Ayurvedic Medicine & Healing the Root Cause: Can Ancient Wisdom Fix What Modern Doctors Can’t?

Dustin Grinnell (00:00:00 --> 00:02:12)
I'm Dustin Grinnell, and this is Curiously.

When Katie Concannon was a teenager, she began experiencing health issues related to her menstrual cycle. Traditional Western medical treatments addressed her symptoms but failed to explore the root causes. These interventions also led to additional complications, prompting more doctor's visits and further treatments that disrupted her body's balance. After years of navigating various therapies, Katie decided in her 20s to step back from these treatments. She started to reflect on her body from a more holistic and integrative perspective.

This shift in mindset sparked her interest in Ayurvedic medicine. While climbing the corporate ladder to executive roles, Katie continued studying Ayurveda and listening to her body, seeking to understand the root causes of her health challenges. Along the way, she became a yoga teacher, leading classes and trainings at organizations such as CorePower Yoga and Wonder Yoga in Arlington, Massachusetts. Her desire to deepen her knowledge of Ayurveda led her to pursue training and certification as an Ayurvedic health counselor at the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in Western Massachusetts. Eventually, Katie decided to offer her own Ayurvedic services, providing personalized evaluations and Ayurvedic prescriptions to help clients restore balance and reclaim their health.

Katie Concannon (00:02:12 --> 00:02:15)
Welcome to the show. Thank you.

Dustin Grinnell (00:02:15 --> 00:02:41)
So excited to be here. So today we're going to be talking about something that you've spent a lot of time studying and doing and just have a great passion for— Ayurvedic medicine. I always like to start with kind of defining key terms, like what we're talking about here. So in the most basic terms, what is Ayurveda? What is Ayurvedic medicine? If you just like met a stranger on the street and you had to tell 'em in the most basic terms what Ayurveda is, what would you say?

Katie Concannon (00:02:41 --> 00:03:21)
[Speaker] Sure, it's hard 'cause I'm rather verbose generally, but I think it's important to kind of practice the elevator pitch for Ayurveda at large. And I would say in its direct translation, it is the study or the science of life, the Veda or the science of Ayu, which is life. And so to me, that translates to the study of you as an individual, how you interact and relate to yourself as well as everything around you. That could be the environment you live in, the music or podcasts you listen to, as well as the food you eat and whatever you experience. And what does that do to you, positively or negatively?

Dustin Grinnell (00:03:21 --> 00:03:26)
How do you make that a little more concrete? Like, give me an example of that.

Katie Concannon (00:03:26 --> 00:04:03)
Yeah, well, one of the best quotes I think that comes from the original Ayurvedic texts that have been translated and, you know, provided to us now in Ayurveda school in today's world is that everything in the world is both a medicine and a poison. It just depends on the dose, the how, when, and, you know, how much. And so when you think about that in terms of anything— sleep, water, how much of just any single thing that you might interact with is either adding a little bit of health or wellness to your life or detracting, and as the original text would say, drawing you closer to death.

Dustin Grinnell (00:04:03 --> 00:04:12)
So what's an example of something that is healthy in the normal amounts, but also poisonous in heavier or low amounts?

Katie Concannon (00:04:13 --> 00:04:15)
Sure, exercise, water. I mean, literally anything.

Dustin Grinnell (00:04:15 --> 00:04:17)
You can get drunk on water.

Katie Concannon (00:04:17 --> 00:04:29)
You can. You can. I mean, I think there was, I don't, we'll fact-check this later, but I believe that I heard at one point there was like a radio contest for who could drink the most water, and there was some really large cash prize, and someone drank so much that they died.

Dustin Grinnell (00:04:29 --> 00:04:52)
Yeah, because it creates, called hyponatremia, it's a low, I think potassium, or something like that, and then it causes heart problems. Yeah, so water, literally the stuff of life, correct, 70% of the Earth, can kill you in the wrong, in the highest amounts. That's right, that's right. So this is a philosophical framework through which to think about health and disease.

Katie Concannon (00:04:52 --> 00:05:49)
Yeah, and I think the other thing that's quite unique about Ayurveda that we don't necessarily see in today's Western medicine construct, which I think is also important in, in an integrative approach, is really where the sweet spot is. Ayurveda also looks at each individual very differently. So during school, my whole class, we got sweatshirts that said "it depends," because as frustrating as that is when you're learning, you want to just know in a black and white way, or at least I do, what is the answer? Is this good or is this bad? And there's way more nuance to that discussion. And for each individual, there's a lot of "it depends" as to what might be healthy or helpful for that person and could potentially be defined in Ayurveda as a poison to another person. Something like salad or meat, dairy, bananas, hot yoga could be really lovely and wonderful and supportive for one individual and quite harmful to another depending on what's happening in their body and just how their constitution, you know, was created initially.

Dustin Grinnell (00:05:49 --> 00:06:01)
[Speaker:CHRIS] So that seems very practical in a way. It's like you're exercising too hard, back off. You're "Drinking too much alcohol? Back off. You're not getting enough of this?

Katie Concannon (00:06:01 --> 00:07:05)
Get more." But it's not exactly that in the sense that, yes, of course, all of those things are true, but that would— I don't think that's unique to Ayurveda in any way. It's more about some individuals can handle and process meat. Some individuals can be raw vegans and do really well, and other individuals might feel completely unsteady, unbalanced, and really unhealthy in that type of diet. So instead of looking at here is a trend where we believe everybody should eat XYZ, these things. It's more prescriptive to the individual.

What elements are dominant in that person's body to start? And so in that individual person, then what might they need more or less of depending on kind of where their neutral or their normal starting base is? But it might mean that like for some individuals they should never do strenuous exercise. For some people they probably need that every day. And then there's a bunch of nuance in the middle.

Dustin Grinnell (00:07:05 --> 00:07:09)
This is a very individualistic approach to health and wellness.

Katie Concannon (00:07:09 --> 00:08:22)
Yes, and it's not only just the person themselves, and this is why I think Ayurveda is hard to adopt because it's sort of a— it's a slow teacher and it takes a while for you to really see the results. As things shift for a person, then what they might need also can shift. So if someone were to come see me without any understanding of Ayurveda and we start with certain practices, as things start to come back into balance, then maybe other things can be introduced. So it's not a, this is the prescription forever, take it and just follow these rules. It's a continual check-in. We're really lucky to live in New England because we also get to experience all of the seasons, or I view it that way. And so Ayurveda shows up so clearly in that transition as well. So things individuals need at large in the winter, for example, are also very different than the summer. A layer deeper than that, there are people who tolerate each season differently, right? And so there's some people who struggle with winter because the qualities inside that person are similar to winter. They have the most extreme challenge, whereas there's other people who experience some of that change in winter but have a better tolerance for it simply because they have the balancing elements.

Dustin Grinnell (00:08:22 --> 00:08:51)
So I'm going to ask about elements next because that's kind of the theoretical framework through which you think about these things. But I just wanted to make the comment again on it depends. So it depends across individuals, but it depends across that individual itself. It's like their needs, their health and wellness change by day, by season, and you kind of always have to be continuously Checking in on yourself?

Katie Concannon (00:08:51 --> 00:09:34)
Yeah. Okay. I mean, and also, yes, of course, right? That's also, it feels like a bit of common sense. And I think the more I study Ayurveda, the more I am like, well, doesn't everybody already know and see this? But it kind of takes a little slowing down and tapping into some of that logic and not overriding it with everyone should XYZ, drink iced coffee in Boston in the middle of winter at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, right? Just did that half hour ago. Yeah, and so, and there's sometimes there's a real identity with that where people hold onto, I need that. And sometimes maybe that's true, and other times it just might be a habitual pattern that if you really slow down enough to tap into what your body actually needs, it might be something very different.

Dustin Grinnell (00:09:34 --> 00:09:52)
It reminds me of like how it's hard to really consume advice or even like self-help content sometimes, because really what that person is saying, if it's an author and they wrote a book about how they did something, it's what worked for them. It's not necessarily what's going to work for you.

Katie Concannon (00:09:52 --> 00:11:51)
So I could certainly speak to my experience in, in why I found Ayurveda and how it's been helpful to me. And sometimes when I do a group intro type session for people, I will share a little bit of that as context as an example, similar to how you wanted a tangible example of water or exercise for why is it both good and bad. But when you do an intake with an individual, generally it's slow. You take a 9 or 10 page form, you spend probably 90 minutes to 2 hours talking to that person, you make very small changes to that person's daily routine, really small, and then check in again a month later. And then do that again, and then a month later, and then you slowly start to unravel some of that habitual pattern or some of the imbalance depending on what they're coming to see you for over time.

And so the big difference between that, and I think, and I don't wanna knock Western medicine, I really do believe it's important and I'm very grateful to have it available to me, but often we get into a really fast solution to the symptom. Which might be an ointment or a cream or a pill or something that's trying to remove the symptom from showing up, whereas Ayurveda looks more at the causative factors. And rather than treat the symptom that might show up on your skin, for example— and I think this is becoming more popular in all types of functional medicine— looking at your digestive system and trying to remove what's causing that to push to the surface. The skin's not doing that by itself, right? Something's happening internally in your body that's forcing that out, and it should showing up with a symptom, as an example.

Dustin Grinnell (00:11:51 --> 00:12:09)
So getting to the root cause. That's right. So talk about Ayurvedic medicine in terms of where it came from historically, India 5,000 years ago, right? What its framework is, like what is the theory, what are the elements, and how does it diagnose and treat?

Katie Concannon (00:12:09 --> 00:13:15)
Sure, so it's hard to say exactly, right? It's just like yoga. We talk about yoga philosophy, which is probably a little bit more well-known here in the US at this point, and there's Patanjali and the Yoga Sutras and all of those things, and no one really knows, is that one guy, is that a bunch of people, where did that all come from is a little bit unclear, and I'd say From a time-tracking perspective, Ayurveda is similar. It's more than 5, potentially more than 10,000 years old. People in India, and certainly people that study the way that I do, believe it is the oldest form of medicine.

Some might say traditional Chinese medicine is, or they're right around the same from how old they are. And that's part of what makes me love it too. It's not a trendy thing that just showed up. It holds true in every way today in the same way it did however long ago that was. Yeah, right.

Dustin Grinnell (00:13:15 --> 00:13:17)
Okay, and what do those mean?

Katie Concannon (00:13:17 --> 00:15:17)
I would say the 5 elements are sort of the basis. Inside of that, we start to put people into buckets of dosha types, which is I think becoming a fairly popular term here in the West. If you go to Whole Foods, you'll see different power bars and snacks that are related to a dosha. You can easily go online and Google dosha quiz and find out sort of what your dosha is. I would say it's not going to really be as prescriptive as seeing an Ayurvedic practitioner or healthcare provider, but we use that categorization meditation to understand where your dominant elements are and then look to what's showing up from an imbalanced perspective.

So there's 3 sort of categories of dosha types, which are all inclusive of 2 elements, and those also match up to the seasons, the times of your life, the phases of your life, as well as the times of day. And when you start to really look at those clocks— I'm happy to talk about any of those to whatever extent you find interesting— you see the same pattern showing up again and again, which is really pretty cool. And then you can see logically, oh, of course this person has more fire element. I think it's a really obvious one. So they might have a more difficult time in summer.

They might have a harder time doing a hot yoga class than someone who is filled with water and air. It just might be more agitating for that body type. And so, you know, two people might have the same experience— go to the same experience and feel very different about it because they're unique individuals. And so we use the elements to categorize that for the person, but also for everything they're experiencing. So if you take a person who's filled with earth element, and then you look at their life and it's also filled with earth element, they might have a heaviness to them that can show up in being lethargic, feeling a little dull or slow, their digestion might be slow, or they might feel, you know, depressed or just sort of lacking that fire element that comes on the other side of that.

Dustin Grinnell (00:15:17 --> 00:15:22)
What does it mean to have earth element but also earth in your life? What does that really mean?

Katie Concannon (00:15:22 --> 00:15:47)
Like what are examples of those, do you mean? Yeah. Yeah, so earth element in your body. Earth element in your body shows up physically in a bigger body type. Someone who's really stable and sturdy in their— in just the way that their body is made up. They're probably more muscular and dense. They're harder to move. I would say looking at you, you have quite a bit of earth element in you. From a personality—

Dustin Grinnell (00:15:47 --> 00:15:48)
Nicest thing anyone's ever said to me.

Katie Concannon (00:15:49 --> 00:16:01)
You're welcome. From a personality perspective, they tend to be a little bit calmer, harder to vitiate, right? They're just— it's going to it does take a lot for them to pop off or potentially even get sick, but when they do, it's just—

Dustin Grinnell (00:16:01 --> 00:16:03)
they come with the thunder.

Katie Concannon (00:16:03 --> 00:16:34)
That's right. From a personality perspective and preferences, again, these are all just real generalizations. There's a lot of it depends, and there's many layers underneath the core doshas. There's sub-doshas and all kinds of things, but generally speaking, a person that's earth element is also going to like some time by themselves, some time maybe in nature alone, reading, writing, things that are in that slower, if you think about like a mountain, right? That's earth element. You would see those types of qualities in that type of person.

Dustin Grinnell (00:16:34 --> 00:16:41)
So what is it about doing quote unquote like earthy things that helps someone who's earth-centric or earth-heavy?

Katie Concannon (00:16:41 --> 00:19:30)
And then the only time where an Ayurvedic person might step in and try to manage that, if it's then showing up in the extremes, which I mentioned, which are like, so slow and dull that then there's potentially a health issue or a problem in the way that they're interacting where they don't want to actually even get out of bed, or they can't digest things or have lost their appetite because they just don't have any fire there to sort of stoke an appetite to show up. And so earth people sort of lean— a tendency would go more in that direction rather than some of the other elements that feed a different type of dis-ease. Dis-ease is clever. Yeah, so any type of discomfort, right, which could go all the way to what would be today considered a classically defined disease. In the ancient Ayurvedic texts, there's a lot of diseases that are multi-dosha, meaning vata interacts with pitta or whatever the Sanskrit terms for the categories, where there's a more extensive state of disease.

That's an Ayurvedic doctor's scope of practice. It's outside of what I'm trained to work on, but there are dosha-specific diseases too, things like acid reflux or slow digestion and things that would be just one dosha potentially causing it. And earth element people or kapha dosha, which is a combination of earth and water, have the least amount in that sort of original category. They just don't get as sick. There's not as much that tosses them around as the other ones.

So there's like 20 diseases that are categorized as kapha diseases, which are the earth and water people. There are 40 diseases in the pitta person, which is the fire and water type body, that person who might have an aversion to summer, has a spicy personality, very direct, likes competing, usually a bit of more of an athletic body type, in the world in a fiery way, kind of getting stuff done. Those individuals have 40 diseases that are pitta-specific in the classical texts. And then the vata individuals, which are space, and air, there are 80. And so those are in vata itself.

Dustin Grinnell (00:19:30 --> 00:19:38)
So when you do an intake with someone, you're trying to evaluate their dosha, and there's 3, you said?

Katie Concannon (00:19:38 --> 00:20:45)
And we are interested to know what your original constitution is. What's more interesting to me, especially at the beginning, is what is imbalanced right now and how can we start to move that back to balance? And so we'll start to talk about just the natural tendencies of a person. When do they go to sleep and wake up? How often do they move their bowels or urinate?

Do they have a preference for hot or cold beverages, hot or cold weather? How often are they hungry? What happens when they digest food? What symptoms show up. And so then you start to figure out what's high today, which might not necessarily be their core constitution.

Dustin Grinnell (00:20:45 --> 00:20:45)
Constipation.

Katie Concannon (00:20:45 --> 00:21:15)
Yes. Okay. Is it— is absolutely a vata imbalance. If you've got some excess pitta, it's probably acid reflux. There's a little too much heat, spiciness to your digestion. You're hungry all the time. That hangry individual that can't leave the house without like knowing where the next meal is or have snacks in their pockets, they're generally a pitta person. And then a kapha person, as we already talked about, is probably a little bit more of a dull appetite or maybe none at all.

Dustin Grinnell (00:21:15 --> 00:21:40)
So staying in the example of someone with like digestive problems, like maybe stomach pain or constipation or reflux, so you're asking these questions, doing an intake, trying to zero in on which category they're in, who's acting up, which element is acting up, who's speaking the loudest. That's right. And then you are trying to figure out ways to intervene on those.

Katie Concannon (00:21:40 --> 00:22:07)
Yeah. And so that's why the other part of the study is not only just the person themselves, but then what are those same elements and qualities that exist in the things they are experiencing. Food is an obvious piece, but it's also all the other stuff. What kind of television do they watch? How, you know, especially if they're having something where there's a lot of stress in their nervous system, which of course can impact their digestive system, but also a lot of other problems. When I first saw an Ayurvedic doctor, that's what she was like, what do you watch at night? And change all of that.

Dustin Grinnell (00:22:07 --> 00:22:09)
And so what did you watch at night, and how did that affect you?

Katie Concannon (00:22:09 --> 00:22:19)
Mostly just murdery shows. So just true crime Not even true crime. You know, I like Handmaid's Tale type stuff, Walking Dead, end of days kind of things.

Dustin Grinnell (00:22:19 --> 00:22:21)
Okay, so yeah, like dystopian.

Katie Concannon (00:22:21 --> 00:22:21)
Game of Thrones.

Dustin Grinnell (00:22:21 --> 00:22:23)
Let's just call them murder-y, yeah.

Katie Concannon (00:22:24 --> 00:23:07)
Murder-y things, yeah. That's a way of putting it. That was my preference, and to be honest, still is. But I know if there's a point in time where I might be having a little trouble sleeping or I feel turned up a bit emotionally for whatever reason, that that is an unwise choice. One of the things that I love to say in an Ayurvedic workshop is like, once you learn this, you can't unknow it.

So you should put a warning label at the beginning of this episode about that. So you can still make the same choices, but then you know what the consequences, right? And that's the other beautiful part about Ayurveda. It doesn't mean— often people will ask me, does Ayurveda allow ice cream? Does Ayurveda allow allow beer?

Dustin Grinnell (00:23:07 --> 00:23:08)
It does.

Dustin Grinnell (00:23:08 --> 00:23:11)
You just know now, you know what it does.

Katie Concannon (00:23:11 --> 00:23:46)
That's right. And then you also know how to manage it. So once you start to learn that, and going back to the digestive question, when I identify, okay, this is the element that's sort of acting up or has come uninvited to this party, then we look to things that are the opposite elements to balance it. And so that might be spices we add, that might be changes to the morning routine. We could add pranayama or some type of breathwork that's going to calm the nervous system in a certain way. It could be a different food element together, either eliminating something or adding something new back in that's going to just bring the equilibrium for that person back.

Dustin Grinnell (00:23:46 --> 00:24:02)
So if you're feeling keyed up or emotional at the end of the night and you maybe want to go back and watch, you know, Walking Dead, do you back off on that? And if you do, what do you watch? Well, what is the opposite? What's the more calming energy?

Katie Concannon (00:24:02 --> 00:24:04)
Yeah, like British Bake Off.

Dustin Grinnell (00:24:04 --> 00:24:07)
Okay, so like something a little more comforting and less conflict.

Katie Concannon (00:24:07 --> 00:24:11)
Yeah, sugary. Yes, something sweeter, less murdery, more sugar.

Dustin Grinnell (00:24:11 --> 00:24:14)
And do you like legit sleep better?

Katie Concannon (00:24:14 --> 00:24:41)
Yeah, I believe so, yes. And it might not always be that black and white, or sometimes I will just say I shouldn't watch TV at all. I'll take an Epsom salt bath and go to bed, read a book, snuggle my dog, who's a perfect prince. He's always quite sapphic, or, you know, he's always gonna bring anyone who interacts with them back to balance. So animals are a wonderful nervous system rebalance as well. So maybe that night TV is just not called for at all.

Dustin Grinnell (00:24:41 --> 00:24:50)
So it's almost like everything is medicine now. Everything is medicine and poison now. That's right. The media you consume, the life you live, which is like obvious, right?

Katie Concannon (00:24:51 --> 00:26:05)
But then I think when we go through our day-to-day life, we don't think about that when we're making those choices as consciously as I think potentially generations before us did, right? There was more of an awareness to, well, if I do this— and I'm making an assumption, I wasn't there— but I do think we've gotten quite disconnected from our own nervous system and what's happening and what we might be lacking or having too much of. We're just in an automatic pilot of, this is what I do. I wake up, I turn my phone on, I lay in bed and look at Instagram, whatever that is for an individual. If you can start to break some of those patterns and slow down, Ayurveda also says because your body already knows everything that it needs.

It is its best teacher. Your mind is what wants excitement and variation and all these other things that sort of get in the way. And so if you're able to quiet your mind enough, and that's where things like yoga and why they're so interconnected, meditation, breathwork, can help you then tap back into your truest self, so then you can make the decisions that are most beneficial to you. No one is ever gonna know as much as you. An Ayurvedic practitioner or counselor is just gonna help you find that out.

Dustin Grinnell (00:26:05 --> 00:26:15)
If you're comfortable sharing, could you talk about your journey into Ayurveda? Like, how did you get there? Like, I understand you may have, you had some health problems yourself.

Katie Concannon (00:26:15 --> 00:26:54)
Sure, yeah, I'm happy to talk about that. I think there's two prongs to that story, and one is certainly my own health journey and also what I've observed as a child and in the environment that I was in growing up growing up with prescription medicine and what I would say watching doctors fail people close to me in a way that I didn't trust it early. I'm not one to trust authority generally, but I was very clear that I was suspicious of doctors or how quick you go in and out of an appointment. They don't really talk to you or ask you any questions. That's just been my experience. And I often find what's given to me to solve a problem hasn't done so.

Dustin Grinnell (00:26:54 --> 00:26:57)
And it's just for the symptom. It's not addressing the root cause. They don't have the time or the depth of understanding.

Katie Concannon (00:26:57 --> 00:27:59)
They don't have the time. They might have the understanding, but there's certainly not a construct that's allowing them to spend that amount of time. And so a lot gets missed. And I think watching some people close to me, it actually caused quite a furthering or, you know, more disease and disorder in those individuals' lives going to seek these professionals rather than if they had never gone. I think it did more harm than good. And so I have lost a lot of trust in that regard very young. So for myself, I had a— I am a Pitta dosha, as I mentioned, which just means that I have a lot of fire and water, or Pitta is more like an oil than water, which we can explain in more detail if you want. But Pitta people are very fiery. If you think about the humidity and the heat of high August, that's kind of what happens in my body, especially if it's out of balance. And so with my menstrual cycle and some of my— when I came into experiencing that as a teenager, I had a lot of problems very early. There was just an intensity. To that for me that was abnormal.

Dustin Grinnell (00:27:59 --> 00:28:03)
So you're saying like more cramping, higher pain during menstruation?

Katie Concannon (00:28:03 --> 00:29:05)
An incredible amount of pain, an incredible amount of fluids leaving my body to a point where there was just like nothing that could kind of maintain that. And I do find that to be quite common with other women that I've seen since then. And so the advice to all of us has always been, well, go on birth control. I was on birth control well before I was a sexually active adult, and it was just to manage my period. And so So there's so much happening with the hormone treatments that happen with that.

And unfortunately, I was a teenager a long time ago. So even the options were a lot more limited at that point in time. And then that caused a bunch of other imbalances with me. I had, at one point, they thought I had breast cancer. I had to have surgery for that.

I had a number of surgeries for my period itself and things that were happening from a fibroid perspective and just like a lot, a lot of pain and a lot of different surgeries. And at one point I realized the IUD was causing the breast problem. If I took the IUD out, I had the menstrual problem and it was just going to be a vicious cycle of moving my body in a way that I didn't think was actually in tune with what my body needed. It was like whack-a-mole. Yeah.

Dustin Grinnell (00:29:05 --> 00:29:05)
That's right.

Dustin Grinnell (00:29:05 --> 00:29:07)
Once you intervene, you cause another thing.

Katie Concannon (00:29:07 --> 00:31:06)
I don't have that anymore," but that didn't sit right with me for some reason. I was like, that feels— well, what happens if that's not happening? Because it feels like such an important part of the female body. If you remove it, what are the consequences? And I experienced some of those.

So at some point in my 20s, I just ripped it all out and I said— I literally drove to my gynecologist and I'm like, get this out of my body right now. The IUD? Yeah, like a pitta person would do. You just show up all crazy and say, get this out. And he took it out.

And then I found my first Ayurvedic doctor and we had one of those long-form sessions that I described I do today. And she prescribed me some confronting things. She said, "Do less hot yoga. Stop having so much coffee. If you wanna have coffee, put milk in it." Small changes in my diet, little things.

She gave me some pranayama to do. She said, "You probably don't need to work out at all. Just like lie around on bolsters and breathe." And I think I got hives at first. I didn't want that to be the answer at all, 'cause I was, you know, really addicted to my hot yoga practice and was certain that was doing a lot for my body. In my mind, and I didn't want to let that go.

And it probably took another year before I was willing to even consider that, and I still haven't fully let that go 20 years later. But that was my entry point. And then I started to study a little bit more about my body and Ayurveda at large, and I've never been on a hormone therapy to manage this ever again. I've never had to have a surgery ever again. And that was my real confirmation that this was it for me.

Dustin Grinnell (00:31:06 --> 00:31:18)
So in your story, hold up like the Western perspective and what they did to what they found and the Ayurvedic perspective, what they found and what they did. How do those two compare and contrast?

Katie Concannon (00:31:18 --> 00:31:22)
Yeah, I mean, it's hard to say because I really don't like to criticize—

Dustin Grinnell (00:31:22 --> 00:31:23)
Shit on Western medicine.

Katie Concannon (00:31:23 --> 00:31:59)
Yeah, right. I try, I really do try, and again, I do believe there's a place for the integrative approach of both, and I am so excited to see the things that are happening today, you know, decades later, where I think that's actually happening. But yeah, I mean, it was quite obvious to me to look back now and say there was a desire to just stop a symptom, which I still don't necessarily believe Western doctors have a real understanding of what's going on with women's menstrual cycles, what's happening from a women's health perspective at large. There's still a lot to be learned about what happens with all of the hormone therapy that we're all taking from, you know, 12 or 13 years old up until potentially our 40s or 50s.

Dustin Grinnell (00:31:59 --> 00:32:02)
It's just completely normalized and—

Katie Concannon (00:32:02 --> 00:32:50)
Without a lot of checking, yeah, and there's just, there's a number of people who then end up with a lot of other side effects, I'll call them. Again, I'm not a doctor, so that's my opinion, but it does feel like that was the case, and it certainly was for me when I went to a breast specialist and she very directly said this is likely coming from the IUD. And so it was symptom to symptom ping-pong game. There was really no understanding of what is causing— why is there so much what I'll call heat in my body that was causing so much intensity to my menstrual cycle versus that's all that I did with the Ayurvedic person. Where is the heat showing up? What's happening in your physical day-to-day life? What's happening in the food you intake? Where is the heat elevated? And then how do you just cool that off?

Dustin Grinnell (00:32:50 --> 00:33:02)
Can I ask something? What is— if you know, because this heat-cold thing is somewhat abstract, right? It's not like measurable or quantifiable, I would say. Would you say? And like, what's causing the heat?

Katie Concannon (00:33:02 --> 00:33:20)
Yeah. So from a food perspective, I think that's the easiest one. If you're looking for something more tangible, there's a post-digestive effect of everything you eat, right? There's the qualities that exist in the food as it sits on the table. Fatty, acidic. Exactly, whatever. Carbs. Salty, astringent, bitter, sweet.

Dustin Grinnell (00:33:20 --> 00:33:23)
And that's an assault to the physiology, to the—

Dustin Grinnell (00:33:23 --> 00:33:23)
Potentially.

Katie Concannon (00:33:23 --> 00:34:57)
Everything's a medicine and a poison, right? So it just depends. And so a person who has high pitta is not gonna wanna add more salty, spicy things. They're going to wanna add things that are sweeter, lighter, that are going to sort sort of ground the fire element versus a kapha person who's filled with earth element is going to have a tolerance and a desire for more fire in their food. So no food is bad, it's just a matter of someone like me who's filled with fire, even black pepper, I get heartburn if I have too much black pepper, like table pepper. It's not a big deal spice, but I don't have a tolerance for it, whereas someone else it could be a real medicine, especially a kapha person that might have in, you know, today's environment like the flu or a lot of congestion in their nasal passage, black pepper can be a real medicine for those individuals. I never have that problem because I just have so much fire it just pretty much burns all that out. So it really is person-specific, but that's where, yeah, the fire is coming from. The person's constitution, some people are just born with more of that, and then also So, if you're out of balance, you may then crave more of your imbalance. And so I was high, high fire for a number of reasons, just my experience as a kid, and then I was seeking out more fiery things because that was my comfort zone in a really unhealthy way. Once you get balanced, that goes away. It's like a sugar craving, right? People really, really crave it until you detox it, and then you're like, Cracks.

Dustin Grinnell (00:34:57 --> 00:35:02)
So you were like, in the metaphor, you were throwing gasoline on the fire. That's right. Adding more fire to fire.

Dustin Grinnell (00:35:02 --> 00:35:02)
Yes.

Dustin Grinnell (00:35:02 --> 00:35:05)
And your body was on fire.

Katie Concannon (00:35:05 --> 00:35:05)
Yes.

Dustin Grinnell (00:35:05 --> 00:35:15)
And so you added in calming activities and food that kind of acted this grounding things and cooling things.

Katie Concannon (00:35:15 --> 00:36:04)
Like, I will drink— if I— I still do sometimes teach hot yoga. I will drink aloe juice after class because— and I can feel it just like you would put that on a sunburn in my body cooling me down. I would use lime instead of lemon where people, you know, everyone believes lemon water is so healthy and we're all drinking lemon water. There's nothing wrong with it, but for someone who has high Pitta, lemon from a post-digestive effect is more heating than lime. And so, and if you think about that, before we became a global food economy, hot climates use lime. If you go to Panama or Puerto Rico or those places that You don't find lemons, you find limes because there's so much heat element there. Limes are going to actually cool you down more post-digestively than lemons. So I have lime water.

Dustin Grinnell (00:36:04 --> 00:36:22)
Little things. I can hear like a listener thinking, what am I? And so again, what are the possibilities there? And then you could say you could take a quiz, which may not be accurate, but it'd be best to go to a specialist. So what— where— if someone's thinking, what am I? How do they basically understand that?

Katie Concannon (00:36:22 --> 00:36:27)
Yeah, I mean, there's nothing wrong with the quizzes, I guess. They're just going to tell you in that moment what is showing up, which doesn't mean that's your real constitution.

Dustin Grinnell (00:36:27 --> 00:36:30)
Could be different from September to July.

Katie Concannon (00:36:30 --> 00:36:36)
It could be different from 10:00 AM to 10:00 PM because there is an Ayurvedic clock that goes seasonally, but also through the day.

Dustin Grinnell (00:36:36 --> 00:36:38)
But you do have a constitution, you said.

Katie Concannon (00:36:38 --> 00:38:19)
You do. It's just likely not going to show up in the test, I believe. So here's the way that it's defined. Definitions for how we look at an individual person. There's your prakriti, that's the Sanskrit word for the constitution you were born with.

That's just the elements that made you a human. When you arrived in this world, you had these dominant things. Most people have a main, and then a second, and then one that's somewhat lacking. Occasionally you'll find a tridoshic person, I can think of two that I know after doing a lot of intakes, that have a pretty even amount of all of None of that means it's better or worse. It just means that's you.

And then your imbalance can exist no matter what, right? The imbalance is really what we're worried about, not the prakriti. Your vikriti, which is your current state of dis-ease, is what we're mostly looking for and what will likely show up in a quiz if you did an online quiz. And so that's more interesting from a treatment perspective because that's where your elevated imbalance is showing up. That might be a depletion, that might be too much, and that's what we start to look at for a person.

And so inside that we have the 3 dosha types. So the kapha, and I'll give this to you with also some of the other definitions. So kapha dosha is water and earth, and that is the, the sort of type of person I described already. They're stable and sturdy. They're generally a bigger, like, denser body type.

Dustin Grinnell (00:38:19 --> 00:38:22)
But it also could be said it's like a dad bod and that's kind of in.

Katie Concannon (00:38:22 --> 00:40:29)
It is, right? But for women, I think, you know, and I see this a lot because I teach a lot of yoga and fitness classes, kapha bodies almost depleting themselves out of what their natural state of balance is to try to look like one of the other body types because they're just not born that way. And so that's something interesting that we but up against quite a bit. But kapha is also your earliest stage of life and it's springtime. And so if you think about that from the cycle of one person's lifetime, kapha is where you're going to see the most mucus, you're going to sleep the most.

If you think about a baby's constitution, it's squishy, it's heavy, it's dense. Even if you're one of the other body types, you're going to have the most earth element in your lifetime at that time. Everything's sort of new and well lubricated, your joints are protected, your bones are protected, you're sturdy in a way that when you're, you know, an elderly person, you aren't. And so that's kapha. So a kapha body as a baby is just going to be a really cute squishy ball of mucus and sleep, right?

And it's springtime season and it's also the beginning of the day. So if you think about when you wake up in the morning, and you go outside, no matter where you are or what season it is, you can see the heaviness of like the dew of morning in kapha time of day in a way that you don't in the other parts of the day, right? If it's a rainy day in the middle of spring, again, that's kapha season, so you'll see that all the time. But even in like a hot August morning, you're still going to get that dew on that grass, the little bit of heaviness that comes with kapha time of day in that time period, which which is 6 AM to 10 AM. I will just add, sometimes people will say, "I decided to sleep late and now I'm more tired." And that, you know, Ayurveda says is you kind of got the heaviness of kapha in your body because you didn't move before that time of day set in.

Dustin Grinnell (00:40:29 --> 00:40:45)
You can anonymize a client, you can just talk in general terms, but, you know, someone who came in in disease, someone came in with maybe something common, maybe something not, and you evaluated them and they made changes and they got better.

Katie Concannon (00:40:45 --> 00:42:17)
So I'm able to see a lot of maybe quicker results in some of those times because we intervene with an actual cleanse. And so I did one this past fall out of one of the yoga studios I teach at. We had a small group of people who I know from regular class, and one of the individuals in the cleanse I've known for quite a while, and he has fairly extreme eczema. I know a little bit about him personally. He's in a high-stress situation right now.

From a work perspective. He was laid off from his job. He's been looking for months. He has young children. He's financially pressed.

There's just a lot going on. So he's just in an elevated stress level. His eczema is completely out of control, to a point where it's really painful, hard for him to work out or do things because of the way that his arms looked. And throughout the cleanse, by the third day of the cleanse, he did not have any eczema. It went away.

Dustin Grinnell (00:42:17 --> 00:42:21)
Well, is a cleanse like sustainable? How would he kind of maintain?

Katie Concannon (00:42:21 --> 00:43:48)
Well, so I guess the intention of a cleanse is not for you to live in the state of a cleanse forever. So to that point, I— no, the point of it is to clear out where you have long-term elevated elements, right? So for that person, it was elevated heat for a long period of time. The fastest way to move that stuff, if it's been there for a really long time, is to clear it out with a mono diet that's going to just let your digestion ease on new things so that it can spend some time clearing out some of the old stuff. Kitchari is a mono diet of— it's basically yellow dal, basmati rice, a couple of basic digestive spices, and a little ghee, and that's all you eat for some number of days.

You might do 3, 5, 7. I've done as long as 21, which is like a full Ayurvedic panchakarma, or like a more intense cleanse. So he experienced a very quick clearing of those elevated doshas, those elevated elements, within 3 days where his body was able to, from an Ayurvedic perspective in my opinion, digest out the excess heat which then caused that rash to go away. When he fell off the wagon per se in such drastic form, like just I would ease that person back in slowly, move from having just this rice porridge, as I would call it, to add a little bit of vegetable, maybe add an egg, put some avocado on it. A couple days later, add a bit more meat.

Dustin Grinnell (00:43:48 --> 00:43:51)
But he just went to Domino's and got a pizza or something.

Katie Concannon (00:43:51 --> 00:44:29)
Yeah, probably had like 3 IPAs, a cheeseburger, some fried food, and it just instantly came back, which again, those are all heating things. Those are all going to create a post-digestive hot effect, and so that's exactly what showed up. Almost immediately, which is evidence to me that that was what was happening. And if there was a way to then potentially reintroduce the cleanse to reset him and then just have him be more mindful of— it's not to say he can't have those things, but just doing them in a way that is more mindful, maybe in a smaller quantity or less frequently, and then marrying them with something that's a little more cooling and calming.

Dustin Grinnell (00:44:29 --> 00:44:34)
Right. What would this person have done if they went in to go see a dermatologist or something?

Katie Concannon (00:44:34 --> 00:44:51)
Well, they had have. And most of the— I see a lot of people with eczema. I actually wrote my paper during school on eczema, the Eastern and Western approach to eczema specifically. And generally it's creams, steroid creams, different topical treatments. Treat the symptom. That's right. Yeah. And sometimes that does treat the symptom.

Dustin Grinnell (00:44:51 --> 00:44:51)
Sure.

Dustin Grinnell (00:44:51 --> 00:44:53)
The rash can go down or—

Katie Concannon (00:44:53 --> 00:45:04)
And I think some, you know, often we get told, well, this is just how it is, right? This is how it is for you. And so you now "Get this cream forever." Right.

Dustin Grinnell (00:45:04 --> 00:45:16)
And so that's— But they don't say, "We don't know what's going on at the most fundamental root cause level?" It's an autoimmune disease, is it not? Or eczema is, yeah, like what's causing it?

Katie Concannon (00:45:16 --> 00:45:25)
I don't know actually what his doctor particularly was saying. Of course I wasn't there, but I don't know if they'll classify it as an autoimmune disease in all cases.

Dustin Grinnell (00:45:25 --> 00:45:26)
Okay.

Dustin Grinnell (00:45:27 --> 00:45:29)
Sometimes. Right. They don't give you steroids or something for—

Katie Concannon (00:45:29 --> 00:45:32)
They do. They'll give you a topical steroid. For the— Cream.

Dustin Grinnell (00:45:32 --> 00:45:33)
For the rash. Skin problem.

Dustin Grinnell (00:45:33 --> 00:45:33)
Right.

Dustin Grinnell (00:45:33 --> 00:45:38)
But for the, if it is autoimmune, how do you tamp down the overreaction?

Katie Concannon (00:45:38 --> 00:45:47)
Yeah. And I'm not sure, and maybe there are some people that have had that experience that have been given a different, more, an internal medicine of some sort. Not in this instance.

Dustin Grinnell (00:45:47 --> 00:46:07)
So what would the dermatologist who gave this person topical cream think what do you think about an Ayurvedic cleanse? Because the proof's in the pudding. They went away. They went away. And so speak about Western medicine's reaction to this type of stuff. Do they think it's bullshit? Do they demean it?

Katie Concannon (00:46:07 --> 00:46:30)
Well, it's hard to say. I mean, first of all, obviously we should have invited a dermatologist here to have this discussion today. Right, hold on. Let me text him. Make a note. But I think, and it's not a one-size-fits-all, right? Not everyone in Western medicine has the same brain and thought, I think that, as I mentioned earlier, there's a larger appetite for an integrative approach of both. I've spent a lot of time at Kripalu out in the Berkshires studying Ayurveda.

Dustin Grinnell (00:46:30 --> 00:46:31)
That's where you got your training as well?

Katie Concannon (00:46:31 --> 00:47:34)
It's where, yep, one of them. I've done this multiple times 'cause I love school, only as an adult. But we brought in a couple doctors, like Western medicine doctors, to the training to have some discussion around integrative medicine and even just some of the problems that one or two individuals was seeing in their own practices and how they wanna take a different approach to just the basic bloodwork panels we take or what might be an indicator of a risk factor for disease, like BMI, for example. We're missing a lot of people who might be a thinner body type but have massive risk factors for a heart attack that aren't getting caught because they're skinny, and that doesn't mean that their body is healthy. And so this more "it depends" version of what is actually happening inside, how is their circulatory system, what's going on with their blood flow, how much heat is in their body, different metric. I don't know what those panels or tests will end up being. Ayurveda does not have the ability to run those types of panels here in the West, and that's where I think there'll be a really interesting next step for the combined study.

Dustin Grinnell (00:47:34 --> 00:47:46)
In a way, you know, I think about the example you just shared, and it's like, this guy's stressed. This guy is unemployed. This guy has responsibilities. It's a stressed body. Yes.

Dustin Grinnell (00:47:46 --> 00:47:46)
That's—

Dustin Grinnell (00:47:46 --> 00:48:21)
and we all know that stress puts strain on the system and can cause problems over time if it's chronic. It's just like everybody knows that. But in a way, too, it's like, I think we'll see if we could fast forward 6 months to a year from now when he's employed, everything's— things are settled, he's more financially secure. Where I think his body's gonna respond. I mean, it's just obvious. So like a lot of this is just lifestyle. It's the circumstances of your life that are affecting your body-mind.

Katie Concannon (00:48:21 --> 00:48:24)
Yes. It's you and how you interact with the world around you.

Dustin Grinnell (00:48:24 --> 00:48:35)
That's it. And whether or not it's like dysfunctional or not. Is it helping or hurting? And also, does it fit with your constitution and where it currently is in the season, time of day, whatever.

Katie Concannon (00:48:35 --> 00:49:00)
That's right. And again, and you can make some choices that say, well, I know I probably don't need a hot yoga class today, but I really want one and I'll take one., and then I just make a decision to potentially make an unwise choice, but I balance that out. If I want to have ice cream at 9 o'clock at night because I think I deserve it, is that a wise Ayurvedic choice necessarily for my digestion? No. But do I need that little bit of joy in my day? Maybe. And so you balance that decision-making.

Dustin Grinnell (00:49:00 --> 00:49:12)
And that's the hard part too. It's one thing to have the self-knowledge, it's one thing to know what something will do to your body, and it's another thing to like abstain or do it and know you're going to pay the price.

Katie Concannon (00:49:12 --> 00:49:23)
Right. But once you know you're going to pay the price, then I do think the choice becomes different. It doesn't mean that it's all of a sudden we're all renunciants and we're at home just meditating and doing breathwork and drinking tea.

Dustin Grinnell (00:49:23 --> 00:49:26)
I mean, that's what I do, but yeah.

Katie Concannon (00:49:27 --> 00:49:56)
Clear. Yeah, totally. But for the rest of us, the normal householder, it's always going to be a balance of give and take of you have to be in the world, you're going to have to potentially work more in a day than your body might ayurvedically want you to. You might not get as much rest all the time. I mean, I've seen clients who are overnight nurses, and so when we have this idea of the Ayurvedic clock and you should get to bed before 10, because even if you're exhausted, if you stay up past 10, you're in Pitta time and your fire's up, and then you can't fall asleep until that's over.

Dustin Grinnell (00:49:56 --> 00:50:04)
There's been so much research on shift work, right, and how it causes pretty severe problems, you know, throws off your circadian rhythm.

Katie Concannon (00:50:04 --> 00:50:33)
And then— exactly. And so then you just have you have to make different balances, right? So it's not to say we all just leave our society and go do exactly what the ancient Ayurvedic texts say. That's, for most people, not an option. But there's always a little bit of support you can add to your body in a different way once you start to understand what's happening and why. And then what things can you shift? And it might not be that you can shift them all, right? And so how do you just make little tweaks over time that can support you the best way that you can?

Dustin Grinnell (00:50:33 --> 00:50:52)
Is like American culture Ayurvedically unsound? Like, you know, this hustle. It's a loaded question. We always have to be industrious. Workaholism is praised. We're consumers. We're materialists. People get things for status. Just so obvious that it's unhealthy.

Katie Concannon (00:50:52 --> 00:51:57)
Yeah, and I think that's shifting though, right? I mean, even in the last, I'd say, 5 years, certainly in 10, there is less of a badge of honor around, "I work all the time and don't have time for anything." Like, I do think there's a shift to— self-care. And in some ways, maybe that's not always done correctly either. There's always an overcorrection that's a little bit weird, I think. We get excited about everything in our society, I think, and we overdo even that. The amount of times I've seen that with something as simple as tongue scraping, which is something we prescribe often to help people's digestive system in the morning— some, you know, undigested material shows up in your tongue, you scrape it out. I can't tell you how many times people that I've seen do it to a point where they're bleeding or in pain because because they want to be the best at tongue scraping. So to answer your question, yes, I think our society at large is, it's highly vata-aggravating, which I mentioned earlier. Everyone has that a little bit of frenetic energy, even in the most grounded, mountainy earth body, there's still some element of that if you're in the world here, especially in a city. We just move too fast.

Dustin Grinnell (00:51:58 --> 00:52:00)
But it's changing.

Katie Concannon (00:52:00 --> 00:52:00)
That's good.

Dustin Grinnell (00:52:00 --> 00:52:30)
Talk about your new venture. Talk about how for many years you worked in the corporate world in a very high-stress environment, but recently you have acquired a business. It's Frost and Float in— West Newton. West Newton. And you've integrated your Ayurvedic practice into the business. Talk about how you got there and how that transpired and how it's going.

Katie Concannon (00:52:30 --> 00:55:18)
I'm really excited about it. I think, how did I get there? Often by accident. I didn't intend to ever have a high-stress corporate career. That was not necessarily my plan.

I actually often tried to resign from my corporate jobs and I kept getting promoted. So that was an accident. But I always had a desire to retire quite early. I said I was going to retire by 40 the whole time I was in corporate. It to every boss I've ever had.

And I was close. I came in a little after that, but pretty close to, to what I committed to. I'm very grateful for the career I had. It's afforded me an ability to do a lot of the things that I wanted to do and study these things, travel to India and Nepal, buy this business that I have today. So it wasn't all bad, but I'm glad I'm out.

And so about a year and a half ago, I think, I moved to full-time yoga teaching and starting to I can actually spend my time focused on launching my own Ayurveda business. I've been studying it a long time, well over 10 years, but I finally decided I want to actually put my energy into this place. So that's been pretty fantastic. And I don't know, things happen in funny ways. I didn't intend to purchase a spa.

It came to me a couple months ago. I found out about it, I think September of '24, and it was friends of friends who, who were selling it. It. It's local to my neighborhood. I've spent many years teaching yoga and practicing in Newton, working in Newton.

So I know the community pretty well. And I went to see it and I was certain it was mine. Why was that? I just felt that space. It's a family that owned it.

The mother had a ladybug tattoo on her leg and I have a ladybug tattoo. It's just like very clear. Where do I sign? Exactly. I'm like, we are meant to be together.

It's just speaking with the family, looking at the customers, seeing the space, it just was exactly where I needed to be. There's some untapped office real estate at the top that they've been paying rent on for the 8 years it's been in business that I will build into my own Ayurvedic office. In the meantime, I've kept all of the services that they've offered. They actually line up to Ayurveda quite well in the way— we do cryotherapy and, and sauna, but the way that they offer it keeps your head out of the heat and cold, which is unusual in the way that I see it at other spas. And exactly how it's done in Ayurveda.

In the old ancient texts, you're in a sweat cabinet. They sort of close you in, and, you know, before electricity, it was just boiled water underneath you, but your head is always out. And so that's how we offer both the heat and cold therapies here, which is really cool. We've brought in breathwork meditators, a couple different yoga teachers and body workers, and then I'm seeing my clients one-on-one there as well. But there'll be a whole new renovation and an upstairs filled with witchy spices and Ayurvedic workshops in the next couple of months.

Dustin Grinnell (00:55:18 --> 00:55:30)
What's your vision for it? For the spa, for your Ayurvedic practice? Are you working on— is there something in your head like a vision of your ability to be a practitioner, to be a business owner?

Katie Concannon (00:55:30 --> 00:57:08)
So, you know, not working for anyone else has certainly been my goal since I was a child. And I think correct for my personality. But yeah, I think from a vision perspective for the spa, I've actually changed changed it from being called a spa, because I think spa implies something different than, than kind of what's there. There's a lot of sports recovery. There's certainly some relaxation therapies.

We also have float tanks, which are fantastic for relaxation, but it's not a spa in a classic sense. It's not, I don't know, like other spas I've gone to. So I've rebranded it a wellness collective, and that's what I want it to become. I want there to be a number of different types of healing modalities and healers that are offering different things that all marry well together. I'm really specific and careful about who I'll bring in from an offering perspective.

I've gotta believe in it and believe that it's not contradictory to what I'm prescribing from an Ayurvedic perspective. But we've brought in breathwork people, body workers of all different kinds, some female like womb working, which has been really cool. Just some healing that I don't think is readily available as much as I'd like it to be. And that's what I see it becoming, sort of a collective of people that are doing this alternative type of healing work and really in their power in that way. I want to empower myself to do that and offer that to others.

Dustin Grinnell (00:57:08 --> 00:57:12)
It's going to be cool. What types of events will take place there in the future?

Katie Concannon (00:57:12 --> 00:58:11)
I want to do cooking workshops. I want to introduce people more to spices and some of the tangible components of Ayurveda that I think allow it to be more tactile for people to feel it. I think Ayurveda is more easily experienced than understood from a book. You can start to feel it in your own digestion and body. A lot of it is so simple, but if you've never seen it before, it feels far away. And so I find that to be my most effective workshops or when we make Indian buttermilk together or a digestive spice blend and people kind of feel, here's what it's like to smell it, this is what it's like to taste it, what are the qualities in a food that change when it's raw versus cooked. Even your post-digestive effect might change from a raw carrot to a boiled carrot to one that you roasted in ghee, right? They're all going to have a different experience in your body. And so giving people those those like experiential opportunities, I think sells Ayurveda better than anything.

Dustin Grinnell (00:58:11 --> 00:58:20)
And how does yoga fit in? You've been a yoga teacher for many years, and how does that influence your perspective on health and wellness?

Katie Concannon (00:58:20 --> 01:00:08)
And yeah, so I mean, yeah, yoga comes from a lot of the same philosophies and teachings, and I'd say Ayurveda is the umbrella that yoga sits under rather than the other way around, because Ayurveda is the study of everything, right? And so of course yoga fits in there just like anything else. So a lot of the teachings are the same. There's very few instances where it deviates really at all. There is a bit of a, a Himsa or a non-harming component to yoga that can be more vegetarian or vegan, and Ayurveda is quite meat-based for the body types that need it in the "it depends" world. So there's a little bit of difference there, but from a prescription perspective to people needing help with stress and moving energy in their body, I use yoga all the time with one-on-one clients as something I'm offering, either a one-on-one practice with me or a routine that they do at home. Every yoga pose can be modified, I believe, to balance different doshas if you cue it in a different way. Okay, that's a whole hour on yoga shapes and why they could be Ayurvedically different and customizing it to be body. That's right. And even when I teach public group class around Boston, I teach usually for a whole month of spring and then again in the fall a class that is dosha balancing. I don't tell anyone that's what's happening because I think it's just too much information to provide. But when we're in the height of spring and people are kind of heavy with that cold and flu spring season and there's more just of that stuff, I will teach class with specific breaths I change the pace of the class, maybe the temperature of the class slightly, the energy of the class to move what I think is dominant more broadly.

Dustin Grinnell (01:00:08 --> 01:00:22)
So we've talked about Ayurveda as a theory, like you've shared some case studies, some examples, you've shared your own story getting into Ayurveda. Like what else is not being said here?

Dustin Grinnell (01:00:22 --> 01:00:22)
Here.

Dustin Grinnell (01:00:22 --> 01:00:28)
What else do you want to add in the space of Ayurvedic medicine? And is there something we haven't covered yet?

Katie Concannon (01:00:28 --> 01:01:13)
I don't think so, but if I had like a closing thought, I would say, you know, I think the thing that I want people to know about Ayurveda more than anything is that it is for everybody. I often hear like things like, I don't like Indian food, so I can't do Ayurveda, or, you know, I don't do yoga, or whatever the thing is that is a barrier to being curious about things like this. I do think there's little things, there's, there's just tiny tweaks for self-care purposes that we can make as individuals that can really move the needle. And whatever you might think is stuck in your body and that it kind of has to be this way, I would be curious to know if that's necessarily true. And if you took a more unusual approach and a windier path to something like this from a healing modality, you might find a different result than what you've been told in the past.

Dustin Grinnell (01:01:14 --> 01:01:21)
Do you find that people maybe come to you at the end of their rope, so to speak, when they've tried multiple attempts at Western approaches.

Katie Concannon (01:01:21 --> 01:01:22)
That's the only time they come to me.

Dustin Grinnell (01:01:22 --> 01:01:24)
Yes. Right. They don't come to you first.

Katie Concannon (01:01:24 --> 01:01:26)
No. And I don't blame them, right? I mean, why would— that's not—

Dustin Grinnell (01:01:26 --> 01:01:29)
this isn't something that we grew up with. Western perspective.

Katie Concannon (01:01:29 --> 01:01:29)
Correct.

Dustin Grinnell (01:01:29 --> 01:01:29)
Yeah.

Katie Concannon (01:01:29 --> 01:01:29)
That's right.

Dustin Grinnell (01:01:29 --> 01:01:32)
This is a scientific, materialistic way of looking at the world.

Katie Concannon (01:01:32 --> 01:01:33)
It's very reductionistic.

Dustin Grinnell (01:01:33 --> 01:01:35)
That's right. And you have to exhaust that.

Katie Concannon (01:01:36 --> 01:01:38)
Oh, you don't. But people feel that they do.

Dustin Grinnell (01:01:38 --> 01:01:38)
Yes.

Katie Concannon (01:01:39 --> 01:01:56)
That's right. Right. Right. And so I guess that's the point of what I'm saying is like maybe you don't have to exhaust that. Maybe you can try something something else first before a lot of pills and creams and symptom treatments. It might be a simpler solution.

Dustin Grinnell (01:01:56 --> 01:02:06)
It depends. It depends. You should have wore that t-shirt today. I know. So if someone wants to seek out an Ayurvedic evaluation with you, how do they do that?

Katie Concannon (01:02:06 --> 01:02:37)
You can sign up through my website. It's ayurvedawithkatie.com. It's also available to people coming through Frost and Float, which is frostandfloatspa.com. You can book a one-on-one with me. I'm happy to do a quick information session with people for 15 minutes beforehand if you have questions before you sign up.

I don't do single sessions. The minimum I would do is 2. I just don't believe it serves anyone to just do the one and then never see it again, because it does take time. It's a slow-moving teacher. So it's a mandatory 2 times.

Dustin Grinnell (01:02:37 --> 01:02:40)
[Speaker:BEN] In a way, you're asking people to change parts of their lives.

Dustin Grinnell (01:02:40 --> 01:02:40)
[Speaker:Cristine] Yeah.

Dustin Grinnell (01:02:40 --> 01:02:48)
[Speaker:BEN] So you kind of have to say, "Don't watch murdery things at night," and then you have to follow up and say, 'Hey, did that have any effect?' That's right.

Katie Concannon (01:02:48 --> 01:03:20)
And I just don't think it serves the person to offer it any different. So when people are ready to, to make that type of change, it can be somewhat confronting to have to let go of their murdery shows. So available through either of those avenues. I'm so excited for more people to come and visit Frost and Float. And if I could offer just one Ayurvedic tip for all people, no matter your dosha or constitution, is to in the morning give yourself just a quick couple sips of warm water to flush out your digestion. That is the one Ayurvedic prescription we give all clients.

Dustin Grinnell (01:03:20 --> 01:03:35)
Okay, I'll leave you with that. So, you know, thank you for, for talking about your passion, your expertise, and I hope people go visit Frost and Float. Me too. And, uh, yeah, I just want to say thank you again for coming. Yeah, thanks for having me.

Dustin Grinnell (01:03:35 --> 01:04:09)
I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Ayurvedic health counselor Katie Conkamp. If it challenged you or helped expand your perspective or satisfy your curiosity about the world, please consider sharing it with your friends and family and use it to have a conversation of your own. If you want to support Curiously, please consider leaving a review. They encourage people to listen and help attract great guests. If you like what you've been hearing and would like to sponsor the podcast, please consider supporting me on my Patreon account.

Thanks again for listening and stay tuned for more conversations with people people I meet along the way.