Spring 2011 Newsletter
Dear Friends,
Spring is natures New Year. Spring is a natural time for new beginnings. NOW is the perfect time to reassess your health by scheduling a consultation or follow up visit. It is also a great time to do a personal cleanse to balance your Doshas. I am offering individual Panchakarma in my home. Panchkarma is a profound detoxification and rejuvenation program that purifies ones whole being. Ayurveda gives us such fabulous tools to live our lives fully. In the meantime enjoy life, take time to be with nature and let go of the past. Notice whats blooming all around you and nurture what is wanting to bloom inside of you.
Much Love,
Carla
“Panchakarma helped my mind and body emerge from a tailspin and set a healing course within. The treatments took life out of time and gave me the opportunity to relax in a way that I hadn’t imagined. This following month I have felt better then I can ever remember feeling”
Sandy Peace
p.s. scroll down for poems and Spring routines
Carla Levy C.A.S. Clinical Ayurvedic Specialist
760 268-0560
“You must give birth to your images.
They are the future waiting to be born…
Fear not the strangeness you feel.
The future must enter you
long before it happens.
Just wait for the birth,
for the hour of new clarity.
–Rainier Maria Rilke
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During this time of the year it would be easier to stop the earth from spinning than to stop the surge of new life being awakened within her.
Seeds buried in the earth are broken apart from the inside out, made to release their delicate shoots of grasses, herbs, and flowers that reach for the light above them. And, as if by magic, along the sides of seemingly lifeless branches appear silver-green buds of baby leaves that stretch out to unfold themselves like banners in the sun.
Life is beginning again everywhere, and so can we, if we are willing.
The power of spring lends us the fresh forces we need to break through and to let go of old patterns. During this time of the year, the possibility of making a brand new beginning in life is never greater. Why is this true? Because spring also dawns within us, and if we will align ourselves with the power of its presence, then the unstoppable principle of rebirth itself will work for us.
How can we harness this planetary power for our own good? Here are just a few of the many ways we can work with spring to start a new life for ourselves:
All past wishes lying dormant within us — to outgrow old limitations — should be brought out into the light of our longing to transform them and be left there to bathe in our need to be free. Whatever conditions in life may have once overcome us should be re-challenged now, regardless of past results.
And, as spring marks the return of a celestial light that gradually grows greater than the darkness it has come to dismiss, so is this the best time to stand up and start walking through whatever frightens us.
We should work to detect and detach ourselves from old heartaches, keeping our eye on emerging possibilities, instead of looking back at lost opportunities. By acting in this way — as though we are free — we find that what once held us captive no longer has the power to keep us down. We succeed because we have becomes partners with the light of Real Life.
Lastly, spring is a time of great and natural tension for all living creatures on earth. Nature sows into every last one of her children an urgency to seek out their “other” and to procreate in order to ensure the continuity of their species.
Each spring great forces are released to work upon and within us. Life is literally seeking itself through us, asking us to open ourselves and receive what will renew us. But, if we would receive this new life, with all its promise, then we must be willing to sacrifice within us whatever stands in its way. We can only be made as new as we are willing to let go of who we have been, and springtime not only awakens this need within us, but it also grants us the possibility of its realization.
Spring Routine: Vasanta Rtucarya
Procedures for bringing balance during the spring season
1) Wake early, during brahma muhurta (3-7 am), and utilize the new-found seasonal vitality. As kapha is especially aggravated by sleeping in beyond 7am, rising early is a useful way to reduce kapha aggravations of fatigue, lethargy, mucus and headaches.
2) After completing your daily ablutions, practice skin brushing. This can be very valuable at this time of year for stimulating lymphatic circulation. Tradition suggests starting brushing at the feet and legs, then progressing to the arms and back and then to the chest and abdomen. This brings lymphatic fluid back to the heart for elimination via the blood where toxins and wastes are cleared by the liver and kidneys.
3) Follow with an oil massage (abhyaôga) using warmed organic sesame or sunflower oil to reduce kapha from the skin.
4) Have a hot shower to refresh the body.
5) If you can have a sauna during the early part of spring it will help to dry the excessive secretions that occur at this time of year.
6) Take a cup of hot ginger and lemon water to stimulate digestion and cut through any mucus that has accumulated overnight.
7) The spring diet should emphasize the bitter, pungent and astringent foods that help to clear mucus and excess moisture from the body. The bitter and pungent flavors also help to open the channels of elimination. Conversely, avoid the sweet, sour and salty flavors that are heavy and cause water stagnation in the body. Your meals should be warm, light and very easy to digest. While the nature of most foods is sweet it is important to add these other recommended flavors into your diet.
.) Increase light grains such as quinoa, barley, millet, corn. As beans are considered to be astringent they can be emphasized at this time of year, with red lentils, adzuki beans and chickpeas good for clearing kapha
