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Path of Practice 2 |
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Path of Practice—A Way We All Can Live - profile of Bri Maya Tiwari, Vedic monk and practitioner of Ayurvedic medicine Healthy & Natural Journal, Dec, 2000 by Bonnie Hartley Continued from page 1. Time became seamless in front of the constantly burning fire. "I wrote voluminously, and wept until it seemed as if I had no more tears to shed. In my journal I wrote page after page about my personal and spiritual history and poured out the most closely guarded secrets in my heart. I rested and dreamed and I had many visions. One vision, in which her father appeared, proved to be a turning point for Bri Maya. "He shook me to my stubborn core. His words were a clarion call to awaken more fully to my true identity. He showed me that I had been killing myself spiritually, shutting out the nourishing energy of my people by cutting myself off from my roots. I wept for weeks following my father's appearance, until the fears, grief, anger, hurt, humiliation and guilt were lifted from my spirit. After four months of reconciling these inner conflicts, my emotional and physical pain dissipated. Gradually, I saw where I had deceived myself, where I had allowed myself to become out of balance." Like a lotus Spring came. "At first I thought I was experiencing the peace the Divine Mother gives just before death. But one afternoon, as I walked outside, the crunch of the dried brambles beneath the melting snow was precisely the invigorating sound my body needed. That was the day I came alive again." (Today, whenever Bri Maya works with people with sluggish or stuck energy, she uses that same sound to reinvigorate them.) Two months later Bri Maya returned to Manhattan. She was 28 years old, weighed only 90 pounds and constantly shook from a fierce inner chill. Doctors could find no sign of cancer anywhere in her body. Bri Maya quotes poet Rashini: "There is a brokenness out of which comes the unbroken. There is a shatteredness out of which comes the unshatterable. There is a sorrow beyond all grief, which leads to joy. And a fragility out of whose depths emerges strength. There is a hollow space too vast for words through which we pass with each loss, out of whose darkness we are sanctioned into being." Sadhana every day It has been more than 20 years now that Bri Maya has been teaching the healing practice of sadhana, the ancient roots of Ayurveda, the well from which Ayurveda flowed and hasn't been practiced in hundreds of years. "What I love is that when we bring the wholesome practices of nature back into our lives, understanding its rhythm and memory, our personal consciousness rises naturally. Not as a prescriptive that just sort of fits in between busy schedules, you know, healing that gets squeezed in between busy schedules and meditating long hours battling our thoughts." Bri Maya continues, "We have had every possible vehicle to our higher self. Only we think we have to run for it and take time out. We run to our therapy, run to our yoga. Two very, very counterproductive ideas: run and take time out. What we need is to take time in and reclaim our self in our everyday life. People say, I don't have time to do everything to get healthy. Meanwhile, they're missing the obvious. We reach for the solution so far away when it's right within the self, only we bury it so deep we think we have to go to the extremes of the earth to get it. "By finding spiritual accord in our daily routines, we can find it elsewhere and everywhere in our ancestry and in clearing our spaces. It's in a delicious naturally grown fruit, one that hasn't been tampered with, of course; in a deep, connected breath to a clear thought; in music that speaks to your heart; in kind words of appreciation. And so," Bri Maya's mouth turns up in an ebullient smile as she cradles her drum, "Thank you!" Bonnie Hartley is a health writer and healing workshop leader from Brooklyn, New York. Bonnie Hartley worked for more than a year to get an interview with Bri Maya Tiwari, a Vedic monk who runs the Wise Earth School in the Smoky Mountains. Bri Maya is an internationally renowned emissary of peace who has singlehandedly revived an ancient Ayurvedic tradition. Her story is the focus of our Mind-Body Health column this month.
COPYRIGHT 2000 Measurement & Data Corporation
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