My Journey with Ayurveda

My relationship with Ayurveda began during the 4 years I lived in India.

In 2008, I learned the basics of Ayurveda for cooking in order to become a cook at the monastery I was living in, located in West Bengal, India.

In 2011, traveling around India, I contracted a serious disease without knowing that what started as a cough and weakness would become a two-month downward spiral into a severe health crisis.

Delirious, and too weak to lift my body off the floor, death felt like it was circling-in for me. I was treated with antibiotics in the later stages of the disease, and while on the other side of danger, my once healthy, youthful body was an emaciated shell of what it once was. I was too weak to travel back to the United States.

My care was entrusted to an Ayurvedic Doctor who prescribed Panchakarma treatments of warm oil massage, inhalation of herbal-smokes, steam baths, medicated enemas, herbal formulations, and an easily digestible diet. Within a week, I was infused with new life and felt enough vigor to make journey back to the States. In retrospect, I cannot imagine what would have happened to me if I had not received Ayurvedic care at this pivotal junction.

The disease left my immunity compromised, and symptoms of systemic weakness displayed as lingering fatigue and a rash on my face. Western medicine offered steroid creams to suppress the rash’s appearance, and offered no tangible solution to the fatigue. My youth offered enough vitality to continue living with little regard for the deficit my body was clearly facing.

I moved to Florida to live near my family and attend the local college. I taught yoga classes & cooked meals at the Ayurveda Health Retreat of Alachua. After attaining my Degree in Health Sciences I felt disenchanted with modern, allopathic medicine. There seemed to be a deficit of healthcare practitioners who themselves were living an uplifting & healthy lifestyle. In fact, some of their diets & habits seemed contrary to their own teachings.

My health seemed to hold-up until I received a routine oral surgery almost a decade after the health-crisis I suffered in India. My body simply did not have the resources needed to handle to procedure. I awoke from the surgery’s anesthesia with crippling, unexplained nerve pain in my jaw that would not let up. Months later, MRIs, CT scans and multiple specialists could offer no answers.

I was diagnosed with Trigeminal Neuralgia. Pain gripped my life for the majority of two years. Even the heaviest pain medications could not appease it. It was a major crisis to contend with.

My search lead me full circle to learn from and take guidance from Dr. Jayarajan Kodikannath of Kerala Ayurveda Academy and other great teachers like Dr Vasant Lad. Under Dr Jayarajan’s careful guidance I studied 3 years and graduated as an Ayurvedic Practitioner in 2018. Nothing spurs the will to study and learn as effectively as being fueled by pain. For that, I am very grateful. After two years of struggling with acute daily pain, I had successfully freed myself of it through diet, lifestyle and Ayurvedic herbal protocols given to me by my teachers.