The Ayurvedic Guide to Fertility. Heather Grzych

the one running most of the show. Take a guess about which one you think will win if there is a conflict between the two.

      You are both an intellectual and animal creature. Your intellect has the ability to understand what is good and bad, make decisions, strategize, and so forth. You can learn quickly in school, get the gold star for your homework, and later get that great internship or job. You can also make the decision to work late and overachieve, go to the gym, go home and cook dinner, or go on a date. All this is the job of your intellect.

      Your primal self is ancient. It was passed down to you from generations long ago, and then it’s been iterated based on your life experiences and choices. It’s been influenced by your intellectual self. The primal wants to synchronize with the primordial rhythm of nature, and it does so whenever your choices and actions within an environment allow it to. However, the primal is also the space where emotions are felt, and if you are not used to listening to your emotions and letting them inform your decisions, then you will become misaligned and be unable to connect with the rhythm of nature.

      You are smart but not perfect. You get hurt, and sometimes you even make mistakes. And you have blind spots. You are an emotional being — not a computer. This is what makes you human.

      Women today need a pathway to explore their inner animals because our day-to-day lives are now spent in structures and systems that were originally designed by men, for men. And the wellness practices and teachings that many of us use to undo the effects of being caught up in this man’s world — modern yoga practices, for instance, or mindfulness — remain mostly focused on the mind, muscles, and bones, which are the areas of thoughts, will, and structure. Women today need practices and teachings that bring them into the more rooted realm of the emotions and urges.

      The word buddha means one who has achieved enlightenment, but a female buddha will figure out how to simultaneously listen to the deep and ancient, unconscious spaces in her body, learning how to read the psychophysical experiences of her emotions, and translate these into wise actions. Since the primal animal is such a huge part of a woman, the mindful woman gets to know it more closely — especially when she’s contemplating having a baby. Getting pregnant, being pregnant, giving birth, and raising a child can be the most embodied experiences a female buddha can have in this modern life.

      A woman who places too much value on her thoughts, ideas, will, and structure and does not balance that out with the exploration of her inner animal — her emotions, gut, heart, and reproductive functioning, including the 95 percent of her programming that isn’t conscious — will experience mental stress and bodily imbalance. A stressed-out woman can spend years and years reprogramming her mind via all sorts of training or therapies, but if she does not get into the experience of her body, and the emotions experienced inside, then she cannot make the changes necessary to realign her life back with nature, and she will get caught in a never-ending battle between the two selves. If she doesn’t learn to talk with her body, then that body will always seem to fail her.

      So here’s the question: Can you let go of what you know to be your mind, the intellectual part, and tap into your primal dimension?

      I’m not insinuating that the mind is not important. It is just as important as the animal self. A state of health comes from making good decisions, and most of the maladies we face in life are the result of the intellect being misused somewhere along the way. For the modern woman, one of the greatest misuses is not getting to know her animal self better, and instead aligning with meaningless pursuits until she wakes up. If she gets to know the animal self deeply, then her intellect can actually arrive at better-informed decisions, which will make her life more efficient, her body healthier, and her spirit more alive.

      Getting in touch with your reproductive power requires that you dive a little more into the dark, mystical realm where you don’t already know everything and where it can be difficult to draw conclusions. You may feel confused. Things may not make sense. However, once you journey into this magical, primal space, you can clear a pathway for being receptive to the ultimate creative endeavor.

      Going Deeper into Your Body

      Once I was adjusting a yoga client as he held a pose for a long time, and he said to me, “Is it fucked up that I want things that are bad for me?” My heart sank. I felt his contrition, and at the same time, I knew I was guilty of this, too. Our minds oftentimes override a healthy, natural decision in favor of what we think we are supposed to do, and we’ve been trained to do this from a very young age.

      It can be confusing to discern what is an urge of the body and what is an urge of the mind. The body sends feelings — sensations, emotions, and the like. The mind has thoughts. Your body feels something and then your mind tells you a story about it, and vice versa — when your mind tells you a story, your body feels something. Finding your truth can be difficult because sometimes your mind is confused or missing very important information.

      It’s time to tap into the wise lady that lives within you. You are very smart when you pay attention. You cannot fully tap into your intuition if you are distracted by your thoughts. Intuition is what happens spontaneously when you have connected the two minds.

      To tap into this power, you must begin to observe both your thoughts and your bodily responses. If you listen closely, you will see how your body reacts in certain situations — sometimes unexpectedly — and can begin to try to understand these reactions. The body is great at telling us that we need to make a different decision: allergies, digestive issues, energy depletion, irregular periods, and sleep or skin problems are a few examples of this. However, sometimes you may not heed the body’s call, and the solutions your mind comes up with when the body is experiencing discomfort are not so effective for relieving it.

      An example is drinking more coffee or exercising a lot to get over your tiredness from either lack of sleep or not eating well for your constitutional type. When you don’t resolve the root cause, it ultimately is the source of more stress and anxiety and sabotages sleep even further, which then creates the stronger dependence on caffeine. Then you realize that you are getting headaches when you don’t have your caffeine, and the addiction persists. When you finally wake up and realize that such excessive amounts of caffeine are damaging your body, you have to go through withdrawal headaches, so then you have to take some sort of headache medicine in the process. What your mind prioritizes is sometimes not beneficial to your health or aligned with what you truly desire for your life.

      To dive back into the primal, not only must a woman pay closer attention to her mind and body, but she must also learn to trust that the body knows what is best. The Ayurvedic approach to health requires that whenever there is a conflict between mind and body, the cues of the body win. The body is biological. The mind is fleeting.

      Whenever you feel torn because of a battle between your head and your heart, it is really this battle between your thoughts and the sensations and emotions being felt in your body. Even while thinking, you will often find that your body sends you a signal. If you listen to your body’s responses with a finely tuned ear, you will move toward a place of health. If you follow your thoughts without listening to your body, a healthy way of being may elude you.

      Connecting Mind with Body

      To connect the mind with the body, most people today need to learn how to sense the body more. You may be used to doing yoga, dance, or fitness exercises, which is a good way to develop a deeper connection with the body. Any study of one’s movement, will, and actions is a worthwhile endeavor in understanding the self. There is, however, an additional dimension to connect with that can provide a good bridge between the mind and the body. This is the energetic layer, and the yogis throughout history have done a pretty good job trying to paint a picture of it.

      The base of the spine is considered the seat of kundalini energy, known as primal serpent energy. This energy can be either dormant or awakened — the serpent coiled or rising — and if awakened, will travel upward and activate an individual at different levels and dimensions. This upward-moving energy is the crown jewel of those individuals looking to awaken their whole being, and it can occur for many reasons — either spontaneously or through guidance from a teacher. The chakras are the body’s seven main energy centers, which are oriented