Hello, everyone. Welcome to Your SuperPowered Mind. I’m Kristin Maxwell. And in this show, we explore the process of transformation and give you tools and strategies that you can use to transform your own life. Today, I am going to be talking to Dr. Avanti Kumar-Singh about creating healing and happiness with Ayurveda. Dr. Singh is a former ER doctor who left Western medicine to study traditional healing cultures from around the world. She is now an Ayurveda wellness expert. Over the past 20 years, Dr. Kumar-Singh has shared her expertise with fortune 500 colleges, fortune 500 companies, universities, and medical conferences. She has been featured in numerous publications and is the host of the Healing Catalyst podcast. I’m really excited to talk to Dr. Singh. So welcome to Your SuperPowered Mind.
Thanks for having me, Kristin. I’m so glad to be here.
Yes. My first question is always, what superpower did you uncover as a result of mastering your mind?
It’s an interesting question. I’ve been thinking about how to answer this question because I know that your podcast is about superpowers. I think that it really came down to an understanding that when symptoms show up, they’re there to tell you something. And when you can get quiet and actually try and understand what your symptoms are trying to tell you, it’s powerful information that’s coming from your inner self, from your higher wisdom. And so, I think that using symptoms of any kind, however, subtle or obvious they may be, can actually really give you a lot of really valuable information about your health and wellness, mind, body, and spirit, if that makes sense.
So I think that when I really tune back into that, and that’s really a basic principle of Ayurveda, which is the healing tradition that I grew up with as a South Asian woman, when I tune back into that power and understanding that, I think everything shifted for me in my personal life, in my own healing, in my own healing journey, as well as the way that I practice medicine. So, I would say that that’s really … that was really what happened for me.
Yeah. That’s great. And can you give an example of what you might mean by symptoms are there to tell you something? I’m pretty sure I have an understanding, but what do you mean by that?
Sure. So, I can give you an example, my own personal example of what happened to me when I was in my medical training. Throughout my medical training, I would routinely just ignore anything that was showing up for me. So whether I had headaches, I had plantar fasciitis, if I had constipation, weight gain, and now those were extremes, right? Those were the symptoms that were there, that were accumulating over years and years of just ignoring it because my career path was a long one. My training took a long time, but I know if I reflect back that all of those symptoms started with some early warning signs, right? A headache here and there, maybe an upset stomach here and there, maybe a little bit of pain in my heels because I was standing all the time as an ER doc, right?
All of these little things that show up that we all just push away and chalk up to nothing, right? But anytime that you’re feeling something that is not … the way I explain it to most people is feeling at ease, mind, body, and spirit, right? So if you’re not feeling at ease, if there’s something that’s a little bit off, take notice of that, right? That doesn’t mean that there’s something significant that’s going to happen. The point is, is that when you start to tune in to these symptoms and say, “Oh, something’s going on my body, my mind, my spirit is trying to tell me something, right? That I need to course correct.” That’s what I call it, course-correcting on a daily basis and really think about, “What have I been eating? What have I been doing? What have I been thinking? What am I consuming as far as media?” All of these sources of information, sensory inputs, or even toxins that are coming into our energetic field all day long every day, right?
So the example is that I routinely ignore that through my medical training, and it wasn’t until the symptoms got so bad that I basically kept throwing my back out every few weeks. And finally, I threw out my back just bending over to fold a blanket in my home, and was laid out for five days where I could not do anything. I was lying in my bed and I really had a lot of time to think. And I realized that I was only 32 years old at the time. And my health was worse than my grandfather who had just passed away, who died at the age of 89 with not a single medical problem. He was not on any medications. And I started thinking, “Well, how did my grandfather do that?” And it brought me back to the way that I was raised with Ayurveda and the principles of Ayurveda.
And so, I think that was really that moment of clarity, of understanding. I need to shift how I’m thinking about things. It can’t just be from a Western perspective, a Western medical perspective of the symptoms show up, and then you do something, right? It’s really tuning in on a daily basis, even when there’s the slightest thing, just take notice of it. That doesn’t mean you have to do anything drastic, but take some notice and then see, is that persisting? Well then, maybe you need to start doing something. So, that would be the example I could give.
Yes. I love that. And so much of what I do is what I love, what you’re talking about is how we just push through so much of what we do. It’s like, “This feels off and this doesn’t feel good.” And so much of what I’m spending time with people is not as much with the physical part of it, but with the emotional part and recognizing you do have these emotions and pushing past them all the time does not make you happy or healthy. It doesn’t make them go away. So this is what it brings to me, and this is where I started and where lots of people are. Okay. So I’m noticing this and I have these symptoms. What do I do? Okay, now I have them, what do I do?
Right. So it’s kind of this pathway that I think about, and this is a common one if you read other psychology and even coaching models, right? Self-coaching or healing models, which is this idea that your thoughts create feelings, create actions, right? That’s a construct that we’ve heard of. Now, what I’ve added to that is that the symptoms show up however subtle or obvious, which then cause thoughts, which then cause feelings, which then cause actions. And that action can either be an act of doing something or not doing something that will determine your course of healing. You either go down a path of health and healing or a path of illness, right? Because your action or inaction determines which direction you’re going to go on.
Now, you can go down this path every day, hundreds, thousands of times during the day, right? This process is happening all the time. And so I think that the first step is really becoming conscious and aware, which is really the point of Ayurveda. Ayurveda is about becoming aware of what is happening in your life from a 360-degree view, right? And understanding that everything is connected. In nature, we are connected to everything in nature, and we are connected to everything that is in our life. Outside of us is actually connected to what’s going on inside of us, right? In Ayurveda, there’s the belief that what is outside of us is also inside of us. What shows up outside of us also shows up inside of us. So when you start with that understanding, you can then see how the symptoms that are showing up are reflecting something that’s going on outside of you and having an impact on the inside of you, right?
So, I think awareness, just becoming conscious, and noticing that is the first step. And then it’s really to think about, “Okay, so this is showing up.” Take notice of it and try and start making some connections. How do you feel about it? What are your thoughts around that symptom? When I was in my medical training, I think for me being in a field that was very male-dominated, I mean, I trained 25 years ago now. And, also I’m first-generation, my parents were immigrants from India and I had this very strong sense of purpose and sort of wanting to fulfill their dreams as well as mine. And so there was a lot of pressure I put on myself, so I had to hack it. I had to make it through that training.
So the physical symptoms that I felt or even the emotional ones of feeling very overwhelmed, stressed, anxious, those are all the thoughts that those symptoms were creating in my mind was that that’s weakness. If you say that you are not feeling well, that you have these symptoms, that means that you’re telling yourself you can’t hack it. So those were the thoughts that I was having, which were creating feelings of inadequacy, of not being strong enough, smart enough, good enough to get through medical training because everybody else could do it, right?
Which then led to my inaction of actually doing something really significant to help myself. I just push through, right? And so it created my reality of going down this path to illness versus a path of healing. And so again, the first step is always awareness and just seeing, what is it bringing up for you? How are you thinking about things?
I love how you’ve outlined it. That’s so clear about what do you make these things mean? We do need to take a quick break. Before we do, can you let people know where they can learn more about you and your work in Ayurveda?
Of course. My website is avantikumarsingh.com. On my website, I have all kinds of different resources, but I also have just written a book called The Health Catalyst in which I talk all about these principles. And I also have a podcast called The Healing Catalyst. So those are a couple of ways to get in touch with me.
Great. Hang on. We’ll be right back and talk a little bit more about Ayurveda.
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