I’m writing a series of blog posts on Radical Self Care: Become Your Own Best Care-giver!  In my last post, in honor of the Day of the Dead, I wrote about how we learn self-care and care-giving from our own care-givers. In the next few post, I will write about how Ayurveda views self-care.

In Ayurveda, there are 3 main ways we fall into dis-ease.  My teacher of Ayurveda, Cate Stillman, has written about these three causes of disease in her blog: How to Sink Your Ship (Ayurveda and the Three Causes of Disease) published by Banyan Botanicals.  In this series of blog posts, I’ll unpack each cause and discuss how understanding this can help you orient toward better self-care.

According to Ayurveda, the first way that we way we fall into disease is:  prajna parada, or making negligent choices. 

I’ve written in a couple of blogs about what we do when life throws us a curve ball.  Well, we sure got a curve ball this week.  Like many of you, the election results caught me totally off guard, and I was unprepared for the wave of emotion that hit me in the early hours of Wednesday morning.  Disappointment. Grief. Fear. Despair.  The election of Trump feels like a blow to so much that I stand for and hold dear.  I slept poorly Tuesday night and woke up Wednesday morning feeling contracted, small, and shut down.

Yet, I got up and did what I always do every morning.  I got up and did my meditation practice.  So did my 12 year old and my 15 year old.  It’s what we do every morning.  It’s a practice that I’ve cultivated over many years, and I’ve passed on to my kids.  It’s the most reliable way for me to steady myself when the world is shaky.  It’s a practice that that cultivates resilience in me, the ability to surf the waves of life and to steady myself when life throws a curve ball.  Mediation helps me keep the container of my body-mind strong and adaptable. It’s what keeps me whole.  

Meditation is no small thing.  I do it, of course, for myself.  I do it so that I can feel better.  But, it’s not just for me.  It’s a form of activism.  I don’t meditate to get good at meditation.  I meditate to get good at life. I meditate so that I can be a better mother, spouse, teacher, neighbor and community member.  I meditate so that I can more open minded, see the big picture, and speak and act from a more compassionate and skillful place.  I meditate so that I can live my life from a place of wholeness.