Calm The VATA Down - The Book

What it's all about

Introducing the Book- & Why I’m Here

This book is a deep dive into ADHD from an Ayurvedic perspective. In other words, it’s all about high vata dosha. But more on that later!

It is being written to help you demystify why you feel the way you do and to help you make sense of the things that have gone wrong in your life. 

My Wish & Hope for You

My hope for you is that you find radical compassion and acceptance for yourself and forgive yourself for any mess that you’ve created along the way. 

My wish is that you start to build yourself a fabulous toolbox packed with the perfect tools for you.  When used regularly, the tools will provide solutions that will help you slow down and make better decisions.  You will learn how to respond rather than react to emotionally charged situations.  You will finally be able to harness your sharp intellect and unbridled creativity to fulfil your life’s potential or dharma.  I offer you Ayurvedic practices that will enable you to regulate your emotions and train your mind so that you are operating from a calm and peaceful place. 

Above all, this is a book about releasing the shame of being different and instead celebrating the extraordinary diversity of who you are. 

You are meant to be you.

What the Book is NOT About

It’s not a complete beginner’s book about Ayurveda.  I will introduce some basic concepts, but if you want to learn more, some excellent resources are available.  Many good books will teach you the basics of Ayurveda if you are interested and want some solid foundations. Some of my favourite authors and teachers include Myra Lewin, Dr. Vasant Lad, Dr. Robert Svoboda, Dr. David Frawley, Kate O’Donnell, Dr. Claudia Welch, Acharya Shunya and Amadea Morningstar.  

This is also not a deep dive into Ayurveda.  It is a need-to-know book.  It contains just what you need to know about Ayurveda in order to benefit from the practices that will help people with ADHD.  You don’t need previous Ayurvedic knowledge to use this book.  However, even well-seasoned Ayurvedic practitioners who want to know more about vata and ADHD will enjoy the perspectives here. If you want a deep dive, I would highly recommend the training courses at Hale Pule. Myraji is a superb teacher and adheres closely to the original texts. 

This book is about empowered living with ADHD and healing through Ayurveda.  It’s not about curing you of ADHD.   The aim is not to banish ADHD, but rather to help you embrace it.  When you understand how it plays out and has played out, in your life, you will have so much more agency over the decisions you make. Healing means understanding and forgiving yourself,  mending the broken bits and building resilience in your mind and spirit.  You will learn to live with ADHD and transform the challenges into superpowers.  The suggestions here are steeped in the ancient wisdom of Ayurveda but offer efficient solutions to navigating the challenges of our crazy modern world.  It’s not about getting rid of your defects, instead it’s all about transforming the things that frustrate you into your greatest gifts.  It will not dumb your personality down; it will make you smarter as you step fully into who you are meant to be.  The suggestions are all based on the natural methods of Ayurveda (with a smattering of behavioural science thrown in).  

This book is not about a quick fix.  As I’ve already said,  we are not aiming to cure ADHD.  ADHD is a difference, not a disease.  The suggestions here are designed to help you manage your challenges and harness your strengths, gifts and superpowers.  It will help you validate the things that are hard for you so that you can give yourself more grace and cut yourself some slack.  It’s a lifelong process, but not a life sentence. You will come to enjoy the process because all the practices make you feel good on a soul level.  You’ll feel good because you will be taking full responsibility for your own healing journey. As you keep practising new thoughts and behaviours that help you to tame your mind and change the quality of your life, everything will fall into place.  You will develop a deep understanding and compassion for yourself and the things that have been really bewildering for you. And knowing that other people with ADHD have very similar struggles to you will help you see that you are not bad, mad, crazy or lazy. 

But Arn’t Labels Damaging?

I understand that labels can be damaging, which is why I ignored any possibility of having ADHD for nearly four decades.  I also ignored it because I thought that having this label was only of significance if you were looking for medication, and I was not.  I now know that understanding the architecture of ADHD can be extremely useful, and empowering. And it’s helped me foster a lot of forgiveness and self-compassion.   It’s also provided me with a lot of laughter as I’ve learned not to take it all so seriously.  

So now, I aim to raise awareness of the aspects of ADHD that are playing out in your life so that you can have some language around them. Both from psychology and Ayurvedic perspectives. You will find it easier to make changes when you can articulate what it is that you want to change.

And…. it is not my intention to encourage too much attachment to the label itself.   I offer you some cognitive frameworks to work with and some language to help you understand what is going on.   This gives you structure, choices and a fresh perspective.  While there are some references to Western understandings, much of this book is filtered through the lens of Ayurveda and Yoga.

Are You my People?

First of all, you do not need an official diagnosis to benefit from this book.  If you self-identify as someone with ADHD, or even just think that you might have some ADHD-like traits, you will benefit.  If you are ready to develop some skills to manage the symptoms and habits to reduce the intensity of ADHD, then this is your book.  By learning how to calm vata dosha, you will do just that. 

If you know that you have some or all of the symptoms of ADHD, you may have noticed that this world was not exactly designed with you in mind.  You will have known from a very young age that you were different from many of your peers or co-workers.  It’s likely that school was not geared up for your style of thinking and learning.  You probably experienced frustration from trying to fit into some kind of mould that was never going to be right for you.  Your inability to focus on boring things, organize yourself or stick to a routine may have been bewildering to you and others.  Your speed of processing and acting was probably way out of sync with your classmates.  You will have learned very early on that you were getting this whole life thing totally wrong (according to the neuro-typicals).  

You may have even experienced making a mess in every single area of your life.  And that will have been reinforced by nearly every authority figure that you’d come into contact with.  Not only will you feel different, but there is a good chance that you learned that this difference meant that you are a bad person.  In short, you probably feel ill-equipped to navigate the world that you live in and carry a lot of shame for the mistakes you’ve made along the way. 

These mistakes may include addictions, illegal activities, failures, unfinished projects, shattered relationships and a ton of horrible decisions.  You may feel flawed, broken and scattered and not know how to start to pick up the pieces. 

You are not alone. You are not bad, crazy, broken, lazy, shameful or guilty.

This book will give you an explanation of why life is so hard and why you do the things you do.  You will find out that you are not alone.  You will be able to release the guilt and shame when you realize that thousands of other people with ADHD have made the same or similar mistakes because of how their brains work.  You are not a bad person.  You are not crazy.  This is not about making excuses; it’s about understanding your internal hardware and getting the updated operating manual.  Apply generous daily doses of grace and forgiveness to the equation, and life will start to flow much more easily.

If you have out-of-control ADHD and are ready for operation clean-up, you are in the right place.  If you are done with feeling scattered, shattered and overwhelmed, and you are ready to dig deep and make changes, then read on.  This is not about giving you a magic pill or formula; instead it is helping you to see what YOU can do to keep restoring balance in a life that is constantly changing. 

This book is for you if you want to improve your mental and emotional health, especially if you struggle with anxiety, fear, depression or sleep problems.  It’s for you if you’ve lost trust in yourself and the world. If life feels scary and unsafe, don’t worry, you’ll find solutions.  If your habits are out-of-control and you desperately want to experience self-discipline, this book is yours. 

If you are ready to rise up because you are dissatisfied with yourself and maybe the people you surround yourself with.  What used to be acceptable, no longer is. You might have toxic relationships in your life that you know you need to let go of.  This book will help you get on the right path and take your first steps.  You will learn that setbacks are not a signal to give up, but opportunities to learn and dig deeper. 

If it is an improvement in your physical health that you are looking for, you’ve picked up the right book. If you want to reduce chronic inflammation and pain caused by lifestyle illnesses, the suggestions here will help you do that too. 

If you have a long history of struggling with yourself and would like to stop that internal battle, Ayurveda can help you.  You will find a way for all of the parts of yourself to finally get on the same page and want the same thing. 

Maybe you feel like you’ve tried everything, jumping from one thing to the next, but nothing has worked. You’ve got enough alarms, reminders, calendars, sticky notes, lists, apps and gadgets to sink a battleship.  You’ve made and broken a bazillion promises to yourself, and broken is how you feel.  I write for you.

It is written for you if you have decided that it is time to make better choices in your life and break the habits that are messing with your mind and body, but you don’t know how.  The practices of Ayurveda can help you overcome impulsive and compulsive urges and end the need for your life to be a perpetual battle.  Willpower doesn’t work, and you can finally stop trying to depend on it.  

If you long to feel at home in your own skin, and make friends with your body, this is for you.  If you are overeating, eating the wrong things or drinking too much, there is help here for you.  If you are hooked on shopping, addicted to your devices, or not getting enough exercise, Ayurveda can help with that too.

If it is deep and lasting happiness that you are seeking, you have come to the right place. The practices of Ayurveda and Yoga can help you transform your life, through diet, meditation, exercise, healthy habits and self-care routines.  Learning to be in the present moment instead of being distracted by a million things is the way forward.

Everyone is different, and we all change over time.  So what works for you right now, might not work next year.  Your life is an ever-changing journey, one in which you will constantly be challenged, and you will keep evolving into the next version of you.  There is no destination; it’s all a process.  

What never changes is the human condition of going out of balance and then searching for ways to find it again.  This book is about learning to recognize what takes you out of balance and what helps you to restore it.  You will also learn practices that help you to make better choices so that you spend less and less time going too far out of balance in the first place.  

I’m here to tell you that while your life may be broken right now, you can fix it, and you are not flawed.  You can pick up the pieces, one at a time.  You are a child of the Universe, and as such, you do have a right to be here and to take up as much space as you need.  You are needed.  You have a purpose, and you can discover what this is and live it.  You can learn to release the shame, forgive yourself and others and move forward.  You can live your best life. You can find happiness, peace and calm.  You can learn habits that will help you step into the best version of yourself and enjoy living in your zone of genius.  In every area of your life. You can have as many fresh starts as you need.  In fact, make a point of having a new one every single day.  Let go of right and wrong and the quest for perfection; it does not exist. Instead, embrace this opportunity to accept your glorious diversity while doing your best to live a life of moderation and balance. 

Most importantly, know that having ADHD is not your fault.  It’s a symptom of so many other broken aspects of modern-day living.  The pace of life, inequality, the rising cost of living, political fears, wars, the sheer amount of information that comes at us and the ever-increasing rate of change. While we can’t change the world we live in, we can change how we do our own life.  I know; I’ve done just that, and Ayurveda has given me the tools to do that.

You In? I’ll be posting every week(ish)

Ready to learn and fly? In a grounded kind of way ;)

I’d love for you to come on this journey with me.

Love Kay x

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