I started my journey in Ayurvedic studies in 2010. Because I’m in the vast Midwest, a flyover state, the no coast, I had to travel to learn. I didn’t want to do online courses, I wanted the essence and transmission in person. I choose Mount Madonna Institute in Watsonville, CA, not for its convenience, but because of the visiting faculty and format of the program. I commuted every month for a couple of years, took a break and started up again last year. This was a commute that meant leaving my home at 4:30 a.m. on Friday morning, connecting flights to San Jose, a rental car to MMI and class until 9:30 p.m. EST (that’s a lot of wake hours if you’re counting). Then class again Saturday and Sunday followed by a red-eye flight home routed through Atlanta–all so that I could be back in time to teach my yoga class and see chiropractic patients. This was sometimes energizing and exhilarating, while other times very tiring.
I didn’t know that this I’d be at this point, completing my Master’s degree in Ayurveda six years after starting the program. Still, Ayurveda is vast and I can’t stop learning. What am I happy to stop doing for a while? Writing. I wrote a thesis on the topic of daily routine, a concept within Ayurveda that I am sort of obsessed with. Okay, really obsessed. With a primary advisor in India who had an average response time of four or five weeks, this has been a long journey.
I’m posting a large portion of it here, should you be interested… or think you’re interested only to find out that it is kind of boring… or to simply skim the material and collect a fact or two… or to pretend you read it when we next meet. In all of its glory, here it is (most of it):