Consciously or unconsciously we have different approaches to life. Some go with the flow; others take the bull by the horns. I’m a bull by the horns kind of gal. I’m going to tell you a bit about myself for you to better understand the context for Body Thrive.
I was not a body thriving kind of kid. My earliest memories include migraines and constipation. It was the late-70’s in American and my parents didn’t know anything about holistic medicine. Allopathy couldn’t help me. By my teen years, allergies piled into the mix. I come from an active, athletic family. We just tried to ignore my chronic body issues as best we could and hope they would go away. They didn’t.
In high school I co-founded a group, a student non-profit of sorts, which continues to this very day named Students Concerned About Tomorrow. My best friend and I found that none of the after school groups were up our alley – they were too nice and not real world enough, so we started our own. Soon we were going to meetings with other kids like us from the state – kids who cared about the future of society, the future of our planet. We met with local leaders and started recycling in our school district and celebrating Earth Day. It was 1989 and I was 16. I started begging my mom to shop at Bread & Circus, which later became Whole Foods.
After college I went to Washington DC to help with the global warming problem. After a year in a highly sought after non-profit internship that was turning into job, I changed my mind. Instead of focusing on the economic and political issues I changed my focus to developing human consciousness and holistic wellness. I figured if humans were too stupid to kill their planet, they could start by taking better care of their bodies. I felt the planet was my body, but I got that most people didn’t. I left DC and went to snowboard in Idaho and figure out the next phase of my life’s work. I was 23.
In Idaho I tore my knee. I had surgery. I ended up post-op with a yoga teacher who did myofascial release to expedite my healing. She let me come to her yoga classes on my crutches.
I researched human consciousness, human development and healing systems. I kept running into Ayurveda. I decided to go to Ayurveda school. In Ayurveda school I started to detox my body. For the first time in my life the migraines, allergies, and constipation lessened. I started to experience control over how I could feel. Now, it seems stupidly obvious. Then, it was a pivotal breakthrough.
Fast forward 15 years of schooling and working as an Ayurvedic practitioner and Yoga teacher. In the process of my work I realize that most of my clients need to detox their habits, their kitchen, their bodies, their minds, their emotions. In the process of my work I realize my clients need body thrive education – the nuts and bolts of Ayurveda – as much as they need treatment through diet, herbal drugs, and body therapies. In the process of my work I realize our approach to healing, to medicine, to raising families needs to focus on basic holistic education and group practice.
I realize all this through trial and error. I like to theorize with the best of them, but like I said, I’m an action-taker and an innovator. I learned most of what you’ll read here through leading worldwide course communities over the past 8 years. The being in a group part of health evolution is huge. In part, that is why working with exclusively with a doctor or wellness practitioner will always short-change your evolution. But, we’ll get into that later.