The Path of Practice

As one of the world's only female experts on the ancient Indian tradition of Ayurvedic medicine, renowned teacher Bri. Maya Tiwari has devoted her heart and soul to share the philosophy and methods that saved her from terminal cancer and redirected her life. In this book she offers a short course on healing and living and reveals how she has gone back to the sources of Ayurvedic wisdom to reclaim time-honored, natural, spiritual techniques for use in contemporary life. Filled with illuminating insights, easy-to-follow recipes and meditations and exercises that can be adapted to different lifestyles and traditions, The Path of Practice is one of the only holistic programs designed for women by a woman. This book has a strong focus on women, because they are the staff-holders of sacred life and nurturance. The aim is to evoke, inform, strengthen and safeguard the memory of women as guardians of sacred healing. It is also meant to help men become awakened to the Mother's primordial healing energy that has existed within them from ancient times.

BRI. MAYA TIWARI is an internationally renowned teacher of Ayurveda, a practicing Vedic monk, and the author of Ayurveda: Secrets of Healing and Ayurveda: A Life of Balance. She is building the Wise Earth School, an Ayurvedic, nature-based facility for teaching and healing in Asheville, North Carolina, and founded and Mother Om Mission, a charitable organization that teachs sadhana and Ayurvedic healing to at risk communities throughout the world. Bri. Maya has been featured on the cover of Yoga Journal and gives numerous lectures every year at Yoga and other major conferences. She also writes a regular column for the international newspaper Hinduism Today, which has over a million English-speaking readers.

Introduction

I am a Vedic monk-a brahmacharini. Since my initiation in 1992 by my teacher, Swami Dayananda Saraswati, I have dedicated my life to living in accordance with the natural rhythms of the universe; to teaching the wisdom and healing practices of the Vedas, the holy scriptures of India which date back to 1500 B.C.E.; and to helping others heal physically and emotionally. At my center, the Wise Earth School of Ayurveda, in the mountains near Asheville, North Carolina, I teach the knowledge and practice of sadhana and Ayurvedic healing.

Because of my experiences, I have a great deal of information- about breath work, meditation, sound, yoga, and wholesome nutrition- that can help people, especially women, live healthy lives, cultivate healing communities, and help themselves and others heal from physical and emotional ailments. My students include doctors, nurses, yoga instructors, nutritionists, artists, social advocates, inner city youth mentors, and interested laypeople.

Wise Earth sadhana teachings are intended for everyone- women, men, and children, indeed, 35 percent of my students are men. However, this book has a strong focus on women, because they are the staff-holders of sacred life and nurturance. The aim of The Path of Practice is to evoke, inform, strengthen, and safeguard and memory of women as guardians of sacred healing. It is also meant to help men become awakened to the Mother's primordial healing energy that has existed within them from ancient times. Indeed, all but a few of the spiritual teachers whose work has informed my practice are men.

In addition, I conduct the Mother Om Mission, a charitable organization whose purpose is to educate at-risk communities about sadhana life ways and to familiarize men and women with the primordial healing power that every human being possesses. I also travel all over the world conducting workshops for those interested in learning the path of practice, or sadhana.

Sadhana is a Sanskrit word whose root, sadh, means to reclaim that which is divine in us, our power to heal, serve, rejoice, and uplift the spirit. Sadhana practices encompass all our daily activities, from the simple to the sublime - from cooking a meal to exploring your inner self through meditation. The goal of sadhana is to enable you to recover your natural rhythms and realign your inner life and daily habits with the cycles of the universe. When you begin to live and move with the rhythms of nature, your mind becomes more lucid and more peaceful and your health improves. Your entire life becomes easier.

As you begin you journey along the path of practice, you must make the promise to yourself that you are willing to take a very clear look at yourself. Allow yourself to recognize the various disguises and false faces that you have assumed over the years. As you come to see beyond them to your truest self. As you find out more about yourself and your strengths and weaknesses, you will also learn about your body, mind, and spirit, and their innate power. You will awaken to your own self-healing abilities. Whatever conventional, Western medical treatments you use, you will always be able to use your own natural abilities as well.

On the path of practice, we adopt the belief that disease happens from within, and so must any cure. We decide that any lack of peace or dis-ease or illness becomes an occasion to go deeper into ourselves, to examine where we must make changes in order to heal our bodies, feelings, or lives. We accept that our ailment is an assignment and that to complete it satisfactorily we must do research into it and into ourselves. Each of us is unique; no one else can complete our assignment for us. We can't even depend on the inherent beneficence of the universe to save us. The universe will support us, and will help us by revealing its sacred rhythms. It will help us see where we have gotten off balance and will always allow us to realign with it. But we have to do the work of self-reflection and healing that fits our individual inner life and outer life. On our individual path on the human journey, each of us is meant to learn the truths of our physical, mental, and spiritual lives that are particular to us and shared by others. These truths unite us to our families, our tribe, the entire human race, and the universe as a whole.