Welcome
A very warm welcome to the Autumn Ayurveda blog! As you guessed, it's Autumn Red writing… creator and founder of Autumn Ayurveda (name probably gave that one away hehe)
Soooo welcome again to my new website, welcome to my blog and welcome to the rambles that will be coming your way each month. I'll be covering a wide range of topics all around health & wellbeing. From yoga & movement, nutrition & food… to philosophy & art.
I would say one of my major characteristics is an insatiable curiosity for ANYTHING & EVERYTHING. So I'll do my best to funnel the info and prioritise only the bestest or very most interesting/relevant.
This first one is just a introduction really.
For those of you who know me, well hello there stalker… (joking please come back) and for those who don't… I'll tell you a little extra about myself that hasn't been covered in the “About Autumn” section.
I'm a Yoga Teacher & student of Ayurvedic Medicine who is currently en route moving over to Dubai from the UK (eeek!). I have a performing arts background & also train in calisthenics and aerial circus, with extra love for silks & straps.
I was born with a deep love of philosophy, starting with the great myths of the Greeks, fascination with the stars, followed by a deep dive into Buddhism and finally landing into the realms of Indian philosophy and influences from the B-G. But also can we count Avatar as a philosophy too…?!
So my need to answer the question WHY is not necessarily new at all. Neither is my quest for health… almost 5 years ago things took a VERY quick nose dive as I developed the symptoms and eventually (4 years later) a western diagnosis of “Inflammatory Spondyloarthropathy”. I know what you're thinking. Sheeeeesh it's a mouthful… took a lot of practice for me to remember the name of this bad boy.
It’s actually an umbrella term for 4 inflammatory autoimmune conditions: crohns/ulcerative colitis, rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis & psoriatic arthritis. Now I'm not saying I have all these conditions all the time, they flare up and down and not necessarily manifest all together. There are many grey areas… and to be honest outside of drugs or very basic physiotherapy… I wasn't offered much help at all.
In fact my final diagnosis was given over the phone. I waited years for an appointment with both gastroenterology and also rheumatology, was finally seen by an NHS physio who told me to keep doing what I was already doing… and actually a doctor once initially asked me in a very sassy way (at the height of a flare) “what do you think I should do?”
Shocked and upset I asked myself…. Well, if I knew that I wouldn't have been sat in her office would I?
But in fact those moments, those feelings of lack of support, misunderstanding and confusion… even the doctor’s sassy question meant I had to step up. Take responsibility for my health and fill the gaps that presented themselves. I felt lost, detached from my body who was misbehaving and hurting me.
My body was hurting me because she was crying out for the attention I had been refusing to give. For the attention to all those feelings and experiences I had suppressed. I blamed my body for hurting me when in actuality I was hurting myself.
I knew the solution was not skin deep.
And so I sought answers in Eastern medicine and Eastern philosophy… and I've never felt better.
There is a lot more to my story, just like everyone else's… but for now all you need to know is that it's my life's purpose to help others find healing for themselves.
It is my life's purpose to be in service to others.
And so… the adventure continues.
Dubai baby!
See you in the next post.
A 🍁