Eight Directions Wellness

02/01/2026

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02/01/2026

My partner Jay made this custom solid cherry altar for the Ayurvedic Community Wellness Clinic 😍

02/01/2026

Students, friends, new faces, familiar faces…the Open House at the Āyurvedic Community Wellness Center in Albuquerque was amazing, energizing and jam-packed. I didn’t get many photos, but I’m sure lots will be shared soon!

01/26/2026

Aum namah Shivaya and happy Monday (day of Shiva). We will never eliminate darkness and ignorance - but if we work diligently to keep them under the pressure of awareness, discipline, and grace, their influence can be greatly immobilized. That is what the images I share in this video demonstrate.

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01/25/2026

You may be asking yourself, these past few weeks, how people can see the same exact thing but come away with completely different and opposing beliefs about what it is they saw.

In Vedic thought, people are not actually seeing the same event - just the same sensory input. This input is then processed through manas (the mind, which reacts to what was seen), buddhi (which gives what was seen meaning), smrti (memory, which colors what was seen with past impressions and experiences) and samskāras (habitual "grooves" that bias interpretation and reaction).

When different people have entirely different inner ecologies, they "see" entirely different things. In Vedanta's snake–rope analogy, one person sees a harmless rope, but another sees a threatening snake. 🐍 The rope is the same - it's the perception that differs.

I don't write this to make excuses for anyone, believe me. I'm simply sitting with my own frustration and sadness and observing it. What I do know is that the Gītā (and Ayurvedic psychology) says that every mind is shaped by three qualities —sattva (clarity), rajas (passion), and tamas (darkness/inertia)—and that these qualities determine how any and all situations are interpreted. What I also know is that sattva is essential for peace in both individuals and in societies - "I am the world and the world is me." We need more sattva. But that doesn't mean we do nothing. The Bhagavad Gita takes place on a battlefield, on the eve of war, and Krishna himself says, "Treat pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory and defeat the same—then engage in battle."

So. Now is definitely not the time to stop your practices. Now is the time to add a great deal of awareness to our day to day life (sākṣī-bhāva - the witnessing conscious), and to guard our intellect from collapse. Gandhi believed it is just to name harm, just to grieve, just to resist injustice - but very dangerous to let harm, grief and injustice make us vengeful - because then violence has succeeded in reproducing itself inwardly. Inner order can be easily destroyed by outer disorder. However we feel we must respond to this moment, we must protect that space.

🙏🏼

01/24/2026

Next weekend!

I’ll be in Albuquerque for the Grand Opening of the Ayurvedic Community Wellness Clinic and talking about “Pathya: Āyurveda’s Path of Balance” at 1:30 and again at 3:00. If you’d told me a year ago that I’d be teaching on Menaul Blvd again I wouldn’t have believed you. Come say hello!

Class description:

Pathya: Ayurveda’s Path of Balance
This experiential talk introduces Ayurveda’s view of health as a dynamic balance of body, mind and awareness. Through everyday examples, we’ll explore how individual constitution, wise choices, and subtle “crimes against wisdom” shape our wellbeing. Drawing on Dr. Lad’s teachings and the classical “tripod” of sattva–ātman–śarīra, we’ll look at how bringing Awareness to our habits can naturally correct imbalance and make living an Ayurvedic lifestyle feel less like discipline and more like alignment.

01/14/2026

Something else to do while home sick (if you're a practitioner) ...put Nyāya philosophy into practice while you're laying on the couch! You too can obtain Valid Knowledge!

Pratyakṣa (direct perception):
"I feel hot and have a body ache." 🥵

Anumāna (inference):
"Based on my knowledge, this feels like a fever." 🤒

Śabda (authoritative text/person):
"According to my jvara notes...." 🤓

I tend to think about direct perception in terms of the early practitioners of Āyurveda observing patients. But one's own body is a laboratory and valid field of direct knowledge - prodromal symptoms and subtle shifts of samprāpti are easier felt in oneself than observed in another. Today, for example, I'm observing that koṣṭhāgni is still depressed, even after circulating heat has subsided. Which makes me realize that when we, as practitioners, ask a client "do you feel 'full' after meals?" there are at least two distinct variations of the post-prandial "full" feeling. One is the stretched-belly, "I may have consumed a bit too much" heavy feeling and the other is the unsatisfying feeling of excess liquid sloshing around in the gut, similar to a giant log that's been dropped on dying embers and is waiting to catch and be consumed. A "liquid smoulder" feeling.

Always be learning!

01/13/2026

I'm inspired to share this by the virus I've been devoted to for the past 3+ days now. It's the first time in a couple of years I'm sick with a viral infection, and I think its arrival ties in well with the classical understanding of jvara, or fever.

Jvara or fever in Āyurveda is the "king" or "lord" of diseases, the first discussed in classic texts because it affectis every living being from birth until death and affects the body, mind and senses. While it has its root, as most disorders do, in doshic imbalance, agni imbalance and āma, mythologically jvara is said to have come to mankind due to the wrath of Shiva in his ferocious form (Rudra) due to the adharmic misconduct of Daksha.

It's an interesting time to be thinking of adharma, which refers to unrighteousness, immorality, wickedness, and actions contrary to cosmic order, duty, or natural law. Chaos, disharmony, and vice, harming oneself, harming others, violating one's inherent responsibilities...are all adharmic behavior.

And as I was looking through my notes from a 2017 clinical class with Dr. Lad I found this quote in my jvara notes. "A demon came and disturbed the whole world - a cruel, famous, powerful person is demonic." Whoa.

If you know the two most important causes of disease you know that one is "asatmya indriya artha samyoga" or improper union of the sense organs with sensory object. One of the three ways we can misuse our sense organs is by mithyayoga - incorrect or unwholesome contact. This includes seeing disturbing/frightening images and traumatic events, and listening to angry words.

Did I do a lot of that last week, via doom-scrolling? And then ended the week by pushing through with two intense evening workouts in a row? Coupled with being around 14 2nd and 3rd graders on Wednesday afternoon,👶🏼several of whom were coughing and sneezing? 🤧 Indeed, I did.

Whatever the root cause of my jvara, Dr. Lad once said that being sick was a good opportunity to do nothing and meditate. I'm completely out of cough syrup at the moment, with only the scary options available at the local gas station market, so I'm meditating on being with what is (or isn't) and getting a good abdominal workout from the couch today.

One of my next posts is going to be about keeping a little Wellness Bin well-stocked in your house for times like this - especially if you live in an isolated area.

Protect your senses (and with them your mind) as much as you can right now.

01/12/2026

01/11/2026

Do you set a New Year’s resolution? Or choose a word? Or something else? I believe that bringing awareness to where it is we want to go and what it is we want to embody in the year ahead is an important step in the process. It is, in itself, a part of bhāvana - a word you’re about to hear more about.