Study YOGA

 

FREE Online Summit

APRIL 29 – MAY 03, 2024

Receive profound teachings from the yogic wisdom traditions that thrust you into digestible depths, result in personal revelations, and are anchored in authenticity.

TRANSCRIPT

LAURA PLUMB

Amy:

Welcome to the Study Yoga Online Summit. If you are seeking beyond the sea of superficial yoga that is flooding your feed, or yearning for insightful conversations and community, or are a sincere seeker devoted to the depths of studentship, then the Study Yoga Masterclass series is the nectar that you need. Author of the bestselling book, Ayurveda Cooking for Beginners, and creator of numerous courses and trainings on Ayurveda, Laura Plum promotes sacred, sumptuous living through the Vedic sciences with decades of study in yoga, Ayurveda, Vedic astrology, Vedanta, herbal medicine, and more. A n international educator, she is widely recognized for understanding and sharing the deeper principles of various Vedic traditions, while making them accessible and relevant to modern life. So wonderful to be chatting with you again. Laura. Welcome. Welcome.

Laura:

Thank you so much, Amy. What a beautiful opening for your summit. So poetic and inviting. Thank you.

Amy:

One thing that I feel, Laura, that is so captivating about you is your warmth and your nourishing energy throughout all that you do and that you create and that you share. And with that in mind, today we are delving into yoga through the lens of Ayurveda. And I think it’s worth prefacing that we are mostly going to be speaking, I suppose, to postural yoga and the more tangible practices such as pranayama. So I would love to invite you to start by shedding some light on the Ayurvedic concepts of Rtu Sandhi and Rtu Charya to set up some context. What are these principles that are woven through life for all of us?

Laura:

Oh, such a good deep question. How much time have we really got? My goodness. I mean, I think one of the beautiful things about the ancient Vedic sages is they really understood the time-space continuum. They understood that time is real and time is an illusion, right? But they understood that part of our Sanatana dharma. The dharma, I mean, a whole other story. I know you’ll probably go into it with somebody else, but what does yoga come out of? It emerges from that culture of the Sanatana Dharma. And that dharma is this universal dharma that we are going to live according to natural law, that we’re going to live according to cosmic law. And it moves in time. And as one of my teachers once asked us, in a world that has ceaselessly spinning ,endlessly cyclical, where is pause? Where is the rest that we need to recover?

The earth is always spinning on its axis. It’s always spinning around the sun. The moon is spinning around the earth, and all these planets are spinning around the sun as well. In our neighborhood, everything is always spinning. Time is always marching onward. And so what Ayurveda is teaching us is align with that time, align with that march, align with that movement. And then you have flow, then you have ease, then you have peace, and then you have healing and wholeness. And so Ayurveda really is the science of this flow, of this cyclical nature, of nature’s cycles and remembering that we too are nature. We too have these cycles, right? We have the cycle of night and day built into us. People who won the Nobel Peace Prize, no, sorry, prize in chemistry in 2017, was because they found the molecule of our chronobiology.

They found that within us, that is designed to go in alignment with nature. It’s all well and good, it’s romantic and beautiful to say, as we ayurvedics do, that nature is this wondrous thing. It’s beautiful, bountiful, mighty and majestic. And wow, you too are nature. Get a lot of that. Ha! I don’t know what we’re busy thinking we are, ’cause I don’t think, we think we’re robots or cars, but I think we do forget that we are nature. And that means that we can be every bit as fierce and ferocious as a wild storm, but also every bit as gentle and beautiful, that we have our spring, we have our freedom and play of summer. We have that autumn where we’re sort of retracting losing our leaves, coming within, and we need to have a winter. We have to rest. So the essence of a Ayurveda is learning to live accordingly.

According to Ritucharya, Ritu Sandhi. Sandhi is a beautiful word, by the way. That has to do with the breaks and things, right? It means the joints and the junctures. In England, they used to, you would get on the tube, you would arrive at your station, there would be a lady sitting there, and she would suddenly stand up and she would say, as the doors open, mind the gap. And I think Ayurveda is also telling us to mind the gap, mind the gap. The gap in our joints. Those are places of vulnerability, the gap in the seasons, even the gaps in our lives, the early teen years, the menopause years, these are gap years. And these are times that we need to be mindful. There are times of vulnerability. The doshas accumulate in the gaps. So we can get doshas accumulating in our joints. We can get doshas accumulating in our periods of life where we’re going through transition.

And then of course, we all have these personal cycles and these personal transitions. Acharya is, as one of my teachers, TKV Desikchar used to say, it’s not Buddha who’s going to find you your way home. It’s not Buddha who’s going to find the path. Buddha was born enlightened. Find yourself an Acharya. You’re an Acharya, Amy. Somebody who’s living these practices, doing these things every single day. So Dinacharya, DI gives us our word diurnal, right? Most of our English language words don’t just go back to Latin and Greek. They go all the way back to Sanskrit. That beautiful diurnal gives us Dinacharya. Dinacharya is our daily acharyas: What we’re going to do every single day, those habits that we form, those rhythms that we follow, that align us to nature and help us live a life of peace and ease, abundance, a life that I describe as sacred and sumptuous because it’s beautiful when it’s sacred, but it also wants to be sumptuous, right?

Ayurveda reminds you: focus on what nourishes you and build that into your daily life. And then it’s as simple as brushing your teeth. How many people started out their life, were born with a toothbrush in their mouth? No, no one. You had to learn to do it. And somebody was probably telling you every single day, have you brushed your teeth? Can you brush your teeth? Now? Let’s go brush your teeth. But eventually it became a habit. And now I think most people wouldn’t go a day without brushing their teeth. Some people two or three times a day, it doesn’t feel right. And that’s what Ayurveda is seeking for all of us, is to establish certain habits that will align us with nature, that will help us be part of the rhythms that at a certain point become second nature and we wouldn’t do without. I hope that helps.

Amy:

I could just let you riff and just keep talking. I’m very contented listening to you. It’s absolutely captivating. But yes, I think this is, I mean, you’ve said it so beautifully, I can’t even compare. But I suppose as someone who, I’ve been teaching now for about, I think over 13 years teaching yoga, and something that I see is often lacking is this seasonal approach with respect to how we teach our students and how we can support them in aligning them with what’s going on around. Rather than giving people what they want or just doing the same thing over and over, but actually curating… there’s so much energy expended on theming classes and sequences in the yoga context,wWhat’s the peak pose or what’s the philosophical theme? And we don’t have to get that creative because nature is already offering us some direction that we can use as inspiration and a foundation for what we teach and what we obviously personally practice and how our sadhana is going to adapt and evolve and change. But yeah, like you said earlier, there is this sort of disconnect. But yoga brings us to that place where we can, I guess, wake up a little to, oh yeah, that’s right. I am nature. I’m part of nature, and how can my practices reflect that? And in turn, again, as you said, it’s only going to nourish us and support us. And it just proves that yoga and ayurveda are so intrinsically intertwined.

Laura:

Yes, so much absolute sister sciences. Ayurveda and yoga, both emerge arise from the same root source of the Vedas. I often think that yoga is all about seeking balance… the pranic channels, the energy in the body, we want to bring into harmony and balance so that we can transcend, so that we can have a transcendental experience of knowing who we are beyond the body. Ayurveda is seeking balance too, balancing the harmonies and harmonizing the energies of the body in this case so that we can heal because any living organism brought to homeostasis, balance or harmony can naturally and spontaneously heal itself. So similar practices, similar theories with slightly different goals. But I also have always said, and I used to say this when we had our own studio and did a yoga teacher training, that I think that when yoga came to the west, what we really might’ve called it was Ayurveda.

Now it’s not as easy to say, I’m going to the Ayurveda studio to go do some Ayurveda. But mostly what people are going for when they go to yoga is actually Ayurveda. They’re either going for exercise, which is strengthening the body, or they’re going to balance the mind or the energies, which is Ayurveda. And if your goal from that session is not Self-realization, it’s not really yoga, it’s Ayurveda. If you’re going, because your doctor said yoga would probably help you with this, you need to stretch. You need to breathe deep. It’ll help you with your stress, with your bad knee, with your this or your that. Your headache, your broken heart. That’s healing. And that’s Ayurveda. Now, Ayurveda does employ asana, pranayama, mantra, meditation towards healing. So actually what most people are doing in a yoga studio is technically Ayurveda. It’s okay because hopefully it will cause us to pause long enough, bring our presence sufficient enough that at some point we might say, hey and by the way, I would like to know what’s out beyond my body, what’s out beyond my selfish desires. I would like to know what’s over the fence in the field beyond. So that’s great. That inspires the deeper seeking.

Amy:

Yeah, I love that very much. And I often think of yoga, in the context of it being a path or a set of practices and techniques that we’re working with and philosophies, I always think of it as a vehicle of some kind. And then Ayurveda, is the mechanic tending to that vehicle, or perhaps the vehicle’s taking us toward self-realization toward the state of yoga, but we need the mechanic, the ayurveda to keep the vessel strong and healthy so that we can progress along the path to get to that state. Should we direct ourselves that way.

Laura:

I absolutely agree with that. And in that sense, you also emphasize that they’re still sister sciences helping and supporting each other. I just think that Ayurveda is less mechanical than that. Ayurveda is more… if allopathic medicine is based on molecules and chemistry, ayurvedic medicine is based on physics. It’s a study of energy. It’s a study of things in flow. It’s a study of dynamics and dynamic relationships. And in that sense, I often think of Ayurveda as a river. We’re really studying the flow, but yoga is also a river, right? That’s the river that takes us to the ocean of our infinite consciousness. So Ayurveda is just the river, ayurveda is the flow and how things flow. Yoga’s like, let’s see how far we can ride this thing. Let’s see if we can take it all the way.

Amy:

I always love your metaphors. I remember it in our podcast conversation, there was just so much metaphor, and that’s such a perfect way to share teachings, and that always comes through you in such an eloquent, perfect, perfect way. And so with this foundation of seasonality in mind, going back to that Ayurvedic understanding of being in alignment with the seasons, yoga then evidently becomes a little bit more “prescriptive”, let’s say, it’s a bit of a dry word. So how can we intentionally use that insight to curate how we apply ourselves within yoga? What might be some practical examples?

Laura:

Okay, hold me to the practical examples, but if you don’t mind, I’d like to insert something.

Amy:

Great.

Laura:

Okay. I think it’s where your mind is a lot as well. My mind is often in this space of Sanskrit, stop me in the middle of the street and ask me what I’m thinking. I’m probably going to be chanting something. You just get to a place where your mind is just doing that. Why does that matter? Because at the end of the day, my teacher, who is my teacher of Jyotish, my teacher of Vedanta, my teacher of some basic Ayurveda, he is now describing himself as a Sanskrit scholar. At the end of the day, it’s like the beginning and the end is Sanskrit because the language of Sanskrit is such a beautiful language of wholeness. And the more that we’re chanting it, the more that we’re creating a whole brain. What is a brahmacharya phase of life? Your first 28 years you’re meant to be in study, and they’re mostly chanting and chanting and chanting to create a brain, because neuroscientists have now discovered that it takes 28 years for the human brain to fully develop.

So I love what you just said. This is what I’m coming back to. I love what you said about prescriptive. Sounds a bit dry. For me, the word “discipline” when I was starting out in yoga sounded a bit dry. I feel like my whole life was all about discipline. And so I find that it is very valuable. It’s medicinal to find the language. That’s why people will say oh Laura you’re so poetic because the language matters. The language is more than meaning. It is meaning, and the meaning matters. What are we pointing to? What are we talking about? But also the sound vibration of it matters. So I love the word ritual. I love the word, yes. If we focus on the seasons and the seasonal changes, we can make our yoga more like a ritual, more like something that feels, as it becomes a little cooler, it becomes a bit windier, it becomes a bit warmer, it becomes a bit wetter.

We can make these adaptations, we can adjust. And again, my teacher of yoga was TKV Desikachar. His father, Krishnamacharya, was also a great Ayurvedic. He came from a long lineage of Ayurvedic Vaidyas, and so Desikachar would wake up every day, every day he did yoga. Every day he did his meditation. But what did he do each day? He didn’t do the same thing every day. He woke up, noticed how he was feeling, put a finger in the air. The wind is coming from the northwest. I think I’ll go this way. I mean, he would tell you: on this day, it was very wet. I decided I was going to do a very brisk walk and then come home and do some strong pranayama, bhastrika breathing. But this other day, I wake up feeling lazy and foggy. He’d say, I did 12 sun salutations first thing.

So which order he did it, which pranayamas he did, which yogas he did, right? Did he do fast, strong? Okay. Yeah. He did that on the day where he was feeling heavy, lethargic or outside the weather was heavy, wet. I think it’s very beautiful to get to a place, it takes, I think a lot of commitment to a practice and then a commitment to paying attention, a commitment to dharana, and a commitment to learning by your own direct experience. It’s not to say do nothing. It’s not to say be a dilatant. It’s not to say just throw a party when you wake up, you felt sad. You’re going to stay the course. You’re going to do the thing. You’re going to have that discipline of the practice, but you’re also going to be responding accordingly. It’s very self-loving, right? It’s very self nourishing, even as it’s very healing and it’s very purposeful.

Amy:

Something I want to pick up out of something that you just said is, I guess to highlight a little more as well, is that it’s not also about changing what we do, but it’s the way we apply ourselves to what we do. So our practice, our sadhana, our pranayama, our postural yoga, it might require a different quality of being. How long we’re in a pose, how we’re being in the pose, how much energy we… so the quality of what we’re doing and how we’re applying ourselves is profoundly important as well. And that’s where I think we need to be very attentive to our natural inclination as to how we do things in life, because we can change up the practice, but if the way we are practicing is not serving us, I think is not going to quite have the same effect. And you did touch on that in your examples and saying, am I moving faster? What’s the quality of the movement or the practice? And I just wanted to sort of, I guess, highlight that. So it’s not only adjusting what we are doing, but it’s the way we are being and the way we’re applying ourselves when we’re doing what we’re doing.

Laura:

I feel that the essence of yoga, ayurveda and jyotish, if there’s an essence at all, because it’s so vast and complex and beautiful and extraordinary, the essence is “pay attention”, right? The essence is dharana, right? It’s right there in the middle of the eight limbs. Focus with single pointed concentration on what you’re doing at any given moment. And that exercise or that thing you’re focusing on will reveal itself to you. It’ll give you great wisdom. That’s true in Ayurveda. If we’re looking at the five elements or the 20 attributes, we’re looking at the states of Agni. That’s true for looking at the stars. Go out and watch the moon, see the moon. Don’t just take it from me or read a book. People say to me all the time, how can I know where the moon is? Go outside and look. Pay attention. You learn for yourself.

That’s how the sages learned, and they didn’t do something that you can’t do. That’s what I love so much about the Vedic philosophy or Vedic wisdom. It says to you, you can do this and you can garner, you can grow extraordinary wisdom for yourself in your own life. But all of those subtle adaptations and adjustments we’re going to make, it comes because you’ve paid strong, deep, clear, focused attention. So what I love about yoga, you stand in a pose, you take a deep breath and you focus. You find something to focus on. You focus on your breath, you focus on your mantra, you focus on your fingertips. And as you’re breathing deep and you’re holding that pose, you’re focused and it creates a really strong mind. It cultivates the muscle of your brain and your mind, so that now in your life you’ve got that same focus that you can apply to discernment, to decision making, to choices, to business, to study, to learning to your family.

So it’s what you do that gives back. It’s the giving and the receiving. We’re cultivating a quality, like you said, a quality of being in our practice that gives us a quality of being in our lives that just makes everything better. So if we need healing, we get healing. If we need self-realization, awakening, we get that. Because ultimately who is focusing, who’s paying attention that who that is paying attention, that satchitananda that you are will deliver the results as long as you’re present, it’ll give you whatever you need. It knows what you need. And it’s always there like the ultimate medicine cabinet, like the ultimate guru. You need peace. Here’s peace, you need sweetness. Here’s sweetness. Anytime you come present, fully present in that quiet state of fully paying attention, that which you are provides.

Amy:

And whilst there are universal principles in Ayurveda, an individualized approach is of course incredibly important and highly recommended. And traditionally, I suppose we could say the same applies or applied to yoga. I mean, of course there were group settings and group discourses that in terms of the more physical aspects, whether it be asana, pranayama, mantra and so forth, there was a bit more of that one-on-one like guru-shisya approach and relationship. So as you are a Vedic astrologer, I’m very curious to know how Jyotish may overlap or be some kind of diagnostic tool or guiding system for each individual person that can direct their yoga practice or even their path at large,

Laura:

The individual approach, which absolutely is there in all of yoga, in the history of yoga, right, you’d sit with your yoga teacher and your yoga teacher, he or she would give you an individual practice. Because as with Ayurveda too, it isn’t just the body that we’re addressing. We’re addressing the mind. Is this mind delicate? Is this mind heavy? Is this a mind of tamas? Is it already very sattvic? Now with jyotish, you can see the mind, you can see very clearly. So with jyotish, you can see a tendency to make right choices or not right choices. You can see the tendency for follow through. You can see the tendency of one who may be what we might call a more evolved or enlightened being by their very nature or not. And everyone is here to participate in the creative evolution of consciousness. So all beings perfectly perfect and whole as they are, yet to compassionately see where someone is on their journey is really advantageous.

And jyotish can show us that. With medicine, even nowadays, I sometimes will work with an Ayurvedic consultant who will say, Hey, can you help me with this case, with this client? And especially if there’s disease or imbalance that has a mental or psychological component, we can really, really help them see what’s happening. And Ayurvedics always would consult with the jyotishi or they were also jyotishis, because we can see the tendency towards disease, but also the tendency one will have to follow through on protocols to overcome or the tendency that may be in the person’s chart to simply have to go through this because it is a kind of karma, not that they’re being punished, but that this is something that will help with their awakening. So don’t interrupt that because a very important part of why they’re alive, and there’s many, many ways I could go here, right? Because it’s very complex, but jyotish is, it’s called the eye of the Vedas. It really helps, truly. It helps us see, it helps us see.

Amy:

I find it very fascinating for sure. And something that I particularly, and it’s so simple really in hindsight, but something that I loved learning through you is how one’s Vedic astrology chart, let’s say, can indicate our proclivities as it pertains to Ayurveda, like our dosha and so forth. And even just that can be quite affirming so that we can therefore, of course, take into account seasonality and daily changes and so forth, but the overarching qualities or dominance across our life, particularly if that dosha or those proclivities are very, very clear and pronounced. Obviously it’s a little bit more complex if someone’s a bit more tri-doshic. But yeah, I thought if you’re looking at someone’s chart and there’s this strong pointing toward, say, for example, someone being a pitta dosha, that’s really helpful because it can not only help obviously their diet, their lifestyle, but it can certainly guide their yoga practice in terms of it being more therapeutic and healing and nourishing.

Laura:

And I’m so glad you said that because I wanted to bring that up earlier when you were talking about how not just the ritucharyas, not just the Ritu sandhis, not just understanding what season is it… So I read a book and I learned that in the summer I should eat these kinds of foods, and maybe that means that I should do these kinds of poses and this sort of a thing. But again, each day can change depending on where I live, depending on the climate. Where I live, our winters are very mild winters, in Southern California compared to the rest of the country, and yet they’re very changeable. One day we have rain. The next day we have hot dry air coming in from the desert. The next day it’s maybe cold, it’s cloudy. It’s very, very changeable. So we get a lot of Vata through our winter season.

I just wanted to say, when you talked about, for instance, if it’s a day where maybe we should hold the pose longer, you were mentioning something like that, we can know to hold the pose, or we can know that in a pose we might do some strong breath to build some heat in the body. Then it’s also important to know what your proclivity is. What is your prakriti? What is your doshic tendency? Because if it’s a day where it’s cold and heavy outside and you want to build some inner fire, but if you’re Pitta, then I would say also be gentle. We used to say to our Pitta people, do your practice at about 90% of what you can do, back off your practice a little bit. Pittas tend to charge in. They’re going to build heat and they’re going to build a furnace. They’re going to build a big fire, a wildfire potentially. Now if you’re kapha, go a little further. Go 110% of what you think you can do, push or build more heat. And if you’re vata, take care of the tendency to give up, oh, I feel like doing something different now to go here and there and everywhere. Try to hold it longer, but don’t overwhelm yourself, right? Because Vata tends to be potentially easily overwhelmed. So it’s always about, yes, we want to know what’s the weather today, what’s the season we’re in, but what also is your own tendency and how to manage that, right?

Amy:

Yeah. Great. So with that in mind, I’m just thinking for people who are really finding this a helpful perspective, what do you feel are some useful resources or a couple of yoga related texts or books that you would think are quite essential or important for any sincere seeker on the path of yoga? And why may that be?

Laura:

Well, I still think that one of the all time classics, the Heart of Yoga, is a great book by Desikachar. I think that is a beautiful book. I think it’s very thorough. There’s poses in there, there’s mantra practices in there. And one of the things that I love so much about Desikachar as a teacher is that he brings mantra, breath and postures or body together in one. So we used to like to say in our yoga classes was put your mind in the mantra. The mantra and the breath, and let breath move the body. And that helps with dharana, that helps you bring your attention into what you’re doing. You’ve got to be thinking about what you’re doing. You’ve got to be breathing into what you’re doing. Also, all of our alignment principles and practices were: can you breathe in this pose? Can you breathe yourself into the pose?

And while you’re in the pose, can you make room for a deeper greater breath? If you can’t, then you’re not in right alignment. Your breath and your alignment, right? Alignment is what? To be in harmony with the center of your being in a way. So your breath will be comfortable and it will be able to deepen if you’ve got right alignment. And it can also help you make the adjustments that are going to be unique to you. Right? More and more we’re hearing now, well, that teacher used to always say, internally, rotate this and externally rotate that. And now people are saying, no, that’s completely crazy. Put your leg on your knee when you’re in repose. No, don’t put it on your knee, your foot on your knee. So we get conflicting messages. We get conflicting messages about everything, what to eat, what to do. So again, all of these Vedic sciences are asking you to resource yourself, but to do that properly, you’re going to have to pay attention. So just back to resources, I love TKV Desikachar’s book, the Heart of Yoga. It’s a great book. It’s a classic. It’s still a great book, but there’s also this great teacher you guys have, Donna Farhi. Do you know her?

I think her books are great. She’s a beautiful writer and very thorough as well. I think those are good places to start.

Amy:

Yeah, Donna, she’s a New Zealand based senior yoga teacher. Yeah, and I agree, Heart of Yoga is a profoundly important book, and I think used quite widely with a lot of teachers that go into yoga therapy. And I think it’s really interesting that yoga therapy, if you train formally, let’s say, to be a qualified yoga therapist, you’d study a lot of Ayurveda. And it addresses, or relates to a lot of what we’ve spoken to today, which I think really is important for all yoga teachers to be immersed in that sort of foundational understanding of Ayurveda. I have to add, I think Dr. David Frawley has some good books I particularly love Yoga For Your Type. So I mean, it is very probably, again, dry and prescriptive and it kind of says this asana for this and this pranayama for that. But I think at an entry level, particularly for teachers or students that are cultivating their own home practice, I think that’s a really great place to start.

Laura:

I’m going to say I feel like that’s a book that I felt I should own. I’ve had it on my bookshelf. I just never got anything particularly from the book specifically. Sorry, I love Dr. Frawley. I was going to say the same thing, that his books are great. I think his book on Yoga and Ayurveda is a really, really great book. He does a book on Ayurveda and the Mind. He’s done some beautiful books about the history and the right sort of placing of yoga, where it sits in Vedic wisdom. Yeah, he’s a great scholar. His books are terrific.

Amy:

Yeah, I definitely agree. I’ve got Ayurveda and the Mind and Yoga and Ayurveda as well. I think Yoga and Ayurveda is definitely a great resource for people new to kind of amalgamating these two Vedic sciences. And Ayurveda and the Mind is very much addressing a lot of the yogic concepts of the mind. So of course, it’s absolutely linked and really one and the same in some sense. So yes, no, thank you so much for those recommendations. I really appreciate it. Is there anything else you’d like to add to this conversation before we close?

Laura:

Yeah, just that you’re really, really wonderful and that I’m so glad that you’re in the world because I love how you keep reminding us of the truth of yoga. You’re very true to the teachings, and it’s really important for those of us who didn’t grow up in India, we don’t look Indian, to make sure that we really are respectful of the tradition and honoring it. And I think you’re one of the lights really leading the way forward that way. So I’m grateful to you.

Amy:

Thank you. Thank you so much, Laura. And for anyone interested in connecting with you, with Laura, you can use the coupon code Plumb10, and we’ll just specify here that it’s P-L-U-M-B 10 and a capital P, I believe, capital P, uppercase P,. And LUMB. And you can get 10% off an Ayurvedic consultation or a Jyotish consultation, which comes highly recommended by me. And you can otherwise head to lauraplumb.com to check out a wealth of courses and resources from Laura. We’ll put the specific link on the summit webpage so you can access that. And if you’re interested in Ayurvedic food and cooking, Laura has a spectacular blog full of nourishing recipes over at food-alovestory.com. And coming up very shortly with Laura is the brand new course called “Gather: Stories, songs and Stars around the Sacred Fire”. Sounds Incredible. A monthly course on Vedic Mythology, cosmology, and mantra. Sounds phenomenal. Do you want to just let us know a little bit more about that quickly before we go?

Laura:

So excited about this? Because what happened is, so I love telling the stories, the myths, the stories of the Ista devatas, the stories of the stars, the origin stories that we know from the Vedas, because all of these stories are really truth, and they all have relevance in our lives. There’s such deep truth there. And so whenever I’m traveling or I’m on retreat, we do storytelling. We’re in the bus, we’re telling stories and telling stories of Shiva and Vishnu, Lakshmi, Saraswati, Ganesh, all the silliness. They get in trouble and all the things. And people have said for a long time, you should do a course on that. So last September, we were at our Ayurveda retreat. We were sitting around the campfire. We were doing stories, storytelling. We were looking at the stars. I was talking about where the moon was at the time. So stories, stars and songs.

The songs were, then we sang some chants, some mantra, and I thought, I would love to find a way to do this on a regular basis. So May 1st when Jupiter goes into Taurus, which is my rising sign, I thought, that’s it. I’m going to start it. Then it’s going to be very Jupiter led. So it’s going to be very much about who you are in the context of this Vedic perspective. All the myths, all the ishta devatas, all the stars, even this word nakshatra, which is the stars, each day the moon passes a different nakshatra. The groups of those nakshatras. Nakshatra relates to the word Shatriya, which is the warrior class, the ruling class, right? The kings and the queens of Once Upon a Time who were there to protect, to protect their people. And the Nakshatra is this beautiful understanding that those are the stars that protect us. And when you know your stars, when you know these stories, you’re naturally protected, right? It’s very beautiful. So we’re going to do that once a month, and it’ll be a really fun course to gather and connect and to really recognize who we are, that each one of us is a star, born in the belly of a star.

Amy:

It sounds so fulfilling, so cup filling, so beautiful and such a great way to feel connected to a community and through your embrace. It’s just magic. Sounds wonderful. We’ll put a link to that again on the summit webpage too. So anyone who’s interested, you can jump onto the website and check that out. Thank you so much for tuning into the conversation. Don’t forget you can upgrade to gain lifetime access to all these wisdom fueled conversations. And deepest thanks to you, Laura, for your awe inspiring wisdom. I very much admire your seamless amalgamation of all the Vedic bodies of knowledge into your life and your being, so grateful you were able to carve out some space to have this conversation. Thank you so very much.

Laura:

Such an honor to speak with you, and an honor to be part of this. Thank you so much for this great summit, and I imagine it will be a great library, so everybody should get it. Get to have to listen over, listening, listening, listening, that we can never listen enough to these truths. That’s the thing about these, this is the kind of satsang that you’ve created here, and every time we listen, it helps to heal and repair. So thank you for putting this together. It’s an honor to be part of it.

Amy:

Thank you, Laura. Such a treat.

IF YOU ARE:

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A sincere seeker devoted to the depths of studentship,

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yoga ayurveda mastermind amy landry about

So who is your summit host?

A beacon for those craving a connection to tradition and timeless wisdom, Amy Landry has cemented herself as a global yoga teacher, teacher trainer, mentor, mama, ayurvedic practitioner, podcast host, speaker, and eternal student.

Renowned for her sold-out retreats, Amy has contributed extensively to Australian Yoga Journal, Om Yoga & Lifestyle magazine, YOGA Magazine (UK), and Nature & Health magazine (AU).

She has presented at Wanderlust, Evolve, Byron Spirit Fest, and Ekam Yoga Festival. You can listen to her Living In Alignment podcast on all major platforms.

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