Ayurveda Practitioners
I’m in the 45th grade. Since I started school at Ms Matthews pre-K program at St Lukes, I have been busy gaining academic accolades and credentials. From attending one of the most prestigious high schools in the country to a MS in biology to a residency in Internal Medicine at Mayo Clinic, I have been engaged in a comprehensive course of study. And yet, once that process was completed, I wasn't done yet. I started phase two diving into even more my unanswered questions. This led to two years of full time Ayurvedic study with master teacher, Dr. Vasant Lad, a yoga teacher training, reiki master training and a formal fellowship in Integrative Medicine. From seeds planted in my long term study of Ayurveda, I began to understand why i had observed that there was no "perfect food plan" that worked for everyone.
Wounded Healer
In 2018, I returned from the most amazing 3 week trip with my husband across the Western states. I had just left my primary care job to pursue my passion for teaching culinary medicine. Burned out and exhausted from trying to exist in a dysfunctional medical system, I had leveraged my savings to take 6 months off to create my dream career. I arrived home excited to think about the next steps but within 10 minutes of coming through the door, I received a call from my mom, “your dad is in the ER with a heart attack and sepsis." I urgently hopped on a plane to support them and he died an agonizing death a week later. Needless to say, everything fell apart.
I have lived the problems | I have lived the solutions
Over the following two years, I unexpectedly endured a barrage of symptoms from crushing migraines to severe systemic pain. My only solace was in cool dark places, alone or watching mindless TV. Social isolation become my deferred normal as it was too complex to try to explain what was going on in my body to anyone. I was not even able to photograph food through most of this time as lifting the camera trigged a sensation of an ice pick stabbing me in my back. I had all the testing without a concrete diagnosis. Time did not heal me. On the brink of divorce and losing my marriage with the most amazing man, I realized I needed help to get better. Through a few dedicated practitioners and the healing power of nature I began to flourish again.
Nature heals
Enter COVID 19, where social isolation was now the norm, and you guessed it, another healing lesson. I got severely sick with a viral illness (probably COVID) and developed pneumonia with significant breathing difficulty. In conjunction with western medical treatments, I prioritized healing and implemented the other modalities that I had only partially offered myself in the past. I started cooking 3 meals a day. Over the course of 40 days, my health turned around. The migraines finally let up, my energy returned, and I found a vitality that had not been present since before my medical training in my early 20’s. I also saw that even though I had all the insight and tools needed to be healthy all along, it was tough to make it happen in real time. As I began solving this problem of how to do this for myself, it was increasingly clear that I need to share these concepts with others.
