Yogacharya Swami Anantdev
Yoga Shibir and Ayurvedic Oil workshop
June 8, 2008
Anantdev started out with several pranayams, which he explained removed disease from our bodies and gave us strength and protection. Then we did yoga dance to limber up. He taught us nauli and we tried quite a few asanas. This was all done in a playful, joyful mood. Look how far he jumped off the floor.
I was really looking forward to the Ayurvedic Oils session as he helped to cure my spine of severe pain when I was in Chicago. The day before we went for a ride on the gator and we would stop as he pointed out various plants that they have in India and what medicinal properties they bestowed.
We decided to catch the workshop with the Tibetan Monks at the Om Center that afternoon. We arrived back at the Temple about minutes before 3 pm and none of us had eaten yet. So we fed the group of 10.
The Ayurvedic oil session was awesome. Rather than just talk, Anantdev demonstrated on everyone who wanted it. What joy Nancy Scott had when she was able to close her hand after he worked on it and said a healing prayer for only a few minutes.
Nancy emailed Leela:
I certainly found Anantdev to be charming and wish I could have spent more time talking about plants with him. He said the wild mustard we are finding to be infesting our woodlands is a very useful plant in India. I didnŐt have time to find out what all he knew about the plant. I thought it was interesting that there were so many plants we agreed on what they were useful for. We really did not have enough time to really talk though. The session with him was interesting.
The massage was very revealing about the limitations of our medicine. Medicine in this country is very much hands off the patient and just find a drug to give or have surgery. My right hand has lost most of its strength and I am not able to close it as a fist because of overwork from using hand pruners for so many years (30+). I drop things so much because of that hand. I did have some relief for about 3 months after getting a very painful cortisone shot in my hand last summer. The shot is painful lasting for about 2-3 days, then there is no pain and the hand was normal for nearly 3 months. After a little while of doing the massage on my hand and finger that refused to close, I could very nearly make a fist, though not with any strength. It was a little painful when he first began, but the more he worked my hand and finger, the closer I was to being able to close my hand into a fist.:
