Why I got into alternative medicine

This one is going to be personal!

What is my WHY for becoming an Ayurvedic practitioner?

If you have known me for eternity, you know I've always had many interests. I would organize them into three main groups:

1)  So, one big part of me was always the writer. I am really into books and literature, and I have written stories and even poetry for as long as I can remember. Despite a decent grip on math and physics, I chose a more humanistically focused high school major. Writing in English, not my mother tongue, was uncomfortable for the longest time, as I was not a bilingual child. I grew up speaking only one language fluently (Polish) and moved to Australia as a young adult.

2)  The creative and very dominant part of me loved to draw with charcoal, paint, and design. Might have won a few awards and competitions in creative arts in my day! This love for creativity eventually led me to study and work as an interior designer for a large company in Australia. (How vata/pitta of me to love creativity, beauty, and esthetics!) I have a volatile love-hate relationship with my artistic flows and blocks, and as a creator, I am full of detours and drama :)

3) And, of course, we arrive to the arena of health. My favorite TV show as a child was Dr Quinn Medicine Woman. I was a young Dr Dolittle myself, running a Stray and Roadkill Rehabilitation Center ;) in my backyard empty chicken coop. It has seen some tragic deaths but also many spectacular success stories. I did my best with what resources I had; the biggest being a soft, compassionate heart that couldn't be ambivalent towards misery. This work continues to date! Have you followed me on Instagram for a while? In that case, you have seen me successfully rehabilitating a baby parrot that couldn't perch due to foot defects and recently saving a kitten straight after its birth.

As life would unfortunately often test it, it turned out that from a young age, I could handle human emergency first aid cases too, and my dad has always suggested I should become a surgeon, especially since I had the grades for it. But I knew I wouldn’t survive losing someone on the operating table, and such losses were unavoidable in the profession. It was only a matter of time, as not everyone could always be helped, and that lesson I learned all too well from my animal rescues. I was too soft-hearted to be a surgeon.

And I was fast becoming too alternative for a mainstream medical degree of any kind. My own healing journey rendered me distrustful of pharmaceutically dominated “healthcare.” 

As a teen and young adult, I already accumulated a host of health conditions, which I now attribute to a highly stressful childhood. (The body keeps the score, indeed Bessel van der Kolk.)

I had:

- asthma (as a result, my lung capacity is forever frozen as that of an 8-year-old child)

- genetic hypothyroidism (prevalent in my family, and since my mom was pregnant with me in Poland during the Chornobyl disaster, you get the picture…)

-severe and painful endometriosis and fibroids (a complex hormonal imbalance of estrogen dominance that led to doctors telling me I would likely not have children)

-IBS or Irritable Bowel Syndrome (led to hospitalization at one point due to excessive bleeding)

-allergies (hives, swelling, and blood-shot eyes regularly).

I usually looked surprisingly healthy and mostly kept the state of my health to myself but I was a young person in a failing body, it seemed, no matter how much I tried to take care of myself. By the age of 26, I was hospitalized three times and had two corrective surgeries for the conditions in my health portfolio.

As you can imagine, I have had my fair share of specialist visits and decades of medical interventions. I am forever grateful to the excellent doctors who helped me as best as they could. But it was clear that mainstream medicine could not help me heal. The list of my medications grew, and with it grew the list of devastating side effects. One day, I decided to stop taking painkillers and all the other pills I was on (please know that I would not recommend doing the same in all the cases I have seen over the years, but I am only sharing my story here with you).

No painkillers? I was now living in discomfort regularly but became so accustomed to it that I wasn’t even aware of my ultra-high pain threshold until the birth of my child. Traumatized by hospitals (back in the day in communistic and post-communistic Poland, babies and children were separated from their mothers during hospitalization; can you even imagine the trauma?), I opted to have my daughter in an un-medicated home birth in water. My experienced midwives commented on the fact that they had hardly seen anyone like me in their 30+ year careers when it came to pain tolerance. This was an eye-opener and a turning point.

I stopped seeing myself as weak and realized that I always just pushed through. I was a highly functioning dictator who bullied her unwell body to go on. But healing takes compassion and self-love. Healing requires looking at the root cause. It takes time and dedication.

The intricacies of the body and healing became my hobby, my obsession.  I have dedicated all my free time to health for decades now, submerging myself in alternative medicine literature and seeking alternative health professionals. When it comes to unconventional therapies, you name it, I have probably tried it! Healing, finding, and understanding the answers consumed me, and I loved what I learned. I found life-altering information of great value, but Ayurveda brought it ALL together for me in a way that made all the pieces fall into place for the first time. There was no more confusion about the conflicting scientific approaches.

Through my twenties, one by one, all of my health conditions softened and peeled off my story, and before I knew it, in my thirties, I was immersed in yoga and studying to become an Ayurvedic practitioner. I have finally been healthy and craved to be of service to others. It seemed like a natural trajectory.

“The true definition of a healer is to be someone who carries the energy of the solution in your own energy field. You must embody the solution first. Then healing is offered to everyone who meets you. As you are healed, so you will heal.”  Aaron Abke

You can say it's cliché, but the solution is love. Sure, I have many herbal prescriptions at my disposal, lifestyle recommendations, dietary fixes, and quick hacks, too. It has always been love, though, at the very core of healing. True self-love and love toward the world softens and relaxes your nervous system. You take different actions, make more aligned choices, and see beauty in others. Your cells can finally thrive in this vibrant energy. You slowly release what you have been carrying and refusing to let go. The pitta-driven inflammation calms down.

I believe that going through this process of transmuting illness into wellness became my initiation into the profession of healthcare. I try as best as I can to walk my talk, to show others that it is possible to be at your healthiest in any decade of life.

It doesn’t have to get worse with age. It can get better!

Can I help you more? Would you like to book an Ayurvedic Consultation to address any particular symptoms or health goals? Please find the booking options in the Book Online tab on my website. A free discovery call is also available!