The Ayurveda Experiment: Phase I

By Varsana Lali Devi Dasi

The Ayurveda Experiment: Phase I is a self-guided, twelve-week program that teaches others about conscious consumption and how to apply the principles of an ancient science of healing to achieve health, wellness, and life balance.

In a twelve-week guide, Varsana offers personal stories intertwined with detailed guidelines and a variety of exercises that teach how to apply the principles of Ayurveda, an ancient holistic science of healing, to achieve life balance. Through her practical roadmap, others will learn about the five elements in the body, the disease process, and how to take inventory of physical imbalances, observe habits, and create goals. Varsana teaches that through these processes one can learn how to break through the cycles that bind us into making ongoing bad choices, and instead, make informed decisions that will contribute to fulfillment, the achievement of personal goals, and ultimately, to happiness. Also available is The Ayurveda Experiment Companion Journal.

Varsana Lali Devi Dasi (born Lisa Marchand) has always been a seeker. While growing up in a tumultuous environment, she was drawn to ask questions about the bigger picture. What was the cause of her suffering and what could she do to make the best of it? As she searched for the truth in the ancient texts of India, Bhakti Yoga, and later through the principles of Ayurveda, Varsana not only found relief from her suffering, but also discovered her purpose, community, and the key to a meaningful life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Mar 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9781982259754

Varsana Lali Devi Dasi

Varsana Lali Devi Dasi earned her Master’s of Education from Salem State University and later a certificate in Ayurvedic Health Counseling from Hale Pule School of Yoga and Ayurveda. Her Ayurveda practice was founded in 2018. Varsana lives with her husband and children in New England where she is currently writing a memoir and the next installment of The Ayurveda Experiment.

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Copyright © 2021 Varsana Lali Devi Dasi.

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ISBN: 978-1-9822-5973-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-5974-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-5975-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020923932

Balboa Press rev. date: 06/10/2021

Contents

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Dedication

Preface

Acknowledgements

Introduction

About Phase I

Ayurveda in a Nutshell: What You Need to Know

Weeks 1 & 2: Preparing for Your Experiment

Weeks 3 & 4 Strengthening Agni

Weeks 5 & 6 Balancing Vata

Weeks 7 & 8 Balancing Pitta

Weeks 9 & 10 Balancing Kapha

Weeks 11 & 12 Establishing Your Routine & Analyzing Your Outcomes

Glossary

Bibliography

Resources

About the Author

On The Ayurveda Experiment

Dedication

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This book is dedicated to my mother, Peg Femino Camarda, and her life. In her short time on this planet she loved stronger, laughed harder, and faced struggles with more courage than anyone I have ever known. I love you, mom, and thank you for everything you have done for me.

Preface

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Reflecting on how I wanted to share Ayurveda with the world, I thought back on my own experience and realized that my own success with incorporating Ayurveda into my life didn’t have to do with a particular book, teacher, or person, but rather how I took everything in and wove it into my life where I was at that moment in time. In that process I learned more about myself, about how to achieve and maintain mental, physical and emotional balance, than I ever thought possible. My goal with this book is to share my experience with you, where I am, with the hope that it will help you, where you are.

When I was in the process of editing this book, the world was hit with the devastating pandemic of COVID-19. Day by day I experienced the routines of my life shift and adapt as safety protocols were established around the world. First, we heard about the virus spreading in other countries. It was vague, and remote. People were dying, but not people we knew. Then, as it arrived in the USA, the effects were closer and closer to home. The first big change for me was that my kids’ schools shut down, forcing me to change my work schedule so I could be home with them during the day. Then my day job shut down, and I began adjusting to the new routine of homeschooling my kids. As more places closed their doors, we had more and more time, and life for us settled into a new slower pace. There was nowhere to go, no one to see. I continued to do my book edits when time allowed, but all the while my consciousness was changing as we learned about social distancing and health recommendations began to hone in on hygiene and immunity. With the paradigm shift that resulted from the spread of COVID-19, I began to think about the content of my book and what I would have done differently in the materials or presentation of The Ayurveda Experiment. What I concluded was that I wouldn’t change a thing, because even though the pandemic had changed the way we live in modern culture, how one goes about using Ayurveda to learn about themselves and to achieve their health goals had not. Ayurveda is shashwat, a timeless and unchanging science, and its origin is divine. The best thing we can do to prepare for anything in the future is to get to know and connect with our true selves. This, is the goal of Ayurveda.

When I first encountered knowledge of the disease process, it was beyond enlightening for me. The notion of how disease unfolded in the body is understood so thoroughly in Ayurveda, and that said disease could be detected, halted, and reversed, was mind blowing. However, that I had never been exposed to any of that information before in any capacity, was bewildering. According to my previous experience and knowledge, disease was something that you got based on genes, luck, and maybe some lingering karma. To think that it was possible to see the course of disease as it was budding and developing, and put a stop to it, was nothing short of earth shattering. But it was also bittersweet. When my own mother was diagnosed with stage four cancer, a disease that would ultimately claim her life at only 56 years old, I was determined to seek out any method that could help her survive. Since she was motivated by alternative approaches to medicine and healing, I know she would have embraced Ayurveda had she encountered it in time. With my understanding of the disease process came also my understanding that my mother’s illness, the one that took her life, was not inevitable, and was in fact preventable. My one regret, if I can call it that, is that I couldn’t help her by addressing her symptoms in those earlier stages of disease. On the brighter side, I am able to use this knowledge to empower myself, my children, and the generations that come after them to make more informed health choices and, hopefully, prevent anything quite as devastating as what happened to my mother. As a fairly new student in the field of Ayurveda (just over 5 years at the time of writing this book), I still have much to learn. I am by no means an expert, and I don’t claim to have a fraction of the knowledge that the many teachers and authors on Ayurveda who have come before me possess. What I do know is that Ayurveda has had a profound impact on my life, that I want to share it with others, and that I aim to offer something different—something approachable—and something that can really apply to nearly anyone.

This book presents suggestions on how to experiment with incorporating Ayurveda into your life, and in the process, just like I did, you will learn about yourself and what you can do to achieve your health and wellness goals. The information and techniques I offer have been given to me by my teachers, and when appropriate, I will share the source of my knowledge. My presentation in this book, however, is unique, and I hope that you appreciate it as a way to get started with Ayurveda.

Whatever your goals may be, there is a solution in Ayurveda. I congratulate you on the start of your journey with this ancient and wonderful science of healing!

Acknowledgements

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I am eternally grateful to all of my teachers in the fields of Bhakti Yoga and Ayurveda, especially my Guru Maharaja, His Holiness Srila Dhanurdhara Swami Maharaja, and my primary teacher of Ayurveda, Myra Lewin. Without my teachers I would be lost in this world. I am also grateful to my husband Fred Day-Lewis (who helped me to edit this book) and my children, Luka and Griffin, who had to endure my own Ayurveda Experiment for years and will hopefully continue to do so. To my editors, students and friends who assisted in the creation of this book, the list of which is still expanding. To my Uncle Jimmy, whose influence shaped my life in the best possible way. And finally, to my dear late mother, Margaret Peggy Femino Camarda, who was my first spiritual teacher in this world.

Introduction

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I can’t remember a time in my life when I wasn’t faced with imbalance. As a child, one of my parents suffered with severe bi-polar disorder and the other with alcoholism. Trauma was my norm, but I have saved those stories for another book.

A seeker from an early age, rather than always address my problems with a pill (which did not seem like a real solution) I was instead drawn to ask questions about the bigger picture. What was the cause of my suffering? What was the reason for it? If suffering were an inevitable part of life, what could I do to make the best of it? So, in the midst of the chaos I faced on a regular basis living with two unpredictable parents, I tried the best I could to search for some truth in the world, some answers to my many growing questions.

As I aged, my somewhat innocent and philosophical nature was jaded by life’s trials and tribulations, and I gradually developed a kind of generalized anxiety, complete with social phobias. These, along with other budding problems associated with puberty, were soon masked but also exacerbated by drug and alcohol abuse. Like many other teens who have suffered trauma, I developed addictions, nicotine and caffeine to begin with, then alcohol to some degree, all the while engaging in destructive behavior patterns that would influence my relationships and my life for decades. Despite my attempt to escape life by any means, I still had so many questions. Questions about life, death, my purpose, and about suffering. They were big questions for a small person, but yet I felt that I needed the answers to make my way through life. I also felt that I was acting and moving forward through time without all the necessary pieces of the puzzle, which was true. I first encountered some answers when in high school, as I began reading Eastern philosophy. One of the first books I read was the Tao Te Ching, translated by Stephen Miller. From there, I began to seek out and read as many books as I could on Buddhism, and found that the teachings of this ancient religion felt more familiar to me than anything I had ever learned. The tenets of compassion and non-violence resonated with me, and the practice of mindfulness, or being in the present moment, helped to still my worried mind. As I began to practice these methods they helped to curb my anxieties, at least some of them, and gave me some much-needed peace. I fancied myself a Buddhist for a few years, and even went on a journey to find some community I could join and practice with. Ultimately, I was not able to find that community, and my interest fizzled out as I failed to address the questions still eating at me. It wasn’t until I was nineteen and met a young, enthusiastic Hare Krishna that I would find my spiritual home.

I began going to the Hare Krishna temple in Boston in the fall of 1998. I would journey with my friends for the Sunday Love Feast, where we would listen to lectures on Bhagavad-Gita, participate in ecstatic and sometimes even rambunctious singing and dancing, and eat delicious vegetarian feasts. I liked the lectures because The Bhagavad-Gita seemed to be aligned with the teachings of Buddhism in many ways, and soon I realized that the Gita itself held even more answers to my questions. Sure, I had heard all the rumors that the Hare Krishnas were a cult, and that by joining it meant you were going to give them all of your worldly belongings, leave your family, and then spend most of your time proselytizing in airports, but at that point in my life I really had nothing to lose, so I took the leap. As far as I could see it, bipolar disorder was most likely in my future, I had no earthly possessions, and I was searching for anything to believe in. My own family had let me down to say the least, so finding a new one, even if it were a cult, seemed ok to me.

After a couple months of attending the feast regularly, I was sure that what the Krishnas followed, called "Vaishnavism" had more to offer than what I had found in Buddhism, but I was still slow to tow the line. I watched as other new people came to the temple and jumped right into the cultural aspects of the tradition that came from India, like wearing colorful saris, painting tilak on one’s forehead and sporting neck beads—but it didn’t feel right to me. I wasn’t just looking to rebel against my parents or try on a new look, I really wanted to understand who I was, and to do this, it really didn’t matter what I wore when I was visiting the temple. What mattered was that I had found the place that had the long sought after answers to my many questions.

As it turned out, my assimilation into Krishna culture took decades, and during those years I wafted in and out of the organization known as ISKCON (The International Society for Krishna Consciousness). I wasn’t asked to give up my material possessions or leave my family, but I had found within the Krishna movement like-minded people, teachers, and friends who would become a new one. And when I would return to that family after a time astray, just like a healthy bio one, they would welcome me back with open arms.

What does this have to do with Ayurveda, you might be wondering? I start with this story because despite my finding a spiritual home and adopting a philosophy of life that made sense to me, it wasn’t until I discovered Ayurveda that I could make Bhakti work for me. Bhakti helped me to understand the final destination of my soul, but I still needed to learn how to take care of myself while I inhabited a physical body. That wouldn’t happen for many years to come.

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By the time I left home and went off to Bard in upstate New York for my first year of college, I was already struggling with crippling anxiety, panic attacks and severe self-doubt. Being away from home instantly exacerbated my symptoms, and so I found myself making the four and a half hour drive home almost every weekend. After years of trying to live with my afflictions, often resorting to self-medication in the form of alcohol and nicotine, I finally chose to see if my primary care doctor could help. Hearing my symptoms, the doctor declared that I was indeed suffering from some kind of anxiety disorder and hastily wrote out a prescription for a drug called Paxil. I might have been advised to seek out some form of counseling to help address the anxiety, but it certainly wasn’t addressed at length and not at the top of my treatment plan. Not much was asked of me in the session about my diet and lifestyle, only what triggered the symptoms. There was no probing into my past to discover why I might be suffering with these things, no attempt to treat the cause of the imbalance was proposed. I was essentially told to take the medicine to manage the symptoms and not change a thing. Paxil did help with the symptoms, and I continued to take it until I decided I wanted to quit smoking. At that time my doctor proposed another drug, Wellbutrin, but it was contraindicated with Paxil so I would have to discontinue that to begin the new treatment. I made the switch, kicked the nicotine habit, and was even able to wean off of the Wellbutrin within a year. Thus far I had done nothing to address the source of my addictions or the many emotional and mental imbalances that had presented themselves, and it was just a matter of time before they would surface again.

During this time, I was in a relationship with a man that was not the best for me, one I knew I should leave, but before