HeyMonicaB

Last weekend (July 16th & 17th) in Los Angeles there were severe warnings about “carmageddon.” Basically they were closing down a stretch of the 405 freeway for the weekend to do some construction work on the bridge as part of a project to widen the freeway. The media warned about it for several weeks and told everyone to stay home because 500,000 cars were going to be rerouted to different freeways and side streets over 2 days. In LA, that’s crazy!!

It’s no surprise that when a major street or thorough fare closes completely or goes down to one lane, it messes up the surrounding streets as well. Well, the same happens in our bodies (dun dun dun)! We have thousands of vertical channels that go from head to toe throughout our entire body. Ayurveda calls them srotas (there are 14 – think of these as big channels, like a freeway) or nadis (there are 72,000 – think of them as side streets). This is why Ayurveda uses massage and acupressure – because it opens and clears channels! This is exactly how acupuncture works too. Puncturing or pressing on certain areas of the body help these channels respond and release any clog they are holding. It also helps to reroute any channels that have gone wonky and are flowing into the wrong places.

It makes sense then when we have some sort of ailment, pain, or imbalance that we have to look at the root cause of where the pain is coming from. Just because there is a clog (imbalance) on street A, doesn’t mean we treat street A. If street B is closed, causing traffic to overflow onto street A, we have to fix street B first. Seeking out the root cause is why Ayurveda is so effective in healing. Western medicine looks at street A and tries to fix that first, which is why often times people end up on several medications because one medication causes a side effect. An example of a side effect would be if we divert traffic from street A (cause that’s where the clog is)  to street C, to solve our street A problem. BUT!! The clog on street B is still there and now there is also a clog on street C. So we might divert traffic from street C to street D which also causes back up there. As you can see, it can go on and on.

Looking at this from the other side, if we were to open up the lanes on street B, this would allow ALL the streets to remain open and traffic to run smoothly. Same with our bods!!

My friendlies, this is why when talking to your Ayurvedic Practitioner really look deep and give all the information about your diet, lifestyle, past traumas, etc., We have to find out where the clog is. With that we can begin to use our therapies to open and unclog channels so that our bods begin to flow in true harmony. It’s a new way of thinking, isn’t it? And, isn’t always the best news (like when margaritas give you heartburn in summer), but it is the only thing that fixes the true problem. Only then do we have the empowerment to learn what shakes us and what keeps us humming along. Once we get the hang of it, we will choose the humming route over and over :) I promise!!

(turns out that everybody stayed home so there was no traffic, no carmageddon :)