On Ayurveda, Imbalance, and the Body’s Own Wisdom

​The once fringe, dismissed idea of the “mind, body, spirit connection” is now a common phrase in our cultural milieu — but in some ways, the commercialization and popularization of the concept has obscured its profound significance. What does it really mean to cultivate balance in one’s mind, body, and spirit? How are the three interdependent?

​One exploration of this balance can be found in Ayurveda, a holistic medicine tradition that emerged in India thousands of years ago. Ayurveda holds that health is inseparable from the rhythms of nature and how we eat, and whether daily life moves with or against the natural cycles around us. A major concept in the ayurvedic tradition is that the cosmos including the planets has an influence on our health, a belief that is held by many indigenous cultures of the earth, and that we can be out of pace with the circadian rhythm and natural forces. The Sun being a planetary influence on our body is represented by Sanskrit word “agni,” the digestive fire that governs how well the body digests food early in the day (when the sun is at its strongest). When agni weakens (as the sun goes down or day goes into night time) and digestive powers are less, what’s left is undigested foods, causing toxins to accumulate in the body, and this can be responsible for the slow formation of chronic illnesses and the start of the inflammation process in the  body.

Stephanie Wright, Ayurvedic chef and instructor of our upcoming Ayurvedic cooking workshop, knows the detrimental effects of toxins in the body from personal experience. In 2020, Stephanie was diagnosed with alopecia and lost all her hair. At the time, she was experiencing significant mental stress as she pushed herself to “make it” as a chef the way she had in her former fast-paced media career: working seven days a week and forfeiting extra time for rest. Rather than seeing her alopecia as a random misfortune to add to the stress, she realized that it was her body’s attempt to prioritize essential nutrients to go towards organ functions rather than hair growth during stress, illness, and nutrient shortages. Stephanie grew all her hair back through the practice of Ayurvedic cooking.

To meet the demands of modern life, we often try to push harder, keep up, and make it work. But the body is often attuned to a deeper wisdom and tries to wake us up to the true path of healing by causing remarkable changes we cannot ignore so we can take time to repair what we have lost. 

In her Sept. 26th workshop on Ayurvedic cooking, Stephanie Wright will guide participants through the key ideas of how Ayurveda can change imbalances in our body, and  how it welcomes specific food combinations, tastes, and recipes, so that we, like she did, can reverse inflammation in our body by using Ayurvedic cooking as our best tool for health.