I think this is exactly where we can get ourselves confused and into our own personal trouble.

Many watch the news, worry about what might happen next, and try to predict, protect, prepare, control.

And meanwhile their internal world becomes just as chaotic.

Ayurveda has always brought me back to something much simpler.

Let the world be the world.

Know that the universe is whole, even when from our tiny human viewpoint it looks anything but.

And then look at what is happening much closer to home, in our own lives...

Am I frightened?

Overstimulated?

Exhausted?

Angry?

Scattered?

Living too quickly?

Ignoring what my body has been telling me for months?

This is where our real work begins.

Not by pretending that what happens in the wider world doesn’t matter. It does.

And certainly not by using spirituality as an excuse to sit quietly and accept things that need to change.

If we want a kinder world, a healthier world, a more thoughtful world, then we have to help create it.

But we begin where we actually have some influence.

In our own bodies.

Our own homes.

The way we speak to somebody.

What we buy.

What we tolerate.

What we refuse to tolerate.

How we care for ourselves and other people.

Even our little world matters.

Perhaps preparing for uncertain times is not about becoming better at predicting what is coming.

Perhaps it is about becoming steady enough inside ourselves to meet whatever does.

It usually seems to be younger people who say this.

Closely followed by, “It’s all in the mind.”

Well no. Not quite.

The body knows far more about itself than the imaginary mind would sometimes like to admit.

Yes, there are people who appear to change illness, pain or physical decline through mindset alone. They are remarkable. They are also rare — which is probably why we hear about them so often.

Ayurveda has never pretended that the body doesn’t age.

It does.

That is its nature.

The tissues change. Recovery changes. Digestion changes. Sleep changes. Strength changes. What nourished us at 30 may not be enough at 60, 70 or 80.

And the body carries things.

Grief. Worry. Shock. Exhaustion. Pain. Years of pushing on when we really needed rest.

We cannot simply think those things away.

We cannot meditate them away, positively affirm them away, or decide that because we have “done the work” the body should now fall obediently into line.

What we can do is work with it.

And this is where I think Ayurveda is profoundly sensible.

Not dramatic interventions.

Not another heroic programme that lasts three weeks.

Consistency.

Small, regular actions that repeatedly tell the body:

you are fed

you are rested

you are safe

you are cared for

Enough sleep. Warmth. Good food. Movement. Oil. Rhythm. Attention. Pleasure. Beauty. Rest before collapse rather than after it.

None of it is particularly glamorous.

But done consistently, it changes the ground we are living from.

Age is not just a number.

It is biology, history, experience and time written into the body.

And perhaps ageing well is not about pretending none of that is happening.

Perhaps it is about becoming much better at listening to the body that has carried us this far.

Honestly it couldn't be more tedious, seeing people jumping in the medical materialistic model of fix it quickly …

And I find myself increasingly uninterested in most of that.

Because Ayurveda, at its best, asks much more interesting questions than What should I eat? or Which herb should I take?

The question that interests me now, at 75, is this ~

What actually really helps us remain alive and energetic in our own life as we grow older?

Not simply alive biologically, physically but alive in the sense of still being curious.

Still being responsive.

Still able to change our minds.

Still interested in beauty, ideas, people, places, creativity.

Still capable of being surprised.

Still able to feel that there is something ahead of us.

This is where Rasayana becomes fascinating.

Rasayana is usually and often translated as rejuvenation or longevity, but I think those words can make it sound superficial, and might appear though the ancient Ayurvedic physicians were searching for the equivalent of an anti-ageing treatment.

No they were asking something much larger.

What helps us preserves vitality?

What diminishes our vitality ?

What allows a human being to continue functioning with clarity and resilience as people get older .

And what does nourishment really mean to us once we stop reducing it to calories, nutrients and supplements?

The older I become, I am less convinced that quality ageing is about continually adding things like …

Another supplement.

Another practice.

Another piece of advice.

Another expert telling us what we should be doing.

Sometimes later life seems to ask almost the opposite of us.

To become more discerning.

To notice what exhausts us.

To stop carrying what no longer belongs to us.

To recognise what we can genuinely digest, physically, emotionally and psychologically.

To become much more selective about where our energy goes.

And perhaps most importantly, to remain interested.

I have begun to think that one of the most revealing signs of vitality is not how young somebody looks or even how physically energetic they are.

It is whether life can still reach them.

Can beauty still move them?

Can an idea still disturb something they thought they knew?

Can they become absorbed in making something?

Can they fall in love with a place, a painting, a garden, a book?

Can they still say, I don't know. I want to understand that.

That interests me far more than the modern obsession with extending lifespan.

I don't particularly want to spend the next part of my life turning myself into a perfectly optimised 75-year-old.

I want to remain available to life.

And after more than forty years of Ayurveda, psychology, meditation, creativity and simply living through a great deal, I increasingly think those things belong together.

That is what im exploringhere.

Not Ayurveda as a collection of rules.

Not ageing as a problem to solve.

Not spirituality as an escape from ordinary human life.

But what it actually means to live intelligently and fully in the later part of a life.

Over the coming months, my Rasayana writing will go much further into this ~ energy, nourishment, sleep, the senses, creativity, digestion, ageing, nervous-system resilience, beauty, meaning, and the very practical question of what we should preserve and what we might finally be able to let go.

Some of my writing here will remain free.

But the deeper Rasayana work will increasingly be for paid subscribers.

I want the paid part of this Substack to become a proper body of work, not simply more posts, but something that gradually builds into a substantial exploration of later life through the knowledge I have accumulated over more than four decades.

If you have been reading quietly and recognising something in these ideas, I would very much like you to join me.

Paid membership is currently £6 a month.

You are not paying for more wellness information.

There is already an endless supply of that.

You are joining me for the deeper enquiry.

And I think we are only just beginning.

It does not separate a racing mind from broken sleep, poor digestion, exhaustion, vigilance, withdrawal or an inability to think clearly.

It sees disturbance as something that can move through the whole system.

In Ayurvedic terms, prolonged fear and uncertainty can seriously disturb Vata, the principle associated with movement, the nervous system, thought, sensory processing, sleep and regulation.

And when Vata becomes deeply unsettled, people can begin to look very different from themselves.

They may become agitated.

Unable to concentrate.

Unable to read important documents.

Avoidant.

Sleepless.

Hyper-alert.

Or simply unable to make good decisions.

From the outside, this can easily be labelled as non-cooperation, instability, hostility or poor judgement.

But Ayurveda would ask a different question ~

What has happened to this person’s capacity to remain internally steady under threat?

That does not excuse behaviour.

It does not tell us whether an accusation is true or false.

But it does remind us that a frightened human being is not operating from the same physiological and psychological state as a settled one.

Modern neuroscience now gives us another language for this, sympathetic activation, stress hormones, threat response, impaired attention and decision-making.

Ayurveda has been looking at the same human reality through a whole-person lens for thousands of years.

And this is why I believe accusation, investigation and prolonged institutional uncertainty need to be understood as more than administrative processes.

For some people, they become a profound disturbance of the whole organism.

If institutions understood that, we might interpret some behaviours very differently.

Your name is now on paperwork you are frightened to read.

Other people are discussing your character, your judgement, your family, your work, perhaps your entire future.

You know you are expected to respond calmly, clearly and promptly.

But your mind is racing.

You cannot concentrate.

You dread opening your emails.

You read the same paragraph three times and still cannot take it in.

You miss a deadline.

You become angry in a meeting.

You avoid a phone call because you simply cannot face hearing one more thing.

And then the words begin to appear:

non-cooperative.

difficult.

avoidant.

hostile.

lacking insight.

This is the part I think we understand very poorly.

A frightened person does not always look frightened.

They may look obstructive.

They may look angry.

They may look evasive.

They may appear not to care.

But inside, they may be overwhelmed by the sheer terror of what could happen to their life.

And once that behaviour is interpreted as evidence about their character, the situation becomes even more frightening.

The person who is already struggling to function now has to defend not only the accusation, but their reaction to being accused.

That matters.

Not because every accusation is wrong.

Not because institutions should abandon procedure.

But because human beings under threat do not always behave like calm, rational participants in a process.

If we fail to understand that, we risk turning distress into evidence.

And sometimes, what looks like non-cooperation may actually be someone trying desperately not to fall apart.

We tend to focus on the process itself: the evidence, the meetings, the correspondence, the deadlines, the decisions.

What receives far less attention is what psychological threat does to the person expected to navigate all of that.

Under serious accusation, the ability to think clearly, absorb information, respond proportionately and participate effectively can become impaired.

And that matters.

Because fear can be read as avoidance.

Overwhelm can be read as non-cooperation.

Anger can be read as hostility.

Inconsistency can be read as unreliability.

My work focuses on this intersection between accusation, psychological threat and institutional process.

I am interested in a simple but important question:

What happens when the person most in need of clear thinking becomes less able to think clearly because of the very process they are inside?

This is not about innocence or guilt.

It is about human functioning under threat.

My background spans more than 40 years across psychology, Ayurveda, meditation, human behaviour and the relationship between our internal state and our ability to function in the world.

That experience has increasingly brought me to one conclusion:

there is a real need for support that sits between legal representation, psychological understanding and practical participation.

Because being given the opportunity to respond is not the same as being psychologically able to respond well.

( meaning rejuvenation, kind off )

Scientists are looking at telomeres, oxidative stress, inflammation, cellular repair, gene expression and the biological processes involved in ageing.

Recent research has even examined Amalaki Rasayana, one of Ayurveda's traditional rejuvenative preparations, through measures including oxidative enzymes, heart-rate variability and gene expression. Much of this work is still early, and some of it is in animals rather than humans, so we should be careful about what we claim.

But I am fascinated by the question underneath it.

Can modern biology explain what Ayurveda has been describing for thousands of years?

After more than forty-five years with Ayurveda, I have a slightly different question.

What if science eventually explains some of Rasayana beautifully, but still misses part of what the ancient physicians were trying to tell us?

Because they were not only asking what happens inside a cell.

They were asking ~

What sort of life allows a human being to remain vital?

That question has followed me for most of my adult life.

I trained for four years in a monastery and then in India.

I watched people live according to rhythms that, to my Western mind, could initially seem unnecessarily restrictive.

Things were done at certain times.

Foods changed with seasons.

Rest was taken seriously.

Digestion was watched carefully.

Nature wasn't something you visited at the weekend.

It was part of the conversation about health.

At first, like many Westerners, I wanted the useful bits.

Tell me which herb.

Tell me which oil.

Tell me what to eat.

Tell me what works.

It took much longer to understand that Ayurveda was asking me to look at something far less convenient.

How are you living?

That question is much harder than swallowing a capsule.

And at 75, I understand it differently again.

Because age removes some of our ability to get away with things.

When I was younger, I could override myself.

Work too hard.

Eat at the wrong time.

Ignore tiredness.

Push through.

Recover.

Begin again.

Many of us spend decades living like this.

We borrow from the body and assume there will always be enough left in the account.

Then one day the terms change.

Recovery takes longer.

Sleep matters more.

Noise affects us differently.

Poor food leaves a greater mark.

Too much activity has consequences.

So does too little.

Relationships can nourish us or exhaust us.

The place we live can enliven us or somehow diminish us.

Even the things we look at every day begin to matter.

And this is where Rasayana becomes far more interesting to me than the phrase “anti-ageing”.

I don't want to be anti-ageing.

I am ageing.

There is no argument to be won there.

What interests me is how much life remains inside the years.

That is different.

Modern research naturally wants measurable mechanisms.

Oxidative damage.

Inflammatory pathways.

Mitochondrial function.

Gene expression.

Cellular resilience.

And I welcome that enquiry.

Research on Amalaki Rasayana, for example, is beginning to investigate whether some traditional claims might correspond with measurable effects on oxidative stress and other biological markers. That is interesting science, but it is not yet the whole human story.

Because Charaka did not have a blood panel.

The ancient physicians did not have genomic sequencing.

They had something we have almost lost.

Long observation.

They watched what happened to human beings over time.

They watched what weakened them.

What restored them.

What made them dull.

What made them bright.

What happened when appetite disappeared.

When sleep became disturbed.

When grief remained unresolved.

When the seasons changed.

When people lived against their own nature for too long.

And from that observation came a profoundly different understanding of longevity.

Not simply ~

How do we stop the body deteriorating?

But, what continually feeds life?

There is a Sanskrit word that becomes important here: ojas.

We will come to it properly later because it deserves much more than a paragraph.

But ojas points towards something that anyone who has worked deeply with people recognises.

There are people who are technically well but somehow depleted.

And there are people who, despite age or difficulty, possess an unmistakable vitality.

You can see it.

Their eyes are alive.

They are interested.

Responsive.

Present.

There is something available in them.

I have met very old people with it.

And much younger people who seemed already to have lost it.

That has stayed with me.

Because perhaps longevity was never simply about adding years.

Perhaps the deeper question was always ~

How do we protect that quality of aliveness?

And that takes us beyond herbs very quickly.

It takes us into food.

Sleep.

Rhythm.

Relationships.

Sex.

Purpose.

The senses.

Environment.

Thought.

Beauty.

Creativity.

Solitude.

Belonging.

And, eventually, consciousness itself.

This is why Rasayana cannot really be reduced to a product labelled “rejuvenating”.

The product may have value.

The herb may have value.

Amalaki may have value.

But you cannot continually deplete yourself and expect a herb to negotiate peace on your behalf.

I think this is one of the great problems with the way ancient knowledge is sometimes absorbed into modern wellness.

We extract the substance and leave behind the intelligence.

Ashwagandha becomes a capsule.

Turmeric becomes an anti-inflammatory.

Meditation becomes ten minutes on an app.

Rasayana becomes an anti-ageing supplement.

And something vast becomes very small.

After all these years, I find myself moving in the opposite direction.

I am less interested in collecting more remedies.

I am more interested in seeing clearly what sustains life, and what quietly steals it.

At 75 that isn't philosophy for me.

It is immediate.

I notice what gives me energy.

I notice what takes it.

I notice that beauty matters to me enormously.

Nature matters.

Creative thought matters.

The people around me matter.

What I allow into my mind matters.

Rest matters.

And I am increasingly unwilling to pretend that these things are secondary to health.

Ayurveda never regarded them as secondary.

That may be one of the things modern science eventually finds hardest to measure.

Because you can measure an inflammatory marker.

It is rather harder to measure what happens to a person who has spent twenty years living a life that no longer belongs to them.

Yet I would never dismiss its effect.

Perhaps this is where the ancient and modern enquiries become most interesting together.

Let science look inside the cell.

We need that knowledge.

But let us not forget to look at the person who contains the cell.

The room she wakes up in.

The food she eats.

The rhythm she keeps.

The relationships she tolerates.

The beauty she experiences.

The thoughts she repeats.

The work she continues long after it has stopped nourishing her.

The life she has built around herself.

Because Rasayana asks a question that reaches much further than biology.

Does the way you are living continually replenish life, or continually ask life to replenish you?

That, for me, is where the real study of longevity begins.

And in the next part of this series I want to go deeper into ojas, that extraordinary Ayurvedic idea of the reserve that gives us resilience, radiance and the capacity to meet life.

Because once we understand ojas, ageing begins to look very different.

Some lived for long periods in forests, mountains and remote places.

Some chose solitude.

Some lived in caves and hermitages, away from the constant interruption of society.

And they watched.

They watched the seasons change.

They watched what happened to the body in heat and cold.

They noticed the effect of hunger, fasting, abundance and scarcity.

They observed sleep.

Breath.

Digestion.

Sexual energy.

Exhaustion.

Stillness.

Plants.

Animals.

The movement of the sun and moon.

The great celestial rhythms by which human beings once measured their lives.

We might say, poetically, that they listened to the stars.

But more importantly, they learned to listen to life.

This is the world from which Rasayana emerged.

Not from a laboratory.

Not from a supplement company.

Not from the modern obsession with appearing younger.

Rasayana belongs to one of the oldest traditions of enquiry into how a human being can preserve vitality, intelligence, resilience and clarity as life progresses.

I have studied and worked with Ayurveda for more than forty-five years, including four years of training in India, and I think we lose something important when we reduce Rasayana to a list of rejuvenating herbs.

Because Rasayana was never simply about taking something.

It was about understanding the conditions in which life flourishes.

That distinction matters enormously.

The early Ayurvedic physicians were not looking at the body as an isolated machine.

They were looking at a human being living inside nature.

A body affected by season.

A mind affected by experience.

Digestion affected by emotion.

Sleep affected by rhythm.

Vitality affected by what we repeatedly consume, not only as food, but through the senses.

And ageing affected by the way an entire life is being lived.

That is a far more sophisticated proposition than “take this herb for longevity.”

Rasayana means more than rejuvenation

The word is often translated as rejuvenation, restorative therapy or the promotion of longevity.

All of those descriptions contain something useful.

But they can also make Rasayana sound like an ancient version of the modern anti-ageing industry.

It isn't.

The deeper enquiry is much more interesting:

What continually nourishes a human being well enough that the quality of life itself can be preserved?

Not preserved forever.

Ayurveda has never promised immortality.

Ageing is part of nature.

Change is part of nature.

Death is part of nature.

The question is not how to defeat those things.

The question is how to remain as vital, clear, responsive and fully inhabited as possible while life is still ours.

That is a very different ambition.

Nature was the original teacher

This is something my own years in India impressed upon me very deeply.

Nature is not scenery in Ayurveda.

It is instruction.

The seasons tell us when to conserve and when to expand.

Plants show us different forms of strength.

Daylight alters our physiology.

Temperature alters appetite.

Wind alters the nervous system.

Age alters our reserves.

Life is constantly speaking to the body.

The problem is that most of us have become extremely good at overriding the conversation.

We eat according to clocks.

Sleep according to schedules.

Work through exhaustion.

Use stimulation to overcome depletion.

Use restriction to fight the body.

Use supplements to compensate for lives that are fundamentally wearing us out.

Then we are surprised when vitality disappears.

Rasayana begins somewhere else.

It asks ~

What is being depleted?

And then ~

What would genuinely restore it?

That restoration may involve food.

Herbs.

Sleep.

Oil.

Touch.

Breath.

Sexual restraint or expression.

Company.

Solitude.

Beauty.

Spiritual practice.

A change of season.

Or sometimes a change in the way a person is living altogether.

This is why I regard Rasayana as one of Ayurveda's most intelligent teachings for later life.

Because by the time we reach our fifties, sixties, seventies and beyond, we have accumulated more than years.

We have accumulated habits.

Stress.

Loss.

Knowledge.

Relationships.

Responsibilities.

Pleasures.

Regrets.

Ways of thinking.

Ways of exhausting ourselves.

And ways of replenishing ourselves.

Rasayana asks us to look at all of it.

Not with fear.

Not with the desperate idea that ageing must somehow be prevented.

But with discrimination.

What still nourishes me?

What no longer does?

What strengthens life?

What slowly drains it?

What does this body need now, not the body I had at thirty?

These are ancient questions.

And I think they have become extraordinarily modern ones.

Because we may have more information about longevity than any generation before us, while knowing surprisingly little about how to live in a way that actually feels sustaining.

That is where I want to begin this Rasayana series.

Not with pills.

Not with protocols.

Not with promises of turning back the clock.

But with the intelligence from which Rasayana originally emerged:

pay close enough attention to life, and life begins to tell you what it needs.

In the next part, I want to look at something even more important ~ what Ayurveda believed we are actually trying to preserve when we talk about longevity.

Because living longer and possessing more life are not necessarily the same thing.

After all I am a Master Trainer

Im going to do a body of work that you can actually follow, where one piece leads naturally into another and, over time, you begin to understand Ayurveda rather than simply collect bits of information about it.

I've spent more than 40 years studying, practising and teaching Ayurveda, including four years of training in a Vedic Monastery and Clinical Training India.

I could probably write about it for the rest of my life and still not reach the end of what it has taught me.

And I will continue to publish free articles here.

But I'm also beginning something deeper for paid subscribers.

My Rasayana series.

Rasayana is one of Ayurveda's great bodies of knowledge concerned with nourishment, restoration, resilience and how we live as we age.

Not anti-ageing.

Not another longevity hack.

And certainly not a list of supplements designed to make us believe we can outwit time.

I want to explore what Rasayana actually means when we apply it to a real human life: food, digestion, sleep, energy, the senses, daily rhythm, emotional life, depletion, creativity, ageing and the way we inhabit our lives as the years pass.

The articles will build upon one another, so you aren't just buying access to individual posts.

You are following a developing programme of Ayurvedic understanding.

There will be knowledge, practical guidance, things to observe in your own body and life, and a much deeper exploration of Ayurveda than I can reasonably give away indefinitely.

So I'm making an early-subscriber offer.

The first 50 people who join as paid subscribers can join for £6 a month.

After those 50 places are taken, the subscription will become £9 a month for new paid subscribers.

I want the people who help me build this from the beginning to have something in return for doing so.

If you've been reading my free work and thinking, I want to understand more of this, the Rasayana series is where we go deeper.

Forty-plus years of Ayurveda has given me an enormous amount I still want to pass on.

This is how I'm going to do it.

Linda

So we are told to keep doing more or less the same things.

Eat less. Exercise more. Build muscle. Improve your sleep. Reduce your stress. Take the supplements. Get your steps in. Drink more water. Increase your protein.

Much of this advice is perfectly reasonable.

And yet I meet people in later life who are doing an extraordinary number of reasonable things and still don't feel particularly well.

They are tired.

Their digestion has changed.

Sleep has become less predictable.

Weight settles in places it never used to.

Recovery takes longer.

Foods they once tolerated no longer suit them.

They can be simultaneously exhausted and unable to settle.

And eventually they begin to wonder what they are doing wrong.

I think we are asking the wrong question.

After more than forty years studying, practising and teaching Ayurveda and now inhabiting my own 70s, I see ageing rather differently.

The body has not necessarily failed because the old rules no longer work.

The conditions have changed.

And Ayurveda has always understood that.

Ayurveda never expected you to remain the same

One of the great strengths of Ayurveda is that it does not describe health as a fixed state.

Everything is moving.

The seasons move.

The day moves.

Digestion changes.

Our circumstances change.

Our capacity changes.

And we age.

Ayurveda describes three fundamental movements or organising principles in nature: Vata, Pitta and Kapha.

I will explore these properly as this Substack develops because they are widely misunderstood. They are not three personality types into which we squeeze ourselves.

For now, what matters is that Ayurveda recognised something remarkably practical, that different forces predominate at different stages of life.

Childhood has more of the building, nourishing, accumulating qualities associated with Kapha.

The middle years tend towards the heat, drive, ambition, transformation and intensity associated with Pitta.

Later life increasingly carries the qualities of VVaa, lighter, drier, more changeable, more sensitive, less buffered.

That does not mean that everyone over a certain age suddenly "becomes Vata".

It means the terrain itself is changing.

And health advice that ignores the terrain can easily become another form of pressure.

What worked beautifully at 40 may not work at 70

This sounds obvious.

Yet look at the way we talk about health.

We remain surprisingly attached to universal prescriptions.

A particular way of eating is declared healthy.

A certain amount of exercise is considered desirable.

Fasting becomes beneficial.

Cold-water swimming becomes beneficial.

Raw food becomes beneficial.

High-intensity exercise becomes beneficial.

And immediately the Ayurvedic mind asks ~

Beneficial for whom?

At what age?

In what season?

With what digestion?

After what illness?

Living what kind of life?

Sleeping how well?

Under what degree of emotional strain?

In what climate?

Thats Ayurveda

It is contextual.

I could have eaten, worked, travelled and recovered in ways at 40 that I would be foolish to impose upon myself at 75.

That isn't surrender.

It is discernment.

There is an enormous difference.

Later life exposes what force used to conceal

When we are younger, we can get away with a great deal.

We can miss sleep and keep going.

Eat badly and recover.

Push through exhaustion.

Work under relentless pressure.

Ignore digestion.

Override hunger.

Override tiredness.

Override emotion.

The body often has sufficient reserves to compensate.

So we conclude that our habits are working.

Sometimes they weren't working at all.

Youth was covering the bill.

Later life can remove that buffer.

The body becomes less willing to absorb the consequences of our choices silently.

This can feel deeply unfair if we continue measuring ourselves against the person we used to be.

But from an Ayurvedic perspective, something more interesting is happening.

The body is becoming harder to override.

Its communication becomes more consequential.

And that demands a different kind of relationship with ourselves.

More discipline is not always the answer

This is where modern wellness culture can become particularly unhelpful.

When something stops working, we tend to intensify it.

If the weight isn't moving, restrict more.

If the body feels weak, train harder.

If sleep is poor, perfect the sleep routine.

If digestion is troublesome, remove another food.

If we feel exhausted, buy something to increase energy.

The underlying message is remarkably consistent ~

You haven't managed yourself well enough yet.

I don't accept that.

There are times when greater discipline is useful. But there are also times when the constant attempt to improve the body becomes part of the disturbance.

Ayurveda asks us to notice qualities.

If there is already dryness, do we need more drying?

If there is depletion, do we need more restriction?

If there is instability, do we need more stimulation?

If there is heaviness, do we need complete inactivity or appropriate warmth and movement?

This is much subtler than dividing the world into healthy and unhealthy behaviours.

The same practice can restore one person and deplete another.

It can even restore you at one stage of life and deplete you at another.

So a person in later life may be experiencing several influences simultaneously.

Age may be bringing greater Vata qualities.

Modern life may be adding stimulation and irregullarity.

No wonder the body occasionally says no.

This is why Ayurveda cannot sensibly be reduced to: What is my dosha?

The more useful question is ~

What is happening now?

The body you have now deserves your attention

There can be real grief in recognising that we cannot live exactly as we once did.

I don't think we should pretend otherwise.

Ageing involves loss as well as gain.

But there is another possibility hidden inside it.

We can stop treating the younger version of ourselves as the gold standard against which the present body is judged.

At 75, I am not interested in trying to make my body behave as though it were 45.

I am interested in understanding the body I actually inhabit.

What strengthens it?

What drains it?

What creates steadiness?

What disturbs it?

What has it stopped tolerating?

What does it now require that I once barely had to consider?

These are not questions of defeat.

They are questions of intelligence.

And, increasingly, I think they are some of the most important questions of later life.

That distinction, between habit and observation, is where Ayurveda becomes genuinely useful.

Because Ayurveda isn't asking us to obey a perfect system.

It is teaching us how to perceive change.

And once we understand that, the question is no longer ~

What's wrong with me?

It becomes ~

What are the conditions now, and what would support me within them?

That is where I want to go next.

Because learning to recognise what the body is asking for, particularly as we age, requires something very different from collecting more health advice.

It requires learning its language.

Ayurveda Living Intelligence

I do not want to spend the rest of my life fighting the evidence that I have lived it.

What interests me far more is this:

Why do some people seem to remain deeply alive as they age, while others begin disappearing from their own lives long before the body gives out?

After more than forty-five years with Ayurveda, I think this is one of the most important questions we can ask.

And Ayurveda has had a language for it for thousands of years.

Rasayana.

Usually translated as rejuvenation.

But rejuvenation is not the same thing as becoming younger.

And I think we have badly confused the two.

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Life is running smoothly, and yet you still wake up thinking ~

Why am I not happier than this?

You may have the house.

The family.

The career behind you.

More freedom than you once had.

Years of therapy, self-development, reading, reflection.

You may even have created the life you once thought you wanted.

And still there is a restlessness you cannot quite explain.

At 75, I am interested in this because I have seen it repeatedly, both in myself and in the people I have worked with over more than forty-five years.

We are very quick to assume that dissatisfaction means something is missing.

So we add.

Another project.

Another course.

Another relationship.

Another goal.

Another reinvention.

Another attempt to become a better version of ourselves.

But Ayurveda offers a very different question.

What if the problem is not that your life needs more?

What if it needs to become more nourishing?

There is an important concept in Ayurveda called Rasayana.

It is usually translated as rejuvenation.

That translation is correct, but incomplete.

Rasayana is not simply about herbs, tonics or anti-ageing treatments.

The word carries the sense of nourishing the rasa , the first essence formed from what we take in.

And what we take in is not only food.

We take in atmosphere.

Conversation.

Beauty.

Noise.

Relationships.

Ideas.

Responsibility.

Light.

Touch.

The places we live.

The pace at which we move through our days.

The things we repeatedly expose ourselves to.

All of this becomes part of us.

That is why a person can have an apparently successful life and still feel strangely depleted.

Nothing obvious is wrong.

But very little may be truly nourishing them.

This becomes particularly interesting in the second half of life.

For years, many of us build according to external measures.

Security.

Achievement.

Usefulness.

Responsibility.

Recognition.

Being needed.

Providing for others.

Keeping things going.

Those things are not wrong.

They may have been completely appropriate for one stage of life.

But Ayurveda has always understood that life moves in stages.

What supports us at thirty may not sustain us at sixty.

What once gave identity may later feel restrictive.

What once felt exciting may become noisy.

What once felt like purpose may begin to feel like obligation.

The difficulty is that the external structure may still look perfectly good.

So we assume the problem must be inside us.

We tell ourselves we should be grateful.

We wonder why we cannot simply enjoy what we have.

We begin trying to correct our thoughts.

But sometimes the dissatisfaction is intelligent.

It may be telling us that our idea of nourishment has changed.

This is where I think Rasayana becomes far more interesting than the modern idea of “anti-ageing”.

At 75, I am not particularly interested in pretending I am forty-five.

I am interested in what allows life to remain vivid.

What restores curiosity.

What brings the senses alive.

What creates enough internal space for creativity to appear.

What makes us feel more present rather than merely more productive.

What actually nourishes us now.

Rasayana asks us to look at the quality of what we are allowing into our lives.

Not simply ~

What am I doing?

But ~

What is this doing to me?

Does this relationship enliven me or diminish me?

Does this environment settle me or subtly exhaust me?

Does my daily rhythm restore me or simply keep me functioning?

Am I surrounded by things I genuinely find beautiful, or things I accumulated because they once represented success?

Do I still need the identity I spent decades building?

Those are not small questions.

And they are certainly not questions another goal can necessarily answer.

This is one reason I do not believe later-life dissatisfaction should immediately be treated as something to fix.

Sometimes it is an invitation to become more discerning.

The first half of life is often about building.

The second half can become about refinement.

What stays?

What goes?

What deserves our remaining energy?

What genuinely feeds us?

What have we been consuming , emotionally, visually, mentally, socially , that leaves very little rasa behind?

This is where Ayurveda becomes much more than a health system.

It becomes a way of reading the quality of a life.

And it changes the question.

Instead of:

What do I need to achieve next?

We begin asking:

What would make this life feel deeply nourishing again?

That may involve change.

But not always dramatic change.

Sometimes rejuvenation begins with something very small.

A different rhythm to the morning.

More beauty in the room where you spend most of your time.

Less noise.

Better food.

More contact with nature.

A creative practice that has no commercial purpose whatsoever.

An honest conversation.

A decision to stop giving energy to something that has been draining you for years.

Rasayana is not another demand to improve yourself.

It is almost the opposite.

It is an enquiry into what allows life to circulate through you more freely.

And I suspect many women in the second half of life do not need another reinvention.

They need to understand what genuinely nourishes the woman they have now become.

That is a very different beginning.

And it raises the question I want to explore next:

What actually counts as rejuvenation when we are no longer interested in becoming younger , only more alive?

Apparently, if you become stiff, tired, unwell or less capable as you grow older, you have simply “given away your agency.”

You made the wrong lifestyle choices.

You did not move enough.

You ate the wrong food.

You carried too much stress.

You failed to protect your sleep.

At 75, I find this kind of certainty both amusing and deeply irritating.

Because until you have actually lived in a body for seven or eight decades, you do not know what ageing feels like.

You do not know what it is to wake up and discover that your body has changed the rules.

You do not know how an old injury, hormonal change, illness, grief, exhaustion, medication or years of caring for other people can alter what is possible.

You do not know what it takes to keep beginning again when your energy no longer automatically returns after a good night’s sleep or a healthy meal.

Of course lifestyle matters.

Food matters.

Movement matters.

Sleep matters.

Stress matters.

But health is not a moral reward for making all the “right” choices.

And illness is not proof that someone has been lazy, careless or full of excuses.

That is not empowerment.

It is blame dressed up as motivation.

Age does play a role.

So do genetics, circumstances, trauma, environment, accidents, responsibilities and plain bad luck.

Real agency is not pretending that age makes no difference.

It is learning how to work intelligently with the body you have now, not shaming yourself because it is no longer the body you had at 40.

At 75, I still believe in change.

I still walk, swim, stretch, question, learn and look for ways to live more fully.

But I no longer accept advice that reduces ageing to a failure of discipline.

There is a vast difference between giving up on yourself and recognising that your body deserves understanding rather than accusation.

Perhaps we should hear more about ageing from people who are actually doing it ☸️

I think peace is cultivated.

I think it is often available, and always found ..

But I also think we have misunderstood where it comes from.

We have been encouraged to think of peace as an entirely internal achievement. Something we must generate through the mind. Something that proves we have finally mastered ourselves.

That has never felt true to me.

Peace can come through stillness, of course.

But it can also come through a painting.

Through the slow grinding of spices.

Through the sensation of water around the body as we swim.

Through stroking an animal.

Through light falling across a room.

Through scent, texture, colour, warmth and rhythm.

These are not trivial pleasures.

They are ways of entering a different state.

Ayurveda has always understood that we are not separate from the world around us. The senses are not merely passive openings through which information enters. They are part of the way consciousness meets life.

What we see, hear, smell, touch and taste affects us.

A room can unsettle us.

A colour can soften us.

A sound can agitate us.

A familiar scent can return us to ourselves before the mind has had time to explain why.

This is why peace is not only an inner matter.

It is also environmental.

Sensory.

Physical.

Relational.

We can sometimes enter peace because something outside us meets something inside us.

A painting can hold our attention long enough for mental noise to loosen.

Grinding spices can bring the hands, senses and breath into one simple act.

Swimming can return us to rhythm.

Touching an animal can soften the vigilance we did not realise we were carrying.

But there is another part of this that matters.

Peace may be available, but it is not always accessible.

The body has to feel safe enough to receive it.

When the nervous system is braced, hurried or overwhelmed, even beautiful things can fail to reach us. We can stand in front of a painting and see nothing. Sit in silence and feel only restlessness. Enter a peaceful room and remain internally tense.

The peace has not disappeared.

We are simply unable, in that moment, to enter it.

This is why I am wary of telling people to “choose peace” as though it were a matter of attitude.

A body that does not feel safe cannot be ordered into calm.

It has to be met.

Supported.

Given conditions in which it can soften.

Sometimes that support comes through inner practice.

Sometimes it comes through the outer world.

Usually, it is both.

This is central to Your Living Canvas.

The life we inhabit is not a neutral backdrop.

Our homes, routines, objects, relationships, meals, colours, sounds and daily gestures are continually affecting our state.

We are always being shaped by what surrounds us.

The question is whether we are aware of it.

A life consciously created does not mean a perfect life.

It means becoming more attentive to what allows us to return to ourselves.

It means noticing what contracts us and what opens us.

What leaves us scattered.

What settles the body.

What makes us feel more present, more alive and more able to receive the moment we are actually in.

Peace does not have to be dramatic.

It may last only a few seconds.

The warmth of a cup in the hands.

The first brushstroke on a blank surface.

The smell of cumin in a pan.

The weight of a dog’s head against the leg.

A shaft of evening light across the floor.

These moments do not solve our lives.

But they interrupt our estrangement from them.

They remind the body that another state is possible.

Perhaps peace is not something we achieve once and keep forever.

Perhaps it is something we learn to recognise.

Something we create conditions for.

Something we enter, lose and enter again.

Not at the end of life.

Not when everything is resolved.

But here.

Through the body.

Through the senses.

Through the world we are already inhabiting.

Sometimes sleep is disturbed because the weather is hot, the day was unsettled, or the mind has not yet come to rest.

Sometimes the body reacts because it is adapting.

But there is another kind of discomfort.

It returns over and overv, i always ask clients when did it start …

It follows us across different days, different rooms, different attempts to improve ourselves.

We rest, but still feel depleted.

We change the routine, but the unease remains.

We tell ourselves to be grateful, positive or sensible, yet something inside us continues to tighten.

After more than forty-five years of working with Ayurveda, I have learned not to dismiss this too quickly.

The body does not always tell us what is wrong in one dramatic moment.

More often, it repeats itself.

The same exhaustion.

The same loss of appetite.

The same waking in the night.

The same restlessness before returning to a place, a person or a role.

The same dullness where creativity once lived.

A temporary disturbance usually begins to settle when the cause has passed.

A deeper pattern does not.

It may soften for a while, but it returns when we re-enter the same conditions.

This is where observation becomes more useful than interpretation.

We are very quick to give discomfort a name.

Stress.

Age.

Hormones.

Anxiety.

Lack of discipline.

But naming something is not the same as understanding it.

Ayurveda taught me to look at relationship.

What changes before the symptom appears?

What environment am I in?

What pace am I keeping?

What am I eating, suppressing, enduring or pretending not to know?

Who do I become in this situation?

What part of myself disappears in order for this arrangement to continue?

The body is always responding to the life being lived.

Not only to food or sleep, but to atmosphere, pressure, repetition, conflict, beauty, noise, responsibility and the roles we continue to perform long after they have become costly.

This is why two people can live through the same event and respond differently.

The body carries history.

It remembers what the mind has explained away.

It recognises the room in which we become smaller.

The conversation in which we abandon our own knowing.

The work that uses our energy but never restores it.

The life that looks acceptable from the outside but no longer feels inhabited from within.

This does not mean every discomfort is a command to leave.

It means discomfort deserves better questions.

Is this response new, or has it been repeating for years?

Does it lessen when I am away from the situation?

Do I feel more like myself elsewhere?

Is my body asking for recovery, or is it asking me to recognise something?

Am I trying to regulate myself so that I can continue tolerating what is no longer right?

That last question matters.

We now have many ways to calm ourselves.

Breathing practices.

Meditation.

Affirmations.

Supplements.

Better routines.

All can be useful.

But they can also become ways of making the body more compliant with a life that continues to disturb it.

Ayurveda was never meant to help us endure everything.

Its purpose is not to make us so balanced that nothing affects us.

Sensitivity is not always weakness.

Sometimes it is intelligence.

The body may become disturbed because something in our way of living has moved too far from what sustains us.

Too much speed.

Too little beauty.

Too much responsibility.

Too little truth.

Too much noise.

Too little space.

Too many years spent maintaining an identity that has completed its purpose.

Later life often brings this into sharper focus.

What we could once override becomes harder to ignore.

Energy becomes more precious.

The body becomes less willing to finance arrangements that no longer belong to us.

This is not failure.

It is discernment becoming physical.

At seventy-five, I do not believe ageing is simply a process of managing decline.

It can also become a more exacting form of truth.

We begin to see what costs too much.

What has become empty.

What was built for an earlier version of ourselves.

What we no longer wish to carry into the years that remain.

The body may register this before the conscious mind is ready to admit it.

That is why discomfort can feel confusing.

One part of us wants to preserve the known.

Another part knows the known is no longer enough.

The body stands between them, expressing the tension.

The answer is not always immediate action.

Sometimes we need time.

We need to watch the pattern.

We need to notice what restores us and what repeatedly diminishes us.

We need to distinguish fear of change from the deeper exhaustion of staying the same.

But once a pattern becomes clear, continuing to call it temporary becomes another form of avoidance.

There comes a point when the question is no longer:

How can I feel better inside this life?

It becomes ~

Does this life still fit the person I have become?

That is a different enquiry.

It asks more of us than symptom management.

It asks us to look at the whole canvas.

The rhythms.

The relationships.

The rooms.

The work.

The habits.

The identities.

The things we keep because they are familiar, even though they no longer carry life.

This is where Ayurveda and Your Living Canvas meet.

Ayurveda helps us read the body’s intelligence.

Your Living Canvas asks what we will do with what we have understood.

Recognition is only the beginning.

The next question is more difficult:

How do we begin reshaping a life without destroying everything that still matters?

We use it very easily.

The body is resisting change.

The person is resisting healing.

The nervous system is resisting rest.

But I am not convinced that this is what is happening.

The body is rarely being difficult for the sake of it.

More often, it is continuing to repeat something it once learned was necessary for its protection to keep it safe …

A person can understand perfectly well in their mind that they need more rest, yet still remain unable to settle.

They may know that a particular relationship, habit or rhythm is exhausting them, yet continue returning to it , not understanding why they do ..

They may repeat affirmations, begin new routines, change their diet or attempt to think more positively, but something deeper remains unchanged, even after years of trying to change things …

This is often described as a lack of discipline.

This explanation is not particularly useful, but it is often said and in itself becomes a shaming one

Ayurveda taught me to look at this completely differently.

Ayurveda does not start at the beginning by asking how quickly we can correct a person.

It begins by observing what the body is already doing now and why these response may have developed.

What is the body responding to?

What has become unstable?

What has been repeated for so long that it now feels normal?

What is the body attempting to protect, and wanting to feel safe ?

This really matters because the body does not work in isolation from the life being lived, it does sound obvious , but its rarely properly understood.

Sleep is affected by worry.

Digestion is affected by pace.

Breath is affected by fear.

Energy is affected by the roles we continue to carry.

The senses are affected by noise, beauty, conflict, light, atmosphere and environment.

A person may be trying to create change while still living inside the conditions that created the original pattern.

The body always notices this.The body has its own integrity.

It is not deceived by positive language.

You can say, “I am safe,” while remaining inwardly vigilant.

You can say, “I am calm,” while your days are hurried and your evenings overstimulated.

You can say, “I am ready to change,” while the body has been given no new experience from which to learn.

The words may be sincere.

But the rest of the system is still receiving a different message.

This is why I know stability must come before many forms of change.

Not perfect stability.

Not a life without difficulty.

But enough rhythm, nourishment, rest and internal space for the body to begin recognising that it does not have to respond in the same way forever.

Ayurveda has always understood the importance of repetition and rythmn and care.

The body learns through what we repeatedly do.

The time we rise.

The way we eat.

The speed at which we move.

The environments we inhabit.

The emotions we suppress.

The moments when we override tiredness, hunger, sadness or instinct.

Eventually, these repeated responses become part of the body’s expectation.

Then we call the resulting pattern resistance.

But perhaps it is not resistance.

Perhaps it is loyalty.

The body may still be loyal to a protection that once helped us survive, belong, achieve or remain acceptable.

It may still be doing exactly what it learned to do.

This changes the question.

Instead of asking:

“Why will my body not change?”

We might ask:

“What has my body learned that it still believes it needs to do?”

That question is less accusing.

It creates space for observation.

It allows us to become curious about the pattern rather than attempting to overpower it.

In my work, the most lasting changes have rarely come from forcing the body into compliance.

They have come when a person begins to understand the intelligence inside the pattern.

They notice what happens before the exhaustion.

What happens before the digestive disturbance.

What happens before sleep disappears.

What happens before they abandon themselves and return to an old role.

Then the body is no longer treated as the enemy.

It becomes part of the conversation.

This is one of the reasons why Ayurveda is not simply a collection of treatments, foods or routines.

Its deeper value is that it teaches us how to observe life as it is being lived through the body.

Not to punish the body for responding.

Not to label every response as dysfunction.

But to recognise that the body is always learning from the conditions we repeatedly create.

Change becomes possible when those conditions begin to change too.

Sometimes that means rest.

Sometimes nourishment.

Sometimes boundaries.

Sometimes a slower pace.

Sometimes allowing an old identity to finish.

Sometimes recognising that the life we are trying to maintain no longer reflects who we are becoming.

The body is not always resisting the future.

It may simply be waiting for enough evidence that the future will be different from the past.

And perhaps that is where healing begins.

Not with another demand.

But with better observation.

Not with forcing the body to change.

But with understanding what it has been trying to protect.

Namaste

Why do some people flourish, while others spend years struggling to express what they know is within them?

As an Ayurveda practitioner and teacher, I learnt to observe the body.

As an artist, I learnt to observe the creative process.

Through years of exploring Satchitananda and awareness, I became interested in the nature of inner experience.

What I've come to understand is this ~

We often try to force creativity.

We search for inspiration.

We wait for motivation.

We judge ourselves when ideas don't come.

But creativity rarely responds well to force.

It responds to conditions.

When the body is nourished...

When the senses are not overwhelmed...

When there is greater inner steadiness...

When beauty becomes part of everyday life...

Something begins to soften.

We notice more.

We imagine more.

We create more freely.

For me, Satchitananda isn't simply a philosophical idea.

It's a reminder that beneath the noise of everyday life there is a quieter place from which insight, creativity and wisdom can emerge.

Perhaps our task is not to chase creativity.

Perhaps it is to create the conditions in which creativity naturally wants to appear.

That is an enquiry that continues to shape both my work and my life...

It wasn't during my training in India.

It wasn't while reading one of the classical texts.

It happened while sitting with another person.

And it changed almost everything.

When I first began working with Ayurveda, I was like many practitioners.

I wanted to help people feel better.

To understand their symptoms.

To find what was out of balance and gently restore it.

There is nothing wrong with that.

Relief matters.

But over the years, I began to notice something deeper.

The people who changed most were rarely those who simply followed advice.

They were the ones who began to see themselves differently.

They noticed that their body wasn't working against them. They began to see that practicing what Ayurveda teaches creates a body that listens …

A body that was responding.

Responding to how they lived.

How they rested.

How they ate.

How they hurried.

How they worried.

How they ignored what they already knew.

That was the real turning point for me.

Ayurveda was never simply a collection of treatments.

It was a way of helping someone rebuild a relationship with themselves.

That relationship cannot be handed over by a practitioner.

It cannot be bottled.

It cannot be bought.

It has to be rediscovered.

This is why I have become less interested in telling people what to do.

And more interested in helping them learn how to observe.

Observation changes everything.

Once you begin to see patterns, your choices become quieter.

More intelligent.

Less driven by fear.

You stop asking,

"What should I take?"

and begin asking,

"What is my life showing me?"

After more than forty years, I think that may be the greatest gift Ayurveda has given me.

Not better answers.

Better observation.

And perhaps that is where healing has always begun.

We spend our lives trying to change our circumstances.

A new job. A different relationship. A holiday. A bigger house. Another self-help book.

Yet we carry the same busy mind everywhere we go.

For decades I've explored Ayurveda, Satchitananda, Vedic meditation and human consciousness. What has become increasingly clear is that the deepest transformation doesn't happen by adding more.

It happens by discovering inner space.

When the mind begins to settle...

...the nervous system softens.

...sleep often becomes easier because the body no longer feels it must stay on guard.

...clarity replaces mental fog.

...creativity begins to emerge naturally instead of being forced.

...decisions become quieter and more certain.

...and many people rediscover a feeling they haven't experienced for years ~

Peace.

Not the peace that depends on life being perfect.

The peace that remains even when life isn't.

This is one of the reasons Satchitananda has fascinated me for so many years.

It isn't simply a philosophy.

It's an invitation to experience another way of being.

You don't have to spend years studying ancient texts to begin.

Many people experience a noticeable shift in one to three sessions as they learn simple ways of understanding their own mind, calming the nervous system, creating inner space and reconnecting with themselves.

This is at the heart of 'Your Living Canvas'

Because the life you create on the outside is always influenced by the quality of the space you cultivate within.

If your mind had more space, what might

become possible?

Not influencers of which many aspire to be ....

But Influence.

We're living in a time where many people aspire to become influential, yet very few stop to ask what influence actually is.

I've just finished reading YesterYears a book which explores the illusion surrounding influencers, our longing for recognition, and the subtle ways desire is shaped without us even noticing.

It left me wondering...

Its a big question I think ..

How much of what we believe we want is truly ours?

How much has been quietly borrowed from the world around us?

Advaita reminds us that much of what we call "me" is a collection of ideas, identities and conditioning.

Ayurveda reminds us that when we become disconnected from our own nature, who we really are, we become more susceptible to the noise that everyone else puts online ...

Perhaps that is why so many people chase the concept of visibility while quietly losing themselves.

Real influence has never been about persuading people to become someone else or to buy something else ...

Perhaps the greatest influence isn't someone who gains millions of followers, but someone whose authentic way of living, quietly causes us to question our own.

As we grow older, recognition matters less.

Authenticity matters more.

The question is no longer, "How do I become influential?"

It is, "What am I giving my attention to, and who am I becoming because of it?"

That feels like a far more interesting conversation.