Coco's Story
I have been a seeker for as long as I can remember, and have had the opportunity to travel extensively throughout my life. I have lived in five countries and visited numerous others. There is something to be said about one’s exposure to travel at an early age that makes one feel like they simultaneously belong everywhere, and yet nowhere at all. I’m still searching for an appropriate word for this syndrome among the languages I know.
I was born in the land of Ayurveda and yoga with a strong tradition of spirituality and herbalism. Most of these sacred arts were part of an oral tradition, passed down generationally, and inculcated into the daily rhythm of our lives. We stretched daily, breathed deeply, put very organic, very excellent things in our bodies and walked every night after dinner. We had no electronics and no interest in television, and chose to spend weekends outdoors in nature. A snack was an orange eaten outside in the sunlight, and sugar was a rare treat. For the odd time one fell ill, we visited a homeopath or a herbalist over a traditional doctor. We used spices from the kitchen to heal common ailments and connected socially with one another on a daily basis.
Growing up with these traditions, I always found them tedious and never questioned what they meant until I went overseas for studies and saw what happened when I stopped following them. My diet and habits changed drastically. It took three years, but I found my body falling apart. I had hypoglycemia, bad skin, acid reflux and a host of other conditions. At the time I lived with a Sicilian woman who left me with a priceless lesson: we look like what we eat most. I examined my highly processed, sugar-laden student diet and immediately switched to a much healthier one with fresh produce in season and learnt how to cook fresh meat I would buy from the weekly markets. This changed my mind, my body and my perspective on how we eat, and started me on the long winding road of the pursuit of lasting wellness.
The world is not an easy place to live in. Our alarm clock lifestyle, tight deadlines, fast food and social media comparisons are enough to bring the best of us to our knees. Add to the mix generational and interpersonal trauma, chemical imbalances brought on by a bad diet and environment, and our virtual relationship with screens, and you have a ticking time bomb of latent chronic conditions and mood disorders waiting to happen. Most of us cannot bear to really look at our lives and choose to distract ourselves- completely and constantly. Our cycles of distraction with virtual worlds put us vastly out of touch with ourselves and what we desire. We don’t move as much as we used to, or as much as we need to. And all we perceive of life is colored by these filters and not our reality.
Over the next decade, I too, fought all types of afflictions brought on by patterns that didn't serve me well. Despite my best intentions, my discipline lapsed, and I bought into the myth of the 'hustle'- i.e. going hard and fast at our goals, putting sugar, caffeine and alcohol into our system to ‘power through’. That probably works in your twenties. For some. Half of the time. Stress, desk jobs, over-caffeinating and terrible diets are the opposite of what we need in order to attain balance and fulfillment of any kind.
Over the years, endless rigors of a desk job caught up with me and I had a debilitating back injury in which I ruptured two discs at the same time. My world became a continuous montage of pain and despair. Not used to relying on pills to feel better, and having lost hope that I would ever recover, I started exploring the vast universe of complementary therapies and integrative medicine. I dove in deep and tried everything I could find! I had lost all hope that I would recover completely, so I had nothing to lose. After experimenting with all kinds of rare and exotic remedies and rituals, I learned a lot about how the healing response works in our bodies, and the role of the mind in facilitating that. I understood that health is nothing but a delicate balance of the trifecta- mind, body and spirit. I also understood that no remedy or methodology alone is the fountain of youth, and that integral to the healing is the patient essentially believing they will recover. This is where the counselling, belief reinforcement and bedside manner of the practitioner come in.
During this time, I also learnt the simple and powerful discipline of checking in with myself and the benefits of maintaining daily practices for optimum health. I discovered that each thing I imbibed and consistently brought into practice had far reaching effects into various aspects of my life. As time elapsed and my learning grew, I came to form connections between all that I know of ancient knowledge around healing, as well as its connection with the latest evidence in science.
I cannot possibly list all the things I have surmounted using holistic medicine here, but rest assured that I was cause-driven enough to park my fifteen year long career as an architect/ urban planner to foray into this. In my opinion, the truth behind good health and great productivity is simple, elegant and effortless, albeit involves a mindset change, and therefore a lifestyle change.
There has been a paradigmatic shift in our thinking and more and more people are focused on optimizing wellness without medication. In that, they are willing to discover and try out holistic medicine and other complementary modalities. We are now rediscovering the ancient ways, and validating the brilliance of that knowledge. I am purpose driven to share what I know and make a lasting difference to your lives. Please support me on my journey