Go to the Gunas!

Photo courtesy of YATNA/Yoga as Therapy North America

Barely had I returned from Ithaca when I had to leave for Nashville and module #3 of my yoga therapy training.  This time around, we spent most of the nine days learning about Ayurveda, a sister science/art to yoga.  The teaching was led by Elizabeth Cunningham-Bossart, who managed to make this highly complex topic accessible to us - offering us just the right amount of information so that we can use some Ayurvedic tools to help us in our yoga therapy practice.

Some aspects of the Ayurvedic model seem to be counter-intuitive and go against commonly held beliefs about health.  For example, in Ayurveda, most people should not ever do a juice cleanse and many of us should not be eating salads, raw veggies or fish everyday.  But when you look closely, as we did, statements like that make a lot more sense.  We have two doctors and two other Western medically-trained people in our course.  They repeatedly confirmed that the Western model of medicine was just beginning to notice and confirm many of the things that have been known and studied by Ayurvedic doctors for millennia.

It felt a little disjointed to go from intensive art making to intensive yoga therapy training but I have faith that everything will fall into place as it should.  Meanwhile, it was wonderful to spend all that time with such a lovely group of caring people.  My love and gratitude to them all!