I’ve been feeling overwhelmed and drained lately.  Like I cannot do one more thing.  So I booked an appointment with an Ayurvedic Lifestyle Consultant, Silver Frith.  Frith (it’s a chosen name and she says you can call her whichever) was one of my Yoga Teacher Training teachers and does this Ayurvedic stuff as well.  If she stared doing yoga in the 70’s she’s gotta be in her 50’s now but you’d never know it.  Her skin glows with dewey youthfulness.  She looks like she’s never consumed anything bad in her life, or at least since she started doing yoga. 

She asked me to first do a 5 day food diary.  

Doing a food diary is a great lesson in the power of awareness.  And accountability. There were a couple times I didn’t eat what I was about to grab because then I’d have to write it down and ‘come clean about it’. 

There was another time when I wrestled with the honesty about the second glass of wine that became a third.  Oops!  It dove into my hand!  And down my throat!  What’s a girl to do?

Anyhoo, the appointment was interesting, she said that a Kapha Vata (that’s me) is the toughest constitution to keep in balance.  She said that the overwhelmed/drained feeling is because I’m up to my eyeballs in Vata. 

She said - have you been doing any air travel? Yup, two trips in two weeks in April.  Any emotional issue stuff coming up recently?  Well, I visited my family on one of those trips, so that would be “yes”.  Eating alot of sweet food like bread and stuff?  Um, did I mention my family?  The family where your breakfast options are cinammon rolls, waffles, pancakes or muffins? Double-check.  So no wonder I’ve been feeling the way I have.  It turns out all those things are vata-city.

So she gave me a bunch of things to try like ginger tea, less caffeine and less sweet food.  Yes, sadly that includes wine which our bodies receive as sugar.  Frith threatened, or at least it sounded that way to me, that if I couldn’t improve things with these tweaks it might be time for a detox diet.  Ayurvedically speaking that means a mono-diet of Kitcheri - a rice, mung bean, veggie dish for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  No god please, not with bbq season starting. 

She also asked if I’ve noticed any peri-menopausal symptoms and I told her, thank god, no.  She said good, because you want to get out of the habit of forcing your energy with caffeine and sugar and learn to go with the energy you have. 

She said that abusing caffeine etc. is tough on your adrenals and adrenal fatigue often hits women right before menopause.  This is lousy timing because you need to be strong for menopause.  She said for my slow a.m. Kapha constitution I should be using active yoga and exercise to get myself moving - less Seattle’s Best Breakfast Blend. 

I was horrified at the idea of “going with my energy”, which just goes to show me that maybe I am a caffeine freak who lives on squeezing every last bit of energy out by Any Means Necessary. 

I’ll let you know how it goes.  Hopefully the energy I learn to go with will be enough to get me back to regular blog postings.