that Poor digestion.
So we have a lot of things thatkind of get stuck in our gut,
so to speak, that we haven'tfully digested.
Whether it's emotional orwhether it is food related.
(17:21):
Either way, that poor digestionmay be behind a lot of the
illness that we may be suffering, and the studies show that our
digestion influences ourimmunity, our mood and
inflammation.
Ayurvedic practices like warmfood, spices of a particular
(17:46):
type and mindful eating supporthealthy gut flora.
So these are some of the thingsthat Ayurveda taught me in
order to heal from my disorderedeating patterns, as well as how
to get my gut back on track,because even though I was no
(18:07):
longer practicing my eatingdisorder it's probably now been
20 years disorder, it's probablynow been 20 years I had a long
way to go to heal my gut, healmy digestive system, and
Ayurveda helped me with that.
So science is echoing Ayurveda.
How you digest is how you feel.
(18:39):
And the third area whereAyurveda has really stood out
from a research standpoint ispersonalized medicine and dosha
typing.
So Ayurvedic systems of doshasis a form of personalized
medicine.
There are many practitionersand this is all based on
thousands of years of research,basically before we even had
that term meaning medicine.
A 2015 study in Nature showeddosha types correlate with
(19:04):
genetic expression patterns.
Think about that.
Doshas that were identified andprescribed thousands of years
ago now are being aligned andshown to match genetic
expression patterns.
I think this is incredible howvata, pitta and kapha types have
(19:28):
distinct biological markers.
Ayurveda understoodconstitution and customization
long before modern science did.
We're finally catching up.
It really blows my mind howthis stuff that was created
(19:50):
based on nature over 5,000 yearsago has stood the test of time.
It's truly the only sciencethat has, quite frankly, all
right.
So now I want to give you somepractices for realignment.
Whether you've studied Ayurvedaor not, you can begin listening
(20:11):
to your body and exploring yourelements.
So I want to give you a fewjournaling questions to explore
in your own time, and we'll putthese attached to this episode
so that you can reference it.
But listen and ponder these.
The first one is which of thefive elements and ponder these.
(20:34):
The first one is which of thefive elements earth, water, fire
, air, ether do you feel mostconnected to right now?
Which of those?
Don't overthink it, justidentify it.
And then, where in your lifeare you feeling imbalanced?
(20:58):
Through habits, people likerelationships, or maybe your
belief system?
It's important to get clearthere.
And then, thirdly, what does abalanced life feel like in your
body?
Have you ever felt it?
Could you imagine what thatmight be like for you?
Could you imagine what thatmight be like for you?
So, with those prompts, thatwill begin maybe creating some
(21:20):
curiosity within you to want toseek more information about this
.
So here's an affirmation I wantyou to just close your eyes for
just a moment, take a long,slow, deep breath with me, in
through the nose, exhale outthrough the mouth.
Just let your body settle inand this information sink into
you.
As I say this affirmation I ammade of earth, water, fire, air
(21:44):
and space.
My body is wise.
My spirit is clear.
I release what pulls me out ofbalance and return to what
restores me.
Let those words wash over you,Let them sink in through every
tissue of your being and knowthat when we align with nature,
(22:08):
we align with life.
So if something stirred you intoday's episode a remembering
life, so if something stirredyou in today's episode a
remembering, a curiosity, adesire for more balance I want
you to know Ayurveda is a gentle, powerful path to lead you back
(22:28):
to who you always were.
It's not a detour, it is thepath, and if you'd like to
explore more of this, understandmore about doshas or receive
personalized guidance onAyurvedic living, I'd love to
support you.
Reach out to me, either throughthis episode or you can email
(22:52):
me directly at Anna atAnnaMcBridecom, and let's set up
a moment where we can talkabout this, because this is
something I'm very passionateabout and want to be able to
provide more information on toyou and, of course, share it
with anyone you think that mightbenefit from knowing more about
how to balance themselves,balance their life.
(23:15):
Thank you for being a part oftoday's episode of she Asked,
where healing meets practicalhope.
Until soon, be well.
Today's episode is a story of returning to your
nature through the ancientwisdom of Ayurveda and the five
elemental forces that live inall of us.
I'll begin by sharing mypersonal story of Ayurvedic
journey and how learning toembody my fiery pitta dosha with
(00:27):
balance and how it changed mylife, and then we'll explore how
you can apply this sacredsystem to align your body with
the life that you want.
So let me begin with my story.
So it was 30 years ago, alittle over 30 years ago, when I
realized I wasn't happy, not inmy marriage, not with my life.
(00:51):
I was a young mom of twindaughters and in a marriage that
I since felt new, I didn't fitin.
Yet I wasn't ready to doanything about that.
I didn't feel courageous enoughor ready to do anything about
that and, bear in mind, I washiding this secret of having an
(01:16):
eating disorder.
So, with all that going on, Idecided instead to explore
mind-body things yoga,meditation which were becoming
very popular, and I startedpracticing yoga.
I started practicing meditationand I did this for years and
(01:41):
eventually that led me to wantto deepen it by becoming trained
in meditation, trained inAyurveda, which is the life
science related to yoga, and itall led me to travel out to the
west coast of this country tostudy with a couple of prominent
(02:03):
teachers, one for Ayurveda andone for meditation.
And I remember having aconversation with this very
famous Ayurvedic doctor andasking him what should I do?
I want to study Ayurveda, Ithink, with you, and I want to
study meditation with this otherteacher.
What should I do?
And he said to me you should dothat.
(02:26):
And I said do what.
He said you should do what youwant to do, because to have
balance in life you need to becontent.
I didn't even know whatcontentment meant, I just knew
that I wanted him to answer thatquestion for me and I felt
perplexed by the fact that hedidn't.
(02:47):
So then I went to study with themeditation teacher and I fell
in love with the way he taughtand his life and what he was
doing for service.
And I approached him and said Iwant to be like you.
I want to help all these peoplethroughout the world.
I want to have this big lifelike you have.
(03:09):
And he said, okay.
He said yet I know you and Iknow your life and everything
involved with it.
What are you willing to give upto have this level of service.
I said nothing.
I want to have everything, Iwant to have it all right.
And he said, honey, it doesn'twork like that.
(03:31):
Life at this level of servicerequires you to let go of so
much in order to be able to beof this level of service.
And I was confused by thatanswer.
I was frustrated by that answer, and yet let me tell you that
conversation happened 12 yearsago, I think 11 years ago, and
(03:55):
in these 11 years, my life,because I had the intention of
wanting to be of service at ahigh level, intention of wanting
to be of service at a highlevel, wanting to be healed and
ready to help people with mind,body related stuff, ayurvedic
stuff that my life is pared down.
So much of what was big ortaking up my time, my
(04:19):
distracting me, in other wordsfell away.
I'm not a mother raising threekids right now.
They're adults.
I'm not married to the personthat I was so unhappy with.
I'm not chasing a career rightnow.
I'm not a business owner rightnow.
(04:39):
Not that any of those thingswere wasted, because that's the
other thing Ayurveda teaches usis nothing is wasted.
Everything is fuel for the firetowards what we're growing into
becoming.
In other words, I just didn'tunderstand how it all worked.
So that's my story, and I wantto tell you that letting go of
(05:05):
things like the addictions thatwere plaguing me, the beliefs,
the perfectionism, letting go ofthe relationships including my
marriage, others and to provemyself, that was what I had to
begin to let go of to be readyfor what I'm doing now, and all
(05:33):
of this is in alignment withAyurveda's lifestyle.
I now say with gratitude I lovemy life, I love my body, I love
my mind, I live in alignmentwith my Pitta Dosha.
I honor the fire and I know howto cool it when needed.
(05:55):
That balance is freedom.
Ayurveda is one of the oldesthealing systems in the world
over 5,000 years old.
Think about it Before we evenhad a word for science, there
were people in this world comingup with systems to help us
(06:20):
identify and create balancebetween our minds, our bodies
and the spirit within us.
They didn't have x-rays, theydidn't have any means of seeing
pictures, they just knew it.
And that just fascinated mewhen I first learned that and it
comes from India the wordAyurveda means the science of
(06:45):
life.
It teaches us that we are allcreated from the five main
elements Earth, which stands forstability, structure,
groundedness.
Water, which represents flow,feeling, nourishment.
Fire, which is abouttransformation, digestion and
(07:11):
action.
Air, movement, breath,creativity.
And ether.
Or space, which representsexpansion, intuition and silence
, which represents expansion,intuition and silence.
From these five main elementscome the three doshas that make
(07:32):
up what Ayurveda is based onVata, which is the combination
of air and ether, so it's light,quick and creative.
Pitta, which is the combinationof fire and water, which
focuses on focus, intensity andambitions.
(07:53):
And Kapha, which is thecombination of earth and water,
which is about being steady,nurturing and calm.
Now, each person in the worldis born with a unique dosha
construction, an elementalfingerprint, if you will, and so
(08:16):
we all have variations of theseelements in us and these doshas
within us, but they're uniquelyours, right, and when we live
in ways that match our dosha, wethrive.
Let's face it, most of us don't.
We don't live in alignment, andso, therefore, whether it's our
(08:38):
thought, our food, our routine,our relationships, we are
suffering imbalances anddis-ease, and so what Ayurveda
addresses is how to identifywhat your dosha is, and then
(08:59):
practices that will help youcreate balance or come back to
balance, restore balance inyourself, and I love the fact
that it's all based on somethingnatural.
It's not something in a lab,it's not something in a bottle,
it's something within us andsomething that we can naturally
(09:23):
attune to.
I remember my Ayurvedic teachertaught me that what we want is
ojas.
Ojas is that it's the sugary,sweet sweetness of life, and you
know you're in ojas when youfeel at peace, at ease and in
(09:45):
flow with life.
Then there is the opposite ofthat right.
There is the thing that is thebyproduct of agni and it is just
so toxic and most of us live intoxicity and we don't even know
it.
We don't realize it because wethink it's normal, right?
(10:06):
Particularly, I live in NewYork City and everybody's going
really fast in many differentdirections.
There's sounds like the sirensthat are going on all the time
and we think like this won'tcreate a problem within our
systems, and yet they do.
However, ayurveda teaches usthat you are living in the world
(10:30):
, so we need to be able to adaptto what is right in front of us
.
It's not like we're going to gooff and live in a cave like
some yogis did way back when.
It's just that we're going todo this lifestyle, real time,
wherever we are, and it ispossible.
You might be wondering is thereany science behind this ancient
(10:54):
system?
Actually, yes.
So let's take a look at threekey areas where modern research
beautifully aligns withAyurvedic wisdom.
So one area very simple isabout the circadian rhythms and
daily routines.
Way back when, before we hadelectricity and modern
(11:17):
technology around clocks andcomputers and even manufacturing
, which changed the way weactually have our workday, we
used to get up when the sun wasup and go to bed when the sun
went down.
That's known as naturalcircadian rhythm, in alignment
with nature.
(11:38):
However, we don't do that.
Ayurveda teaches us to followthe rhythm of nature, especially
the sun, in our daily lives.
It's called Dhanachara.
Modern chronobiology researchconfirms this.
Nobel Prize winning studies from2017 uncovered how circadian
(12:04):
rhythms govern everything frommetabolism to mood.
Think about that body, yourmetabolism, the way you digest
food, thoughts, feelings are inflow naturally with nature, not
(12:26):
with your watch, not with yourwork week, none of that right.
It's with nature, and so isyour mood.
So when we try to forceourselves to adapt to a schedule
that leaves us being tired andworn out, it's no wonder our
moods are crappy.
(12:47):
I know that when I don't getenough rest.
I am really anxious.
I don't know how you are inresponse to low sleep, but
that's my nervous systemresponse.
And I gotta tell you today,last night, was the first night
in a while where I have slepteight hours.
Eight hours that's amazing tome.
(13:13):
When I woke up and it was 5 amand I went to bed, lights out at
9, I was like, wow, something'sworking.
And I had been working on mysleep pattern because I noticed
years ago how off it was.
But anyway, disrupting thisrhythm that is natural to us is
(13:33):
linked to things likeinflammation, depression and
disease.
This is how important rest isProper rest, proper schedule
that isn't out of sync withnature.
So Ayurveda tells us thataligning with natural cycles is
essential for health, and I justwant to pause for a second,
(14:00):
because I know there are peoplewho have to go to work and
schedules that are off fromcircadian would be great if we
could all just readapt our workschedules to the nature.
I just want you to keep in mindthat if you are feeling off at
all, if your sleep schedule isoff at all, there are things you
can do that can get you asclose to a natural rhythm for
(14:24):
your body that keeps in mindnatural cycles.
I don't need to go into allthat now.
I just want you to know thatthere are ways Ayurveda is just
pointing the way towards.
Get as close to nature as youcan.
Scientific research comes outabout gut health and digestion
this thing called Agni.
So I remember when I firststarted studying Ayurveda there
(14:48):
was this quote that my teachersaid, which is in our culture.
We say you are what you eat.
From an Ayurvedic standpoint,you aren't what you eat, you are
what you digest, because if youcan't digest it, you're not
really benefiting from it.
And that took me a while tounderstand what that meant,
(15:10):
because I'm digesting things notonly in my body, physically,
because of the food I eat.
I'm digesting thoughts, I'mdigesting feelings, and there's
a lot of digestion that ourbodies go through, our minds,
our bodies, our spirits, and Idon't know that I really
(15:30):
understood that a lot of theimbalance I was experiencing in
my life is because I wasn'tallowing myself to digest.
If you're like me and you'resomeone who avoided feelings as
much as I did, or if you had aneating disorder or withheld food
(15:50):
or undernourished yourself,whatever the circumstances were,
that's a form of non digestion.
The other thing that I alsolearned through Ayurveda is this
concept of not eating whenyou're upset, because if you're
upset, if your central nervoussystem is upset, if your mind is
(16:12):
upset, your body is actuallyupset also and not ready to
digest.
So my Ayurvedic teachers taughtus, if you're upset, better to
wait before you eat.
Get yourself calm and groundedas much as possible and then
have the meal, even if it ishours later.
(16:35):
Do what you can to regroundbefore you eat.
And so recent research hastaught us that gut microbiota
and the gut brain accesssupports this, supports the idea
that your digestive fire, agni,is central to the idea of
(16:57):
digestion.
Poor digestion is said to be theroot of most illnesses.
Think about that Poor digestion.
So we have a lot of things thatkind of get stuck in our gut,
so to speak, that we haven'tfully digested.
Whether it's emotional orwhether it is food related.
(17:21):
Either way, that poor digestionmay be behind a lot of the
illness that we may be suffering, and the studies show that our
digestion influences ourimmunity, our mood and
inflammation.
Ayurvedic practices like warmfood, spices of a particular
(17:46):
type and mindful eating supporthealthy gut flora.
So these are some of the thingsthat Ayurveda taught me in
order to heal from my disorderedeating patterns, as well as how
to get my gut back on track,because even though I was no
(18:07):
longer practicing my eatingdisorder it's probably now been
20 years disorder, it's probablynow been 20 years I had a long
way to go to heal my gut, healmy digestive system, and
Ayurveda helped me with that.
So science is echoing Ayurveda.
How you digest is how you feel.
(18:39):
And the third area whereAyurveda has really stood out
from a research standpoint ispersonalized medicine and dosha
typing.
So Ayurvedic systems of doshasis a form of personalized
medicine.
There are many practitionersand this is all based on
thousands of years of research,basically before we even had
that term meaning medicine.
A 2015 study in Nature showeddosha types correlate with
(19:04):
genetic expression patterns.
Think about that.
Doshas that were identified andprescribed thousands of years
ago now are being aligned andshown to match genetic
expression patterns.
I think this is incredible howvata, pitta and kapha types have
(19:28):
distinct biological markers.
Ayurveda understoodconstitution and customization
long before modern science did.
We're finally catching up.
It really blows my mind howthis stuff that was created
(19:50):
based on nature over 5,000 yearsago has stood the test of time.
It's truly the only sciencethat has, quite frankly, all
right.
So now I want to give you somepractices for realignment.
Whether you've studied Ayurvedaor not, you can begin listening
(20:11):
to your body and exploring yourelements.
So I want to give you a fewjournaling questions to explore
in your own time, and we'll putthese attached to this episode
so that you can reference it.
But listen and ponder these.
The first one is which of thefive elements and ponder these.
(20:34):
The first one is which of thefive elements earth, water, fire
, air, ether do you feel mostconnected to right now?
Which of those?
Don't overthink it, justidentify it.
And then, where in your lifeare you feeling imbalanced?
(20:58):
Through habits, people likerelationships, or maybe your
belief system?
It's important to get clearthere.
And then, thirdly, what does abalanced life feel like in your
body?
Have you ever felt it?
Could you imagine what thatmight be like for you?
Could you imagine what thatmight be like for you?
So, with those prompts, thatwill begin maybe creating some
(21:20):
curiosity within you to want toseek more information about this
.
So here's an affirmation I wantyou to just close your eyes for
just a moment, take a long,slow, deep breath with me, in
through the nose, exhale outthrough the mouth.
Just let your body settle inand this information sink into
you.
As I say this affirmation I ammade of earth, water, fire, air
(21:44):
and space.
My body is wise.
My spirit is clear.
I release what pulls me out ofbalance and return to what
restores me.
Let those words wash over you,Let them sink in through every
tissue of your being and knowthat when we align with nature,
(22:08):
we align with life.
So if something stirred you intoday's episode a remembering
life, so if something stirredyou in today's episode a
remembering, a curiosity, adesire for more balance I want
you to know Ayurveda is a gentle, powerful path to lead you back
(22:28):
to who you always were.
It's not a detour, it is thepath, and if you'd like to
explore more of this, understandmore about doshas or receive
personalized guidance onAyurvedic living, I'd love to
support you.
Reach out to me, either throughthis episode or you can email
(22:52):
me directly at Anna atAnnaMcBridecom, and let's set up
a moment where we can talkabout this, because this is
something I'm very passionateabout and want to be able to
provide more information on toyou and, of course, share it
with anyone you think that mightbenefit from knowing more about
how to balance themselves,balance their life.
(23:15):
Thank you for being a part oftoday's episode of she Asked,
where healing meets practicalhope.
Until soon, be well.
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