Category: Arvigo

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Zen and the Art of Regular Maintenance; Discover Maya Abdominal Therapy

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Yum.

One of my favorite novelists, Tom Robbins, mentions in one of his books that there are two mantras we can choose from: Yuck or Yum.

Through which lens do you peer?

I’ve been musing on this topic the last few weeks.  Not which mantra to choose, but what complementary and alternative healing really looks like.

I am learning so much from my experiences of healing after birthing a baby, and my clients experiences when they come for appointments, and hearing about what some friends have been struggling with in the ‘regular’ health care system.

The change is upon us – I’d say a large amount of people desire a natural solution for their health woes.  What they may not be ready for is the discovery that it is intentional work, that there is dedication and maintenance involved.

For example, in my practice of Ayurveda and Maya Abdominal Therapy and I specialize in working with women with painful or irregular cycles.  The reproductive system is a deep system of the body which modern medicine often throws a quick fix on in the form of birth control.  I do not disagree that sometimes this is the best solution in some situations, though it often leaves women feeling defeated and still frustrated because they feel that they have not solved the root cause of their problem.

What I love most about the two modalities I work within, is that I’m almost always just giving women tools to use in order to create a healing environment in their bodies.  This is in the form of herbalism, but also in practices like Self Care uterine massage, castor oil packs, vaginal steams, and other rituals for moving blood, energy and emotions that may be stagnating and preventing homeostasis.

Homeostasis and hemodynamics; these are the ATMAT (Arvigo Techniques of Maya Abdominal Therapy) buzzwords.  Homeostasis is just another word for balance.  Balance implies a give and take, an in and out, a space where we are no longer just coping, but we are actually healing.  And Hemodynamics is about blood flow, and we could also assume energy flow.  Let’s get the good stuff in where it needs to be, and the wastes out, properly and easily.  

Every one of my ATMAT clients is taught Self Care massage.  This is the most important piece to maintaining the work done in the one on one session.  I, personally, came to study ATMAT because I experienced profound healing from painful periods. And I do my Self care massage to this day, daily, and I know that it was, and is, a huge part of my menstrual and reproductive health, comfort, and connection with this part of my being.

The actual path to healing is going to look different for everyone, but there are three things I have found are congruent in all plans. Along with maintenance, come pleasure, and support.

Maintenance | What I have found to be true, even to my chagrin, is that it takes daily input to actually heal, rather than just continue to competently cope with the problems.

It matters if I drink coffee or not. Every day. It matters if I get to bed early enough. Every day. It matters if I actually do 10 minutes of alternate nostril breathing. Every day. It matters if I do abhyanga. Every day.  The days I do not, I feel off my center, the days I do, I can feel myself coming back toward a new normal.

Pleasure | When you have the experience of feeling good in your body, a lot can shift.  Coming in for a massage starts to encourage you to really look at what else you’re putting in your body.  How you’re living your day to day, where you are putting your energy.

Support | I might go on to say that there is another ‘perk’ to natural healing modalities.  There is really no going back to the way it was before.  I see this in all of my work.  It can be frustrating at first, but ultimately it leads us to living healthier, more authentic lives overall, and hopefully, usually, alleviation from our symptoms, too.

Finding support in a practitioner you trust can be the way to get loving reminders into your life, to remind you to keep doing what you really want to be doing for yourself anyway.

Want to learn useful, practical, natural tools for reproductive healing?  Ancient Womb Healing for Modern Women starts April 22.  Learn more and read the syllabus here. Any questions email me!

 

Love,

Adena

 

 

Adena Rose Bright practices Ayurveda and Maya Abdominal Therapy. She’s passionate about sharing Ayurveda to help women live better and feel better.  She offers courses in food as medicine and women’s womb healing available online. See more on her website www.adenaroseayurveda.com, instagram and FB page.

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Sisterhood Rising | Feeling empowered to heal yourself

There are more and more women’s gatherings being held – and each time I attend one, I am somehow shocked at their authenticity and power.

Perhaps it’s showing a weakness within myself, to assume that they would be full of fluff, or tainted with the energy of ‘trying to hard’ and everyone trying to sell themselves.

Women are ready to show up, and to do the work.  On the inside and outside.  We are also hungry, hungry for our great-great-grandmother’s wisdom. Not just the wisdom of childbearing or nourishing our families or herbal medicine, but what is underneath all of that.  The connection to the energy of the Earth herself, the life force that directs and fuels all their is.  And in the gathering is the power.  In the gathering we are forging the connection.

I spoke with a woman yesterday, and she expressed some interest in my Womb Healing Course.  She said, something along the lines of “I am well-trained in Ayurveda, I feel like I know alot about physical healing, but I want to know more about the virtual side of things.”

I knew what she meant, but I felt like it was a strange choice to words.  So I looked up the definition of virtual, because I was just thinking about it in relation to ‘online,’ a sort of fake world. The first listed definition is “being such in essence or effect though not formally recognized or admitted.”  She used this word, ‘virtual,’ in an attempt, perhaps in a modern way, to say, “I need spiritual healing!”

I told her that to me, it seems like a lot of the healing on the subtle layers of the body happen through intention.  I think our New Age-y downfall is that we’re looking for a mystical experience, something that feels out of body. And that somehow, this would be the real reality…the real healing, the stuff we’re seeking.

In my experience, all of the layers of our being are really just mished and mashed together, and it takes subtle awareness to create any sort of separation.  When we work with whatever layer is most tangible to us, we effectively affect the other layers.  In fact, we’re really designed that way, and that is the key to holistic medicine.

My work is outwardly, mostly on the gross, physical body, the food body, or annamaya kosha as we call it in Yoga. But what I find more and more is that it is the gateway to the subtle. Not JUST the gateway, as there is often much physical healing to happen, too!  And when physical healing happens, it’s like turning the key for those more subtle layers to come forth and also be healed.

I share vaginal steaming for healing from painful periods and pelvic pain, to healing from loss or trauma.  Uttar vasti for moving a woman’s cycle closer to the rhythm of the new moon, or for clearing up frequent infections.  Self Care massage for gently coaxing a tipped uterus back to her center, or releasing stuck emotions.  We are large, we contain multitudes.  (To butcher one of my favorite Walt Whitman quotes. 😉 )

For this Spring’s Womb Healing class, my intent is to show up, to invite a gathering, in which the power will come. Sort of like the ‘If you build it they will come,’ mentality.  There are a lot of women who might not be ready for a class like this – I talk a lot about how this stuff helps with painful periods, PMS, and more…but when I mention ‘herbal douche,’ they kind of give me a blank look, like they don’t want to do all kinds of work. Well, often, this does take dedication.  But it feels good! And it is so, so empowering to know how to help yourself, and other women.  To take back simple yet profound knowledge which can help in those in-between places where powerful emergency medicine isn’t the ideal fit.

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And, ya know, vaginal steaming can feel pretty magical in my experience.

More on the next time.

Love,

Adena

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Maya Abdominal Therapy: My Story Part 2, Conscious Conception

I am in love with Maya Abdominal Therapy, just like I am in love with Ayurveda.

Combining the two is a dream when it comes to women’s health.

A couple of years ago, I wrote a post sharing my experiences with ATMAT (which I will use now instead of writing out Maya Abdominal Therapy) and how it helped to heal my extremely painful periods.

I want to continue sharing my story, and tell you how I feel this helped me into easy conception, comfortable (ish) pregnancy and vaginal home birth.

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A Recap

ATMAT is a massage technique and healing modality that comes from Belize and Mayan Medicine.  Its founder is Dr. Rosita Arvigo, and she lives and studied in Belize with a Mayan Medicine Man, Don Elijio, for years.  There may be many ‘Mayan’ abdominal massage techniques, but I come from this specific, authentic lineage.  There is use of massage, self massage, herbs, yoni steaming, and spiritual healing modalities.

I came across this technique when I was looking for additional help, beyond Ayurveda, for periods which were becoming debilitating.  According to Ayurveda, I was experiencing Vata like symptoms, and great stagnation, leading to pain and brown blood, as well as long cycles (35+ days sometimes).  You can read more details in that first blog post – basically, I found out that my uterus was tilted, leading to more stagnation. I found a therapist local to me, and received a few treatments from her.  My pain did not completely disappear, but became more of just a nuisance.

I knew I needed to study this modality, so I did. I also knew that I wanted to conceive one day, within the next year or two, and believe that healing an imbalance in my womb was vitally important before conceiving.

How it works

ATMAT works by improving blood flow and homeostasis, as well as actually sometimes changing the uterus position.  From the Eastern medical perspective, if there is pain, there is some sort of stagnation going on.  This could be stagnation of energy, prana, or emotions, mind, or actually tissues or physiology.  One affects the other, eventually, anyway, so really, no matter on what level, we know the flow is not…flowing happily.

Massage helps encourage flow.  And what can impede flow greatly are misplaced organs, especially if they are blocking veins or arteries or lymph vessels.  The uterus is relatively mobile in the abdominal cavity – its nature is to move and grow, holding and feeding the fetus as it does so.  Falls, accidents and exercise can jostle the organ very easily, especially when she is full and heavy before and during menstruation.

A misplaced uterus is not the only cause of stagnation, nor is it always the case she is misplaced when there is pain.  But it is quite common.  Many women are told this by the gynecologist, that is it ‘normal’ and that there is nothing to do about it.  I was told this.  It is very common, but it is not ‘normal’ and there are things that can be done, or at the very least help manage the symptoms, naturally. (As in, without using hormonal birth control to mask the issues.)

Homeostasis is just an awesome biproduct of proper flow.  Good stuff gets to where it needs to go, and wastes can easily leave.  This helps the body maintain health and balance, because, really, that’s what it wants to do. We just need to get out of the way.

My process | Conscious conception

I have been seeing another local practitioner for 3 years this month.  About 18 months before I conceived my son, I started receiving treatments.

She mentioned to me that I should go to at least 3 sessions. After about 2, my next cycle was closer to 28 days, and almost pain-free. I was hooked. I go for massage every other month. It’s part of my health care plan for myself.   She gives me a full body massage as well as working on the uterine/abdominal area, because she happens to be a massage therapist too (this is also how I offer my sessions). This is something not all practitioners do. So if you’re looking to book, be sure to check in ahead of time what to expect.

I also use Ayurvedic herbs, castor oil packs, uttar basti, yoni steams, and daily self care massage of my uterus to maintain the benefits.  It is important to have guidance with thee modalities, as there are times when it is contraindicated to use them, especially when trying to conceive.

About 6 months before my husband and I agreed to begin trying, we stopped drinking any alcohol, and did an Ayurveda home cleanse.  We did another, 3 months before.  We started more openly inviting a new being in.  We did some intention setting, and he even found some chants that felt important to him.

I was charting my cycles, learning about when and if I usually ovulated each month, and how the practices I was doing affected my cycle.  It was really cool to see the temperature shift each month!  I found that I usually ovulated between day 14 and day 20, depending on if my cycles were 27 or 32 days, which is what they tended to fluctuate between.

To our excitement (and surprise!) the first month we tried to conceive, which happened to be a 32 day cycle, we found out we were pregnant!  I felt excited, scared, hopeful, and all sorts of indescribable emotions.  But it was amazing knowing I did my best to bring a healthy being into the world.

Pregnancy and postpartum benefits

I also received massage during my pregnancy. ATMAT has many benefits, and can be perfectly safe after 20 weeks.  The massage helps to keep the uterus centered in the pelvis, relieve stress and strain on the ligaments, and my favorite, aid sluggish bowels.

I am a small person, and it was important to me to have the best chance at a vaginal home birth as possible.  I believe that the techniques helped keep me as aligned as possible so that could happen without any intervention.

And post partum, I have received a few treatments as well, after I stopped bleeding.  I have more awe and respect for the uterus than I ever could have imagined before, and I want to continue to care for her!  I am also extremely curious to find out what my post partum periods will be like, now that so much has changed.

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As you might have gleaned, there were multiple levels going into my journey to pregnancy and motherhood.  I started with ATMAT, but I learn how to chart my fertility signs, cleanse, and balance my hormones and my cycles with herbs.

I am more inspired than ever to put this all together for other women.  Though I really only wrote about ATMAT here, Ayurveda has an traditional and beautiful protocol for preparing for conception, as well as powerful womb healing and hormone balancing practices.  I look forward to sharing more on this on the blog in 2016.  If you’re interested for yourself, reach out and contact me  – this excites me so much, I want to talk about it, share it, and help you do the work. It really works. And it seems that, in regards to reproductive issues, western medicine stops falls in what it has to offer.

And just a note:

You don’t need to want to get pregnant to do this work.

You don’t need to be of childbearing age to do this work.

All the uteri deserve TLC!

Love,

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RECORDING | Ayurveda and the Menstrual Cycle, and for Natural Fertility

In case you missed it…

Listen to the free call
on Ayurveda for Fertility and Conception

Email me with your questions on this topic. I love to hear from you, and believe in this important conversation.

PS: If you’re ready for an empowering and accessible way to use the tools of Ayurveda and Maya medicine on your path to becoming healthy for conception, apply for my one of a kind program that starts in April.