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You’re listening to Insights at the Edge. Today my guest is Acharya Shunya. Shunya is an expert in Ayurveda lifestyle medicine and has established Vedika Global, the award-winning school of Ayurveda and vedic studies in Emeryville, California. She is also the current president of the California Association of Ayurvedic medicine and advisor to The Association of Ayurvedic Professionals of North America. With Sounds True, Shunya has written a new book called Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom: A Complete Prescription to Optimize Your Health, Prevent Disease, and Live with Vitality and Joy. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Shunya and I spoke about the misconception that health is a commodity and instead the Ayurvedic view that we cultivate our health by aligning with the rhythms of nature through living an Ayurvedic lifestyle. We also talked about the wisdom of the ancient rishis, and the universality of the Vedic teachings, as well as the portability and adaptability to different places and cultures. Finally we talked about how hopelessness is a disease that precedes all symptoms and what it means not just to live with hope, but with what Shunya calls an infinity mindset. Here’s my conversation with Acharya Shunya.
Shunya, I know you have an unusual background and that even certain predictions were made at the time of your birth. I wonder if we can start our conversation right there and if you could share with our listeners a little bit about your birth and background.
Acharya Shunya: Tami, I was born to a family that’s renowned in northern India for being teachers of ancient Vedic spirituality, which includes the Upanishads, which teach about a spiritual self that transcends the body and mind. It is universal. All of us share that one self. It also advocated yoga as a path to a beautiful ascended mind and then of course Ayurveda lifestyle so that we could live this spirituality and not just talk about it. Apparently this family has been involved in this work of disseminating this precious wisdom for not just a couple of hundred years, but thousands of years. There I was, this little baby, born into this illustrious family. My grandfather, who was at that time a very renowned teacher and healer in our small town called Ayodhya, a holy city, a pilgrimage town in India. He held me, and he named me Shunya.
Everybody rejoiced. I’m sure my soul heard that name too. Shunya means infinity, Tami. As we all know, the Vedic Indians gave to the world the concept of zero, which means infinity, except that in common parlance some children would tease me as I grew up because Shunya is also the word used for zero. It also means your intelligence is zero. Any time I didn’t exactly perform the way my peers expected me to, when breaking fruit from the tree, or not running fast enough, or not doing well enough in school, the kids would sneer and say “Of course, but you are Shunya.” It was not very complimentary.
Then gradually through the teachings of my guru and through my own life experiences, I am beginning to embody what Shunya really means and touching that infinite self within. That infinite self has taught me that I can reinvent myself again and again. I don’t approach anything in life from a fixed mindset, including health. I approach it from an infinity mindset. That is what I am on about now. Spiritual lineage, in 1935 opened up the doors to the girl child all over again, the way it was back in the ancient Vedic days when the women scholars and sages were known as rishikas or brahmavadini. My Baba, my beloved grandfather, my teacher, said “Enough. We are going to open this classroom, this gurukula, this traditional school to every worthy soul, every seeker with a quest in their heart.”
Long before I was born, almost three decades before I was born, we already had students who were in the female body with my grandfather. Then he chose me. We had multiple cousins. We lived in a joined family. I had male cousins too. They studied alongside me. Then at age 24 he decided that I would be the lineage holder, and I would take this wisdom forward. It made more sense why he chose me now when I look back because when I was born, within minutes of my being born, he predicted that I would travel abroad to the other side of the world, create a foundation of Vedic wisdom and education and spread that wisdom from my heart. You know, Tami, when I was growing up, I didn’t even know what the western direction meant. What does a foreign country mean? I was just busy leading my life, and then karmic situations, no special effort, have brought me here, and I’m talking to you right now. I believe I have written a book Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom for a world audience, specifically the West.
TS: Now, you were the first person in your family lineage to travel and begin teaching outside of India. Is that correct?
AS: That is correct.
TS: I want to talk more to you about this infinity mindset. I think that’s very important. Before we do, you mentioned your guru, and you also talked about your grandfather. Your grandfather was your guru, your teacher, yes?
AS: That is right. My grandfather was a guru to hundreds, and he was also my guru.
TS: Tell me a little bit about him. I know in the book you refer to him as Baba, and there’s so much affection. You even go so far as to say that the teachings in the book are the teachings you received through him and that his energy, if you will, his brilliance, his genius, is pouring through you into the book. I’d love to know more about your relationship with him and what he was like.
AS: What was he like? I’m still trying to get around to it. He was clearly a spiritually realized being. He was a householder saint. Our lineage is what is known as grihastha sadhu in Sanskrit, which means householder sages. He spent several years in the Himalayas, but then his father, my great-grandfather said “Now let me see you find the Himalayas back home here amongst your people, amongst the work you have to do as a householder.” We believe in touching our spiritual peak, our self, amidst urban life or amidst normal life, what is normal to us in the course of affairs. Baba came back from the Himalayas, but he remained internally in a peak, in a state of God consciousness. He was a householder. He went about taking care of the people who came to him for healing, for advice, for blessings. He also raised his sons. One of them was my father.
He took a special liking to me probably because I lost my mother when I was 10, but even prior to that he had chosen me as a student, and he paid attention to me. Apparently, Tami, he had these very adult conversations with me around spirituality, and God, and infinity, and health, and to never give up on hope, and that I can be who I want to be. For example, if he’d walked to the river, we wouldn’t just look at the fishes and exclaim the joy. He would say to me, and I’ve written that in the book, “Now, like the river, follow your true course, and don’t stop until you reach the ocean.”
I don’t know if I understood him completely, but apparently my soul was listening because I’m still understanding him. I’m so grateful that he didn’t talk down to me. He just addressed me like I am a 50-year-old woman walking next to him, a 90-year-old man. That was it. We had these profound conversations. They come back to me through my waking experience, my dream experiences, when I am talking, when I am teaching. When I open an ancient text that I have not opened for 20 years, I will open that very page, and I will hear him explaining every word to me. I was apparently karmically blessed to be with him, and he prepared me for the work. Many times when I am lost, Tami, I just close my eyes, and I trust. I trust myself the way my guru trusted me. Then the rest of it is history. It’s a flow. That’s how I wrote the book.
TS: Now, I want to talk to you a little bit more about your name, Shunya. You talked about how this word, shunya, shunyata both relates to the mathematical idea of zero and infinity. I wonder if you can share with us a little bit more your understanding of this sense of zero or, you could say, emptiness, nothing there, and infinity, which goes out endlessly in space, no end.
AS: Yes. I would love to do that because it has become a central springboard of my own life. What I have done is embraced a kind of emptiness, which is the emptiness of the ego, of the contents of the mind. I have noticed that there is a potent emptiness. When I touch that space within me, when I become empty of the concepts, and the deductions, and the projections of my mind, I am able to touch something infinite within me. In fact I’ve begun teaching how to do that, and that is the whole aspect of infinity mindset towards health where we don’t feel like health is this static phenomena, and we’re going to just lose it with every encounter of a cold, cough, disease, trauma, and accident, but that we can actually recreate it again and again every day by knowing about this infinite emptiness. Can emptiness be infinite?
Then we go back to the Upanishads, these ancient texts, which then talk about this beautiful story between, once again, a father, the guru, and the disciple who is his son. The father says, “Bring me that banyan seed in yonder. The child brings it, and the father says, “Break it open.” The child breaks it open, and the father says, the guru says, “What do you see?” The child says, “It’s empty.” That’s the lesson. He says, the father says, “This great tree, the banyan, emerged from an empty seed. In the same way, your true essence, spirit, it is invisible, and yet it contains everything within it.”
Again and again I have had to let go of identifications around a personality, an adaptive self, which my mind and stories have created. I even forget on a daily basis that I belong to a lineage, or I am from this country or that place, or other fascinating facts about my bodily self. Really I keep trying to reclaim my empty self, the shunyata, this potent emptiness within me before it becomes filled with anything else, Tami. I’m enjoying talking about this to you. I can feel that you’re really getting what I’m saying because you understand this at the deepest level.
TS: Well, I love this phrase, potent emptiness. I think often when people fall into spaces that they experience as, you could say, a sense of no reference point, or they’re not sure what to believe, there’s a sense of darkness, sometimes they don’t experience it as potent. They experience it as deficient in some sense, like the way you were teased “Zero, zero, you’re not good enough.” There’s this deficiency. I’m wondering how you could help people shift their mindset into experiencing the potency instead of this sense of lack.
AS: The spirit cannot be seen with physical eyes, and yet this non-manifest essence leads to everything that is manifest. Therefore perhaps in my entire Vedic teachings and the essence of everything I have learned from my guru and my own journey, a very potent learning that I’ve had, Tami, is the learning of saying, “Neti neti,” “Not that, not that.” What does it mean? I would rather be a zero. I would rather be deficient. I would rather be empty. I would rather be anything that people want to call me, but when people tell me who I am, I don’t believe them. That is the truth of who I am and how I would suggest people to be.
I just want them to focus within on that inviolable, incorruptible, and beautiful, ultimate, complete essence and entertain the possibility of the existence of a supra-being within themselves. It is empty. It’s empty for a reason because if it’s filled with content, including depression, sadness, or even joy, or a human deciphered worthiness, then it is stuffy. I would rather be empty. People can call me deficient all they want, but I know that I am the magician. I know that I can be who I want to be. I have permission. I have expanse. I have space. I own this emptiness. I protect it. I am the guardian of my own infinity. Thank you very much. I like it to be empty.
TS: Tell me what you mean by that that you’re the guardian and the protector. That’s intriguing to me.
AS: You know, when we live in the—you know, when you’re a monk, I’m a monk at my heart, and I live in the world of people, relationships, concepts, ideologies. I find that all of this is being pushed towards me to take it on in some way and become that, including having a lineage to belong to. Well, then the world wanted to tell me how I should belong to a lineage. How does a Vedic master dress? How do they behave? How do they talk? I remembered my guru saying that “Never follow the word. Really live the spirit.” Therefore I have become a guardian of this emptiness, this potent emptiness, because I ultimately will decide, Tami, how I am going to be, how I will behave. That’s why people around me know that I can say no at any time, and I mean it. I’ll say it with love, and I’ll walk away with love. Similarly when I say yes, it is a flower that has bloomed in my emptiness, and I offer it with my entire being. I do not go in for any coercion. I’m looking at all parts of me.
It’s not like I’ve arrived. It’s an ongoing journey, I would say. Any times I feel that my emptiness is causing me suffering, then it became stuffed up with people wanting to stuff me, or subconsciously or unconsciously, facts, figures, phenomena, opinions, they entered my emptiness. That’s when I remember that I am the custodian. I am my cheerleader. That’s when I go into meditation. That’s when I start writing. I have written books just for me. That’s my scripture for me, which I will never reveal to the world. It was enough for my eyes to see them because that is what my emptiness wanted to grow. That’s where I’m a custodian, so I guess I walk tall, and I walk free, and that’s my attempt, at least every day.
TS: Oh, my. I am so inspired. Walk tall. Walk free. What a fierce woman you are. You’re totally making my day, Shunya. I’m enjoying this so much. We’ve talked—
AS: —bringing that out.
TS: I want to bring that out with you. I want to bring that out. It’s true. In many ways our conversation has started in the deep end, if you will, of this infinity mindset. That’s fine with me. What I want to do is now apply that infinity mindset, if you will, to this topic of your new book, the lifestyle wisdom of Ayurveda. What are the core principles, if you will, of lifestyle wisdom? It seems like you already are pointing to a spiritual principle that’s at the root, this coming from emptiness, trusting yourself, not letting other people stuff you with their ideas. I know there are many principles that you’ll language in your own way. That’s what I’d like to know.
AS: I’d like to preface it with something that I want to share with you and our listeners today, Tami. I guess the first step is to become aware that possessing health is a matter of mastering a spiritual art. It’s not just a stroke of luck or perfecting a technology. If we want to have health, we must proceed to learn all about cultivating health, something like in the way we would learn any other art, say, music, writing poetry, ceramics, or even woodwork. There are all these misconceptions and falsehoods that keep us from approaching and least of all mastering this art. The biggest misconception is that health is a fixed commodity. This leaves us in a pretty hopeless and pessimistic condition. Deep in our heart we all worry that “What’s going to happen when my health runs out?”
What I’m trying to really—the point I’m trying to plead, what I’m trying to convey through my book here, the spiritual piece here is saying, “Don’t give up on hope because you can actually, working off of the infinity principle around health, you simply have to cultivate health. It’s an evolving and growth mindset that we want to have. You’re not going to run out of it just because you’ve had accidents, and antibiotics, and traumas, and genetic dispositions, or other such conditions. Simply consider each day as in a canvas of an artist, and the lifestyle practices are like colors. Every day paint your most beautiful picture, your most beautiful image.” That is it. Every day, maximize your ability to stay healthy, and you will become more and more healthy because as per the infinity principle, which is a spiritual reality, there is unbounded health within you. These practices draw it out.
My hope was in writing this book that people don’t give up on hope because my teacher had told me that hopelessness is the primary disease that precedes all diseases. We give up on ourselves. Then we don’t want to just, in the name of an art—that word is very cliché, an art of this, an art of that. It’s not just anything and everything. There are these timeless practices intelligently bound together with some healthy dose of dos and don’ts that have stood the test of time. They were relevant thousands of years ago. They were relevant in the middle. They are relevant today, and they’ll be relevant tomorrow. This is a rational, scientific art that I wanted to convey, but ultimately with the hope that people stop thinking that “Oh my God, I’m running out of my health cache. What am I going to do?”
TS: Now, I have several questions for you here, Shunya. One is that I understand the spiritual principles underneath Ayurveda being timeless, any generation in any place. When we get into some of the methods, and the herbs that are used, et cetera, and we’re really taking what developed in a different geographic zone, in a different time, and now here you are, the first member of your family coming to the western world to teach, and we’re adapting that science of Ayurveda and the methods to a Western culture, do you think it can be just imported whole hog, if you will, or are there certain revisions that need to be made for it to blossom here in the Western world?
AS: You know what’s amazing is that in the ancient days also, Ayurveda was mainstream medicine not only in India, but a big part of Southeast Asia, and Tibet, and China, and Japan. It was traveling everywhere. When you go to the ancient texts, they actually talk about adapting it to the client and environment of different countries. They call it deshe, which means different land, and kala, which means different time and seasons. If you take the same Ayurveda knowledge, and you go to Eskimo country, guess what? There is information there as to what are the universal principles and what would be the regional adaptations to it. That’s really great that the sages foresaw that this is not limited knowledge that belongs to one people, who worship one god, or eat one kind of food. This is from the beginning universal. It was from the beginning open for humanity. In fact it was not only Ayurveda for humans, but there is ashvaveda for horses, vrikshaveda for trees. Ayurveda was for everyone in all epochs of life.
When you read the book, the readers will find that “Oh my God, yes, yes, yes, this applies to me.” The sages studied the human condition, which has essentially not changed, which is a continuum of experiences of body, senses, mind, and spirit. They addressed it. They didn’t address Indians or South Indians. They didn’t address people who live on this side of the Indus who eat the cumin and the turmeric. No, they talked about things that grow on higher altitudes, or what grow in the ocean, what you can find near the river, what you can find in the hot climate. These are universal. What I did in this book specifically was tailor this book especially for my readers in America because I live here. I’ve worked with the people here for the last several decades. I wanted to write for my people, so I took care of it. I addressed the climate here and the adaptations here. It works, and it’s easy to adapt to, and it comes in-built with those recommendations.
TS: Now, you talked about how this core teaching that you got from your grandfather, your guru, Baba, was not to lose hope, and that “Hopelessness is the disease that precedes all symptoms.” That’s a quote from Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom. When I read that quote, “Hopelessness is the disease that precedes all symptoms,” I actually made a connection with the state of current affairs in our world and particularly in terms of the environment. People are beginning, many, to feel quite hopeless about climate change, about species extinction. I wonder how you see that from an Ayurvedic standpoint and an infinity mindset, if you will, people who are so despairing, right now, and for good reason, about the state of the world.
AS: Yes. It’s amazing that thousands of years ago the Ayurvedic texts from first century BCE actually talk about environment, and dharma, and the human condition. If they lose hope, if you lose hope at what’s happening today in the world, in the world of environment, politics, and national and international situations that are developing, we’re not going to be able to really influence the course of destiny. Much like when we develop symptoms of disease, if you lose hope quickly, that disease becomes very strengthened because we have already lost our power. We have already lost our ability to influence and change that we want.
Therefore I would say that when we look back at Ayurveda, then I have a lesson that I want to share with you. Thousands of years ago, Charaka, one of the sages writes, and I’m literally quoting from this very ancient text, Tami, and it says “That when there is a adharma among the political leaders and nations, and among the keepers of the nations,” adharma means unrighteousness, “then because of this, it does not rain in time or at all, or there is abnormal rainfall. The wind will not blow properly. That land will get affected and polluted. Water reservoirs will get dried up, and the herbal medicines will give up their natural properties and acquire morbidity. Epidemics will break out because humans lost their dharma.”
It’s very interesting that thousands of years ago they were connecting human ability to follow a just course of action or not going out and influencing what happens to the planets in their orbit, and seasons, and changes, and then they plead for us to come back to the course of dharma. I am working on a separate writing around environment and dharma, but all I can share right now with our listeners would be to go back to Baba’s wisdom and say “Don’t give up hope,” because many times our planet has been tested. Many times unrighteousness has taken over. Many times reason has been tossed away for ego and interest, and evilness. But every time there is something sustainable, something beautiful that rises again and again that is bigger than all of us.
Now more than ever, Tami, I tell my students “Hold onto your knowingness of what is right, and truthful, and beautiful because we can make a paradigm shift by who we are deep within us, but if we lose ourselves in the negativity, then we’ve already lost it.” Now more than ever, now more than ever the healthy ones have to come together and believe that anything is possible so that whatever is not working for us becomes very minimized from a paradigm perspective.
TS: Shunya, in your book, Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom, you focus on many, many aspects of health. I want to see if we can touch on just a few of them. First of all, there are three main areas that you address: sleep, diet, and sex. I thought it was interesting that sex made it to the top of the list. It wasn’t sleep, diet, and exercise, and sex is an aspect of exercise. Instead, sleep, diet, and sex. How did sex make it so high on the list?
AS: Because the sages were having happy sex.
TS: I love it. These are my kind of sages.
AS: Absolutely. My kind too. I think sex is such an integral part of our biological, physiological, emotional, and spiritual nature that the sages really wanted to hold that and give us the right parameters so that we don’t burn ourselves out, but nor do we go into some morbid states of self-punishment. Vedic spirituality, if you look at the sages who wrote the Vedas, they were all happily married, or they had sexual partners. There was not this concept of extreme abstinence to prove a point, least of all a spiritual one. I like that. That is why in my lineage too we all are often in fact entreated upon to find partners, find love, and lead a full life, and really be part of nature. Therefore sexuality had to be a part of Ayurveda. Because it was being addressed to the common person, who finds partners, often reproduces, lives on to have a complete sexual cycle until the later years of their life, it’s wonderful, wonderful teachings, and beloved teachings, and gentle teachings, including talking about being sexual only with the one who respects you. I love that.
TS: OK. When it comes to sleep, diet, and sex, we started off talking about sex, but what I want to know are what you think the key myths or misconceptions are that you would like to correct with Ayurvedic instructions. I know this is a really big topic and that you’ll only be able to hit some of the highlights. If we move to sleep and diet, what are the key misconceptions that you see that people have and the key Ayurvedic instructions?
AS: More than the misconceptions I would say that when I came across Ayurveda—we are all trying our best. We all have an inherent relationship with sleep, food, and sex, and we are just intuitive beings, and we all figure it out in some way. When you read Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom, my book, and I bring forward the teachings of the ancient sages, more than misconception, I would say, Tami, it gives us the right way to conceptualize what kind of relationship I would like to have with food, sleep, and sex. It’s a positive teaching, which actually has done research in the human being in interaction with nature and told us that “Hey, probably if you went to bed around 10 p.m. and tried to wake up anytime before six a.m., that is the most optimum for your body and mind, and here is why.”
Then I take the time to elaborate why because I didn’t want to just give some couple of rules and expect everybody to follow it blindly. Then I explained it from Ayurvedic science perspective. I also quoted some relevant research in modern times to convey my point until I believe that the reader is happily convinced and actually has a transformation in their lifestyle, and they reap the consequent benefit of that change. For example, in sleep, we often think that we can sleep in the daytime, at any time, after eating, or before eating. When is the right time to take a nap? Say, if you take a nap after you’ve eaten, what impact will it have on your digestion, metabolism? Will you end up being more toxic as a result or less toxic? These are some details that I found were not often discussed.
I abhor lists, “Do this. Do that.” I don’t like just doing that. There are all these gentle, narrative discussions, gently persuading the listener into why the ancient sages who gave us Ayurveda, yoga, meditation, tantra, chakras, why they were not napping right after a meal, but instead walking 100 steps after a meal. What does that do to you? How do you, in interaction to your environment and physiology, how do you reciprocate to that eating? Do you just sit down and go into inertia, or do you walk around and help digest that food with your movement? These simple things have helped conceptualize and reframe our basic mundane activities, which we so take for granted. I’ve had year after year of working with students, leading several clinics, where people make these simple changes, and they notice that their blood pressures are dropping, cholesterol is clearing up, blood sugar is improved, depression lifts. Apparently there was some wisdom to all of this.
Similarly in sex. For example, many people get tired after sexual activity. What is the ideal time to have sexual activity? When would be the best time? When does your sexual energy peak? What did the ancient sages have to say about it, and why do you think they say this? I love the whys. I love answering the whys. What was the deeper belief system behind these changes, and how can you accommodate it in your modern life, in your regular homes and family life? This way when people read the Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom, they connect not only to Eastern wisdom, but they connect to much more mindfulness around the simple practices of sleeping, or sexual activity, or even food. In which season should be eating what? In the nighttime should be a heavier meal or the daytime? In case you feel hungry, but you don’t want a full meal, what could be good snack options in a regular American home which are Ayurvedically approved and wonderful for your being, and the next morning when you get up, you’ll be energized and not feeling the taste in your mouth?
It’s very simple things, but it requires a deep look into it. What I’ve found, Tami, is that when people start employing pieces and parts of this wisdom into their life, they find a lot of physical energy that was trapped earlier, physiologically, gets released. They feel more creative, and they just feel overall well-being that is hard to define but cannot be dismissed.
TS: Now, Shunya, before I let you move on, just to clarify, because you asked some really interesting questions about sex, back to this for a moment, when is the best time to have sex?
AS: Ideally before the partners go to bed versus early in the morning, which is a special time to meditate and be more in a creative solitude communing with higher realities.
TS: Now, it sounds to me since you don’t like lists and check a bunch of boxes, you’re not trying to impose something from the outside. You’re trying to help guide people into something that is intuitive. Throughout Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom, you talk about the importance of aligning ourselves with nature and the cycles of nature. I wonder if you can talk more about that as an underlying principle, if you will, that these other lifestyle recommendations come from.
AS: Absolutely. Just to preface what I’m about to tell you, I just want to say that Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom has the right amount of boxes and checklists, but not without a discussion and a gentle exploration as to why we are providing that information. Apparently one thing that Ayurveda wants you to be really clear about is that your health or our health is not a static phenomena, but it is the product of a dynamic interaction with all of creation, all of creation. The sun, the moon, the wind play a very special role. Chronobiological rhythms evolve as a result of a 24-hour cycle when the earth spins on its own axis and also a 12-season rhythm because the earth orbits around the sun. Now, this is a majestic adventure for all beings on planet earth, and they all change the amount of food they need, whether they drop their leaves, or they hold onto their leaves, or whether the flowers will bloom or not bloom. There is a lot of interaction going on between natural world and the cosmos.
Well, Ayurveda wants to remind us that we are no different. We are not made of plastic. We too have to accept these rhythms. If we can live according to these rhythms, then we would do wonderfully. I had asked Baba “Well, of course, if I and the lotus in the pond in my home, we are both natural creatures and we know what to do,” but Baba smiled and said “No because the lotus has not forgotten that it’s a natural creature, and it must respect mother nature.” We have. We tend to forget, hence we need Ayurveda to remind us of how to live in those rhythms. As a result, in these teachings, in this book, I talk about how to construct and live an ideal 24-hour time period, when to wake up, when to sleep, when to have your biggest meal, what to cook in what season, what would be the ideal things to do in any season. We have found again, and again, and again that once I give this knowledge to people who have a variety of ill health, and suffering, mental, emotional, physical, I don’t see them for many months. I just see them getting happier and happier in the audience that I am addressing. Then once in a while they’ll come back to me and say “The knowledge of the rhythm and working in cooperation with nature and not against it has set me free, Shunya. Thank you.”
Apparently, Tami, nature has some lessons for us. The Ayurveda sages captured it beautifully with detailed instruction. Baba made it a life for me, and I lived that life. Now in this book, I bring it for everyone because I care, because this knowledge set me free, and I want others to walk in an expansive way too.
TS: You know, Shunya, when you talk about the knowledge of these rhythms of the natural world, I’m reminded of times when I’ve been on a retreat by myself, very tuned in to when the sun rises and sets, and very much connected to the rhythms of the natural world. I compare that to how it’s like when I’m deeply engaged in working when I’m not particularly tuned in to when the sun is setting necessarily. I’m tuned into deadlines that I have. I think that many people, their priority, if you will, of what is setting their agenda for any given day, week, or month, is not, “What are the rhythms going on in the natural world?” They’re, “What are my work responsibilities or family responsibilities?” Do you feel that here in the West we’ve invested in a set of priorities that are keeping us away from Ayurveda lifestyle wisdom? How do we change that investment?
AS: I’m so grateful that you asked me this question because this takes me back to my favorite theme of presence versus productivity. One of the reasons we have invested so much in the work we do, and being on our laptop, or checking out what’s happening in the world versus ourselves and being in tune with nature is because we’re checked out. We also believe that somehow to be productive we really have to somehow not check in with ourselves.
Throughout this book I plead the case that by leading a life that is to a large extent guided by Ayurveda’s lifestyle wisdom, you shall be cultivating and connecting with presence, a spiritual presence within you and in this universe from time, to time, to time. This will only enhance your productivity. This shall make you even more creative. That’s why even whether I am in a board meeting, whether I am addressing an audience of thousands of people who are looking up to me as a speaker and a teacher, I have a secret. My secret is that I lead a life which is almost nourishing me, which is polishing me, which is perfecting me to do what I do in the world.
In my private moments of cultivated mindfulness, I actually have an art of lifestyle to go back to. When I, for example, apply oil on my body, warmed oil, and I’m touching every part of my being, from my foot to my head, and later I have a class that I have to teach, that 10 minutes of oiling, and loving myself, and connecting with nature through that warmed oil, and remembering that this is what I am doing as an act of self-love, an active process of nourishing my health, it centers me.
I don’t know what happens, Tami, but when I walk out into that classroom, I don’t lose myself. I don’t pander to the classroom. I am completely me, as if I am alone with that oil still on my body. I am in my lifestyle, and my life has a style that supports me and my presence. I think it’s a myth that somehow presence and productivity don’t work together. We are doing it again and again, you and I, bringing them together. That’s why our life has changed.
TS: Is there a certain kind of oil you put on yourself, Shunya? I notice I feel attracted to that. What kind of oil are you using?
AS: I wrote so much about sesame oil. It’s the uncooked, crude sesame oil known as tila tailam in Sanskrit in the book that anybody would fall in love with it. You warm it, and it balances all the energies. I warmly cook it in a crockpot, so it’s waiting for me when I go into the area where I want to oil my body. Then the strokes are really gentle. I am just caressing myself, so the name is massage. Really I am self-caressing, and I apply oil to every part of my body. Then I take a hot shower. Instead of soap, I have mentioned many kinds of natural soap substitutes. There is a lentil called mung lentil. We can get mung lentil flour, and we can use that. As you smell the mung lentil, as you are scrubbing that oil on your face, you will feel like you’re standing in a forest, and all acne and blemishes will settle down.
I write about Ayurveda, and talking about sesame oil and mung flour, and I’m having a spiritual experience right now because presence does not live in the mind with its ideas, thoughts, concepts. It lives and expresses itself in the here and now through the smells, textures, tastes. I believe that Ayurveda has helped me be in my body more. I love that. I just love being part of that ritualistic life where I am a custodian of my health.
TS: I notice, Shunya, that I feel drawn to being a guest in your house where the crockpot’s waiting for me and the food’s being cooked. Then this is a question here, and I’m not trying to be glib or anything, but when I notice of setting all of this up for myself, I feel a little intimidated. Will I find the right kind of oil? Will I not start a fire in my house? Will I know how to cook with this type of special flour? Is it available in a regular grocery store? I just feel a little overwhelmed by trying to make this practical in my own life.
AS: Right. That is why I have asked to the readers that they—it’s a whole lifestyle. It takes a whole life to implement it. Ayurveda lifestyle is like the tree which has beautiful fruit, but you’re not being asked to eat the entire tree. Just nibble at a fruit at a time. Then the book contains—I have been teaching people in America for the longest time now, so we have details on where can you buy it. Most of the things can be bought online now. There is nothing so foreign and exotic that you can’t find it on an easy online search engine. That I can promise you. I don’t want to create the façade of an exotic world that you can only find by taking a plane ride to India. That is an antithesis to what I’m trying to do. I care for the average American family here that I work with. India was where I learned, and this is where I teach, and I groom students to become teachers in the future.
Everything is available here. There are many common ingredients that were also known to Native American mystics, and shamans, and teachers, but the uniqueness is in the how, the knowledge. Sesame oil has been known to many cultures, but what does Ayurveda do with it? This should all be very easy. The book has been broken down into very easy chapters from morning to night. You can literally dive into whichever area seems to call you. Somebody wants happier sleep? Go read the sleep chapter. There’s lots of resources for you. That’s what I try, Tami, so that my conversation—culture, language barriers, cultural barriers should not come in the way of great knowledge getting to each and every home.
TS: You know, Shunya, one of the things I’m reflecting on as we’re talking is how our conversation has touched on a depth of spiritual realization coming from shunya, from emptiness, from zero, this infinity mindset into very serious details about health and diet, and sleep recommendations, and a psychological attitude of not losing hope, and how sometimes people think about health as one thing and spirituality as something different, and psychology as something yet different again, and how there’s this effortless weaving together, if you will, in the Vedic approach. I wonder if you can address that, this kind of seamless integration.
AS: Indeed. That was the beauty of the Vedic approach that I really have become a champion for where it does not oblige us to separate different parts of ourselves. Again and again there is a calling of an integrity approach, a unity approach. That is why I have written about that in the book too, Tami, about we don’t have to take our spirit to the church, and the mind to the psychiatrist, and our body to the doctor. Ayurveda lifestyle will address all aspects of our being. In fact, thousands of years ago Ayurveda did a very bold thing. It defined the living subject as four dimensional, [speaking Sanskrit]. It said that the subject, you the reader who is going to benefit from Ayurveda, we’re not going to address just your body. Of course we will, but you have senses too, which sometimes get tired. We want to make sure your senses are rested too.
That’s not enough too, also your mind. Your mind should be optimally functioning, balanced, calm. Finally, your spirit. Are you feeling freedom? Are you hopeful? Are you in touch with your emptiness? Are you flying? Are you recreating yourself in your daily life? All of these became an important subject matter for Ayurveda. That is why it seems that when people feel invisible in other systems of medicine which have a deep obligation towards the material dimension of the existence, or they feel like “Yes, my spirituality is being addressed, but my bodily needs are being ignored,” somehow Ayurveda is that unique system that sees that at once, altogether, and we don’t have to be apologetic for anything. That is why I as a teacher, I am a spiritual teacher. I teach about self-realization and self-actualization. Then within a minute I can talk about sleep patterns and digestion. I don’t feel apologetic. I feel I am very well equipped to address the human being and the multiple dimensions of existence, and I have the knowledge that has been time-tested, that is for all beings that was generously shared by the sages for the benefit of all.
It teaches us compassion. Do you know that—it is beautiful, Tami, and I’ve touched upon it in the book about how a charitable state of mind, a generous state of mind, a state of selfless service, and a state of forgiveness and compassion, all of these things decorate our health and move us towards greater well-being. Only Ayurveda could do that all in one stroke.
TS: Shunya, I’d love to bring our conversation all the way into a circle and end our conversation the way we began, which was talking about your grandfather and the mantle, if you will, that you received from him and your family lineage. I wonder if you could share with us a story about you and Baba together that’s a story that’s a real touchstone for you, if you will, something that you draw strength from.
AS: I have so many stories. I am wondering which one to share with you. Let me think about it. What Baba shared with me was something very powerful and poignant when my mother passed away at 10. I was 10. She passed away because she had a congenital heart condition, and apparently she came for a short lifetime on earth, enough, enough to mother me, and enough to fill me with mothering capacities. I was sitting by her dead body, and some rituals were going on. Baba sat with me, and he held a clay pot. Clay utensils were common in India. They are still common today. He broke the pot in front of me, and he said, “The space that was contained in the clay pot is no longer contained by the clay pot. It still exists. In the same way, your mother, who was contained in that one body, now exists everywhere. She is mother nature now.”
That quiet teaching and that visual scene of the space that was stuffed inside a clay pot, released to become part of the greatest pot, that infinity pot, really made me fearless of death. It has allowed me to reinvent myself again and again and become a healer by touching very deep chords within me. I think that teaching next to the still body of my mother and knowing that while death is certain, spirit is the only truth made a very big impact on me. I started connecting with that essence which sometimes comes inside a pot and becomes the animated spirit, but is everywhere. I think that is what I remember. I wonder if it is too grave to share on the podcast.
TS: No, not at all. Not at all, and you made a strong statement in telling the story that this demonstration and illustration by Baba in your life when you were just 10 years old has led to a certain fearlessness in the face of death. I think a lot of people wish they felt fearless in the face of death, but they don’t actually. They have quite a lot of fear. I think that anything you can say or do to help people reckon with their own fear around death is very useful.
AS: Yes. Thank you. I think it helps if the healer, the teacher, has had close encounters with death, and so really knows that life and death are really just opposite sides of the same energy of spirit, and can walk with a certain grace. I think I owe all of this to my very out-of-box teacher. That has created me an out of-the-box teacher and personality. My students still cannot predict me, and yet I have a stability that goes back thousands of years. That same conviction and a fearless conviction in health is why I wrote this book. I didn’t just write the book because I had to write the book. I wrote the book because I wanted to convey my conviction.
People who study with me, read my writings, and actually take the time to go through my writings, because they are not just information, it’s a transmission, it’s a communication from my soul to their soul, they feel transformed. I have miracles happening all around me, but I don’t think I trace those miracles to me. I trace them to the truth of spirit, consciousness, and infinity. I just got connected with it. You know, Tami, probably this is a good time to share as any that there was a time in my teenage years that I couldn’t walk for a while. Later, much later we found out that I have a genetic condition that doesn’t want me to walk and would like me to be in a wheelchair.
TS: What genetic condition is that?
AS: It’s a condition that causes inflammation throughout my body and would like to have me in a wheelchair. There was a while, for a short while, when I could not walk. There was a short while when I also did not want to follow Ayurveda. I think that’s really important for people to know because I don’t want to just come across as this wonderful person who was born in this wonderful family with an Ayurveda-coated spoon. I as a teenager, as all teenagers, wanted to not have to work on my health, not want to touch my infinity, and not want to have to do with anything sacred whatsoever. That confirmed that I’m a regular human being, but similarly at that time, interestingly, the inflammation went up so much, I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t cough. I couldn’t lift a spoon. Once again, my Baba didn’t push it on me. He said that a forgetting of the way is necessary to really then recognize the way. Then when I went up to him, Baba said “Are you ready?” I said “I’m ready.” He helped me once again with oiling my body, and taking warm foods, and the right kind of foods that reduce inflammation, which is known as vata-balancing foods mentioned in the book.
My body came back to normal. I am walking, and recently I started running. I seem to be going against my age. My health seems to be improving more every day. That doesn’t mean that I won’t follow the natural law of decay or aging, or that I won’t leave this part called the Shunya body and become part of that great space and expanse of spirit, but probably I’ll do it in a very healthy way and the best way that’s right for me. Occasionally I get a twinge here or there, but then I know what I can do, and I become even more inward and more connected to my lifestyle and my spirit. My health and consciousness seem to awaken others and stay awakened. That’s my path right now currently, reporting as of today.
TS: I’ve been speaking with Acharya Shunya, and I want to thank you so much for sharing this entire conversation and then about your own health challenges from your teenage years as well that have really informed your own journey with Ayurveda lifestyle wisdom. Thank you for adding that in. I think it was quite helpful and illuminating. You know, out-of-the-box, being an out-of-the-box spiritual teacher, that works just fine for me and just fine for Sounds True. I think, honestly, that’s what we need in our time, people who will walk tall, walk free, and be as self-revealing and straightforward as you’ve been. Thank you so much.
AS: Thank you.
TS: I’ve been speaking with Acharya Shunya. She’s written a new book called Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom: A Complete Prescription to Optimize Your Health, Prevent Disease, and Live with Vitality and Joy. It’s a very rich and comprehensive book that covers everything from sleep to the daily clock, 24-hour clock of health, diet. There are recipes in the book as well as sections on elimination, and dental health, and all kinds of Ayurvedic instructions, all rooted in this deeper spiritual view of an infinity mindset. Shunya, I really enjoyed talking to you. You inspire me. Thank you.
AS: Thank you.
TS: SoundsTrue.com, many voices, one journey. Thanks for listening.
