10 Oct Understanding Fertility through Ayurveda
Tip Jar ☕️ Enjoying the content? A small tip helps me keep creating content you love!
Tip Me
🎙️ Summary Description
Dr. Ashwin Kumar shares his journey into Ayurveda through the traditional Gurukulam path, offering deep insights into how healing begins with alignment of body, mind, and spirit. We explore the eight limbs of yoga, spiritual counseling, and the Ayurvedic perspective on emotional health, infertility, and menstruation—not just as a biological function, but as a vital dashboard for overall well-being. With clear, practical advice, Dr. Ashwin explains how ignoring the body’s subtle signals (often shaped by lifestyle and diet) can lead to deeper imbalances, and how true healing begins by honoring those messages.
🌟 Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Ayurveda and Dr. Ashwin Kumar
02:16 Dr. Ashwin’s Journey into Ayurveda
04:33 The Gurukulam Tradition of Learning
08:27 The link between spiritual, physical and mental
09:17 The Spiritual Component of Ayurveda
13:54 Ayurveda and Life Purpose
14:13 Spiritual Counseling in Ayurveda
17:17 Understanding the Eight Limbs of Yoga
26:26 Yoga’s Role in Mental and Emotional Health
27:04 The paths of yoga – householder or yogi
30:38 Ayurvedic Perspective on Infertility
33:01 Artava dhatu as a depositary for emotions
38:02 Menstrual Cycle: A Window into Health & Fertility
40:43 Spiritual and Emotional Aspects of Menstruation
48:27 Infertility in Men and Emotional Health
53:13 Holistic Approaches to Fertility
54:33 Importance of a Spiritual Foundation in Relationships
56:30 Community and Educational Offerings at Ashwin Ayurveda
01:02:07 Outro3.mp3
🎥 Watch on YouTube
Prefer to watch the conversation?
👉 View the full video on YouTube Episode #3 – Vaidya Ashwin Kumar
👤 About the Guest
Vaidya Ashwin Kumar
Dr. Ashwin is a fourth-generation Ayurvedic doctor, Vedic teacher, and holistic health consultant with over two decades of experience in Ayurvedic medicine, Siddha medicine and Vedic sciences. Classically trained in both India and the U.S., he carries forward a distinguished family lineage of healing that began in 1901 with the founding of the Ashwin College of Ayurveda & Vedic Sciences in Southern California. He specializes in women’s and family health and consults globally with individuals, families, and leaders to address complex health challenges and support holistic well-being.
Email: ashwin@ashwinayurveda.com
Phone: 323-702-1211
Website: AshwinAyurveda.com
Instagram: @ashwinayurveda
Facebook: @ashwinayurveda
Meetup: Kriya Yoga Ayurveda Sciences Meetup
Eventbrite: Clinic-College of Ayurveda Yoga-Vedic Sciences
YouTube: Vedic Kriya Yoga
📜 Full Transcript
Lois (00:12)
Namaste and welcome to Essential Ayurveda Talks. Let’s begin with a few breaths to ground ourselves, clear the mind and open our hearts to receive. We can inhale deeply. And exhale slowly.
Just take a moment to honor the ancient tradition of Ayurveda. It’s a science rooted in balance, nature, and inner harmony. And take a moment to have deep respect and gratitude for the teachers, the healers, and the knowledge keepers who came before us. Let’s open the space with that feeling of gratitude.
Welcome to the show! Today I’m honored to be joined by Dr. Ashwin Kumar. He’s a fourth generation Ayurvedic doctor, Vedic teacher, and holistic health consultant with over two decades of experience in Ayurvedic medicine and Vedic sciences. Dr. Ashwin is classically trained in both India and the United States and continues a distinguished family lineage of healing that dates back to 1901, when his great grandparents established the Ashwin College of Ayurveda and Vedic Sciences in Southern California. His approach is rooted in the immersive gurukulam tradition, where knowledge is passed down directly from teacher to student, and it extends into modern practice through a powerful integration of science, philosophy, and spiritual insight.
He specializes in women’s and family health and brings deep expertise in the ancient practices of pulse diagnosis, marma therapy, panchakarma, Jyotish astrology, and vastu. Through this multi-dimensional approach, Dr. Ashwin offers individualized guidance to clients globally. His work is deeply rooted in the understanding that true health is not just physical, but it comes from living in alignment mindfully, spiritually, and purposefully. Welcome Dr. Ashwin.
Vaidya Ashwin Kumar (02:16)
Thank you for the introduction. Thank you for the invitation to be here.
Lois (02:20)
Thank you so much for coming. To get started, I’d love for you to tell us a little bit about your background. How did you know that this was your true calling?
Vaidya Ashwin Kumar (02:28)
Well, as a normal child and teenager, you still have a lot of what I would like to say, introductions to the world. So I still live the normal American child teenager life, but underlying that after school hours and on weekends, I was very interested since six, seven years old to be around my mother and my grandmother. I got an interest in hearing their conversations with their clients and all the different theories that they discussed… the philosophy that they discussed. And as part of our upbringing, we had yoga and meditation as a foundation instilled within us.
So through that angle and through being around both of them, I consider both of them as my first guru, first spiritual teachers, both the divine feminine through my grandmother and my mother. And so that was my first inspiration, motivation to start wondering what is this life about? What is this human body consisting of? Why is it that people get sick? Why are some people more joyous and peaceful than others? There was this questioning that started to take place.
I also had a health difficulty, at one year old. I overcame that. I learned after the fact, when I was six, seven years old, about what had happened. That near-death experience, also brought to light a lot of these questions. As a teenager, I became more interested from a clinical perspective. Potentially a career, a dharma. That’s how it all started. It started listening to conversations at both of their clinics. Not what most people consider Ayurvedic clinics these days, like a spa. Our services that we provide are almost home-based. That’s how it used to be. So from humble beginnings, you can say, it’s how we started. Most people would attribute the sciences that were practiced as indigenous medicine. Thank you for asking that. Thank you.
Lois (04:30)
So Ayurveda was originally taught as an oral tradition using the gurukulam system, Can you tell us a little bit more about this ancient immersive method of learning? And how does this compare to learning Ayurveda in a college with “degree programs”?
Vaidya Ashwin Kumar (04:51)
Thank you. There are still some places where gurukulam is being taught, but not many. Since the late 1960s in India, the Bachelor’s in Ayurveda Medicine was established in the 60s. And then in late 1970s, 1978, the B.A.M.S. degree, they added the surgical component B.A.M.S.
The gurukulam training started to decline ever since the institutionalization of Ayurveda in the universities and colleges… Western style, more British influenced education.
There is an interest in some students who are very dedicated and want to go deeper into Ayurveda. There’s a movement to get more of that gurukulam training back, either in the classroom or through external time spent at hospitals or clinics to learn that directly from their spiritual teachers. So the gurukulam method, it’s an apprenticeship method.
And even higher than that, it’s a spiritual lineage. Guru-Kulam, as you can tell by the word Guru and Kulam, meaning the family lineage of the Guru, or spiritual family lineage. And so it requires dedication to the spiritual practices, number one.
To have a discipline of yoga integrated, or vedanta you can say, as a spiritual base, spiritual foundation.
And once the student that has enough discipline built and developed, then the guru, the spiritual teacher, will provide clinical training through apprenticeship, through assigning tasks, to assigning perhaps reading of the ancient scriptures (Ayurvedic textbooks as well as astrology or yogic textbooks).
So the foundation that mainly differentiates the gurukulam is the spiritual training. You can say that a doctor, before becoming a doctor, becomes a yogi, and then he is able to absorb and assimilate the training both in theory and in practice.
As far as the apprenticeship itself, the gurukulam system is both by being in the classroom through discussion, question and answer, studying the ancient textbooks of Sanskrit, as well as being in front of the senior doctor, teacher, and the client. So watching the client-patient interaction in front of you live, being able to participate at different points in time during that interaction between a doctor and the patient. And gradually you start to see the theory in action in front of your eyes. Gradually you start to practice things like Nadi Pariksha, checking the pulse, or looking at someone’s tongue for the Jiva Pariksha, the analysis of the tongue, or palpation and auscultation. So you start to participate side by side with the senior doctor.
After the client departs, usually the doctor will discuss the outcome with the students and connect the theory along with the actual client interaction so that the students are able to assimilate what just happened when the patient left.
The recommendations are discussed as well. How did the doctor diagnose? How did the doctor determine the different methods of diagnosis, examination? How did the doctor determine the appropriate root causes of that patient for those diseases or imbalances, both of body and mind? And then how did the doctor determine the recommendations that was given to that client? So the understanding of the why in front of your eyes with a real live patient. The senior doctor explaining that. And lastly, the recommendations around spirituality that sometimes, most of the time, if not all, are given to the patient. Understanding the link between the subtle, which is the spiritual component, and the physical, mental.
The spiritual recommendations or spiritual analysis or spiritual diagnosis and connecting it to the physical matters, the mental, emotional matters, is hardly written about even in ancient scriptures. So it’s a senior doctor, vaidya a guru, being able to discern, being able to analyze and to share that with the students. That in itself is the pinnacle of the gurukulam system.
You must be there in person really to absorb and assimilate that information. During the British colonization of India for over 250 years, the British had an impact on the educational systems of India. We’re hoping that the Gurukulam system makes a revival. There are various forces against that. In Western countries there’s a movement to nationalize or institutionalize Ayurveda into the healthcare system. And because the countries are heavily based on scientific approach, it will diminish the gurukulam system further.
The hospitals or clinics, or even doctors who are scientific-based, may not be too keen in adopting the subtle practices of Ayurveda. And the Gurukulam system is largely founded on the subtle plus the scientific. So there is a push and pull happening. A lot of the Western students who graduate, some of them end up finding out a few years later that they are missing the spiritual component, that they are missing the gurukulam component, and out of their own resources, time, and money, they go seeking a place where they can actually learn the subtle practices of Ayurveda.
So we’re hoping that the gurukulam system makes a revival in the West. And in doing so, India as a country, and the population of India, would also be interested.
Lois (10:37)
That sounds amazing. I came to Ayurveda through yoga. I had already been doing yoga for, 20 years or so. I was fortunate. And when I came in to Ayurveda, I was like, oh, wow, there’s a lot of crossover here. It made a lot of sense. So I guess I did my prerequisite with yoga.
Vaidya Ashwin Kumar (10:46)
Congratulations. Well done.
Lois (10:58)
When you talk about spiritual side of it, I think the issue some Westerners may have is that they’ll be like, it’s a religion and you’re making me learn a religion I feel that might be the catching point.
Vaidya Ashwin Kumar (11:11)
You’re right. I deal with that since day one, I guess, since I started practicing. And also I observed that in my family’s clients and patients. There’s always a percentage of people who are very religious in a very positive way, and a few not so positive. And so there is a valid concern for a client patient to not want to modify their spirituality, their religious base. But there should be a little bit of balance of what they can do, perhaps a little better.
Lois (11:41)
Yeah, I think for the patients, I’m less worried, but in terms of people who would like to be an Ayurvedic practitioner, they have to understand spiritual and psychological aspect of what could be possibly motivating some of the disease processes to help guide their diagnosis.
Vaidya Ashwin Kumar (12:02)
You’re right. The mind, according to Ayurveda, the definition of health of Ayurveda, right, it must have joy and peace in everything you do, in all relationships, all activities. And so, that joy and peace is not happiness and that joy and peace obviously is not sadness or equivalent. The joy and peace is an inner experience of the divine within you. And so that conversation needs to be had with the patient. That the true health, wealth, prosperity, and awareness, and purpose in life will result in joy and peace from within. And in doing so, the true healing takes place. The true healing of mental, emotional, psychological, psychiatric, as well as physical health takes place.
And so the ultimate resolution to any life’s problems, physical or mental, including, is achieving moksha, achieving samadhi, and living life out of joy and peace in everything you do.
Lois (13:03)
And I think that’s easier to pitch in India than in the West, where we’re very money oriented. Everything’s about, you know… ‘I want this car, this house, or I want my kids to go to this school’. It’s very materialistic. And I think people don’t realize how much that takes away from them finding their true happiness.
If you had all the money in the world and you didn’t have to work, what would you really spend your time doing? Probably not your nine to five job, right?
So let me get back to my questions. It’s along these lines. We just said Ayurveda views health not just as absence of disease, but also living in alignment with one’s unique life purpose, which you have clearly found, which is amazing. It’s called your Dharma in Ayurveda. So as a Swami and vaidya you bring a unique perspective to mental and emotional health. I’ve heard you say that being out of alignment with one’s deeper purpose is often the root cause of disease. So how does this understanding shape your approach to a client’s health? How do you help someone realign when you see that they’ve gotten off track?
Vaidya Ashwin Kumar (14:13)
Yeah, one of the categories is spiritual counseling. We make it clear to the client upfront that spirituality will be a point of discussion for their benefit through the definition of Ayurveda. And 90%, I would say, they already understand that that’s a component. Then we also explain that yoga is the heart and soul.
Lois (14:32)
Which is probably why they’re there.
Vaidya Ashwin Kumar (14:41)
Ayurveda as far as spirituality, the sister science as we can say. You you’ve been practicing for many years and are well aware of the benefits of yoga. And so we make that a disclosure upfront. A disclaimer. I think people like to hear what they are getting into. So we have a verbal discussion over the phone or in person, and then second, we have it in writing.
Lois (15:14)
You are warned. You may feel better after this! Ha ha!
Vaidya Ashwin Kumar (15:18)
So for baby steps or early adoption, we say come to meditation asana and pranayama classes, if they can start attending once, twice, three times a week locally or online, or we find them a local studio in the city that they’re in.
And then we tailored the philosophical approach so that they can learn the philosophy of life, which could be based on the yogic scriptures, or Vedanta or whatever it is that inspires them. It could be the Bible, the Torah. the Koran.
So we sort of tailor the philosophical aspect according to what they already have and build from there. But the key differentiator is that we would like them to practice the eight steps of yoga, or at a minimum, the meditation aspect, maybe the pranayama, and if they’re open to the postures as well.
And so, yoga can be considered the heart and soul of the recommendations for spirituality plus the Vedanta in the yogic philosophy. And that’s how we get the clients to get started in their spiritual journey of self-discovery, self-realization, self-awareness, identifying and finding their true self. Many, clients understand perhaps the goal, but they don’t understand what steps to take. And that’s where we come in. And people like you and I are, life coaches in a way, from that angle.
Lois (16:47)
Very much so, yeah. I feel like that’s a lot of what I do. I feel like that’s when I’m the most valuable.
Vaidya Ashwin Kumar (16:55)
We are professional facilitators, moderators, life coaches. Mostly silent witnesses. Many clients already know the answer. We are there to help them over the bump that they have to get over.
Lois (17:04)
Yeah. So, you mentioned doing yoga as part of the requirements of working with you. When you say yoga, I think most people in the West will think of doing physical poses…stretching… but I think you’re also referring to the eight limbs. Is that correct?
Vaidya Ashwin Kumar (17:30)
That’s correct.
Lois (17:31)
So do you want to just kind of touch briefly what the eight limbs are so people can get a more comprehensive understanding of what you said?
Vaidya Ashwin Kumar (17:39)
Sure. The eight limbs are expressed in the famous book of Patanjali, the two Patanjali Sutras. The first one is Yama, second one is Niyama. You can consider these two as the foundation of life, meaning the philosophical aspect of what to do, what not to do. Maybe a loose analogy would be similar to the Ten Commandments,
Lois (18:02)
Sure. The code of ethics.
Vaidya Ashwin Kumar (18:04)
The code of ethics…it is the bill of rights of human experience. What the body’s potential is and what the detriments are to the mind, to the human experience.
Then the third step is the asana. And asana is loosely interpreted as posture. But better said, perhaps, is stable and comfortable. And that stability and that comfortableness can be loosely translated as joy and peace as well. So asana is keeping your posture. It’s interpreted as the physical movements of yoga, the physical postures.
And in each of those postures, the person is able to maintain their composure, is able to maintain their breath, their stability, they’re in a comfortable state of mind and body in each of those postures. So in other words, the postures are not intended to create pain and suffering because many people think yoga is very difficult physically, which it could be if you don’t have the teacher to guide you to let you know how much to push and how little to push so that you remain in what I call “mostly comfortable, slightly uncomfortable”.
Lois (19:00)
Ha ha ha!
Vaidya Ashwin Kumar (19:19)
We can, tell if somebody’s not physically able to do the posture, that means they’re trying too hard and they need to try a little bit less. Sometimes I generalize it as 80 % of your maximum. Sometimes 60 % of your maximum, depending on your day. So in other words, understanding the physio anatomy, psychosomatic aspects of the body, that’s what the postures do.
The mind is heavily involved. The emotions are heavily involved in those postures. So as you go through each posture, the mind will throw a tantrum at times… fear or anger or grief or greed. And so the teacher is watching not only the physical movements of the student, but it’s also watching the energetic mental status of the student, right?
Lois (19:52)
Yes.
Vaidya Ashwin Kumar (20:15)
And so the mind and the physical body in the posture needs to be at ease mostly. Then that takes us to Pranayama. Once you stabilize the body, mind complex, then you move into the life force, which is the connection between the mind and the body. Pranayama. Prana, chi in Asian languages, or ki, the life force that connects the body, mind to something greater. So, stabilizing prana.
As one of the sub-doshas of vata, or stabilizing it in general as the life force, very important, and knowing how to redirect it. So pranayama, step four of yoga, of the eight steps, is stabilizing prana, and then knowing what to do with it, if you want to not only stabilize it throughout the body and the mind, but maybe you want to withdraw it, maybe you want to redistribute it, maybe you want to redirect it, or withdraw it for the internal practices.
So starting with the next three, which is the upper echelon of yoga practices, the inner practices, dharana, pratyahara, and dhyana. So the concentration power, developing concentration power and developing withdrawal of the senses, the mind, mental senses. Those are step five and six. And then that takes us to meditation, dhyana, step seven.
These three are grouped together because they’re usually practiced almost at the same time. So teaching the student how to develop concentration on a single object, eka graha, and then how do we direct the prana into that object or away from the object. And that concentration leads you to withdraw the senses.
First, in concentration, you put all the senses into that object. And then once you got them all together, you withdraw the senses inwardly and away from that object of concentration. And in doing so, the step seven meditation will happen as a recourse of that, as a result of that.
So we’d like to say that we don’t teach meditation in our spiritual lineage. We don’t teach meditation because meditation is who you are. We are just coaching the mind- body complex on being put at rest. Being put at rest and the true you comes through. The true you results as a side effect of those six first steps of the eight steps. So step seven is the true you.
And then the last step of the eight steps, Samadhi. And Samadhi has multiple layers, but in general, “Samma” is stability or stable. And the “dhi” Samadhi is the mind. Or no mind. We can say, the stability of the mind. And having no fluctuations of the mind, of the body. So it means you have withdrawn away from the body and mind, and you are experiencing the ecstasy of oneness with the divine, with the universe, the cosmic, the God of choice, the prophet of choice, the guru of choice. So meditation is experiencing the self.
And Samadhi step eight is experiencing the oneness, the dissolution of the division, experiencing the oneness without fluctuations and without division. So these are the eight steps we expound on. These are the classical steps of yoga. And as you can tell by the progression, there’s a delineation between the asana and then making the jump into the concentration that withdraw the senses and meditation.
For the most part, the last 100 years in America and Western Europe, the asana became very popular, the posture aspect, the movement aspect became very popular. In our spiritual lineage, our divine guru, Yogananda. He expounded on Kriya yoga techniques and decided to focus mostly on the meditation aspect since the 90s.
And it’s picking up steam again. I think the first 40, 50 years of yoga was focused on meditation, 1920s to the early 60s. And then it went into the asana when more gurus and teachers from India came to the West. And then the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, it’s been mostly the physical aspect. And there’s a revival again of meditation.
So putting it all together, people in your position, your influence, are doing the right thing by teaching the eight steps and teaching yoga comprehensively, not on a piecemeal basis. It’s for the benefit of everyone, the client’s health of body and mind, the client’s spirituality. And if we can even take it to the world level of world peace, that is the ultimate outcome, right?
Peace and joy of every individual accumulated equals world peace.
Lois (25:21)
I’ll tell you a little story. The first time I tried yoga, I saw a sign, are you stressed out? Try yoga. So I show up to class and the teacher, he’s wearing a turban. He was a Sikh…and it was Kundalini yoga. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. And we did all this pranayama and moving our arms up and down. And then we did shavasana. At the end of the class, I thought “if everyone did this, we would have world peace”! I mean, like I was just so chill. So.
Vaidya Ashwin Kumar (25:50)
Everybody walks out glowing out of the yoga class, right? It’s a beautiful experience.
Lois (25:55)
It’s like, it’s the best drug and it’s free. I don’t know why more people don’t do it, but I am reminded because I’ve been chatting with more people about this podcast and we talked about yoga and Ayurveda and they say, “I just, can’t go to those classes. I can’t keep my mind quiet”. So I don’t know. Like maybe I’ve just had amazing teachers?
Let’s see….so the Western psychology speaks about mental health and physical health very separately. But this discussion has all been about the relationship between body, mind and emotions. So the role of spiritual practice or self-inquiry and healing.
When I think of the eight limbs of yoga, I think this is because I want to become enlightened and become a monk. But it’s not necessarily only that. It’s also to help you live in the world, maybe elaborate a little on why people should meditate. How does it make them better able to live in the world?
Vaidya Ashwin Kumar (27:04)
The path of yoga has two components. One of them is the path of the householder and the path of the monk or yogi, sannyasin. So people have an option to practice yoga in either of those two paths and they both lead to the same.
The path of the householder, which is a person who may want to have family with children, married, spouse, partner, life partner, those are fine. Yoga welcomes both. And as well as the yogi, who’s a renunciant, a servant to the whole world, a servant to the community, and follows the renunciation method or the sannyasi method. So both are excellent paths. They lead you to moksha, they lead you to samadhi.
And so that the goal of yoga is for people to live in my own words, to make this life a vacation of 120 years on planet Earth. To make it a vacation of 120 years on average so that people live out of joy and peace. That’s the purpose of yoga. It can be done, married with children or married or not married and just having a life partner, or it can be done through the monkhood. So you don’t necessarily have to be a monk and you can still have a full career. You can be very financially successful, materialistic, and emotionally successful in a relationship, no problem.
I think that the heart and soul of the higher practices of the philosophy of yoga is detachment. In other words, get involved in the world, don’t fall for the trap that you are an inherent part of the world.
A vacation means you have to go back to where you came from. You should not be attached to vacation.
When we go on vacation into an island or to a beautiful European city, you know you have to go back at the end of your two, three weeks. When we are here on planet Earth, whatever your lifetime span is, you must go back to where you came from. And yoga gives you the answers. In my own words, three key questions, Who are you really? Number two, where did you come from? And why are you here?
So in experiencing the answers, not only intellectually, but in experiencing these answers through the higher practices of yoga, then the person can actually play a beautiful role in their life. Be very giving, be service-oriented, be devotional, and live life out of joy and peace in all activities or relationships.
So yes, yoga can be performed by non-monks, and it’s not a requirement. They both have their pros and cons. There’s benefits and potential obstacles in both paths.
Lois (29:55)
Yeah, I feel like I go back and forth, like doing a lot of meditation, a lot of extricating myself from the world. And then it’s oops, “I’m out of money. I gotta go work again”. I’ve never really been able to balance it very well.
Vaidya Ashwin Kumar (30:13)
Well, it’s okay. Like I said, both methods do not limit you on the finances or the material success or accumulation of that success. So more power to you and others and everyone. Everybody deserves to live comfortably. And that comfortably is differently by different people.
Lois (30:35)
Yay. Yeah, I’m a little pampered for sure. Okay, we’ve done a ton of yoga spiritual talk. I’d like to dovetail into your expertise in women’s and family’s health.
Can you walk us through the Ayurvedic understanding of infertility? What is the pathogenesis or samprati behind it? And how can an imbalance manifest into deeper reproductive challenges?
Vaidya Ashwin Kumar (31:07)
Thank you. So to understand the reproductive system of both men and women, but focusing on women specifically, we must understand the context of the anatomy, physio anatomy of Ayurveda. And as you know, we have the seven dhatus or seven bodily tissues. We have the srotas, the channels that the body has, right?
These seven bodily tissues through the srotras, they feed off of each other, you can say. There’s three methods of interaction between the seven bodily tissues. The seventh tissue is the reproductive organ.
The seventh tissue, meaning shukra for the men and artava for the ladies. So the artava dhatu, is the reproductive system of the female, it’s the seventh one, which means that the food, the nutrition, the lifestyle, the mental health, emotional health will end up in the seventh dhatu.
If we take an analogy of a refinery, you start with the inputs and you have to go through six different processes to get to the seventh process, which is the reproductive organ. So the reproductive organ inherently might be a weak spot if you don’t have a good supply of quality nutrition.
By the time you get through the earlier dahtus/ bodily systems, maybe there’s not enough to go around to end up in the seventh dhatu seventh bodily system, which is the reproductive organ. So the reproductive organ, by being the last one in line, is subject to deficiencies, if the individual has poor nutrition, if the individual has a lack of mental emotional balance. And so just by that sheer nature, the reproductive system might have consequences.
So for the female, there’s an add-on, which is obviously the baby bearing and childbirth and pregnancy. So it’s a little more sensible from that perspective. It has more features, more complexities, if I can call it.
And the uterus, the ovaries act as an emotional carrier as well, emotional place of deposit for emotions and mental health. And the mammillary glands in the breast are directly connected to these organs. So breast tissue, uterus, ovaries, cervix, and vaginal passage, all of these areas of the female anatomy may hold emotions. There’s more size to that interior space to carry a child, a child that might be nine 10 pounds.
Whereas for the men, just by poor comparison, but the prostate for the men is very tiny. Whereas the reproductive organs for the female are larger. So there is more that can bear on the women’s health, not only anatomical size, interior space, but also more organs that are involved. And then there’s the menstrual cycle. The menses for the ladies as well, has to be a part and it has to happen every month.
So that’s another layer of potential complexity. And the female also has the premenopausal stage, the menopausal stage, and the postmenopausal stage, which is another transition, as well as menarche, menarche meaning the onset of menstruation, which is somewhere between the age of 11 to 13 for most women.
So spiritually speaking, the female is the emotion and the male is the reason. I want to stay clear of feminism, but we can say that, one difference in chromosome, gives the female body more of an emotional context.
And male, which lacks that chromosome or difference in chromosome, it’s more intellectual, more in the reasoning aspect. And we were just talking that the reproductive organs are containers not only to be fed micronutrients, but also deposition of emotions. And because females have a little bit more on the emotional side, that extra chromosome, then they’re subject to more deposition. And that potential deposition in the artava dhatu the reproductive organ can lead to imbalances of reproductive organs.
It can be infertility. It can be dysmenorrhea, amenorrhea, which are imbalances of the menstrual cycle, irregularities of the menstrual cycle, painful menstruation. It can lead to other situations even cancers…cervical cancer, ovarian cancer, or polycystic ovarian syndrome, PCS.
So the general scope is that the reproductive organ is the last one in line to receive nutrition, is the first one in line to receive the emotions, especially the out of balances in emotions, and the memories are contained in the reproductive organs, the memories of those emotions.
Lois (36:04)
Is that just current life memories or is it also past life?
Vaidya Ashwin Kumar (36:11)
That’s a good point. Through the eyes of Ayurveda, yoga and Vedanta, there’s a component, again, knowing the true self and knowing the body, mind and ego, the Ahamkara, that this body reincarnates because of past memories, unfulfilled desires and past attachments that want to be recreated.
So the short answer is it includes at least seven lifetimes of memories, unfulfilled desires, and attachments that need to be dealt with. So the human experience in this limited body mind, the reason for it is kama.
Kama, K-A-M-A is the unfulfilled desires and attachments of past lives that the human ego wants to recreate, re-perform, and maybe do even better, or maybe stay away from certain experiences. So there is still an attachment to this body-mind. And those experiences of unfulfilled desires and attachments can only be had, according to the ego, in the flesh, in the body-mind. So the uterus, the reproductive organs of the ovaries, and cervix, and mammillary glands, and breast tissue will inherently have memories of the past as well.
Lois (37:26)
Wow!
Vaidya Ashwin Kumar (37:27)
That’s if you believe in reincarnation.
Lois (37:31)
I mean, I do. So listening to all this, I was thinking you can also have these imbalances start to show up
like with menstrual issues, maybe there’s a painful period, maybe it’s a very heavy, maybe it’s a very light, maybe you don’t get it. So would we say that anytime that there’s some imbalance with the menstrual cycle, it could be something that may hinder you later down the road with pregnancy and we should take these more seriously? And can you give us some tips about that?
Vaidya Ashwin Kumar (38:03)
Absolutely, thank you for bringing that up. Think of it as the menstrual cycle is a dashboard indicator overall health, body and mind. And it’s a beautiful feature that the female, the divine feminine has. It’s to be taken as very much of a treasure. I know some ladies, they don’t look forward to the monthly cycle, but it’s a dashboard indicator that gives you an opportunity to know how your body is doing, how your mental emotional status is doing. So it should not be taken for granted and it should be taken as a treasure of information and of divine power.
To be able to develop a fetus, an embryo into a child, into a human. It’s beautiful gift of the divine.
So the menstrual cycle is an indicator of greater situations. And yes, if it’s a painful menstrual cycle or if it’s an irregular menstrual cycle, it can lead to complications in childbearing age and adulthood. And it can also lead to a painful menopause, premenopause, postmenopause.
So if a lady wants to conceive a child, they should definitely work on having a regular menstrual cycle that’s almost pain free. And my grandmother used to say that there is no such thing as a pain free cycle, but it’s mostly pain free.
Some ladies have a very painful cycle that can lead to three, four days of agonizing pain. That should not be taken for granted. So again, your cycle should be mostly pain free. You might experience some discomfort three, four hours of the day for the first day, or the day before. And it should last three to four, five days max of the bleeding phase, maybe three days of normal bleeding, one day of spotting.
And it should recur approximately every 28 days, which is the lunar phase, the 28 phases of the moon. So to prevent complications from having a child later, it’s very important for young ladies to take care of that. So the parents need to play a big role in coaching their teenage daughter from 11, 12, 13 years old through their early adulthood to check up on them. Lead them to a counselor, to an Ayurveda doctor, or similar, so that it can be corrected.
And most of the discomforts that the menstrual cycle might cause, will also have emotional impact on the lady and vice versa. Acne, for example, that’s detrimental to a lady’s self-esteem and self-identity in her young adulthood, to have to deal with. And so they can prevent that. Mood swings, blood clots, migraines, cramps. These are all side effects that should not be there.
If a lady experiences any of these symptoms, they should look to their general practitioner or their OBGYN or even better their Ayurvedic doctor to remediate the situation.
Lois (40:54)
So my understanding of the menstrual cycle is that it’s a natural cleansing that the lady’s body does every month. And it’s an apanic downward flow of energy. So if you’re having cramps, it’s because there’s a fighting between the apana and the prana. Is that because, women today are doing a million things during a cleanse, you should be relaxing and maybe not going out and playing tennis or biking or doing a lot of activities, certainly not in the first couple of days. Just to be doing things that will help reinforce the downward flow of the energy. So relaxing, maybe doing supportive yoga poses over bolsters, things like that. Then the other thing in the West, we don’t want it so bad. We try to hide it. There’s such a stigma about it, right?
Vaidya Ashwin Kumar (41:48)
Yes. It’s almost taboo.
Lois (41:51)
They’ll keep going about their daily activities and use tampons, now you’re blocking the natural, way that the body wants to move. So it seems like there’s so many things, like if we just step back and looked at what the purpose of the menstruation is and honored that instead of trying to hide it or keep involved in this moving instead of relaxing and reflecting.
Vaidya Ashwin Kumar (42:16)
You’re right. The menstrual cycle originally was a time of spirituality, inwardness or awareness and being able to spend time in contemplation, perhaps.
Not so much, I would say, relaxation, but more of being aware of the body itself, being aware of the mind, being aware of the divinity of the body, the gift of procreation. And so it was a time of reflection, contemplation. It wasn’t a time for continuing to do the laboring around the home or otherwise, work these days, career-wise, or physical strenuous exercise or activities.
So it’s a time of celebrating the divine feminine. It’s a time of celebrating the divine mother through internal practices. And I don’t mean the postures of yoga even, I mean more of the meditation or studying or reflection, contemplation.
And you’re right, the sub-doshas of vata, apana, which is the down and out force, which is excretion. Could be urine, feces, menstrual cycle, or sweat, for example. And the prana, which is the life force, in and throughout, those are almost opposite forces in a way. Both are life-giving because one is you’re getting rid of remnants or releasing toxins perhaps or cleansing the body. And the other one is bringing in fresh life force. So they’re both in a way helping detox. You’re bringing in life force and you’re letting go of things that don’t belong.
So the contemplation reflection aspect is very important because as we discussed the uterus, ovaries, cervix, so on, the reproductive organ of the female, might have emotions that have accumulated the last 27 days. And on the 28th day, it’s time to consider if something is being let go, if something is being discharged, not only physically, but emotionally.
And so being aware of that, the female then becomes more knowledgeable and wise as to how to prevent those emotions from accumulating and stagnating. That you don’t have to wait a full 28 days. You actually will be able to reflect on how I could have done this earlier. So it’s a release of not only the physical component, but it’s a release emotionally.
And for everybody who’s listening, right, as well as the men, the male of our population, they need to be fully aware of this. When a lady has their menstrual cycle, it’s not only the menstrual cycle for the last 24 hours, 36 hours, three days, four days. It’s potentially a cleansing, a release of the last month or the last few months or the last few years. And so we gotta be patient as the male counterpart and we gotta be supportive and it’s best to keep quiet guys.
Listen, don’t say much. Don’t try to come up with solutions real quick. Just listen and be supportive. So next time you see a female and she’s going through the menstrual cycle, it’s a spiritual experience. It’s a mental experience and it’s a physical experience. It’s not only a physical experience.
Lois (45:26)
So how can they support her? Should they bring her a cup of tea? Like what should they do?
Vaidya Ashwin Kumar (45:31)
Absolutely, a cup of tea always helps. It’s best to ask, what can I do honey to support you? Right? It could be a foot massage. It could be making sure that the room’s at the right temperature. Candles, aroma therapy, you name it, right? ⁓
Lois (45:38)
What’s a nice food for menstruation? What can he bring her or cook her?
Vaidya Ashwin Kumar (45:57)
Well, it is varied by dosha or doshic imbalance, right? But in general, in general, as you know already, in Ayurveda, we don’t prescribe to have too much comfort foods, perhaps. But if perhaps that helps the emotional side, maybe you’ve saved up 27 days, and now it’s time to have a little spurge. It’s okay, right?
Balanced nutrition is the most important. Do not overeat. I know this is going against Western topical perhaps because people want to splurge when they’re a little bit ill under the weather and having a painful menstruation or regular cycle might be a time where the body mind wants some kind of splurging, some kind of pampering as they say.
So nothing wrong with either one, but you just have to be aware of the repercussions. Is it going to make the menstrual cycle more profuse, excess bleeding, or is it going to make it more painful? Certain foods, like too much spices, chili peppers, might make it more of a long-term bleeding. Or blood clots, having too much kapha. Pitta aggravating nutrition, meaning greasy, oily, fried foods, or too much heavier foods like yogurt, ice cream, desserts, right? That might create more of the blood clot situation.
And so it’s best to stay with your Ayurvedic nutrition throughout the cycle and to err on the balance, not overeat, not under eat, stay in balance. Usually what you’ve done the last 30 days, 28 days, it’s already accumulated into what’s gonna happen during the menstrual cycle. So it’s not something you can remediate on the same day, right?
But in general, if you want to feel better those two, three days, it’s better to eat a little less than more. And that applies to even the common flu or the common cold. You want to semi-fast when you’re a little bit under the weather to allow the digestion organs to help the excretion function. Right?
Lois (47:52)
Yeah, there used to be a commercial, “Starve a cold, Feed a Fever”.
Vaidya Ashwin Kumar (47:58)
There’s truth in that, yes. Just starve a cold and feed a fever. According to Ayurveda, feed it the right things.
Lois (48:04)
Yeah, makes sense, right?
So, we’re talking a lot about women because I’ve gone through the whole menstrual cycle, but what about men? My understanding, is that like 30 % of men have infertility issues.
What are their signs and symptoms that they need to be looking out for? What do they have to do? Is it mostly emotional, are they stressed out because they’re working so hard and they’re providing and we’re in this inflationary environment and it’s just hard to be a provider and be everything that they’re supposed to be, you know?
Vaidya Ashwin Kumar (48:42)
Right. You’re right. There’s the infertility challenges for both male and female since the sixties has been on the increase, right? Statistics show that. I would say for both generalizing both infertility in men and women. We always need to consider the mind. Number one.
Mental emotional status, psychological status of both male and female. If anything, that’s the bullseye of any disease in that out of balance, holding other things equal. And so what people call stress, there is no such word of like stress, let’s say in Sanskrit, we call stress an emotion. So stress is an emotion. Let’s call it for what it is.
In our lineage, we just summarize all emotions into four. Fear, anger, greed, and grief. Fear, anger, greed, and grief. So fear obviously can include things like anxiety and nervousness, anger, irritability in patients. Grief can include things like attachment, jealousy, and grief can include sadness, loneliness, depression. So if a person is dealing with stress, we should always ask, what is the root of that stress? Are you angry? Are you irritable? Why are you fearful, anxious, nervous? What is the emotion behind the stress? That’s the question. What is the emotions plural, that are creating stress. And then go a little deeper, where is it coming from? Is it job, is it your supervisor, your boss? Is it your workload, Is it that you are not technically trained to do that job? Or is it related to the stresses at home, right? From your spouse, perhaps.
Sometimes people don’t enjoy going back home after work because they know they’re going to have some kind of friction. Or finances, too many bills to pay, not enough income.
So we gotta define what stress is. So yes, I can agree that stress is a cause that can lead to infertility because stress will lead to behavioral changes and then behavioral changes will lead you to eat incorrectly. And eating incorrectly then that leads to lifestyle issues and lifestyle differences. Going to bed late, waking up late, not exercising on a regular basis, not maintaining the body and mind. So we gotta look at stress as a main cause that can trickle down into body mind health issues.
There’s also pollution, right? All of these things lead to AMA, which is toxic metabolic morbid waste.
And this toxicity of both mind, mental, emotional health, whether it’s excess anger, fear, grief, greed, that people may call stress that leads to ama, toxic metabolic morbid waste, and that gets stuck in the tissues, the bodily tissues, the datus, the srotas, the channels of the body. And that leads to the last of the seven datus, the artava for the female and the shukra for the male, will be affected by the other dhatus (the first six dhatus).
So poor nutrition will have an effect on fertility. Poor lifestyle will have an effect in fertility. Poor mental health, emotional balance will have an effect on fertility. We have to look at it from all these angles.
And we mentioned that the reproductive organ for both male and female is a catch-all organ of both emotional side and physical, biological, micro nutrition. There’s the component within nutrition of are your digestion organs working properly? Do you have malabsorption?
Or is a specific organ is lacking performance. By that I mean the stomach, liver, gallbladder, small intestine, and large intestine. These are the primary organs. And these can lead to you eating correctly, nutrition is fine, but you’re not digesting and you’re not absorbing, assimilating or transforming that food into useful products for the reproductive organs. And that leads to infertility.
You could be eating the right food, but your digestion organs are not functioning properly. Ayurveda focuses on finding the root cause of infertility. We have a long track record for millennia of helping people achieve, conceiving, delivering a healthy child, whereas Western scientists at times may not be able to help, even with the modern day invitro and technologies.
We can find the root cause. Regarding the male counterpart, right, in terms of what to look for, right, again, because of the spiritual understanding of the male physiognomy and psychosomatic and psychology, the reasoning aspect versus the emotional aspect.
The male counterpart needs to practice on a daily basis on expressing their emotions, on expressing their challenges, expressing any obstacles, being able to talk about life situations and not keep it within, right? The male might use the gym, the health club to go have a workout to express that through the workout. The female is able to talk about it more with their female friends.
So the male counterpart needs to balance that reasoning and the emotional side. And the emotional side requires communication, requires expression of those feelings and emotions. And so that is a big antidote for the male. If they wanna regain their fertility, they need to work on that communication of feelings and emotions.
Lois (54:26)
Wow. And how can the partner facilitate, get the man to open up and communicate?
Vaidya Ashwin Kumar (54:34)
Yeah, that’s the million dollar question. But there’s a million dollar answer. The spiritual component is where couples need to found their life partnership in spirituality. Our guru used to say spiritual marriage. He coined that term, spiritual marriage.
Every marriage, every life partner, two people living together, should have a foundation of spirituality, number one, ahead of emotional, physical attraction, material attraction. So even if a couple didn’t have that upon marriage or upon deciding to live together, they should go back and consider establishing a relationship on spiritual values, spiritual understanding of whatever spirituality of your choice might be. In other words, seeing the basic principle is you see yourself as something greater than this body mind. You see your spouse partner as something greater as well, equal. And both of you through this divinity, then those values get applied to everyday living. And that spirituality is 50-50 male-female. The true spirituality is androgynous, as they say.
And so that brings to balance the communication, brings to balance the feelings and emotions sharing as well as the reasoning and intellectual So the quicker solution is to work on your spirituality and see that truth in your partner. And then have coffee hour, tea hour about these topics, the greater life’s questions, existential questions. And follow that path together, study together, pray together, meditate together. Thank you for asking.
Lois (56:08)
Yeah, I’m always very excited to see couples show up at yoga class. It’s nice to share that.
Vaidya Ashwin Kumar (56:15)
It’s a divine observation, I see.
Lois (56:19)
Before we wrap up, for those people who are lucky enough to live local to Glendale, California, you offer a community hub for learning, healing, and spiritual growth. From after school programs, hiking meetups, ongoing classes and Ayurveda certification programs. Can you elaborate about any of these offerings for people that might want to come by and say hello?
Vaidya Ashwin Kumar (56:42)
So we have a complete schedule on our website, Facebook, Instagram. We’re here from 5.30 in the morning all the way to 8 p.m., seven days a week, and we have three major components.
We have the ashram, which is the monastery temple, where we teach Kriya Yoga Meditation. We also teach the higher practices or philosophical aspects of spiritual Vedanta, yoga philosophy.
And number two is the clinic. We offer the clinic services of Ayurveda, traditional Ayurveda and we offer Panchakarma as well. We have two therapy rooms, consultation room, our own apothecary herbal room where we mix the medicines together.
And third, we have the college where we have programs of study. It can be as simple as a course, 50 hours, 100 hours, or a one-year program, a two-year program, or all the way to the doctor level, the traditional way of studying the doctor level. And within that, we have a yoga studio as well. We have three daily classes of classical Hatha yoga with meditation, pranayama, and the postures. Sometimes people start with the classes, the daily yoga, which includes meditation, yoga, pranayama, asana, postures. Everybody’s welcome to attend any of these levels.
Lois (57:39)
Yeah, I saw this course that sounded really interesting for those who are interested in learning more. It’s called Foundations of Ayurveda Yoga and Vedic Sciences Course and Certificate. It just sounded really cool because it’s basic life skills, without having to commit yourself to becoming an Ayurvedic doctor.
Vaidya Ashwin Kumar (58:18)
That’s right, thank you. So this foundation’s course has a little bit of the five major branches of Vedic sciences that we teach here, the Ayurvedic branch, which includes, by the way, cooking, nutrition, lifestyle, and an overview of the physio anatomy of Ayurveda. And then it has the astrology component, Jyotisha. It has the astronomy and astrology both. And then it has the Vastu, which is the architectural component, the sacred designs, interior spaces, balancing of energy.
Lois (58:45)
Vastu — that’s like Feng Shui for people might be more familiar with the term Feng Shui than vastu, yeah. Yeah.
Vaidya Ashwin Kumar (58:51)
It’s the yoga of feng shui, we can say. And it obviously has the component of yoga, and it has the Vedanta component, which is the higher level Upanishads and non-dualistic Vedanta philosophy as well. So somebody who takes that course over five months, about eight to 10 hours of class time, online or in person, can benefit.
I really think personally that everyone should take such a course to have a basic understanding of these principles. Everything we do here is hands-on. So when people join this course, they learn to cook here, breakfast, lunch. And so over a period of time, they’re taking hands-on experience of how to eat, how to cook, what nutrition is. As far as the children’s program that you asked, by the way, ⁓
Lois (59:18)
Yes, the after school program… that’s amazing!
Vaidya Ashwin Kumar (59:41)
Our spiritual lineage through Yogananda, who most people know, during his first 10 years after being initiated as a monk from 17 years old to 27 before coming to America, he established a number of schools in India for children. You can think of it as K through 12. He was teaching everything you and I have been talking about, plus the ABCs and the one, two, threes. So he started teaching children 10 years before coming to America very successfully. He was granted many acres of land throughout India, to establish these schools because they became very successful.
So we follow that same pattern. We offer after school programs for children after 3 p.m., usually 3: 30. And we might entertain them, keep them here in a safe place until 7- 8 p.m. until the parents get home or as little as one hour. And during that time, we assign them things to read, arts and crafts, workbooks or we might help them on tutoring certain subjects that they’re having difficulty with. So they become very productive in those hours that they spend here.
Lois (1:00:50)
That’s amazing. I think if I were in Glendale, California and I was a working family, I would love to send my children there. They’re learning valuable life lessons yeah, it’s a wonderful service. So if you’re in Glendale, California, you’ve got a place to bring your children.
Vaidya Ashwin Kumar (1:01:01)
Correct. Thank you.
Lois (1:01:09)
Okay, how do people get in touch with you? Website, email, what should I put in the show notes?
Vaidya Ashwin Kumar (1:01:15)
Yeah, they can do the website Ashwin Ayurveda or they can send messages through Instagram by the same name or Facebook or our number which is 323-702-1211.
Lois (1:01:24)
Okay, cool. And you do have a meetup group. For anyone who’s on meetup meetup.com Ashwin Ayurveda and also on Eventbrite. That’s awesome. So thank you so much for joining us today. And maybe we’ll chat again. Thank you so much. Namaste.
📚 Resources & Mentions
What is Veda, Vedanta & its Summary
Body/Mind Nutrition & Digestion = Health
Foundations of Ayurveda Yoga & Vedic Sciences Course and Certificate — foundational course for anyone interested in diving deeper, but maybe not interested in a career change.
Vedic Vidyalaya: After School for Children-Teens – an after-school program emphasizing wellness education through yoga, meditation, cooking classes, and healthy lifestyle habits, while encouraging an active, nature-connected way of living. It also provides academic support and helps identify and nurture each child’s unique gifts and potential.
🤝 Stay Connected and Join the Conversation
Follow me on social, leave a review, and subscribe for updates to keep the Ayurveda inspiration flowing and our community growing!
🤝 Are we connected on social?
📸 Instagram: @yogawithlois (https://www.instagram.com/yogawithlois)
🎥 TikTok: @yogawithlois (https://www.tiktok.com/@yogawithlois)
💼 LinkedIn: @loisleonhardi (https://www.linkedin.com/in/loisleonhardi/)
Learn more: The Essential Ayurvedic Cookbook
💬 Enjoying the Show? Please take a moment to leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It really helps others find the show.
🔔Following the podcast yet? Please subscribe on your favorite platform so you’ll never miss an episode.
📩 Want Updates & Exclusive Offers? Just send me an email with your name and say, “Sign me up!” It’s as easy as that.
💬 Got Thoughts to Share? Drop a comment below. I’d love to hear from you.
No Comments