Ayurveda works best when we proactively tend to our health and wellness. This is not a model that is primarily set up around emergencies and triage, although it can handle those, too.
Continuing to come in for appointments serves a few functions:
1. a gentle reminder to continue doing your self-care practices {We all stray from time to time—for various reasons; it’s nice to have someone hold us accountable and remind us to re-engage.}
2. a way to review what you are currently doing to see if it is working well for you {For example: sometimes we need to take more of an herb, take less of an herb, or take the herb in a different way. Your practitioner is the container of that information in all of its variables. So, rather than dismiss a practice as something that is “not working for me,” you might talk about it with your practitioner and find a way to successfully modify it.}
3. a review process to ensure that you are, in fact, doing what we talked about during your appointment {Life is busy, we all have many things to take care of, and there are lots of distractions. Something may have been lost in translation—ie: you may have mis-understood a recommendation. It happens. Pretty frequently, actually. Let’s make sure you are doing the thing—in its intended way—to get you feeling better.}
4. an opportunity for a seasonal check-in or tune-up {Ayurveda works with the rhythms of nature and understands that things (including us) change over time. What works in summer may be aggravating in autumn or winter. Adjusting our routines and practices to flow with the cycles of the seasons is good preventative medicine.}
5. a teacher who can educate you around the finer points or deeper levels of Ayurvedic knowledge {The internet is a wonderful tool, but it is not the end-all/be-all. There is a lot of nuance to Ayurveda, and there is a great body of knowledge to this Science of Life that does not show up in an internet search or in publicly-available books. Your practitioner has been rigourously trained in Ayurvedic medicine; Google hasn’t. It is easy for people to misunderstand disctinctions between terms—and how they manifest. Your practitioner is a guide who can correctly decode information and gently correct your assumptions.}