I have a rebellious spirit by nature. Anyone who knows me will agree with that. Lately I’ve had a generally pessimistic outlook on all aspects of my life and have been trying to undo that with these methods that I previously thought were very “LA” and extremely hokey, like meditation, the power of positive thinking, and breathing. What I’ve discovered so far is that these things generally work when you do them, and generally don’t work when you don’t do them. What a concept.
While watching television earlier this week, a comedian was joking about the world’s propensity towards spilling their guts on the internet. She determined in her routine that blogging was for individuals without social skills. To that I immediately thought “boy is that true, and boy is that funny!” Then I remembered that I’d just started my own blog. I hope those of you who are gracious enough to read this blog because you care about what’s going on with me, are confident in my ability to hold a conversation in person. ;-)
This week has been a very trying one—much harder than I thought. Just like keeping a positive state of mind, meditating and breathing—these practices only work when you actually DO them. I’m realizing what a hard road I’ve got ahead of me. But I’m determined not to quit.
Let’s start with Practice One: Eating in a Calm Quiet Environment. This has been the most difficult practice of all for me. It takes a lot of thought to get up and plan my day around my eating, especially when almost each day of my life is different than the next. I have two jobs, and am working on a third project that I hope will turn into a full time job, so my days are filled with scheduling and rescheduling meetings, conference calls that are supposed to take ten minutes happening an hour late and lasting for 45 minutes, so I find it an impossible task to eat at the same TIME every day, let alone without the presence of a computer, loud conversation or work of some sort. What I’m discovering is that the people around me are either going to conform to my new way of living, or I’m going to go back to the old way of living—and right now it feels like it could go either way. For week two I think I’m going to attempt one meal a day “Ayurvedic style,” instead of putting a bunch of pressure on myself to eat every meal that way from now on. In fact, I JUST realized in this moment that I’m typing this blog and eating my morning oatmeal at the same time. My bad—excuse me for a moment while I finish.
Practice Two: Sipping hot water throughout the day. This one has been pretty easy to do, but I find that slowing down my life is the only way to make this one work. I went to Target and bought a cheap kettle. I’m lucky that all the environments I work in have a kitchen that I have easy access to, so I don’t have to rely on a microwave as much as I thought I did. Mary-Alice told me in passing about her own experience starting Ayurveda. She didn’t always eat that way nor did she have understanding of its benefits to her body until her early 20s. Her parents raised her to eat the way most of our parents do—peanut butter and jelly on white bread is a great lunch. ;-) Anyway, she said “Victoria, it takes as much effort to heat water in a kettle on a stove as it does to heat it in a microwave—and it’s safer.” I couldn’t argue with that. It takes about two minutes for one cup of water to get hot enough for my purposes in the microwave, and I can only heat one cup at a time. I can heat several cups in my kettle in a few more minutes and it stays hot much longer.
I must admit that I’m waiting for the sale at Starbucks so I can get a really sweet tumbler to keep my water warm during the day. My roommate works there, so I’m waiting for the employee discount—is that horrible? (I refuse to add things like “LOL” and “IMHO” and other internet-speak in this blog. I did major in English, after all.)
Practice Three: Reducing Leftovers. This has been the easiest practice to maintain and I thought it would surely be the most difficult. It’s only been a week, but I realized that changing this practice was easy—and maybe that’s because I’ve traded leftovers for pre-made and packaged foods which is definitely a no-no in Ayurveda. Eventually I’m supposed to get to a place where I prepare cooked whole organic foods for each meal, every time I eat. The meals will always be hot and will always be enough for just one portion. To that I say (in my best Judge Judy voice) ‘BALONEY!’ Right now I have the attitude that my lifestyle will never allow for this kind of behavior. I hope I’m wrong, but unless I hook up with some rich person who will bankroll my life, I won’t have enough ‘leisure’ time to sleep 8 hours a night, get up and meditate, walk, do a yoga sequence and eat a lovely breakfast, then go to work and have enough time to come home and do it all over again.
It’s this negative attitude that keeps me and other people from succeeding in Ayurveda. But I don’t like to end on a negative note—let’s end with Practice Four: Drinking Agni Churna! Next time Mary-Alice offers to put these into capsules for me instead of a tea, I just might take her up on it. Drinking this mixture isn’t fun. Don’t get me wrong, there are worse things to drink, and it goes down a lot easier than a shot of Vodka, with many more benefits. My body is starting to wake up to the process of digestion. I feel energized when I eat, and here’s a tip for you guys—apparently the easiest and best way to GAIN weight is to eat a meal and then go to sleep within 30 minutes of eating. Welcome to my world!
Since I began drinking these herbs I find that my stomach never feels upset after I eat, which used to happen often. It became a feeling I was so used to that I began to think it was supposed to happen. But now I know that paying attention to levels of hunger, eating at the appropriate times and in the appropriate amounts make me feel so much better—or just not sick!
The most beneficial aspect of the Agni Churna or fire formula is that it forces me out of mindless eating. Ideally a person is supposed to drink this mixture of herbs no more than 30 minutes before any substantive meal. That means if you’re eating an apple go ahead and eat it, but if you’re going to eat a slice of pizza (gasp!) drink your herbs first. Well, if you’re just picking up that pizza slice because someone offered it to you and you left your herbs at home, you have to either wrap up that pizza slice to take it with you, or you have to say “no thank you.” The best solution would be to have remembered your herbs in the first place, have a snack on hand to tide you over until you get somewhere to warm up your meal, or bring your own with you in the first place. Ayurveda removes all pointless eating and snacking—and I just didn’t realize how much of that I did until I learned how to say no.
Let’s wrap today’s entry with the actual subject of the blog—self-sabotage and eating in defiance. I’m going to be really honest here. I realized earlier this year as I began this journey of putting myself first, that I have a lot of associations with food besides just liking how it tastes and eating it in great quantities. I associated a full refrigerator and cabinets with a full life. If I could open my cabinet and refrigerator and see food spilling out of it, then that meant that I was doing well financially and that must mean that I was doing well in my job. That meant that I had the food and time to share with others, so people would come over, I’d make a meal for them and feel affirmed that they liked me and that I was a good person.
This is not a good practice or association, and lately because I’m supposed to be cutting out leftovers and preparing hot foods, there isn’t a lot that needs to hang out in my refrigerator getting cold and losing its prana. The same goes for the prepackaged foods that I’m supposed to be avoiding. Other than the endless cans of soup that I’ve taken up with to avoid microwaving frozen dinners, there are no chips and crackers, no snack cakes or juice boxes. There is only oatmeal, cooking spices, pasta and rice—as it should be according to Ayurveda.
Having cabinets and a refrigerator in this state doesn’t mean that I’m void of success and friendships and that’s an important lesson to learn.
But most of the time I buy food and eat it in defiance of what I know to be true and that is what I mean by self-sabotage. I feel the pull to leave those Little Debbie Snack Cakes right where they are on the shelf. If I just think about it for 10 more seconds I know I’ll find the will to leave them in the store. But I ignore that feeling, put it in my cart and keep walking. Remember that line from Field of Dreams? ‘If you build it, they will come.’ Well ‘if you buy it, Victoria will eat it.’ And buy it, I do.
One evening this week I ate well past my hunger and satisfaction level, I began to feel the familiar pain and heaviness and though I knew what I was doing I couldn’t seem to stop myself—or rather I chose not to. Afterwards I went to sleep and later I got very sick. And after that—I ate again. What’s the lesson in that? I’m still trying to learn it, but what I HAVE learned is that I’m not one of those people who can have something in my house and leave it alone or eat it in moderation—I have to leave it outside of my house so that the opportunity doesn’t even present itself. There is something I can do about it, it is something I can control, and I do have a choice.
Ok, I don’t want to be Debbie Downer at the end of all this, so let me say that I am doing well, I do feel better and after one week I’ve failed and made a lot of progress too. Didn’t we say at the beginning of this that it was a journey? So thanks to everyone who’s been reading this blog and calling me or emailing me their support. See ya next week!
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Day One--Testing the Waters
Day One (November 13, 2007)
Yesterday was my follow up consultation with Mary-Alice. She sat me down for a “report of findings.” This means that based on the information that I gave her about my emotions, my job, my friends, my eating and sleeping habits and my medical history, she has come up with my body constitution in its balanced state and in its imbalanced state. In ayurvedic terms this means my prakruti and my vikruiti.
Prakruti is my body IN balance. That means that the three doshas (Vata, Pitta and Kapha) are present in my body in the following way: (45% Pitta, 40% Kapha, and %15 Vata). This is what I was born with, and where I’m struggling to get back to.
Vikruiti is my body OUT of balance or imbalanced. This means that the three doshas are present in my body in the following way: (Kapha is primary, Pitta is secondary and Vata is tertiary). So what does all that Indian mumbo jumbo mean? Well I’ll let you look up the qualities of each dosha and what it all means yourself—it might even be fun for you to Google dosha body types and find out which one of the three is present in you. But remember, your results could indicate which dosha is present in your IMBALANCED state, or it might reveal what your true nature is if you’re one of those LA folks who know about Runyon Canyon and what people do there. I myself have never laid eyes on the place.
The SHORT version of what it all means is this: each of the three doshas has certain qualities and they manifest in a person’s body in certain ways. The Kapha dosha is made up of the elements of earth and water. If you think about the qualities of earth and water you’ll find that they are in general cold, wet, and heavy. So these are also the qualities of Kapha. The Pitta dosha has qualities of fire and some water. Fire is hot, it is movement (think of that flickering flame) and it is light (as in weight, not brightness). And water is cold, wet and heavy. So these two elements working together would promote balance. Pitta is the dosha that is most balanced. Vata has qualities of air and ether or space. The primary quality of this dosha is movement.
So we all have some of all of these in our body and this lifestyle will help me reach balance. In order to do this, I have to change my life a LOT. I won’t give you the full list here, but as I progress you’ll eventually (if you stick with me!) read about it all.
Ayurveda teaches that there are several therapies one can engage in including yoga, meditation, breathing techniques, and certain foods one can eat that promote balance in the doshas. The main principle of Ayurveda is “like increases like and opposites reduce.” The best example is that of a campfire. Fire is hot—if you add something flammable like gasoline (which may be cool to the touch but has heating qualities) it will make the fire hotter. But if you add something cool like water to the fire, you reduce its hotness and eventually put the fire out altogether. So like things increase and opposite things reduce. Remember this—it will be very important later.
When you see an Ayurvedic specialist, they listen to you and then identify your vikruiti and prakruti, and then give you a list of therapies and practices to bring you back into balance. Since Kapha and Pitta are the two doshas most prevalent in me, and Kapha is higher right now in my imbalanced state, I need to choose foods and practices that balance or reduce the Kapha in me. For me that means choosing foods that have warm, light qualities (like soups) and dry foods that are cooked but don’t have much water. I can also have foods that are spicy because they have heating qualities. The downside—I have to minimize foods that have butter, oil and sugar, which pretty much means, there goes my cake.
But what about the practices—Ayurveda also teaches that the ‘where, when, how and why’ you eat certain foods are as important if not MORE important than what you are eating. For example, cake may not be the best thing for me to eat, but if I eat it with the state of mind that I am celebrating a milestone and that my friend Cassandra made it FOR me, the qualities or effects it will have on my body are much better than if I were to eat the cake feeling guilty about it, or criticizing myself for failing to stay away from it at all. This was an important concept for me to grasp.
So not only do I have to gradually change to foods that are balancing to my dosha, I have to change where I eat, when, how and why. Since it’s impossible to completely turn your life upside down in one day, Mary-Alice has given me a few new practices to live by until we meet again in two more weeks.
Practice One: Eating in a calm, quiet environment with no television or other harsh stimuli like reading friends’ blogs or checking email. Eating without self-criticizing or criticizing the food is also important. This will be the hardest thing for me, which is why we’re starting with it.
Practice Two: Sipping hot water throughout the day. This one won’t be so difficult for me—just need to grab a thermos, a couple of lemon slices and some honey. This might sound like a remedy for a cold, but it works great all the time when you’re trying to pacify a dosha that has cold heavy slow qualities with something like hot water with lemon, which is opposite.
Practice Three: Reducing left-overs. All food, no matter if it’s a hamburger or fresh cut green beans has a prana or life force. Easily recognized by something that’s freshly cooked, but if you put that hamburger or green beans in the refrigerator, the color is reduced, it becomes colder, the flavor diminishes—it is dying or losing its prana. So when I eat foods with less prana (things that are packaged or full of preservatives to maintain shelf-life) it is less beneficial to my body. Sort of like using wet wood to stoke a fire.
Practice Four: Drinking agni churna or (fire formula) which is a customized mixture of herbs that Mary-Alice made just for me. Remember that digestion is an act of transformation and has qualities of fire or burning? But since Kapha is what is most present in me, I need a little help stoking that fire. So drinking this mixture of herbs taken in hot water (or capsule form) 30 minutes before I eat will help promote successful digestion.
There’s lots more I could write and lots more practices and behaviors, but there are people with a lot more experience and a much better vocabulary that have already written books on the subject, like Deepak Chopra. I suggest reading one of his beginner books into Ayurveda called “Perfect Health.” The first one I read is called “Perfect Weight,” which is another book in the series.
As I write this, I’ve started my day at 6:00 AM (you’ll read more about this later but the doshas are not only present in your body and in foods, but present in the time of day, month and year. So there are times of day where you’ll feel that fire or Pitta constitution coming out!) I need to eat things that have heating qualities so I chose oatmeal. Before I ate it though, I had to try my first taste of the fire formula in hot water. There are lots of Indian herbs in this mixture which looks a lot like brown sugar. It smells a lot like a seasoning blend, so I thought it would taste a lot worse than it does. It’s palatable, not the most delicious thing I ever had, but I’m hopeful that the taste will diminish and my tolerance will increase. Wish me luck.
For the rest of the day I’m working on sipping that hot water, eating in a calm environment, and being ok with my food choices. I hope you’ll come back and read up on how I’m progressing, and that you’ll maybe give Ayurveda a try.
Yesterday was my follow up consultation with Mary-Alice. She sat me down for a “report of findings.” This means that based on the information that I gave her about my emotions, my job, my friends, my eating and sleeping habits and my medical history, she has come up with my body constitution in its balanced state and in its imbalanced state. In ayurvedic terms this means my prakruti and my vikruiti.
Prakruti is my body IN balance. That means that the three doshas (Vata, Pitta and Kapha) are present in my body in the following way: (45% Pitta, 40% Kapha, and %15 Vata). This is what I was born with, and where I’m struggling to get back to.
Vikruiti is my body OUT of balance or imbalanced. This means that the three doshas are present in my body in the following way: (Kapha is primary, Pitta is secondary and Vata is tertiary). So what does all that Indian mumbo jumbo mean? Well I’ll let you look up the qualities of each dosha and what it all means yourself—it might even be fun for you to Google dosha body types and find out which one of the three is present in you. But remember, your results could indicate which dosha is present in your IMBALANCED state, or it might reveal what your true nature is if you’re one of those LA folks who know about Runyon Canyon and what people do there. I myself have never laid eyes on the place.
The SHORT version of what it all means is this: each of the three doshas has certain qualities and they manifest in a person’s body in certain ways. The Kapha dosha is made up of the elements of earth and water. If you think about the qualities of earth and water you’ll find that they are in general cold, wet, and heavy. So these are also the qualities of Kapha. The Pitta dosha has qualities of fire and some water. Fire is hot, it is movement (think of that flickering flame) and it is light (as in weight, not brightness). And water is cold, wet and heavy. So these two elements working together would promote balance. Pitta is the dosha that is most balanced. Vata has qualities of air and ether or space. The primary quality of this dosha is movement.
So we all have some of all of these in our body and this lifestyle will help me reach balance. In order to do this, I have to change my life a LOT. I won’t give you the full list here, but as I progress you’ll eventually (if you stick with me!) read about it all.
Ayurveda teaches that there are several therapies one can engage in including yoga, meditation, breathing techniques, and certain foods one can eat that promote balance in the doshas. The main principle of Ayurveda is “like increases like and opposites reduce.” The best example is that of a campfire. Fire is hot—if you add something flammable like gasoline (which may be cool to the touch but has heating qualities) it will make the fire hotter. But if you add something cool like water to the fire, you reduce its hotness and eventually put the fire out altogether. So like things increase and opposite things reduce. Remember this—it will be very important later.
When you see an Ayurvedic specialist, they listen to you and then identify your vikruiti and prakruti, and then give you a list of therapies and practices to bring you back into balance. Since Kapha and Pitta are the two doshas most prevalent in me, and Kapha is higher right now in my imbalanced state, I need to choose foods and practices that balance or reduce the Kapha in me. For me that means choosing foods that have warm, light qualities (like soups) and dry foods that are cooked but don’t have much water. I can also have foods that are spicy because they have heating qualities. The downside—I have to minimize foods that have butter, oil and sugar, which pretty much means, there goes my cake.
But what about the practices—Ayurveda also teaches that the ‘where, when, how and why’ you eat certain foods are as important if not MORE important than what you are eating. For example, cake may not be the best thing for me to eat, but if I eat it with the state of mind that I am celebrating a milestone and that my friend Cassandra made it FOR me, the qualities or effects it will have on my body are much better than if I were to eat the cake feeling guilty about it, or criticizing myself for failing to stay away from it at all. This was an important concept for me to grasp.
So not only do I have to gradually change to foods that are balancing to my dosha, I have to change where I eat, when, how and why. Since it’s impossible to completely turn your life upside down in one day, Mary-Alice has given me a few new practices to live by until we meet again in two more weeks.
Practice One: Eating in a calm, quiet environment with no television or other harsh stimuli like reading friends’ blogs or checking email. Eating without self-criticizing or criticizing the food is also important. This will be the hardest thing for me, which is why we’re starting with it.
Practice Two: Sipping hot water throughout the day. This one won’t be so difficult for me—just need to grab a thermos, a couple of lemon slices and some honey. This might sound like a remedy for a cold, but it works great all the time when you’re trying to pacify a dosha that has cold heavy slow qualities with something like hot water with lemon, which is opposite.
Practice Three: Reducing left-overs. All food, no matter if it’s a hamburger or fresh cut green beans has a prana or life force. Easily recognized by something that’s freshly cooked, but if you put that hamburger or green beans in the refrigerator, the color is reduced, it becomes colder, the flavor diminishes—it is dying or losing its prana. So when I eat foods with less prana (things that are packaged or full of preservatives to maintain shelf-life) it is less beneficial to my body. Sort of like using wet wood to stoke a fire.
Practice Four: Drinking agni churna or (fire formula) which is a customized mixture of herbs that Mary-Alice made just for me. Remember that digestion is an act of transformation and has qualities of fire or burning? But since Kapha is what is most present in me, I need a little help stoking that fire. So drinking this mixture of herbs taken in hot water (or capsule form) 30 minutes before I eat will help promote successful digestion.
There’s lots more I could write and lots more practices and behaviors, but there are people with a lot more experience and a much better vocabulary that have already written books on the subject, like Deepak Chopra. I suggest reading one of his beginner books into Ayurveda called “Perfect Health.” The first one I read is called “Perfect Weight,” which is another book in the series.
As I write this, I’ve started my day at 6:00 AM (you’ll read more about this later but the doshas are not only present in your body and in foods, but present in the time of day, month and year. So there are times of day where you’ll feel that fire or Pitta constitution coming out!) I need to eat things that have heating qualities so I chose oatmeal. Before I ate it though, I had to try my first taste of the fire formula in hot water. There are lots of Indian herbs in this mixture which looks a lot like brown sugar. It smells a lot like a seasoning blend, so I thought it would taste a lot worse than it does. It’s palatable, not the most delicious thing I ever had, but I’m hopeful that the taste will diminish and my tolerance will increase. Wish me luck.
For the rest of the day I’m working on sipping that hot water, eating in a calm environment, and being ok with my food choices. I hope you’ll come back and read up on how I’m progressing, and that you’ll maybe give Ayurveda a try.
My Journey into Ayurveda
This is my journey into Ayurveda. As I type this, the first thing I notice is that “Ayurveda” isn’t in my computer’s dictionary. This will be very telling for the future, as Ayurveda isn’t in my body’s dictionary, either.
I am writing this blog to chronicle my experiences as I transition into a new way of eating, living and thinking known as Ayurveda, or the “yoga of eating.” My name is Victoria Russell, I live in Los Angeles, and I have a sweet tooth. Someone said recently that having a sweet tooth in LA is like harboring an addiction to crack. They’re right. In this land of bleached blondes and boob jobs, it’s really difficult for us regular gals to watch television, go to the grocery store or even take a walk without being bombarded with images of how thin we aren’t, or how fit we aren’t. We’re also sent messages constantly of how our jobs, relationships, homes and cars would all be better, if we were a little better ourselves. And by better I mean thinner.
But we’ve heard all this before, so I won’t spend this blog discussing the media and its cruel treatment of women. Instead, I’ll focus on this woman and my journey away from all those messages of inferiority, to a lifestyle that reminds me I am inherently unique—there is NO ONE else on the planet that can have my exact body/mind/spirit and I can’t have anyone else’s either—so stop trying. It will NEVER work.
Note: (This blog will discuss ayurvedic principles and ideas, but should not be taken as a substitute for a consultation with an ayurvedic specialist, or published books on the subject. To learn more, visit my consultant’s website www.maryalicequinn.com or simply Google ‘Ayurveda’).
Ayurveda tells us that each person has a constitution or body type that is a mixture of three overall constitutions or “doshas.” Although everyone has some of all three, no one has exactly the same amount of all three. This was so freeing for me because I was one of those women who bought into the notion “if there’s an amount of money, an amount of exercise, an amount of prayer that I can do, I will have the body of the following—Vanessa Marcil, Peta Wilson, Sarah Shahi, Evangeline Lily—and any other woman that I’ve watched on television and admired.” Let me tell you, that’d be one hell of a plastic surgeon that could turn me into a 6’2” Australian white girl!
So basically, I’m stuck with me. I’m stuck with this face, this body, these bones, this body constitution and I can’t have anyone else’s no matter how hard I try. This 5,000 year old traditional Indian medicine that has been proven for all this time is telling me to let go of the fantasy and obsession that I can be someone else. I can still have a great home, career and relationship, just being who I am.
To a lot of people (including me) at first this sounded like a lot of mumbo jumbo. But last year I got fed up with being fat. No pun intended. And I decided (having never heard of Ayurveda at this point) to just start living my life, fat be damned. I’d done a lot of exciting things already and it was my new year’s resolution to keep it up. So I decided to try at least once, everything that I’d been waiting until I was skinny to try. I started taking salsa lessons that I stuck with for 9 months and am hoping to get back into very soon. I also took a class at City Yoga in West Hollywood (www.cityyoga.com) and got on their mailing list. It was here that I first learned about Ayurveda.
Cut to 10 months later—I hadn’t stuck with the yoga classes but I’d rented some DVDs, bought some mats and props such as bricks, a belt and bolsters, and developed an occasional yoga practice at home. The benefits of the yoga practice were amazing, but I allowed my crazy schedule of 3 jobs and social life to remain more important than my individual health. So despite a year of making an effort to live a different life, I was living the SAME life—just with more shit in general to do.
I became run down, tired, lethargic, and having hardly any energy to do the things I loved. I retreated into a lifestyle of crap food, going to bed late, getting up early, and dragging myself from meeting to meeting, job to job, and complaining on the phone to all my friends about how my pathetic life was going nowhere. Then I got an email about the ‘Yoga of Eating.’
Let’s back up here a second and give you just a brief insight into Miss Vicki Leigh. I love to eat—I love the entire ritual of it from thinking about the food to deciding what I’m going to eat, when, where, and how much. Sometimes even that is enough to make me happy. Food is a great pal of mine. I would eat when I was upset, eat to celebrate, eat to mark the time, eat because the sun is shining, eat because it’s raining, eat because the food is here. I used to have a hard time admitting that I do this, but now I realize that sharing it breaks down walls for others, and allows them to get real. But I digress.
I saw this work shop and decided to go. I went down to the yoga studio in person to sign up—I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss this. A week went by, and my enthusiasm about the class diminished as I fell back into my routine. But then I went, sat down on a yoga mat and bolster for three hours, and got introduced to something that I truly believe will save and change my life forever.
After the workshop I got Mary Alice’s information and set up a meeting with her. Two weeks later, I was sitting in her office and spent three hours telling her every thing about myself. Ayurveda isn’t just about eating—it’s about your mind, body and spirit working together to keep you in balance, or in perfect health. It’s a life long journey to reach balance, but most of us are so far out of balance that being even a little bit closer can bring us much more satisfaction with life and overall health. After my therapy session, I decided to make the commitment to give Ayurveda a try.
Victoria—this southern girl who loves her fried chicken, cheese cake, and potato chips, will give up these foods and bring in new practices to increase the balance in her life. And she’s going to chronicle it here….
I am writing this blog to chronicle my experiences as I transition into a new way of eating, living and thinking known as Ayurveda, or the “yoga of eating.” My name is Victoria Russell, I live in Los Angeles, and I have a sweet tooth. Someone said recently that having a sweet tooth in LA is like harboring an addiction to crack. They’re right. In this land of bleached blondes and boob jobs, it’s really difficult for us regular gals to watch television, go to the grocery store or even take a walk without being bombarded with images of how thin we aren’t, or how fit we aren’t. We’re also sent messages constantly of how our jobs, relationships, homes and cars would all be better, if we were a little better ourselves. And by better I mean thinner.
But we’ve heard all this before, so I won’t spend this blog discussing the media and its cruel treatment of women. Instead, I’ll focus on this woman and my journey away from all those messages of inferiority, to a lifestyle that reminds me I am inherently unique—there is NO ONE else on the planet that can have my exact body/mind/spirit and I can’t have anyone else’s either—so stop trying. It will NEVER work.
Note: (This blog will discuss ayurvedic principles and ideas, but should not be taken as a substitute for a consultation with an ayurvedic specialist, or published books on the subject. To learn more, visit my consultant’s website www.maryalicequinn.com or simply Google ‘Ayurveda’).
Ayurveda tells us that each person has a constitution or body type that is a mixture of three overall constitutions or “doshas.” Although everyone has some of all three, no one has exactly the same amount of all three. This was so freeing for me because I was one of those women who bought into the notion “if there’s an amount of money, an amount of exercise, an amount of prayer that I can do, I will have the body of the following—Vanessa Marcil, Peta Wilson, Sarah Shahi, Evangeline Lily—and any other woman that I’ve watched on television and admired.” Let me tell you, that’d be one hell of a plastic surgeon that could turn me into a 6’2” Australian white girl!
So basically, I’m stuck with me. I’m stuck with this face, this body, these bones, this body constitution and I can’t have anyone else’s no matter how hard I try. This 5,000 year old traditional Indian medicine that has been proven for all this time is telling me to let go of the fantasy and obsession that I can be someone else. I can still have a great home, career and relationship, just being who I am.
To a lot of people (including me) at first this sounded like a lot of mumbo jumbo. But last year I got fed up with being fat. No pun intended. And I decided (having never heard of Ayurveda at this point) to just start living my life, fat be damned. I’d done a lot of exciting things already and it was my new year’s resolution to keep it up. So I decided to try at least once, everything that I’d been waiting until I was skinny to try. I started taking salsa lessons that I stuck with for 9 months and am hoping to get back into very soon. I also took a class at City Yoga in West Hollywood (www.cityyoga.com) and got on their mailing list. It was here that I first learned about Ayurveda.
Cut to 10 months later—I hadn’t stuck with the yoga classes but I’d rented some DVDs, bought some mats and props such as bricks, a belt and bolsters, and developed an occasional yoga practice at home. The benefits of the yoga practice were amazing, but I allowed my crazy schedule of 3 jobs and social life to remain more important than my individual health. So despite a year of making an effort to live a different life, I was living the SAME life—just with more shit in general to do.
I became run down, tired, lethargic, and having hardly any energy to do the things I loved. I retreated into a lifestyle of crap food, going to bed late, getting up early, and dragging myself from meeting to meeting, job to job, and complaining on the phone to all my friends about how my pathetic life was going nowhere. Then I got an email about the ‘Yoga of Eating.’
Let’s back up here a second and give you just a brief insight into Miss Vicki Leigh. I love to eat—I love the entire ritual of it from thinking about the food to deciding what I’m going to eat, when, where, and how much. Sometimes even that is enough to make me happy. Food is a great pal of mine. I would eat when I was upset, eat to celebrate, eat to mark the time, eat because the sun is shining, eat because it’s raining, eat because the food is here. I used to have a hard time admitting that I do this, but now I realize that sharing it breaks down walls for others, and allows them to get real. But I digress.
I saw this work shop and decided to go. I went down to the yoga studio in person to sign up—I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss this. A week went by, and my enthusiasm about the class diminished as I fell back into my routine. But then I went, sat down on a yoga mat and bolster for three hours, and got introduced to something that I truly believe will save and change my life forever.
After the workshop I got Mary Alice’s information and set up a meeting with her. Two weeks later, I was sitting in her office and spent three hours telling her every thing about myself. Ayurveda isn’t just about eating—it’s about your mind, body and spirit working together to keep you in balance, or in perfect health. It’s a life long journey to reach balance, but most of us are so far out of balance that being even a little bit closer can bring us much more satisfaction with life and overall health. After my therapy session, I decided to make the commitment to give Ayurveda a try.
Victoria—this southern girl who loves her fried chicken, cheese cake, and potato chips, will give up these foods and bring in new practices to increase the balance in her life. And she’s going to chronicle it here….
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