Plant Medicine Summit™Abhyanga: Ayurvedic Self-Massage and Longevity

James Bailey

David: Welcome to everyone! This is David Crow, your host of the fourth annual Plant Medicine Summit. In our segment today, we're going to be discussing a very simple, practical, cost-effective and highly therapeutic Ayurvedic treatment. Our guest is James Bailey. James is an Ayurvedic practitioner, a doctor of oriental medicine, an Ayurvedic and yoga educator, and the founder of Sevanti Institute which offers Ayurveda wellness education and professional training programs. He's also the founder of Sevanti Adventures, leading individuals through sacred tours of India. James, welcome!

James: Thank you, David. I'm happy to be here.

David: Well, it's a great pleasure to be able to talk with you about this subject, which is so effective for so many people, a very simple routine from classical Ayurvedic medicine that anybody can do anywhere, virtually no safety concerns or warnings or contraindications, but highly therapeutic, the topic of "Abhyanga: Ayurvedic Self-Massage and Longevity". Just to get started, maybe you could give us a little bit of historical background and context. What's the traditional Ayurvedic use of Abhyanga and what is its therapeutic intention? Or maybe even better to start with, what is Abhyanga?

James: Great question. Let's take a moment to look at what it is. I'm fairly sure that the listeners listening to this will be quite varied in their experience and understanding of what it is and people who are already practicing to those who are encountering this for the first time. For those listening who have never heard of the term Abhyanga, the term is a Sanskrit word that comes from the Indian traditional medicine system known as Ayurveda. I've been to India many times looking at Ayurveda in general, but also looking at their treatment systems that include Abhyanga and have studied with many of the Ayurvedic doctors and also treatment therapists in Kerala, in South India where Ayurveda is quite a rich tradition and the tropical and jungle environment is quite lush. In many ways, it's one of the most traditionally practiced Ayurveda centers in India, if not in the world. With that, I like to describe Abhyanga as a form of Ayurvedic massage that involves anointing the body topically with warm plant-based oils usually infused with soothing or medicinal herbs with an anti-aging, and these days, almost a fountain of youth sort of worldwide following. The practice has both medicinal and preventative health uses. In India, it can be quite a clinical practice as well as an in-home personal practice. Today, it's possible to say that it's spreading popularity outside of India. It would mean that more people are likely

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using Abhyanga for health prevention and longevity reasons than for direct medical applications. The practice, as I said, is both clinical. It's used in clinical Ayurvedic medicine. Also, it's a part of the self-care practices, also more commonly known as the Dinacharya or daily health routines. They were first described in some of the Ayurvedic texts, so let's start there for a moment. We'll just take one minute to look at where it comes from historically, at least to the best of our knowledge. There are references to this incredible massage system in one of the oldest Ayurvedic texts called the Charaka Samhita and in this text, it says, and I'll quote from it, "The body of one who uses oil massage routinely is less affected by injury and strenuous work. By using Abhyanga daily, a person is endowed with a pleasant touch, a lean body, and becomes strong, charming, and least affected by old age." This is a very early reference to the understanding that by massaging the body both in terms of someone professionally massaging you or clinically massaging you or you massaging yourself, which is what we're really going to talk about today, that the benefits that come with that are, as it says here, you're least affected by old age, so there's going to be a slowing of the aging process, an anti-aging, stress-reducing effect.

Now, I think we all already know that about massage in general, but there are some differences between Abhyanga and your classical Western massage, so we'll look at that in a moment. While we're taking a moment to look and explore its origin, let's just look at the word for a moment just to get that out of the way because I know there are some Sanskrit lovers out there who would like to hear this part. The word "Abhyanga", it translates as massaging the body's limbs, but also translates as a glowing body. The word is derived from the root word "abhi" which means to glow, and "anga" which means limb, so this original meaning, it's not really locked on us because even today, we still use Abhyanga to massage the body, to create a glowing and more radiant and beautiful body, which is exactly what its original intention was back in the beginnings of Ayurveda. Traditionally, Abhyanga oil massage is one of the many classical, clinical therapies using Ayurveda that involve the massage of the body with dosha-specific, usually warm, although not always, and usually herbally infused oils. In the case of Abhyanga, the technique is not unlike the Western styles of massage. You apply the oil to the body and then you massage it. One of the main differences between Abhyanga and Western style massages, which is quite fascinating to me anyway, is that in the Abhyanga practices, the medicine really is the oils. It's in the oils itself and a little less so the touch or the strokes that are used on the body. Now, the strokes are still hugely important, but the oil is considered the medicine. This notion, this understanding that sure, the massage is important but the oil is the medicine itself, that opens up a huge potential for personal use because we don't have to be a professional massage therapist to heal ourselves, to connect with our bodies or to love our bodies.

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The oils are usually premixed with herbs for very specific conditions or for specific doshic constitutions, the Vata, Pitta, or Kapha constitution, or both. If you travel to India to experience Ayurvedic treatments, you'll find that much of the Abhyanga is done clinically. That's what you'll see is the most visible form of Abhyanga. It's done clinically on treatment tables and it's performed by Ayurvedic therapists to their patients. Usually, the strokes or the style of Abhyanga is prescribed by the Ayurvedic doctor and then the Ayurvedic therapists take those instructions and then use very specific and very eloquent methods. There may be one, there may be two therapists working on one person, so that would be what we call a two-handed or a four-handed Abhyanga. It's an amazing experience to receive, I have to say. There's nothing quite like it in the world of massage. I have had lots of Western massages and still love Western massages, but once you've had an Abhyanga, whether two-hand or four-hand, it's a game-changer. It really changes the way you relate to the therapy in general. The strokes are very sophisticated, very elaborate, and every move by the therapist is intentional and clinically relevant, but at the end of the day, it's the oils really and the herbs that are infused into those oils that do most or a lot of the healing. In the home self-massage version, the one that you and I can do right here in our own homes, the methods are simplified, but yet they're still quite profound in their effects. In that lesser mentioned world of the self-massage in India, the part that we don't see because it's in people's homes, there's an almost universal understanding that the oils we apply to the body keep us young, youthful, and free from disease. You'd be challenged actually to find anyone in India that doesn't use oil on some part of their body. At least from my experience down south and from my experience in the northern parts of India, that's true too. I can't speak to all the younger people, but traditionally, almost everybody does. Most men and women apply it to their hair as well as to their bodies.

I can't tell you how many times I've seen a person in India that looks 20 to 30 years younger because of those oils. If I can just use an example that's happened to me several times, if you're walking behind somebody and you can't quite see their face, you see their hair or you see their neck and their arms and you're thinking, "Wow. Maybe they have a little young son with them." It's a mother and a son and you're thinking, "Oh, a lovely mother and her son" and then when the person turns around, you can then see a little bit closer that maybe it's not a mother; it's a grandmother. You can tell by the face that this person is not the mother, but you couldn't tell that actually from the side or from the back. The quality of their hair and the skin quality was that of a 20-year-old or a 30-year-old. In South India, most women apply oils to their hair. It's gorgeous. It's actually really beautiful to see. Even a grandmother's hair looks like her granddaughter's in terms of quality of the hair and of the skin. It's almost entirely due to the rejuvenating and the youthing effect of the Abhyanga practice.

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The last part to this question that I just wanted to mention is that the more modern applications of Abhyanga equate the Abhyanga not just with self-care and balancing the doshas, which is very important, but with a deeper level of self-love. Anointing ourselves with warm, healing oils is not just a physical practice. It's a spiritual practice and it's found throughout the world. It's found throughout all time and it's always implied a sense of purity, refinement, subtle radiance, a grace, an insight, a wisdom, and a godly attunement, you could say. That's Abhyanga. This is interesting. The Sanskrit term for oil is the word "sneha" and the word "sneha" translates as both oil and love. There are many ways to love ourselves and to take care of ourselves, but Abhyanga is one of the crown jewels of them all, and what could be more loving than to soothe the body, yourself, to rejuvenate what we call the sacred sap of our being, the juice of life, and to slow the aging process. It's thought that we are better able to love ourselves and others when we are nourished at this level and when we first anoint ourselves with love. That's really the key aspect of the Abhyanga.

David: Very nice. Thank you, a very good introduction. You've mentioned a few terms here, which I am sure that many people are familiar with at this point, but many people probably aren't. You mentioned the term doshas and Vata, Pitta, Kapha, so I'm wondering if you could give us a very brief elaboration. For those who don't know these terms, if you could explain what they mean and perhaps tell us a bit about the relationship of the oil and its qualities of nourishment, heaviness, unctuousness, and all those beautiful terms we learn in Ayurvedic medicine, how those qualities of the oil relate to the different body types or doshas.

James: Okay. The doshas are the fundamental of Ayurveda that to understand Ayurveda, we do have to understand what these doshas are. There is quite a bit of misconception about what they are out in the community. The doshas are an aspect of all of us and they're that capacity for each of us to maintain a physiological balance basically. There are three of them because in the Ayurvedic tradition, we view that there are three fundamental, primary, necessary actions that our body needs to maintain itself and to maintain equilibrium, balance, health, wellness. One we call Vata. It's often associated with the air element, but nevertheless, Vata has more to do with the flow and circulation of things in the body, the movement of things in the body. If it moves, it's governed by Vata.

There's a lot of movement going on in our body and Vata would be that energy of movement, but also the intelligence that coordinates and also oversees the smooth and healthy movements of the body to make sure all things that move, move well. Pitta is also associated with the fire element traditionally, but Pitta really is associated with all things in the body that change and transform. Some of the key things that change or transform would be the function end of your metabolism or the ability to digest foods or to take those nutrients and then rebuild tissues from them. If you're changing something from one form to

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another, that transformative ability is what we call Pitta. Kapha is associated with the earth and water elements, heavier elements, more substantive. The understanding of Kapha is that the body has the ability to generate tissue and to regenerate tissues as things die and to maintain itself, the structure of the body, and also because of its association with the water element to maintain the fluid body and the cohesiveness of tissues, to keep things integrous and enduring, so those are the three doshas. We all have all three doshas. No one is missing a dosha. If someone says, "I'm a Vata type" for example, of course you have the Pitta and the Kapha. It just means that in each of us, one or two of the doshas can be more dominant in what we call our constitution or prakriti. That's what makes each of us unique, makes us one of a kind. Even all Vata types are different because we're raised in different environments or constitutions are different, and the way we fall out of balance is also very different.

That's another thing to note about the doshas, is that they're not static and they're dynamic in nature or they fluctuate, and that fluctuation allows us to adapt and cope with changes in the environment, changes internally and externally. It's a good thing, but with change and with fluctuations of the doshas can also come imbalances that affect the physiology and the way our body works. Aggravations of the doshas, they're called. When those occur, if they're minor, you won't notice a whole lot, but if they're substantial, they can result in sometimes even illnesses and diseases. Some are short-lived and they correct themselves just through your own body's intelligence and some are longer lived in terms of long-term chronic health issues that people have. A lot of the diseases that we see from Western medicine, we view them in terms of doshic imbalances and we do our work from our side of things by recommending dietary practices and lifestyle changes that would offset those aggravations of the doshas and bring them back to their natural state, which we call your constitution, which also varies from person to person.

To answer your questions about the oils, I understand that question, where you're going with that. Yes, if the doshas have different qualities so to speak and different functions then the oils, as with all things, foods, herbs, everything, we would need to take into consideration the qualities of those oils and herbs as well in terms of how they impact those doshas. Oils and herbs, like foods, can positively or negatively affect the doshas. They can push them so to speak into aggravations if we're not careful. When we come back to the temperatures and weights and things like that, let me just discuss how it works first. To understand how Abhyanga works, we have to first understand the traditional Ayurvedic medicine view of Abhyanga and then we can look at the Western understanding after that, but as with all things in Ayurveda, Abhyanga places its primary attention onto that balance of the three doshas -- Vata, Pitta, and Kapha. To do that in Abhyanga practice, it will ideally employ a dosha-specific oil, meaning that the oils and the herbs infused into those oils are applied with the intention

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of regulating or pacifying any aggravations or elevations or increases of the doshas or balancing to any minor routine imbalances of the doshas that come with certain constitutional types. For example, for someone with a Vata aggravation or illness where you might see anxiety or eczema, dryness, airy dry anemia, deficiencies, osteoporosis, loss of tissue, loss of bones, these are common Vata imbalances.

The aggravated Vata dosha would be managed by applying a Vata-pacifying oil or a blend of oils or oils with herbs added to them and they'd be employed both internally and topically, but for the sake of the Abhyanga, this discussion, we're talking about topical uses of the oils. They would be prescribed for a particular period of time until that imbalance of the Vata comes back into balance because the qualities of those oils are the opposite of the qualities of the disorder or of the aggravation of Vata. For someone with a Vata constitution who's not necessarily sick but suffers from frequent Vata annoyances like gas, constipation or dry skin, that person can also apply Vata-pacifying oils and herbs in their Abhyanga to help maintain balance and prevent more damage down the road, so a little bit more preventative. In either case, the intention is to heal the disease or to prevent disease by maintaining the balance of the doshas, Vata, Pitta, and Kapha.

Abhyanga is often traditionally followed by what they call Swedana Therapy where we take a warm bath or a warm shower. The purpose of that is that the heat from the steam or the bath or the shower will open the pores of the skin, dilate the blood vessels, stimulate the blood circulation within the skin, and increase the absorption or improve the absorption of the oils into the skin and even into the deeper tissues. This is known in Ayurveda as transdermal therapies. Medicine is applied to the body through the skin. It's not that unlike Western approaches like nicotine patches or hormone lotions and creams or patches or things we put on our body when we're in pain that are warming or stimulating to the blood in that area. The Abhyanga is similar. The Abhyanga that's prescribed in classic Ayurvedic texts for clinical use is more vigorous. So when you think of more the clinical uses of Abhyanga, the techniques of the massage are more vigorous and they're intended to open up the minor channels. They're called srotas or subtle channels of the skin and into the underlying tissues for several reasons, to remove any toxins that might be there in the skin or to melt what we call kleshma, which is the fatty secretions that can block those channels, or to cleanse and moisturize the skin even just for, say, health or for beauty reasons, just to feel like your skin is healthier. But the Abhyanga that's used as part of the daily health routine is more gentle and more relaxing and it should be, the point being to bring a deeper relaxation to the body or to palliate an aggravated dosha, a minorly aggravated dosha, or just to create a calm and peaceful experience for heart and mind, just to feel relaxed at the end of a long day. In short, an Abhyanga works by calming aggravated doshas, but also to help

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detox the body, to improve circulation, to nourish the tissues, which is important. Because we're using plant-based natural oils, it's said that in Ayurveda that the oils are a rich source of -- this is another Sanskrit term, an Ayurvedic term which I'll introduce. It's called ojas. Ojas is defined as our deep reserve of life essence, the part of us that is full in birth and as we go through life, it weakens. It's associated with the aging process. If there's anything we can do to pour that little bit of oil back into the oil lamp and just rejuvenate that ojas, that helps with slowing the aging process. The oils, if you think about it, are processed from the seeds of the plant and the seeds are part of the primal reproductive tissue of the plant, the part that's needed to cultivate new, young life. When we tap into those energetic virtues of the seeds and the oils, we tap into a fountain of concentrated life essence that can replenish our spent reserves as we go through life, reserves that are depleted more and more as we age.

To rejuvenate these reserves is a key feature of the Ayurvedic approach to longevity and to slowing the aging process, and Abhyanga is one of the most important methods for doing that.

David: Nice. Thank you. I want to go back to your description of Vata dosha and clarify something. Vata is a very good example of the use of oils when oils are indicated because Vata is a condition of dryness, and what I think is interesting to point out here is that we say that Vata is increased when there is increased dryness, but dryness is actually a condition of deficiency, of fluids. So with Vata, we have a very clear example of how oil nourishes. When Vata is increased, the skin is deficient in oils and applying oils is clearly very nourishing. What about Pitta and Kapha? And especially Kapha because Kapha is actually a condition of fullness and excess in fluids as opposed to a deficiency that can be nourished. Maybe you could give us some other examples of the kinds of conditions that Abhyanga is very good for for Pitta and for Kapha, and maybe clarify how it is that a person who is more of a Kapha constitution, who has a lot more of the earth and the water elements, fluid retention and excess weight and so forth, or maybe already oily skin or a condition where one would think that Abhyanga and the application of oil is not really necessary. Now, I know that in Ayurvedic clinics, of course in Ayurvedic treatment, there are ways to actually use oil therapy when there is already an apparent condition of excess oils, so I'm wondering if you could clarify that a little bit.

James: Okay. There are like four questions in there. Let's just start with Pitta for a moment. Pitta, we know, is associated with the fire element, agni. When someone has a Pitta constitution or especially when they have a Pitta imbalance, they're going to have an aggravation of that element in the body and all the activities of the body that are associated with change and transformation and metabolism are stressed. They've either been working too hard or they've been pushed too hard by other substances in the body that are similar like spicy foods

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or inflammatory foods or alcohol or acidic foods like caffeine and coffee. These behaviors of the body are really unique to each dosha and what we know from Ayurveda is that regardless of the condition -- and let me step back from Pitta for a moment -- regardless of the condition, whatever condition arises comes with certain qualities about them that can be remedied by their opposite qualities. So if there happens to be hotness or oiliness or inflammation for example as one of those common Pitta imbalances then there are going to be plants in plant medicine that are going to have opposite qualities like cooling and anti-inflammatory or alkalinizing or soothing like aloe, things that are soothing to the tissues, that they're healing from inflammations or infection. The idea with Abhyanga with any of the doshas whether it's Vata, Pitta, or Kapha is to apply an equal degree of opposite qualities that will remedy the imbalance that their body is achieving, so it doesn't just have to be the deficiency of Vata. That's an easy one to grasp because oils are substance and when you put them on the body, they go into the body and they're going to fill a deficiency somehow. That's a simple way of looking at it, but it isn't always deficiency. Vata looks like deficiency a lot, but Vata can also be -- it's an excess. It can be excessive movement like a spasm or Parkinson's or seizures, things that wouldn't really look like a deficiency, but they can be soothed by the calming and grounding of earthy qualities of Vata-pacifying substances like oils, even with Kapha.

Now, I would agree that the Kapha types inherently probably aren't going to be as initially attracted to the practice of Abhyanga because they might already have a strong water element. They're not dry. If you associate Abhyanga with dryness then yes, a Kapha person is not going to be very interested in Abhyanga, but Abhyanga is not just about dryness. It's about the right kind of nurturing. It's a healthy nourishment, not just any nourishment. There's a lot of, to be fair, a lot of unhealthy nourishment going on out there in the world, and so to have more of what's good and righteous and pure in the body even for a Kapha type is healthy. It might even prevent them from ingesting some of the wrong things for their body type. In the case of oiliness, if a body is already oily, you wouldn't think that an oil would be therapeutic for that either, but there are some oils that actually do remedy oiliness. They leave a drying effect on the body or they have a stimulating effect. They might stimulate the skin to release more of those oils in order to balance them out.

I had a personal experience one summer a few years ago when I went to Crested Butte in Colorado just for a family vacation and the altitude and the dryness was so intense. I thought I was just going to shrivel up. Now, this is more of a Vata example and a dryness example, but let me tell you what happened. I was at the time using coconut oil at home because I'm a Pitta type, so I was used to using coconut oil and had coconut oil on me while I was at around 9000 to 10,000 feet in Crested Butte and had signs of dryness. And when I would put on the coconut oil, the coconut oil was literally drying me out more. It felt great for ten minutes

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and then it would leave a more dried situation than before I put the oil on. That was when I discovered that the oils, there's the initial response to the oils and then there's the therapeutic response that can come about 20 to 30 minutes later after you've done the Abhyanga, so I quickly switched to sesame and was very relieved by the sesame because sesame is the primary oil that's used for Vata imbalances, but in that case, because it was not drying. It had a lasting unctuousness that allowed me to feel the relief from the dryness for longer periods of time.

David: Nice. That's very helpful to understand. Well, I think that before we go any further, it would be really good to tell people how to do this. I know just all this discussion and listening to you talk about it is giving me body sensations of craving a warm oil Abhyanga treatment. Tell us the actual method. What kinds of oils are best? How do we prepare them? How do we apply them? How frequently do we do it? How do we clean up the mess afterwards? Are there any contraindications or things to be concerned about and so forth so that people can actually jump right in and start getting all these benefits?

James: Okay. Well, to talk about how to do it, I think we need to talk about the types of oils that are out there because we have to choose the right oil before we can talk about how to do them. When looking for the right oil, it would help really to know your Ayurvedic constitution, what we call your pakriti. More specifically, if we can, it would be great to know if you have any health issues that you might be working with so that if there are any doshic imbalances, we would address those because that would be the first thing we'd want to do, is addressing the imbalances that a person has. The third option, if you're not really sure of either one, we can employ what we call a tridoshic oil or a blend of oils that are tridoshic, so that's a nice way to get started without having to wait weeks or months to see an Ayurvedic practitioner before getting started. Assuming that you know your constitution like you know you're a Vata type or a Pitta type, one of the things we look for in an oil is its heating or cooling qualities and its heavy or light qualities are the key aspects of the oil, also what medicinal herbs might be processed into them because as a general rule, you want to choose an oil that is warm and heavy for Vata, cooling and heavy or neutral in weight for Pitta, and warm and light for Kapha.

A few of the more popular oils that are being used for Abhyanga these days are sesame oil, almond oil, mustard oil, sunflower oil, occasionally some olive oil, and coconut oil. Maybe I should actually flip that over and put coconut near the top because it's a very, very, very popular one. That list was actually a list from warming to cooling. We also use those oils that I just mentioned in a class of herbally medicated oil remedies called tailam. Now, a tailam is a base oil such as sesame or almond that has very specific medicinal herbs infused in it, so if you're going to go out into the world of the internet, you start searching "Abhyanga

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oils", you're going to run into lots of websites and products. You might feel a bit overwhelmed. Some of them are very simply labeled like Vata massage or Pitta massage or Kapha massage. That's a great place to start, or it might be tridoshic. A tridoshic massage oil might even be the best place to start if you don't know your Ayurvedic constitution. A few of the popular tailams that are out there, herbally medicated tailams that are out there, well, there's one called Ashwagandha Bala Oil that's used for building and strengthening the tissues. If you know someone who's weak in the tissues or they're older and they're atrophying, you might want to recommend the Ashwagandha Bala Oil. There's another one that's very popular called Mahanarayan Oil. Mahanarayan Oil is used as an analgesic oil for pain in the muscles and the joints. There's a therapeutic benefit to these oils that we also look for to make sure we have the right oil for our body type.

Then there are specific oils for Vata, Pitta, and Kapha, and let me just mention those real quick and then we'll talk about the practice. For Vata types, sesame oil, like I said earlier, is the oil of choice because it's warming and it's heavy. Those are exactly what Vatas love because they typically are cold, light, and dry in nature, so those warm and heavy qualities, again, unctuous qualities, they just feel divine. It feels soothing and relaxing to your nervous system. You feel younger. It's a beautiful sensation. Just make sure when you do buy sesame oil that you get the untoasted sesame oil, not the toasted. It's used more in cooking because if you put that on, you will smell like dinner. You'll smell like a stir-fry, so we don't want to use the toasted sesame. You'll want to use the untoasted, which is largely made from what we call white sesame which has had the hulls or the husks removed from the seeds. For Vatas, we also use almond oil and sometimes sunflower oils. The best one for Pitta types, if you know you're warm or you're a little bit prone to inflammation sort of personality type, you'll want to use coconut or sunflower oils as they have cooling properties and anti-inflammatory qualities. For Kapha, you'll want to consider mustard oil because of its warming and light qualities because Kaphas tend to be a little cooler and a little heavier. Mustard oil, it comes from mustard seeds and it's warming, it's pungent, and it's stimulating. That's the feature in the oil that we're looking for, is warming and light and stimulating. It stimulates the circulation.

How to practice? Well, things to consider. This is getting a little technical for a moment, but just bear with me for one minute. If you have an imbalanced dosha or if you know you have an imbalanced dosha, use the oil or the oil blend, herbally medicated oil blend or tailam, as they're called, that best pacifies the aggravated dosha. It's very important that if you do have an imbalance in life, in your constitution or in your health that you're not using an oil that will make that imbalance worse. The more imbalanced the dosha is, the more important it is to use the right oil for the right blend. For example, if you're feeling anxious or highly stressed, your sleep is poor, you're feeling cold and dry, sort of the Vata

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qualities, to use that example again, you really need to be sure that you're using a Vata-pacifying oil for your Abhyanga.

If no dosha is currently imbalanced and you're fairly healthy, consider balancing either the dominant dosha of your constitution or the dosha most affected by the seasonal environment that you're in. If it's the hot season, maybe use an oil that's pacifying to a Pitta like coconut oil in the summer. If it's fall and it's dry and it's cold and windy then you might want to use sesame because of its Vata-pacifying effects and so on. If you had more than two doshas that are dominant in your constitution, you can just try pacifying the dosha that associates with whatever season you're in, so again, Pitta for summer, Vata for fall, and then Kapha is associated with the winter season, late fall to winter.

How to practice, how do we do an Abhyanga, this is the fun part. I think it's important that we -- we're going to do this in the bathroom. It's important that you warm your bathroom in advance of doing your Abhyanga. It's no fun to give yourself a massage in a cold room. It just tightens up the skin and reduces the ability and the chance of the oils to permeate or penetrate into the skin where it does its most benefits. Have a comfortable, warm space, a place to sit, maybe with a towel, some old towels that you can sit on, towels you don't mind getting a little oily because there's oil involved. There are a couple of ways that you can distribute the oils onto your body. Probably the most common way to do it is to use a small squeeze bottle of some type that you can put about three to six ounces or about half a cup of your preferred oil into the squeeze bottle. My favorite way of doing it is to use what we call an oil warmer. You'll have to purchase these online. They have a little base unit that you can put a tea light in and then they have a little stainless steel bowl on top that you pour the oil in, and when you light the tea light, it warms the oil. You could be doing that and warm the oil while you're brushing your teeth or getting ready doing other things. You want to warm the oil. You always want to warm the oil in terms of the home self-massage Abhyanga systems. The way you could warm the bottle is to fill the sink up with hot water. Just put the bottle in and let it float around for a few minutes. That will typically warm the oil that's in the bottle.

To start, I like to begin my Abhyanga in a way that I learned in South India, in Kerala. In the Kerala systems of Abhyanga, we'd like to pour a little bit of the oil into one of your hands, so your left hand or your right hand. Hold it to your chest right in front of your heart and then say a prayer or an affirmation or a mantra of your choice, whatever inspires you to be in this moment, to be present, to better appreciate the gratitude and the sense of this is time I'm creating for myself to heal myself and to love myself, and just to awaken that part of you. Then we take that oil that's on the hands -- and this is very South Indian, but it's fun -- you take the oil and you put it right over the top of your head, right under the crown chakra, the crown center, and just open your hand a little. Just roll it on to the

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top of the head. Now, some people are probably not going to like that idea of oils in the hair, but we can wash it out. It's not a big deal. Just hold the hand over the head. You can repeat the mantra a couple more times, if you like, and then just take your hands and start to give yourself a little scalp massage with the oils that are on the head. Just using the fingertips, to go under the hair and getting to the scalp itself. If you don't want to get all your hair oily each time, I totally understand that. You can just massage the oil under the hair with the fingertips and distribute it around, so you'll get a little oil on the hair closest to the follicles, which is the part that needs it. If you're kind of like me and you don't care about the oil on your hair, just go ahead and oil all of your hair. Your hair will thank you for it. It's a really wonderful thing to massage your scalp routinely. Stay a little longer in those areas that just feel really good, maybe move a little faster in areas that you don't feel anything, but just make sure you spend a few minutes to really invigorate the scalp. It's very good for brain health or mental well-being. There's a lot of marma. We call them marma points or acupuncture points all over the scalp, so if you feel something in a spot, there's probably a marma there or an acupuncture point. Just go ahead and massage them and give them the attention that they need. The head is sort of like the hands and the feet. They're very sensitive energetically, so don't go too quickly.

Next thing we want to do is to massage the body. There are different methods out there on how to do an Abhyanga in general, so I'm going to give you the most common system that I see out there and that I've seen from my experiences in India as well. The easiest way would be to start with one of your extremities, so your hands. Pour a little bit more oil onto your hand then start to massage one of your hands, let's say your left hand. There are a lot of marma points or acupuncture points around the hand as well, so take plenty of time just to massage and lots of circular movements around each of the fingers, around each of the joints. The joints are places where energy likes to go for movement, but also can get stuck. As you know, a lot of people develop arthritis in their hands and their fingers, so if you have a little hot joint or a little sensitive joint, spend a little extra time there just doing nice circular strokes around that joint and just really give it the love and attention that it needs to improve circulation and to heal, so lots of round circulation. This is one of the general rules of the Abhyanga. Anywhere there are joints, we do circular types of strokes. You don't need to be a massage therapist to do this. You can just intuit this, circular strokes all over the hand. Then as we move up the arm, anywhere there's a long bone like the forearm, we want to do long strokes. Next, do long strokes, massaging the forearm from the wrist to the elbow. It just takes a moment just to do all sides of the arm, then the massage starts on the elbow using circular strokes. Again, long strokes along the upper arm from the elbow to the shoulder, then massage the shoulder with larger circular strokes.

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If you have issues along the way like if you have a tennis elbow or a sensitive shoulder, frozen shoulder, anything that's sensitive, take some extra time in those areas and be careful, but also just remember that a large part of what you're doing is the massage, but more so it's massaging the oils and the herbs that are in the oils into the tissues, so you're applying the medicine. Even if you don't know exactly a particular technique, just putting the oils on you is already a huge benefit for your body, so trust yourself. You'll do fine. Then repeat in the other arm, starting from the hand all the way to the shoulder just as you did on the left one. Repeat then also for each leg starting with the feet and moving up the leg, so lots of circular movements around the feet. The feet love to be massaged. There are lots of energy in the feet, lots of acupuncture points and marma points, so take your time with the feet. It's lovely to spend time with your feet. Then as you move up the leg, do long strokes along the leg, circular strokes around the knee. If you're like me and you have sensitive knees, take plenty of time with the knees. The knees love being massaged. If you have a little bit of osteoarthritis or any kind of problems with your knees, the oils are going to be very, very useful in helping to reduce the amount of Vata that's in the knees or inflammation, Pitta, that's in the knees, so it's really, really helpful for those kinds of conditions.

Okay, then up the legs, up to the hips, torso, and then the abdomen. The abdominal massage in the Abhyanga tradition again is not a complicated technique necessarily. It's a simple one of doing large clockwise movements around the abdominal belly below the diaphragm. You can start down in the lower right corner of your abdomen. This is right where the small intestine meets the colon and then we message the colon by going up the right side over the top of the left, down the left side, back to the midline. Just do these nice, large, clockwise, circular movements. If you're having any issues with constipation or elimination, menstrual cramps, any problems of blockage in the lower part of the body, just be careful. Don't press too hard. Also, you want to do some downward strokes from the navel down towards the pelvic floor. We can also come back to the chest. Put a little more oil on your hand. Put the hand over the heart center.

I like to spend another moment over my heart each time I do this and repeat the mantra or saying the affirmation or just a prayer, something of intention around my heart center, but just to connect with the heart. There's a marma, again, an energy center that's on the sternum just in the center of the chest that does connect to the heart chakra, so a little bit of oil on that marma helps with invigorating the connection to the heart. Then you can do again clockwise strokes over the chest, getting larger and larger and working your way out. Women should massage their breasts with oils routinely, as said in Ayurveda. One of the techniques that we suggest for that is you try as best as you can to massage from the nipple towards the chest, not towards the nipple. Move away from it just to encourage the lymphatics and the circulation that goes into the

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breast to move towards the chest and not towards the breast necessarily. You also want to place some attention to the lymphatic glands that are under the arm and then the armpit, just giving it a little nice, gentle massage and squeeze to those areas to improve circulation. Another thing we can do -- now, the back is difficult to reach. One of the big jokes of Abhyanga is how do you get the back. Just do the best you can, reaching over the top and on the sides. Also, keep in mind that if you have a life partner who lives with you, you can massage each other. That's another nice aspect of Abhyanga. It's not just a self-massage, but you can massage your partners. It makes it easier to reach some of these hard-to-get-to places. A couple of things you can do while you're there doing this is putting a little bit of oil onto one of your pinkies. What I do is I pour a little teaspoon of oil onto one of my palms, take the other pinkie and dip it in to that little pool and then wiggle it into each ear, just to apply a few drops of oil into each ear. It's a practice called Karna Purana and it has some nice benefits for people who are prone to high Vata in the ears like tinnitus or ring of the ears, also for TMJ, tightness around the jaw, and grinding. People who grind or night-grind could also shoot oil in the ears, but also along the jaw, the jaw line as well. Another thing that we can do is dip our little pinkie finger into the oil again in your hand and apply a little bit to each nostril. It's a tradition in Ayurveda called nasya. Nasya means nasal, so any of the nasal therapies are called nasya. It's a huge class of treatments, but in this case, it's employing the Abhyanga practice to apply oil through the noise. It's just a few drops in each nostril. You can sniff and then massage the outer nose, just get a little bit of the oils back in there and that helps with lowering the amount of allergies, seasonal allergies. It increases the cleansing and health of the nose. It moisturizes the tissues in the back of the nose. For those of you who are having issues with nosebleeds or just cracking in the nose because of cold, dry weather, you want to keep those tissues soft and hydrated using oils. It's a brilliant tradition. It's also good for increasing circulation to the brain itself and just keeping the mind clear, as well as other benefits to the sinuses and the nose itself.

Then after putting all these oils on and you're all oiled up, you want to get into the shower or a bath and just continue to massage yourself for a few minutes, not so methodically necessarily, but just to rub your body down and get the oils to move into your body as the hot water dilates the blood vessels in the skin and opens up the pores and the oils start to rush in. You can tell because you can just feel the oils are not as heavy. By the time you get out of the shower, they're not washing off of you. They're going into the body. Just be careful not to slip in the shower. The oils stick on your feet. It will get onto the shower or the tub surface, so be very careful while you're standing in a shower or a bathtub that you don't slip. You might want to use those slip pads that stick at the bottom of your tub. The shower or the steam is that swedana process. It's an important part of the Abhyanga, so we don't just oil our bodies and then towel off and leave. Ideally, we want to use the steam or the hot water or a bath to reinforce it, to really take

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it to that next level. I like to let people know that you will get a little bit of oil on your towel. That is for sure. It's something you're just going to have to prepare yourself for and it's part of life. It's part of working with plants and plant medicine. You're going to have an oil towel, maybe two or three.

What we do here in my home is we dedicate our older towels. As they get a little past their prime, they become our Abhyanga towels, and particularly the darker-colored ones so you don't see oil spots and things like that. We also like to wash those towels separately when we do laundry so they don't get oil on any of our other clothes. Just be aware of oil in general. I think it can be a new part of your life, but 99.99% of it is going to be on your body and in your body, so it's not so bad, but you will need to replace your towels maybe a couple of times a year, once or twice a year as they get older and accumulate a little bit of oil, but that's pretty much it.

Now, there's a shortcut to this Abhyanga that I want to share. This is one of my personal favorites. I call it the Abhyanga bath shortcut. There are times in life when you don't really have the time to do this full practice because the practice can take about five to ten minutes. Some people take up to 15 or 20. Really they slow it down and they really massage, and you should as much as you can, but there are some evenings, for example, where you'd really love those oils on but you're really ready for bed. A warm bath sounds really nice. I think we could pull off a nice, long bath. I do what's called the Abhyanga bath. In this case, we fill the bath with warm water. We take our base oil, sesame, coconut, sunflower, an herbally medicated blend -- tailam, they're called -- and you put a cup, an ounce or so into the bathwater. Swish it around and you just jump in. It's like an instant Abhyanga. The oils just jump on you. They jump on you. They stick to you. Our bodies are -- I'd like to say we're lipophilic. Our body loves oils and oils love us. They hop on. Water doesn't even stick to us like oils do. Oils, they love us, so we jump in. It's warm. It's oils. You just swish it around for a couple of minutes and then you could start doing little massages with your feet, your hands, your arms, your legs. It's lovely. It's really one of the most beautiful ways to get oils onto our bodies. It's kind of like Abhyanga cheat sheet a little bit, but it's fun. It really is just a beautiful way to get it done.

David: Nice. Well, thank you. That's a very comprehensive overview and very easily applicable for everybody. You covered all the details, so that's great. I just want to mention one thing that I learned the hard way. There's only one real danger of doing Abhyanga and that has to do with those oily towels. Don't put oily towels in a dryer. Oily towels in the dryer can combust and having a fire in your house will imbalance all your doshas, so just make sure that you dry them on low heat or dry them outside of something. Okay. James, you have presented a great wealth of information here about something that is very simple and cost-effective and highly therapeutic. I have heard so many cases, as I'm sure you

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have also, of people who had some pretty chronic and even pretty serious health conditions that were significantly benefitted, if not just cured from doing regular Abhyanga, so thank you. This is very important information. I know that the time that we've had is not enough to fully unpack and explore this topic, but I would like to let people know where they can get more information because you are an Ayurvedic teacher who's doing a lot of good work and you have three websites here that I would like to tell people about. One is sevantiinstitute.com. Another is sevantiadventures.com and another is just sevanti.com. Maybe you could tell us briefly what can people find when they go to these sites.

James: Right. Thank you. Sevantiinstitute.com is the Sevanti Institute website and Sevanti Institute is a new school so to speak or our wellness resource, Ayurvedic wellness resource, for learning more about Ayurveda at various levels. The first levels of the institute programs are to introduce the Ayurveda wellness tradition to anybody.

We have a program called the Ayurveda Wellness Counselor Program which is the more professional training program that trains people who really like Ayurveda and they want to go on to practice it just to help others professionally. They can become certified by the National Ayurvedic Medical Association as an Ayurvedic health counselor, so we have that as well. We have professional trainings, but the level one is open to anybody. If you like what you hear about Ayurveda or you have always wanted to learn a little more about Ayurveda and wellness and how to take care of yourself and your family, your most immediate community, not professionally, you should take a look at the website. The level one program is open to everybody. We have both local programs as well as an online program as a webinar format, so you can study from anywhere.

The Sevanti Adventure website is another branch of the Sevanti company that we have a once a year tour to India where we take people on a two-week tour to India. We spend the first week down in Kerala, which is where I like to go. I'm very much in alignment with the Kerala style of Ayurveda and my teachers down there. I spent a year there the first time back in 1989 to 1990 and I've been there. I've led tours there 18 times now. We take 30 people and we go to this Ayurveda center that's in the jungle, on the beach, a traditional Ayurveda center, but then it's surrounded by a very comfortable -- not a resort, but sort of a retreat center-type environment with a restaurant. There are 30 doctors. There are 90 treatment therapists there. There are 30 or 40 treatment rooms. It's a fantastic experience and you really get an immersion into how Ayurveda is practiced in India, but also from that rich South Indian, Kerala, lush jungle kind of style of Ayurveda, which is my favorite, and that's every year in February. The Sevanti site, just sevanti.com, is just a little website about me and it has my bio on there so people can find more about myself, also so people can find these

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other sites. I also teach yoga trainings to yoga schools around the country, so that information is on the sevanti.com site.

David: Wonderful! Thank you. Well, James, this has been a very comprehensive discussion and it covered both the theory and the practical side of things. On behalf of all of us, I just want to say thank you very much and thank you for the excellent work that you've been doing for many years now, decades actually of promoting Ayurveda and Chinese medicine combined together, so thank you.

James: Well, thank you for having me, David, for The Shift Network. It's been my pleasure.

David: For everybody listening, thank you for joining us. Join us again in another segment of The Plant Medicine Summit.

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