Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Hi, I'm Tara Lee and welcome to Star Being, your cosmic journey to self discovery, higher consciousness, and spiritual exploration. This podcast serves as a guiding light, illuminating the path to wisdom, healing, and conscious living. Let Star Being ignite your inner light as we transcend limitations and tap into the universal consciousness that unites and empowers all of us. Welcome to episode 22, Science meets Redefining Modern Medicine with Siva Mohan. From the age of five, Siva knew she was destined to become a doctor. But her path was never about following convention, it was about transforming it. With an MD in medicine and a background in neuroscience and behavioral change, Siva merges the wisdom of Ayurveda with advanced functional medicine and emotional wellness. Her approach is deeply personal, guiding individuals to reconnect with their bodies, decode their inner signals, and craft a wellness lifestyle that's tailored to their unique needs. But Siva's journey wasn't without challenge. After earning a place at one of the world's top medical schools, she found herself unraveling, disillusioned by a system that often overlooks the body's innate intelligence. This sparked a deeper calling to redefine what modern medicine could be. Now, as an innovator and thought leader, Siva is pioneering a new paradigm of healing, one that bridges east and west, science and intuition, structure and soul. Her mission is to teach people how to truly feel again, to trust their inner wisdom, and to embrace a more expansive vision of health. In this conversation, we explore her personal evolution, the power of unlearning, and what it really means to heal from the inside out. This conversation was incredibly expansive to me and I cannot wait for you to listen. If you loved this, please leave a rating and a review that helps me so much. Enjoy. Welcome to Star Being xiva. I am so excited to have you here. I was just telling you that I have been deep diving, thriving on your work and I really consider you a thought leader not only in the space of Ayurveda, but I really want to go into your powerful journey and your story because yeah, it is so powerful and recently I found you through the world of Instagram and what really resonated with me was a post that you put up which I want to get into as well. But I would about the modern medicine and we'll go into that, I'm sure, but I would love to start with your journey and how that has connected you to where you are today.
[00:03:28] Speaker B: Wow. Where to start? Well, first of all, thank you for having me and it's so beautiful to hear that people out there, resonate with your content enough to see you as a thought leader. So thank you for that.
So my journey, you know, it was probably like everyone else's journey, personally and professionally, where you think you know what you want, you think you know where you're headed, you think you have what you need, and then you find these moments of something's not right, something's not fitting, something is missing. What is it? Confusion, lack of clarity, self doubt, you know? And so I was having this in my professional front because ever since I was five, like, we have, like, home videos. What do you want to be when you grow up?
[00:04:25] Speaker A: I'm gonna be a doctor.
[00:04:26] Speaker B: Like, I just knew. I always knew, and it was never something I even questioned. Like, I just knew.
So imagine going all the way to one of the top med schools, and I was, like, applying for residency and just so disillusioned.
I didn't feel like there was even really a great fit for what I wanted to do or for what felt really healing. And I ended up applying to a psych residency.
Well, I was a neuroscience undergrad, so mind body was always sort of interesting to me. And I'd been practicing yoga for some time, so there was that sort of layer to it. But the reason I really chose psych is because it was the only specialty in which I felt like people's lives were actually taken into account to some degree.
And then I went into my psych residency and had the kind of cold realization that people only come to psychiatrists for meds, for drugs. And it's really the very serious cases where they're not even really living and expressing. It's like they're just being managed on medications because everyone else goes to a psychologist or a PsyD or MFT or an MSW, you know, for therapy. Right.
And that was really hard to digest because it was so not aligned with what I really wanted to practice. And I. I just couldn't find it in the Western medical front. So then I went and did a master's in public health because I thought maybe it's because I want to address the bigger issues, the root causes of what affects people truly in their health. And I did international health and development because naturally, I'm a creative solver. I love thinking outside of the box and putting things together in these places that had no infrastructure. I thought would be a really great place to apply my skill for a positive impact.
And then again, I hit some blocks, realizing, like, I'm doing all this work on the ground to connect with people and really Advocate for their needs. And at the end of the day, no one's reading my reports and you know, you know, the funders really are determining how things are going to go down. And again, I felt a loss of impact and disconnection from my true purpose. So I had my quarter life crisis and opened a yoga studio.
I guess that's what you do these days when you have your quarter life crisis. So yeah, I just, I opened a yoga studio and I started studying Ayurveda, really because I was stepping into wanting to be a mom. And it was interesting because parallel now on the personal front, as by the time I was in med school, I already had ibs, chronic sinusitis, nodulocystic acne, eczema, and these are all autoimmune related phenomenon. And then I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's thyroiditis. And you know, this, all of this stuff just was progressing in residency and public health studies. And by the time I was on the ground, like, here I am, this like American, well educated doctor and you know, well respected and working with ministries of health in different countries.
And on the ground the women were bringing me remedies for my belly, for my skin, herbal remedies. And I really got to see, oh, I have goosebumps. I really got to see the power of indigenous healing systems, you know, because western medicine wasn't offering me anything besides steroids and things to just like keep shutting down, like antibiotics, antibiotics, steroids, steroids, and like nothing that was a real solution and nothing that I would ever be able to get off of and all of which have really bad side effects. And you know, I'm like in my mid-20s. Like this was, this was bad. So I actually started then my true interest in Ayurveda, for me personally, for my health, because my grandmother moved to the States when I was born and she moved in with us. And I grew up with, you know, if you have a headache, you have a bellyache, whatever, she would go to the kitchen and she would whip up something and she would rub something or give you a tea or a food and.
And she was 96 and passed away. And that was right before I started wanting to have children. And so I went to Ayurveda school just to learn my grandmother's ways and to kind of explore a natural healing system that it made sense to continue in my own culture, especially with my yoga practice.
Had no idea that I would be practicing Ayurveda.
And the truth is if I stuck to what I was taught, I wouldn't be Practicing Ayurveda because you know, I, I appreciate the term thought leader because I'm really innovating a lot here.
This whole type, your constitution and live this way is something I reject and speak out against. Yet is the foundational approach of most modern Ayurveda. And I question that. And I, and I can see why it's become this way with you know, Ayurveda being illegal in India for 300 years and a Gurukula tradition resurfacing in modern allopathic settings and mass marketing and you know, so on and so forth.
But it's, it's not the way I see Ayurveda. So the way I practice Ayurveda, literally my business is Ayurveda by Siva because it's not traditional by any means. And I'm using these ancient ways of mapping energetics and seeing the big picture and understanding that we can modulate energetics in infinite ways and custom tailoring solutions to do so for our individual patterns that we want to shift.
I'm not seeing other practitioners do that, you know. And then the other huge area of innovation which I know you were saying you wanted to go into too is the whole psychospiritual aspects. So you know, Ayurveda is really amazing for healthy lifestyle, like powerful prevention, really keeping ourselves in a state of optimal function of rejuvenation which nobody's in because modern life prevents that. But to take as many steps in that direction as we can. Ayurveda lifestyle hands down is amazing. But the way it's offered often feels like a prescriptive set of rules. That's like a part time job, you know. And so this ability to really tap into growing in awareness, where am I at? What do I need really? And tailoring that self care and that lifestyle to be realistic and functional for us was probably like the first half of all of what I've been working on and then seeing that that's great, but everything in the non physical self is going to come and reveal itself or manifest in some kind of physical ailment. And so, you know, you can take all of the kitchen Ashwagandha you want, you know, you can do all of the practices, but if you're not addressing your emotional experience, we're not addressing the root cause of disease and we're limiting our healing, right? So if the stressors are the same, if the internal conflicts are the same, if the relationship dynamics remain toxic, if we're not finding connection to our true purpose, we're going to stay in our patterns of disease period.
Right. So the more recent focus that I've been excited about, that's, that's really calling me and that I feel like is really more like dialed in. And my dharma and kind of legacy is, is that psychospiritual wellness piece. And it doesn't really exist in Ayurveda. So again, it's not something, I've express it in a lot of Vedic terms because it's there if we want it to be. But even growing up in a Hindu family, it's not there. Even, even those sort of mind body practices are very prescriptive. You know, sit and meditate for this long fast on these days, you know, it's not, it's not a. Build your awareness and get to know your patterns and actively work towards your personal evolution as a part of your healing process. We can't separate out the self growth I.e. build awareness, apply awareness. Build awareness, apply awareness. We, I can't separate that out from emotional healing and I can't separate that out from physical healing. It's, it's all one in the same journey.
So that's been a nightmare to convey in terms of a niche.
But, but that's, that's what the journey has been and, and that's what's helped me because again, once I, once I started using all the natural remedies and changing my lifestyle to be more supportive for my own physical ailments, I also had in front of me all of those emotional patterns that were keeping me unwell that I had to address and make some big changes.
So that was a lot.
I'll let you take it from there.
[00:15:48] Speaker A: Yeah, so much to dive into there.
I would love to know how you processed shifting your identity of being a doctor of medicine and then with your background in neuroscience and then shifting into Ayurveda, I can't imagine the delayering that you needed to do, the shedding around that.
And I really feel that you having that background also gives you an incredible amount of authority and recognition as well. And so I think that is really powerful that you know, you've explored, you know, the, the Western and now the Eastern and bringing that together I think is really powerful. But I'd love to know what that breaking down of the identity, that process, that journey was like for you.
[00:17:04] Speaker B: Yeah, it was not easy. It really wasn't. My parents were like, they disowned me. Like that classic Indian parent move of like, what the heck, like you just went to one of the top med schools and public health schools and now you're going to practice like poor village medicine, you know, and also worried about like my earning potential, you know, I had student loans and I was definitely more the major breadwinner in my marriage. And are people going to be interested in and value and pay for Ayurveda? You know, and it was interesting because I thought that I would need to build interest and kind of cultivate an awareness of Ayurveda and you know, slow grow from there. And I had the yoga studio. So I started kind of introducing things there.
I was wrong and people were ready. People were frustrated with the medical system and this is 15 years ago already. They were hungry for different solutions and they wanted someone who they felt like they could trust. And my background gave them that added layer of security that this woman knows, you know, if I have a diagnosis, you know, diabetes or hypercholesterolism, or if I, if I am taking a lot of medications, you know, that she can reconcile all of it. And so in the beginning I attracted really sick people that were very frustrated with their healthcare experience.
And it was a good challenge for me. And it was, it was, it was lonely, it took a lot of courage.
And then the universe just guided me, right, because within a year my practice was so full that I actually handed over the yoga studio and just took my practice out and focused on that business. Because at that time too I had two young kids and was like too much to do all of it.
So I mean, within a year was like self sufficient of a business. And that told me something. And then the transformations, I mean, wow, like people who, you know, been like suffering from rheumatoid arthritis on chemotherapy level drugs for 12 years, having massive transformations and you know, just knocking down the list of drugs from 15 to like 3 and reducing dosages and feeling vibrant and feeling encouraged and hopeful and making major life changes is in the, the real emotional root causes. I mean, the number of transformative stories, like I would really love one day to have the time to just like write about case studies that I've been so blessed to witness and that, that really kept me going forward because it was, it was so obvious that it works, this works, it's, it, it's a real approach to healing.
You know, the background I think has burdened me to some degree in that even now my heart is to just go fully into the psycho spiritual, you know, all of these sort of more physically oriented tools and integrate and curate.
But my heart is really over here in the psychospiritual wellness. And I almost feel this responsibility to keep doing, you know, the work with the physical self.
Because of my background in a way.
So yeah, it's, it's been really mixed, really inspiring, really guided.
I've always had a wait list practice. I've never advertised.
So I think word of mouth, like our people can feel the genuine.
When I teach or, or speak and it's taken care of itself. And then even after my divorce, which is one of my big emotional healing moves, I've been the sole provider for myself and my two kids and we've been taken care of and we're blessed and we have an amazing lifestyle. So yeah, it's been really lonely at times. I've been definitely shunned at times from the Ayurvedic community. Like in the States, like they.
It's very interesting to see like, you know, kind of. I don't know if it's like, you know, when you're shining really bright, like some people have trouble digesting that and it's been interesting to see like with the professional organizations and things like that and my being very non traditional and kind of outspoken.
Yeah, the traditional Ayurvedic community doesn't like that because almost a rejection of what they do, right?
[00:23:09] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:23:09] Speaker B: And my work in all of the emotional wellness stuff, they don't have the background to address that.
I mean, yes, I have the neuroscience and I have the psychiatry and, and you know, my yoga teacher trainings and things, but truly it's. It's channeled in many ways, you know, because it's my life purpose. And so it almost makes it like what they're doing isn't enough.
It's limited. Right. So I understand it, but I. It's really been a lone wolf kind of experience because there's no one doing what I'm doing and neither am I well accepted in the medical community and neither am I well accepted in the Ayurvedic community.
[00:23:57] Speaker A: Yes. Yes. I just want to honor your courage and bravery and also the threat to both of those systems as well.
I can fully understand and appreciate that.
But that is what attracted me to your work and how you speak about Ayurveda is how I know it in my heart, even not knowing these concepts. But when I hear you speak, I'm like that.
Yeah, that is truth.
So I really love that and I really want to encourage the rebellion. And I'm trying to, in my mind as we speak, map out your Vedic chart. In my mind what your placements would be.
[00:24:52] Speaker B: My moon in Aries is what gave me all the courage.
[00:24:55] Speaker A: I was going to say the pioneer. Yeah, definitely. The fire.
[00:24:59] Speaker B: Yeah, that. Yeah. And my son is in cancer, so with Jupiter.
[00:25:07] Speaker A: Beautiful.
The Instagram post that I saw, Siva, that made me reach out to you was you talking about modern medicine and obviously this being your background and it being a huge gift when it is needed, especially in those emergency situations.
But the duality of that as well, that there is also, you know, the over prescription and the dangers of diagnosis and not paying attention to the human or the whole individual, the whole person.
And when I read this, I. My husband had just. He races in motorsport. He had just had a serious crash and he was in a hospital in. In Australia. And I wasn't able to get to him, but he went in and he had all these tests and CT scans and he kept complaining to me that he had a really sore back. And they said to him, the CT scan is fine. Your. Your back is fine. They took him out of the brace and everything like that. He ended up flying home and he was still complaining about his back. And so he ended up having to have wrist surgery. And while we were at the doctors getting the surgeon for the wrist, I was like, Because I know my husband so well, I was like, can you also do an MRI just to check his back? Because I know that this type of pain is not normal.
And he reluctantly, you know, goes, okay, so they did the MRI scan. He ended up having. He broke his back in two places. But the reason that that was so alarming to me is because one, that there was that dismissive element, which is not, you know, just to Western medicine. I'm not boxing it in that. But the other thing, after reflecting on this, was just reflecting on my husband, on how he wasn't feeling into his body and he didn't have the awareness that he needed to advocate and push that. And so what I love about your work is that you really come back to that mission to teach people how to feel and that.
[00:28:08] Speaker B: Yes, yes, you get it.
Yes.
[00:28:13] Speaker A: And I keep thinking about this because my husband said to me, he goes, well, they're the experts, they know what they're doing and, you know, going to lean on their expertise.
And I feel that when it comes to our health and when it comes to our wellness, we need to be fully invested. We can't outsource that. And so I noticed that disconnect. And it's not just unique to him. I think that we do have this disconnect from our body and we are outsourcing that someone knows our body better than we do. And so yeah, this is just. And then I read your post and I was like, oh, I need to speak to Seva. Because, yeah, I think coming back to this, getting in touch with our body, getting in touch with how our body feels, what our body needs, and then advocating for it if it doesn't feel right, if we need to, you know, have a second opinion, really coming back to that empowerment piece and listening to art and coming back to that intuition, knowing when something's off. Like I knew something was off.
And so yeah, I would just love to hear if that is something that you've obviously experienced. And how do you start educating? I mean, it would be amazing to have this in, you know, in our curriculum or learning about it, on how to tap into how we feel and connect to our body. But how do you go about that with your, with your clients?
[00:30:00] Speaker B: Oh, this is such a great question. So, yes, my, the way I mentioned earlier that I explained to people what Ayurveda is because they ask me and I say it's a living, breathing awareness of where am I at, what do I need that we're using all the time now, that has nothing to do with the traditional definition of Ayurveda. Like if you Google it, I'm sure you've seen it's a 5,000 year old science and you type yourself and blah, blah, blah, you know, but it really is to me, know yourself, heal yourself. Like that age old adage, right? So with my clients, I tell them from the beginning, like, my job is not to make you dependent on me or any practitioner, right? So what I do is I start with having them really observe their physical patterns because that's easier for them. Bowel movements, digestive symptoms, sleep patterns, skin patterns, menstrual patterns. Like they're able to, you know, kind of do that as a, as a really easy sort of starting place, right. And it's amazing how many people just aren't paying attention because they're not taught to know themselves. Right.
It's just this assumption that it's all going to work out well and, and even to the point where I charge them with their supplements that I'm giving them like their herbs, right?
Try this.
See how your body feels.
Listen, adjust this way if you get this message, adjust this way if you get this message and report back to me next session.
So inherent is that is your body's guiding this, not me. And what I think is the professional dosage and how it needs to be taken.
That's huge because so many people have experienced a prescription either whether that was like functional medicine, supplements or a pharmaceutical prescription where it just didn't feel right to them. But there was no ability to modulate for their what they were feeling. And we're told you just need to do it this way because this is the standard. But why do we have a standard? We have a standard for liability prevention for doctors, not because this optimizes healing by any means.
Right. And, and so that's important to know, right? And so when they do that, the empowerment they already step into, oh, well, I took this and I felt this and like you said, so then I did it, took the next step and you know, over time that turns into them feeling very great about modulating their food, their herbal supplements, their routines, you know, and then I take them into the psycho spiritual and really observing.
So I will call out the patterns for them first. And the psychospiritual of like, here's this pattern here in this relationship and this is a reflection of this early childhood pattern that you're recreating and you need to be aware of this pattern. And you know, look, here we see it at work in a different flavor and you know, here we see it in your parenting in a different flavor. And you know, I build the awareness of the pattern, right? And as soon as they can see it, when you have an aware, you can't turn it off, you can't turn that off. Right? And so it's almost like a natural motivation for self advocacy and the best one, right? Because like once you can see a pattern and you know you're choosing it over and over again and you know, I have clients that will choose that toxic romantic alliance several rounds, but they're aware of it sooner. They the way I say it is cut out the poison faster, bring in the medicine faster, right? So like we have these karmic lessons that are going to repeat and we're going to see them in multiple areas of our lives. But if we understand them as karmic lessons and we understand them as the blueprint for what our growth is here in this lifetime, it really helps, right? It helps us to not feel like something's wrong with us. Like, why do I keep finding myself in this situation?
You know, something's wrong with me that men keep treating me this way, or my work keeps being this way, or my community members and friendships keep being this way to really understanding. No, this is a pattern and it's a pattern I'm going to keep encountering until I grow in this way and fulfill that Karmic curriculum. And I outline for them what the growth is and what the healing direction is. And slowly they take steps forward towards that. And the faster they move towards that, the more they decrease the, the frequency, the intensity, the duration of the emotional pain.
Yeah, yeah. Even my parents that I told you were so skeptical of me going into Ayurveda, you know, in their older years, came across their health challenges and went to the Western medical system and experienced all kinds of mismanagement and bad side effects. And now both of them are fully off of any meds and without any real diagnoses and fully managed on food and herbs.
And they became believers through their experience.
[00:35:51] Speaker A: Yeah, that's, that's beautiful and, and so powerful as well to.
Yeah, witness. Especially when you feel that you have those answers and you can lessen that discomfort. But it is like you say, that journey, that big picture us all going through those, those karmic lessons.
[00:36:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:36:21] Speaker A: I would love to know your thoughts. Speaking of the modern medicine and Ayurveda and you mentioned that Ayurveda is around prevention. It can be used as a, you know, a well being, maintenance tool that we can live our best lives through our lifestyle. And then there is also those patients that come to you that might be having more of a health challenge.
What are the, what are the crossovers with Ayurveda and modern medicine? Do you think that there is ever going to be a place for Ayurveda in modern medicine to have it as a, a complementary or working side by side? Because right now I see them as, you know, this is this path or this is this path. And I think you're bridging that gap with what you've spoken about and you know, with your background.
But how, how do you see this in the future? Do you see this as, you know, what Thomas Edison says, that the doctor of the future won't be, I'm going to butcher it, but won't be prescribing medicine. He will be teaching how to look after our health and things like that rather than providing Medicare.
So do you see it like that or do you see Ayurveda eventually?
[00:38:04] Speaker B: I don't, sadly. I, I just, maybe I, I have a, too good of an internal sense of the medical industrial complex. And I'm, but I'm also very realistic when it comes to these things and the fundamental difference between the two paths. And by the way, like modern Greek Hippocratic medicine, which is where allopathic, you know, sort of Western medicine comes from, originated actually from Ayurveda long, long ago, like if we go medical, anthropologically speaking, Ayurveda is the original healing system. It's the oldest and the most comprehensive. And its various branches and iterations have developed into all the things we have now, including traditional Chinese medicine, you know, sort of the Arabic medicine branches, et cetera, et cetera. So it's interesting that there, there was that original thing. But the reason why I don't believe there will be a good merger is because the great departure that has happened again is because of legal reasons.
So it used to be that even in Western allopathic medicine, the doctor was practicing semiology, they were putting their hands on you, they were feeling where you're at, they were assessing really, they were listening to you, they knew you, they knew your whole family, they lived in your community. And so when they prescribed medicines, it already had a customization inherent in it. Right?
With the modern practice where the doctor has eight minutes for any hmo, they're looking at a chart that's overloaded with a ton of paperwork or an electronic chart which just so fragmented, they don't have any clear, quick, holistic view of you and your health journey.
And the amount of data is too much for any doctor to digest in that time frame. The turnover rate is way too high.
People don't stay with one doctor for very long, so there isn't time to track or get to know them.
And so that fundamental discrepancy between how medicine is practiced now and Ayurveda is. Ayurveda should always be about customization.
Where am I at? What do I need? Right. Like there's an inherent tailoring to the current state, whereas this is being practiced. It's like a monkey could practice modern medicine. And it's in AN app. The DSM 4 patient comes in with cough diagnostic tree, offer these diagnostic tests, prescribe these medicines because those are the only things that make money for the medical system. Prescriptions and diagnostic exams. Right. And so even going to one of the top med schools in the world, I didn't have a solid nutrition class or any lifestyle.
Like adjuncts that were. There's a, there's a lot of evidence based, but the pharmaceutical lobby controls medical curriculum.
So how are we going to reconcile this system with tailoring or customization?
I don't see that happening. Right. And so what it will be is this like really like superficial level stuff, right? Like you can bring in meditation and you can prescribe that to people that for example, have a cardiac history and high stress or you know, stress related diseases.
But I don't see the capacity of this system to do any customization or to offer stuff that they don't see is, you know, having been proved in a randomized clinical trial and even that. Like it frustrates me. And I've spoken out about this in conferences like why is NIH spending millions of dollars studying the effect of curcumin extract and rats when we have 3, 000 years of clarity on the benefits of the whole turmeric plant?
You know, that's some colonial bs like, and India is so busy trying to like prove Ayurveda in a current western medical context, that's gross to me. Like stand up and own own.
That thousands of years of observation is way more powerful than any study.
Right. And not only that, but randomized clinical trials, they're randomized. And so the people's constitutions are not taken into effect.
And your constitution and your current state affects everything, how you respond to any medication or intervention. So all of those studies, and I have a mast in epidemiology, you know, so every one of those studies is inherently flawed in my opinion.
And then who's funding them and how the P value was manipulated. I don't trust that stuff. I will take thousands of years of observation any day over any modern scientific study. But that is the basis of evidence based medicine.
So I don't see those two systems reconciling anytime soon.
What I do see is people like me who have ventured out on their own and offer private services. So I do not maintain a DEA license, I do not have a license to practice medicine. And I own that everywhere. And like my patient, I don't even call them patients, their clients, you know, so on the waivers and on my website, I have to be very clear about that because the California Medical Board came after me, you know, like, because everything I do is not practicing medicine and I can't risk the liability. And so no doctor is going to risk the liability of trying to practice.
And I mean you would have to be really well educated in Ayurveda to be willing to take on the liability of offering an Ayurvedic intervention to your patients as a doctor. And you don't have the time, right?
So it's going to be, what it is is private.
It's the private sector. And it's people like me who are integrationists, whether that's with TCM and medicine, whether that's, you know, they're using holistic modalities within their specialty like cardiology or, you know, ortho or whatever. And they're, they're offering adjunctive tools that they found effective. But what's sad about that is that it means that only wealthy people can access this.
But it is what it is. We, I don't see us integrating into a system.
I do have hope that med schools are seeing it will be market driven because they're seeing the demand and how much people are paying out of pocket for what in the United States is called complementary and alternative medicine.
They might be more and more willing to have some integrative shifts in their curriculum, but even that, it's, it's going to be superficial. And there's no way to monitor that. Dr. Liability insurance will likely not cover that. Do you see? So these are all the blocks. I mean, no one's really asked me this question and I'm thankful, but that's my honest opinion about it.
[00:46:49] Speaker A: And I think that you bring up so many points there. And the thing that I think about.
[00:46:53] Speaker B: Is.
[00:46:56] Speaker A: Ayurveda and how I am starting to see that morph into how I feel about how neutropathy has gone into more of that allopathic model and losing that soul, that spirit, and distilling that information down to, like you said, extracting this out of the herb. But then if we're not giving the whole herb, how does the body know how to break it down? And so I'm seeing all these quick fixes as well with that masking of that. This is different. And I think that that's where that discernment needs to happen. And I think that is why the Aries fire in you is really great, to keep that honesty and keep that integrity and question that. I think that is so needed.
Yeah, so needed. I would love to ask you more about the psycho spiritual side of the medicine and getting to that, that root cause and our beliefs and how, how you lead with that within, with your clients and how important that is, how important that is for the healing.
[00:48:33] Speaker B: It's imperative for healing. Like I was explaining earlier, I don't, I don't think that. I think we, we will go to a certain place and we'll hit a plateau in the healing process or journey until the emotional roots are addressed. This is always what I see now with my clients before I even accept them. I let them know that that look like. If you just want to focus on your digestion or, you know, healing a specific physical ailment, I'll refer you to really fantastic functional medicine doctor or other ayurvedic practitioners that are focused more on the body. But if you want to work with me, it's more that we're really focusing on what's going on in your non physical self and what your life experiences and how you're digesting that and how you're navigating that and what awareness you have of that and how you're healing all of these core wounds and how you're finding your, your, your path.
And of course as we're moving through it, if you're having challenges in the physical body, I'll make recommendations and guide you there because it's all together. Right. So for example, yesterday I onboarded a client where severe, you know, in her low 30s, severe endometriosis to the point where she already had a pretty significant surgery and severe digestive problems and since childhood. Right. And the non physical self, all of the stuff in the subtle body comes into the physical body through the digestive system first.
Obviously we see it in real time in the nervous system, but we're the stuff really comes into the physical body digestive system and for women, the womb.
So right away I'm like, okay, clearly there's a lot going on in her emotional experience in life that it's showing right away in these two places with such severity at such a young age. Right.
And yeah, sure enough we were able to map out so clearly her childhood like all the traumas that she'd had thus far.
And also she chronic anxiety, says this was a big problem for her and exactly why she had the endometriosis, why she has the trouble digesting her life experience and what's behind her anxiety. I mean within an hour and a half that was so clear.
And over and over and over again I have people tell me like wow, like what we've done just blew away like 10 years of therapy, what I wasn't able to accomplish there. Right. Because in the therapeutic setting we're so limited as guides. Right. Like again there's a, there's a board and, and you can't self disclose and you can't share stories and you can't suggest to people what they need to do and you can't call out anything spiritual. And so basically you can just sit there and hear and validate and maybe provoke some introspection or give them some like cognitive behavioral responses to challenging emotions. But there is nobody teaching people.
If you have an unpleasant feeling, here's how you identify what that message means from your emotional body. Here's how you call out the unmet emotional needs. That's your guide to moving forward in this situation and we just get so caught up in the top stuff. Like, so and so is a narcissist. Or, you know, I'm in toxic, but you know, it's just like, label it and like, oh, I have anxiety, my anxiety. You know, it's like the unpleasant feeling is just a message, you know, and if you're not hearing the message and you're not getting it, it's going to stay on, you know. But when you fulfill those unmet emotional needs, the unpleasant feeling dissipates. This is how the emotional body communicates with the mind. And it's because these two intelligence systems are meant to work together. So I always describe this as like trying to run with one leg when we've been given two.
Right. Like, but nobody is working with the emotional intelligence system. And you mentioned earlier, like, teaching people how to feel. Absolutely. Not just in the physical body, but also sentience.
What are you feeling emotionally? Not just identify your emotions or some kind. Like, when I ask people, what do you do for your emotional wellness? They are stumped.
I go to therapy.
I let my feelings pass through me.
Okay.
Neither of those are effective at addressing the. The true changes that are needed and how we are resolving our internal conflicts, navigating relationship dynamics, advocating for our emotional needs, and moving forward in life in a way where we're choosing that.
So to me, this work is really paramount. And that's why I mentioned, like, I feel like this is my legacy work and I've been teaching it, so I've been now really focusing. All of my content includes emotional wellness, and lately I've been doing emotional wellness retreats. So, like, immersions where I can give people sort of the foundational awareness and skill set that they can then continue to apply on their own.
So.
So yeah, I hope that answered your question. Did I miss any part of it?
[00:54:51] Speaker A: Yes. No. Thank you for answering. That was beautiful and perfect.
So this is Siva. This is where you're putting all your energy right now into your retreats and this education and courses as well, is that correct?
[00:55:12] Speaker B: It really is. Where I've been emphasizing. The truth of the matter is that people with chronic sleep issues, chronic digestive issues, chronic anemia, even, you know, chronic anything.
The reason it's chronic is because the emotional roots haven't been addressed.
But they're not going to sign up for an emotional wellness retreat.
[00:55:36] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:55:37] Speaker B: Because they are thinking, I have a digestive issue.
[00:55:41] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:55:43] Speaker B: So it, you know, it's a blend. Right. Like, I have a retreat coming up at Esalon in Big Sur, California. And I'm calling it a heal yourself retreat where, you know, we focus on some of the foundational pillars of wellness lifestyle, like self assessment and kind of awareness building and digestion, sleep immunity routines that will likely draw an audience, for example, that wants to make those shifts and wants to change the way that they're living, but are likely oblivious to the emotional root causes.
And so it gives me an opportunity to serve that audience and kind of just, hey, this is where you really need to focus. Here's some natural remedies and tools and approaches for this, but this is where the gold is.
[00:56:46] Speaker A: Yes.
Incredible work, Seva. I just love to hear it. It's such an inspiring conversation and I've loved our time together.
I wanted to ask you so many more questions, but I thank so much for your time and just being this beacon of light and also bridging the ancient and the modern. I truly believe that, you know, things have changed and we need that we need something different. We can still keep the integrity, but yeah, it's different times. So, yeah, I just want to honor you and thank you for your time and your work and your message.
[00:57:41] Speaker B: Absolutely. I really do believe we need to take back that word modern medicine, because what is allopathic medicine is not modern. What's modern is that we have access to so many healing modalities. And so modern medicine to me is that we're custom fitting the right combination for our needs at that moment.
Yeah. Well, beautiful. Thank you for having me. This was really inspiring conversation for me too. I love the questions that you asked and we'll just have to do another one sometime soon for the rest of that.
[00:58:22] Speaker A: Yes. Thank you so much. Thanks for tuning in to starbeing. May the wisdom shared resonate in your soul. Until next time, stay connected and keep reaching for the stars. This is starbeing signing off.
