WOMEN IN WELLNESS: Claire Ragozzino

In at the moment’s upside-down world, there’s nothing extra essential than genuine connections with individuals who may help us domesticate self-care. For the following 3 months, I’m interviewing three superb girls in wellness who will all be becoming a member of us on our September Restore & Reboot Massive Sky Yoga Retreat in Montana, and provoking us with their instructing items.

Q: For the newbies, what's Ayurveda in a nut shell?

Ayurveda is the indigenous medical system of India that views well being via an all-encompassing lens, trying on the body-mind-spirit in relationship to nature.

Ayurveda means “the knowledge of life and longevity,” or one other translation I get pleasure from, “the art of living.”

It teaches us how you can gracefully take care of ourselves via the numerous seasons and phases of life.

Q: How did you uncover Ayurveda, and what rang so true that you just have been led to make it your life’s work?

I used to be in my teenagers after I first found it, flipping via the pages of Dr. Vasant Lad’s primer, Ayurveda: The Science of Self-Therapeutic. Having struggled with digestive challenges since I used to be a younger woman, I began to look to meals first to heal my physique.

But for years, I jumped from one eating regimen, cleanse, superfood and complement to the following, in search of the solutions exterior of myself and at all times feeling like one thing was lacking.

I used to be within the cycle many people are within the fashionable world, sampling every thing like a buffet, however by no means going deep into one subject. The metaphor of digging one effectively deep till you discover water actually got here to life for me in my early twenties, and that’s after I determined to not solely examine Ayurveda as a idea, however to truly stay and embody it in day by day follow and dedicate my work to this path. From there, I started to really feel higher, belief myself and expertise what well being actually means.

I’ve been practising Yoga and Ayurveda since 2009, and dealing professionally on this path for the previous decade.

Q: Many yoginis haven’t heard of Ayurveda. Why is “yoga’s sister science” essential in a day by day self-care system? How can incorporating Ayurveda improve your yoga follow? What's the connection between Ayurveda and asana?

Yoga is taken into account to be Ayurveda’s sister science, with an analogous timeline of growth. Many know yoga within the fashionable West as a bodily follow, a exercise for staying in form.

Nevertheless, till lately, yoga was primarily a follow for religious liberation, solely outlining a handful of postures for meditation. It wasn’t till the early 1900s that yoga turned a extra embodied follow and began to merge with Ayurveda as a method of supporting the physique, thoughts, and spirit as an interconnected entire.

Yoga can be utilized as a remedy (Cikitsā) to forestall and deal with illness. As a result of the thoughts influences the physique, yoga’s intention is just not solely to carry energy and vitality again to the bodily physique but additionally to revive the thoughts again to its sattvic state. Yoga as a remedy is just not a one-size-fits-all or all-the-time strategy.

Slightly, yoga will be practiced in accordance along with your distinctive sort and wishes, a therapeutic device to steadiness the doshas and work with totally different postures and breath via the seasons. So if you happen to’re experiencing sure imbalances, like an excessive amount of warmth or scorching flashes, digestive upsets or nervousness, you may learn to use totally different postures and respiration strategies to heal these illnesses and shift your inner state.

That is what I train in my book and in my Living Ayurveda Immersion.

Q: Ayurveda could be a bit intimidating. I used to be at all times drawn to it in my yoga instructor trainings, nevertheless it was your stunning e book Dwelling Ayurveda that basically drew me in. What's the essence of Ayurveda that's most interesting to girls at the moment?

What I really like about Ayurveda is that it isn't a fad or a development; it’s a time-tested science that applies to all cultures, locations, and phases of life. It’s information we will take with us irrespective of the place we come from or the place we're, and it might probably equip us with higher self-knowledge to information us to the place we wish to go.

If we decelerate sufficient and learn to hear, the solutions to vibrant well being will be discovered throughout us.

I discover this very empowering. And in a time the place we don’t know who to belief with regard to our well being, what an unimaginable device to take care of ourselves and our households.

It’s really easy to lose contact with what meals are in season when, since we will get virtually any meals, any time at our fashionable groceries.

Q: Why is consuming seasonally one of many pillars of Ayurveda?

An Ayurvedic eating regimen focuses on unprocessed, entire meals substances, cooked with digestive supporting spices, and ready and eaten with an angle of affection. An Ayurvedic meal consists of the six tastes—candy, bitter, salty, bitter, pungent and astringent—to nourish all of the tissue layers of the physique and promote satisfaction.

Consuming seasonally is an important follow, as a result of it yokes us with the environment and current second wants.

Because the seasons shift, we choose meals and tastes that steadiness the dominant parts of that season. For instance, the pungent, salty and bitter tastes are composed of the hearth component, so their impact is heating to the physique. In summertime, we restrict the quantity of heating substances we eat to steadiness the already current warmth within the surroundings. As a result of like will increase like, we wish to eat meals that can calm and funky extra fireplace in summer season moderately than enhance it.

Equally, in case you are experiencing an imbalance of warmth in your physique, irrespective of the season, you wish to eat a eating regimen that can cut back this extra warmth, not provoke it.

We're at all times making an attempt to make use of meals deliberately to nurture steadiness inside ourselves. Ayurvedic rules will be utilized to any fashion of delicacies. Whereas Ayurveda’s roots hint again to India, the ideas will be utilized cross-culturally. We use the information of a meals’s properties (whether or not it's heating or cooling, constructing or lightening), to create dishes with balanced tastes and desired results.

There isn't any one eating regimen or menu plan that may match everybody, as every particular person has a singular physique sort, digestive capability, and wishes, relying on their structure, stage of life, and surroundings.

Typically, this may increasingly embody meat or different animal merchandise. An Ayurvedic eating regimen doesn’t completely imply a vegetarian eating regimen, although lots of the dishes incorporate vegetation because the foundational elements (legumes, entire grains, nuts, seeds, vegatables and fruits) cooked in quite a lot of pleasant methods.

Should you needed to decide just one Ayurvedic follow that you may’t stay with out, what would it not be?

Abhyanga. Palms down.

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Claire Ragozzino is a licensed yoga teacher and Ayurvedic practitioner with a background in holistic vitamin and pure cooking. Her work is devoted to bringing yoga, Ayurveda, and vitamin to a contemporary life-style. She is the writer of the favored web site, Vidya Dwelling, and likewise writes and pictures for on-line and print publications surrounding subjects of meals, tradition, and our relationship to nature. Her first e book, Dwelling Ayurveda, presents a complete Ayurvedic cookbook and life-style information. Claire works with purchasers across the globe and leads immersive workshops and retreats.

www.vidyaliving.com
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Images from Dwelling Ayurveda: Nourishing Physique & Thoughts via Seasonal Recipes,
Rituals and Yoga © Claire Ragozzino, 2020. Copyright © Claire Ragozzino. Reprinted by permission of the writer, Roost Books. www.roostbooks.com.