Boring is the new zen. In this episode I talk about why slowing down makes me boring and why I’m totally happy with that description. Pitta and vata types might relate.

Click here to listen to the full episode or subscribe to The Simple Ayurveda Podcast on iTunes.

Welcome to the Simple Ayurveda podcast. I’m Angela Perger, and this is a place where we discuss how ancient wisdom can be applied to your everyday like, so that you can be your happiest, healthiest self. 

Thank you for tuning in to episode 2 of the Simple Ayurveda Podcast-Boring is the New Zen. And today I am talking about why I was happy when my friends called me boring. This happened a few weeks ago, I went to a comedy show to see Amy Shumer, she is fabulous, and the friends that I had met beforehand I know love to drink, and right now I am taking a break from drinking. And I say “taking a break” to take the pressure off myself of saying “I’m never going to do it again” or “I’m doing it again after a certain amount of time” and just to be in the moment. And right now I need to not drink alcohol. So I knew that the friends wouldn’t be happy with that and I really didn’t want to get into it with them. I ordered a fake drink at the bar and when that ran out and they insisted on buying me another one, I told them I didn’t want it and that’s when they said “you’re boring”. And at first I was a little taken aback and surprised, but when I let it sink in for a few moments I realized that I was absolutely happy to be called boring because i have been spending the last 16 years, I’m 36 now, so 18 years since I was 18, drinking and partying and running around like a chicken with my head cut off. And I really hate that phrase, so I’ll have to think of something better to describe the way that i’ve been feeling and acting for all of my adult life. But for the first time, I feel content like boring is something that I want to be. And so I’m not mad at those friends, I look at it with laughter and joy and total acceptance of where they are and where I am and hopefully we can meet somewhere in the middle and connect once in a while. 

But in the meantime, going back to that running around, I think that it really catalysts, the big start of that was when I was 18. Moving away to school, I moved to Tallahassee, I didn’t love it so I moved to Orlando for 2 years after that, I went to grad school in New York for 2 years. I moved to Philadelphia then moved to New Jersey with my now husband, we lived in a country house where i felt a little bit isolated, so after 5 years there I moved to this small beach town where I live now, which I love. During the time that we had been together, my husband and I, we’ve traveled a lot, we’ve been to about 25 different countries, countless states, I have a Bachelor’s degree, a Master’s degree, almost a second Master’s degree in a subject that I could care less about because I felt like I needed it for the job that I no longer want to do. While I was getting that degree I had my son, so I have 2 children now. I also have two 200-hour Yoga certifications and several weekend trainings including kids, prenatal, alignment, and whatever else you can think of. So if you can relate to this, if you have a really long list of things that you have accomplished but it’s not enough for you then you’re probably a Pitta dosha like me. Or the pitta is out of balance and there is this striving, it’s like they say that pitta’s are competitive and I never really looked at myself as a competitive person because I don’t like comparing myself to other people, but really it’s this internal competition where I think that I need to have so much just to prove that I’m good enough. And so, right now I am good enough and I’m stepping off this hamster wheel of achievement, of thinking that I need to go somewhere and do something all of the time, and I’m going to be boring. 

I’ve been dabbling in Ayurveda for about 7 years, but I really immersed myself fully for the past year. I am enrolled in a 650-hour health counselor program that I’m finishing up, but that wasn’t enough. I still signed up to go to a weekend cooking immersion at Kripalu which is a Yoga retreat center in Massachusetts, and it’s absolutely beautiful. And while I was there the first day I got this schedule of all of the additional yoga classes that are offered on top of the cooking classes that I was there for, and set myself up that I wanted to go to everything. The 6am morning wake up class, the 12 o’clock dance class, and then I realized that I don’t need all of that. I’m already a Yoga teacher and yes there is something to gain from those experiences but right now, what I really needed to do after that 5 hour drive to get there was just some Yin Yoga on the floor of the room that I was staying in, and to me that was an “aha” moment Like wow this Ayurveda stuff is working. I noticed that my vata-the air and wind energy of mobility and travel, was elevated and rather than going and doing something else I just got quiet with myself. And that’s the kind of magic that happens by paying attention to what’s going on in your own body and learning how you can make choices to create balance within yourself. 

And so now I want to jump into a few questions and comments that my friends have made to me lately. One of my friends said, “Don’t you want to enjoy life?” and I think that this is so important because this gets right to the core of how I feel often on that fear of missing out. The FOMO. And Ayurveda teaches that misuses of the senses is one of the main causes of physical disease. That our senses are this tool that are here for our protection and our enjoyment and when we pay attention to the things that are senses are telling us, that we can make decisions that go toward health or away from health. And so this idea that “don’t you want to enjoy your life?”, our culture and our society and from my experience is that I need more and more and more to enjoy my life. It’s not enough that I went to 25 countries, I need to go to more. It’s not enough that I’m studying Ayurveda the way that I’m studying it right now, It’s not valid until I go to India, right? Because I need more. I can’t enjoy life unless it includes alcohol. I can’t enjoy life unless it includes staying up late or doing this or that. And for me, someone that’s prone to excessiveness through pitta, through wanting to learn and signing up for class after class and experience after experience, and that vata energy of travel and doing more and going more, it’s time to start to become aware of what that’s doing to me. And it’s starting to unravel. I’m starting to feel frazzled about doing stuff. And all of this travel and things that I’m doing, I’m doing with a toddler and a five year old on top of that. And so, for me, “don’t you want to enjoy life?” An experience that happened just last weekend popped into my head. All of the teachers that work at the yoga studio that I go to were planning on going to a yoga festival on Saturday. So I signed up, I bought a ticket, it’s an hour away and I would have had to wake up and leave early and I realized that my baby just started kindergarten a few weeks ago and he’s go, go, going now Monday through Friday, and Saturday is that day that we spend together because I teach on Sundays. So if I’m going to leave early in the morning to go to a festival and leave him at home, is that really what I want to do? And so, what does enjoying my life actually look like? And I decided just to stay home with him. Which is not my usual type of behavior before studying Ayurveda. 

We did nothing. We ate some muffins from the local bakery. We wore our pajamas out back. The kids played in the hose and made a big, muddy mess, and put mulch all over the place, and then we picked some lemon balm from our garden. I put together a bowl of grapes...and that’s it. And in the past I would’ve thought that tea party needed cheese and crackers and grapes but I’m avoiding all of that because I'm simplifying and I’m following Ayurvedic recommendations for food combining the best that I can, and I’ll share more about that in a future podcast. And it was just such a simple day. We snuggled, we watched movies. And that was enjoying life. That’s what made me happy and I felt balanced and whole and supported and stable and my feet were in the dirt and my Yoga practice was me in my pajamas in the backyard with the kids. 

So I encourage you to consider what does enjoying your life actually look like. And right now if you feel happy and satisfied going out and doing a lot of different things, then do that. Maybe you need to balance some sort of earth energy and so you need some stimulation and you need to get out. But, if you’re like me and you’re just doing it because that’s what you think you need to do to have fun, then maybe reconsider. Reconsider your view of what is fun. 

Another friend recently said to me “I couldn’t follow Ayurveda all of the time.” That ‘s ok too. I don’t follow Ayurveda all of the time. And I don’t think that anyone follows it all of the time. Ayurveda is not an extreme and that is what I love about it. It is the middle way, the middle path, the path of moderation. And it’s just noticing when something brings you into balance, or when something takes you out of balance. And the purpose of an Ayurveda Health Counselor is to help you notice things that you might have missed yourself. Once or twice a month I’ll make a huge bowl of popcorn, I put salt and butter, things that Ayurveda says are not great for my pitta imbalance, and I sit down and watch TV, usually something really trashy like the housewives which I love, and eat it. It goes against everything Ayurveda-eating food while watching TV is not good for agni, the digestive fire, popcorn is dry which elevates my vata even more, and I know I’m doing something that is not going to take me toward wellness. But, I do want to enjoy my life and right now I think this is a fun activity to do once in a while. But the difference for me is that I used to do this kind of thing twice a week, now I do it twice a month. And maybe someday it’ll fade out and i won’t even care to eat it or to watch TV while I’m eating, but right now I’m not there yet. And that’s ok, I accept where I’m at because im following the middle path. And I can look back to a year ago and look at all of the different things I used to do and i was confused, I didn’t even know all of the different ways that i was harming my digestive fire, or the ways that I was misusing my senses. And for me, understanding Ayurveda is just a clue to understanding myself. And yes, sometimes I do something that is going to take me out of balance. But now I have more tools to bring myself back into balance. So on the day that I eat, on the night that I eat the big bowl of popcorn, the next morning I can choose a really simple breakfast, like just a bowl of rice, so that I can allow my agni, my digestive fire, to reset, rather than piling on something else the next morning. And so no, I don’t follow Ayurveda all of the time and you don’t have to either. And that’s what’s so wonderful about it. You can just start incorporating some of the principles right away, and I would say that one of the easiest things to do is just start to notice if you feel like you’re doing too much. And pull back. Stay home. Sacrifice the cost of the ticket if you don’t really want to go anyway. It’s okay to be boring. I’m right there with you. 

You can find out more at simpleayurveda.com all of the social media will be listed in the show notes. Thank you so much for being here. Namaste.