On digesting..

I’ve been a bit radio silent lately. The last 8 weeks have been a lot to digest. The best way I can describe how I have been feeling is emotionally constipated.. as a teacher and student of Ayurveda, this is not such a strange analogy.. Here’s what I mean…

I am personally quite good at responding to immediate crisis and making the most of it. I usually just shift my attention to create a new project - in this case a virtual retreat, mini Ayurveda course and being a regular face in the lives of the students and loved ones most dear to me. I try to not live a Corona virus all day every day kind of existence, but it’s hard not to feel the collective pain of so much suffering - physically, emotionally and economically. And I don’t think zoning this out is desireable. People we know, and people we don’t know, all across the globe have lost jobs and businesses, and loved ones. We have all suffered , in ways that may feel big or may feel small to others. It’s all suffering.

I spoke with a private student the other day about this. Like me, she, too had experienced her own losses which she considered “not so bad” - in income and security, inability to see her family and loved ones, feeling cut off from her community and just the regular old normalcy of taking a yoga class, grabbing a coffee or enjoying a weekend away. These losses may seem small in comparison to what they could be. Some lose family members, their entire means of employment or got really sick themselves after all. It is easy to feel that we have no reason to complain. No reason to grieve… as things could have been a lot worse.

While it is probably always true that things could be worse, emotions don’t really turn on or off based on hierarchy where some are deserving of feeling how they feel and others are not. In Ayurveda, if we don’t process our own feelings, we develop a kind of indigestion (hence the constipation analogy:)). It is called ama. You have likely read about it my newsletters or Instagram blogs.

Ama means undigested or toxicity. We often think of ama as being purely physical - like if we eat too much or too late or simply at the wrong times, we don’t have the digestive capacity to break down everything that was put in. Like over Christmas time or after an indulgent holiday. But ama is not just physical. We take in from the outside into the inside far more than just food. We take in conversations at work and at home, sights and smells as we walk about in the world, sights, sounds and impressions from news and social media. We take in the behaviors of others towards us and others. And how we feel about all of these things.

We have taken in quite a lot over the last few months, haven’t we? Just like food, anything we take in through 1 of our 5 senses needs to be digested and assimilated or eliminated or it hangs out in our body as ama. Physical, mental or emotional ama. Feelings that aren’t felt or expressed. Grief that is pushed down and ignored. Addiction to news and social media updates filled with sadness and suffering. This all leads to a kind of stuck-ness internally. Ama, whether physical, mental or emotional, is the root cause of disease in Ayurveda. It can make us sick some day down the road - digestive distress, rashes or skin disorders, burnouts and depressions, autoimmune disorders and even serious illnesses like cancer, at their root, are all due to ama in Ayurveda.

I don’t say that to freak anyone out, but instead as a gentle reminder to you, me, and us, that we are experiencing a collective trauma. For many of us there are great gains in terms of insights, times in nature, time with family, reconnecting to loved ones from afar, and the like. But there are also huge losses and pain, in our own backyard or in our collective one. In the words of my dear teacher Jack Kornfield,

“Grief is one of the heart’s natural responses to loss. When we grieve we allow ourselves to feel the truth of our pain. By our willingness to mourn, we slowly acknowledge, integrate, and accept the truth of our losses. Sometimes the best way to let go is to grieve”

Perhaps the best way to get unstuck and move forward with all we have gained is actually to let ourselves grieve. Cheers to moving forward..