EP 160 Ayurvedic Postpartum Wisdom with Dr. Shivani Gupta

Dr. Shivani Gupta brings a wealth of knowledge on Ayurvedic postpartum care, blending Eastern and Western practices for optimal well-being.

In this conversation, look forward to: 

• Understanding Ayurveda: Dr. Gupta introduces Ayurveda, a holistic system of medicine over 5,000 years old, encompassing mind-body constitution, circadian rhythms, herbology, and detoxification.
• Ayurveda in Pregnancy: Ayurvedic principles can guide conception, pregnancy, and postpartum, promoting a peaceful, balanced lifestyle for both mother and baby.
• The Importance of Doshas: Exploring the three doshas—Vata, Pitta, and Kapha—helps tailor health practices to individual needs, fostering balance and vitality.
• Practical Applications: Dr. Gupta shares daily habits for optimal digestion, emphasizing mindful eating, timing of meals, and herbal remedies like turmeric for inflammation and gut health.
• Holistic Postpartum Care: Addressing the neglect of postpartum healing, Ayurveda offers insights into nurturing the body and mind, crucial for long-term well-being.

In a world often dismissive of postpartum needs, Dr. Shivani Gupta's insights shed light on the profound impact of Ayurvedic wisdom in promoting holistic health for mothers and families. 

As we navigate the complexities of modern life, her teachings remind us to honor the body's innate wisdom and embrace nourishing practices that sustain us through every phase of life.

For more information about Dr. Gupta, her work, and how to incorporate Ayurveda into your postpartum practices click here to head to the blog! 

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Chapters

• 0:02 Ayurveda for Pregnancy and Postpartum
• 6:34 Understanding Ayurvedic Doshas and Gut Health
• 14:57 Nutrition, Healing, and Ayurvedic Practices

Transcript

Depression, anxiety, and autoimmune symptoms after birth is not how it's supposed to be. There is a much better way, and I'm here to show you how to do just that. Hey, my friend, I'm Maranda Bower, a mother to four kids and a biology student turned scientist obsessed with changing the world through postpartum care. Join us as we talk to mothers and the providers who serve them and getting evidence-based information that actually supports the mind, body, and soul in the years after birth.

Hello everyone, welcome to the podcast. I am going to have this amazing conversation. 

Dr Shivani is an Ayurvedic practitioner and an expert in infusing Eastern and Western practices that help our bodies achieve equilibrium.

She completed her master's in Ayurvedic sciences and her PhD on turmeric.

Maranda Bower: 1:08

Inflammation is the root cause for so many health issues in our lives. I was just talking about this on the past podcast episodes and I am a full believer in this and I'm so excited to bring her passion to teaching at-home remedies that help reduce inflammation naturally and help you enjoy more energy, less brain fog, less pain and achieve that vibrant health that we also deserve in the postpartum period and beyond.

Dr. Shivani is also the founder of Fusionary Formulas, an Ayurvedic company that helps people with inflammation and pain.

What is Ayurveda and how can it help moms and birth care providers? Because this is a conversation that I get asked all the time.

Dr. Gupta: 2:07

Sure. So Ayurveda is an entire system of medicine, health and healing from India that's over 5,000 years old, so similar to how we have acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine simultaneously.

India had its own system called Ayurveda, and Ayurveda encompasses a lot of things. It encompasses your mind-body constitution, which we call your dosha.

It encompasses circadian rhythm, circadian medicine, or living according to nature's clock, your biological clock.

We teach about herbology and the different super spices that can have such a profound impact on our health. I call them the new superfoods, as opposed to the superfoods we already reach into all the time.

We teach about how to eat, when to eat, all the different ways that eating can support our health, but not just the diet.

It's a lot about the health habits around when we're eating. And then we also talk a lot about detoxing seasonal detox, quarterly annual detoxes and when it comes to pregnancy and postpartum, ayurveda actually has a ton of science and research and protocols.

When I was ready to have my own children two years prior, I started the process of doing a big bunch of karma detoxes. I prepared the body like I was preparing for the most ultimate marathon. I wanted to be healthy, whole, and nourished.

It teaches on conception, that act of conception, and around conception to help build this child who's going to be Zen.

I wrote a book called the Conscious Pregnancy, on how to have a Zen baby, because I had this theory that if we changed how we treated ourselves during pregnancy and followed the Ayurvedic wisdom and principles of really living this sattvic, peaceful, yogic lifestyle, could we then birth more zen, happy babies.

Postpartum Ayurveda also teaches how to live according to these 40, 42 days post-baby and honor yourself and nourish yourself and bring yourself back to whole, so that we don't have after effects and detriments in women's health, because a lot of times women don't manage pregnancy or postpartum in the most ideal way because we're not taught to and then all of a sudden you have these long-term chronic health issues. 

I consider it luck my children did turn out to be zen, beautiful, happy babies. So I think the Ayurvedic wisdom holds true, that you can put certain habits in place or principles in place for pregnancy and postpartum that will lead to this happier, healthier baby.

Maranda Bower: 4:34

It is such a beautiful tradition that has been, as you said, around for thousands and thousands of years, and so much wisdom is there and sometimes I almost find it like it is an entire medicine and complex learning system in and of itself, because when we get down to it and we start looking at all of the components of Ayurvedic medicine, there is a lot to learn.

Dr. Gupta: 5:02

Yeah, there is and that's why I broke it down.

I have a six-week program where I just immerse everyone right in and then that's it, like that's the foundation and you can live by that and truly get probably 90% of what Ayurveda is teaching by practicing it. Because, I agree with you, I could study Ayurveda forever, for the rest of my life. There's so much there.

Maranda Bower: 5:24

It is so true, because I remember finding it and I think it was like my second or third pregnancy and I'm like, oh, this stuff is amazing.

But with my pregnancy brain and having other children, I was like I just need somebody to walk me through all of this.

So I'm so glad that you have something there.

One of the most important pieces to this and I recognize this when I was doing my studies in this is doshas, and maybe you can explain a little bit more about that, because I think that's such a primary component to everything that is Ayurveda. I mean, obviously there's so much more, but doshas are so important.

Dr. Gupta: 6:01

Yeah, doshas is a big concept because what we're saying there is we're made of nature, we're made of the five elements and we're all some custom, individual version of those five elements. And so we have three doshas.

Everyone has a primary and a secondary dosha. Everyone's born with their dosha and then oftentimes big life events will help, will shift you out of your primary doshas and you'll have to realign back.

You'll get vitiated or what we call deranged out of the dosha, and so the primary doshas are you'll have to realign back. You'll get like vitiated or what we call deranged out of the dosha, and so the primary doshas are vata, pitta and kapha.

So vata is more thin and wiry. This is someone who's more air and ether in their elements. So they're going to have the physical, mental and emotional traits and tendencies of those elements. So vata person's thin and wiry. They're energizer, bunny energy. They're very creative. They're kind of all over the place Disrupted sleep, disrupted gut. Those kinds of tendencies are in vata.

Dr. Gupta: 6:56

Then you have pitta. That's fire with some water. So this is medium body person, reddish skin, reddish hair, everything red.

They have a tendency to be on fire, entrepreneurial, ambitious go-getters, but tend to get hangry, inflamed, overburnt, burnt out that kind of thing.

Then you have kapha. Kapha is of the earth, earth plus water, energy. This is someone who's loyal one thing at a time.

Their body tends to be stronger, heavier of the earth and they tend to have a slower metabolism and have a harder time getting up off the couch.

So this is someone who you have to support in a different way.

So understanding your primary and secondary dosha is a very powerful way to then customize to the person in front of you.

Let's say you are a doula or you are working with someone who's about to have a baby or has had one.

You can really navigate with them better, based on their dosha, and support them better to feel more balanced and whole through that whole journey of having kids.

Maranda Bower: 7:55

This is incredible. I hear those three and I always wonder what am I? 

I know so many people are probably asking the same thing because I can see myself in so many of those pieces. How do you figure it out? Because then you also have like life events and you have different stages of life that you're in and then sometimes you have imbalances that make you seem like you're in one but you're really not like how do you figure it all out?

Dr. Gupta: 8:23

So I have a dosha quiz on my website. Anyone can take the dosha quiz.

Now, if you want to go deeper, I would recommend an Ayurveda consultation, because you're going to want to understand your dosha from birth, primary and secondary, your dosha now and there's some nuance to it.

I was a pitta from birth and when I aligned to my pitta self, I am sharp and ambitious and motivated.

But having kids threw me into kapha land and I felt like I was Tom Brady and I got dropped in the Sahara desert with no money, no phone and told to just walk back to my original awesome self.

I was very frustrated for many years and it took coaching health and detoxing until I finally figured it out.

Hey, you're a Pitta, you need to be your Pitta lion self and get back to her. And so, yeah, it can be challenging, but the point of it all is to teach you how to intuitively flex with and leverage your dosha.

So, although I am a pitta, I'm going to have life events that happen that throw me into kapha, and that's okay when I have to caretake because someone passes away or something happens, and that happened in the last year and I was like, okay, I'm going to be kapha for two months, I'm just going to love and nurture and care for everyone, while maintaining my self-care, knowing that when this phase ends, I've got to align back to my original self, I'm not going to stay in this other mode that's different from myself.

Another interesting fact one of my Ayurvedic teachers taught me that over 90% of us here in the West are Vata imbalanced.

Rightfully so, because modern-day times is going to make us crazy Vata people who are all over and overstimulated and over-consuming and all these things. It's going to create a Vata mind, and so just understanding how to balance your vata is key to everybody.

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Maranda Bower: 11:17

This is profound, because I'm hearing you speak and I'm like oh man, that would be so helpful to know.

This is where I normally am, and sometimes I might fall here, and it's okay to fall here, but I now know exactly what I need to do to get back and to be able to move in between those without thinking what am I failing? Am I doing something wrong? Am I going to throw off my whole body?

There's so much anxiety that sometimes comes with those things, and what I'm hearing from you is like there's none of that.

There's just this understanding of here's where I am, here's where I'm going to be, and it's okay, we're going to move through the flow.

Dr. Gupta: 11:57

Yes. It's beautiful and it changes your experience of motherhood, because motherhood can be so profound and it can make us totally nuts, or it can be the most beautiful thing ever, and so learning how to flow with.

Maranda Bower: 12:14

I know gut health is a huge focus from Ayurveda. How does that apply to moms and providers? What are some of the tools that you recommend for this?

Dr. Gupta: 12:25

So gut health and honoring the gut digestive fire is one of the key topics.

Out of Ayurveda we teach an entire lifestyle and self-care rhythm and circadian rhythm that's built around igniting the digestive fire in the morning, thinking of it like a campfire. You ignite it in the morning, you get it started.

By lunchtime it is at its hottest and that's when we teach to eat your biggest meal of the day and you have the support of the sun and your dosha, pitta dosha in the middle of the day to digest and assimilate and absorb the most nutrients from your food.

Then, entering the evening, knowing that that campfire is going to wane and we're not as supported, we should do our smaller dinner, not huge dinners or heavy dinners, and then we shut that campfire down at night on purpose, so that our body is then in charge of just cleaning up house.

It's not in charge of digesting our food anymore, it's in charge of instead cleaning house until we wake up the next morning and doing it again.

So Ayurveda teaches that through a series of different cues. I use tea as my method, just because I find that to be easiest.

So in the morning I'll have a cup of ginger lemon tea.

Mid-morning I'll have my first cup of caffeine, like my green tea, to get things churning and burning.

At lunch we teach don't have any water 30 minutes before or 30 minutes after a meal because you're going to shut off digestion. 

It's like putting water on the campfire and that's how we invite you to look at it.

Really honoring lunch and that meal time as just for that thing is important.

We teach don't eat, don't eat your meal standing, don't eat them running like sit down for five minutes and focus on the food, which I know sounds hard but it's a practice to just honor the food going in and create the awareness and connection mind-body connection around your food.

Then in the afternoon I have a high tea time with snack and I have really learned over time that that's kind of the key to the evening.

If I can support myself, eat healthy fat at that time, feel whole and nourished and just take 20 minutes to myself, then I'm best supported to transition over into motherhood and the new commitment called the fourth phase of my day or that last third of my day really.

And then it's evening time and then from there really honoring gut health means finish dinner three hours before bedtime, allow yourself to walk or digest or process that completely before sleep so that your lymphatic system and inflammation can all handle itself and cut off inflammation in the body.

Reduce inflammation before you wake up again.

Maranda Bower: 14:57

I absolutely love this conversation because so much of what you're sharing here is not about the type of foods that you eat, which are insanely important, but you're saying the habits around what we do and how we eat and the connection that we have with ourselves while we do. It is the fundamental piece to all of this.

Do you feel like that is the most important and more important than what it is that you're eating?

Dr. Gupta: 15:24

Yes, because if you're not gonna absorb it, what's the point anyway? Ideally, yes, we would eat these like whole, nourishing, organic, fresh, lovely, local, organic meals. All the things I'm not perfect I always share. I'm not perfect, but doing my best. At least what I am eating that's good will never absorb if I'm not following these kinds of principles.

Maranda Bower: 15:44

This is exactly what I teach in postpartum, because so many of us have nervous systems that are so dysregulated, we're living in such high stress that the very act of digestion takes so much energy, and oftentimes we're just passing it along, you know, straight down the toilet. Just flush it away and it's going to cause you pain while you know that process is happening and it's so not supportive or helpful in the least bit.

Dr. Gupta: 16:14

Yeah, and in Ayurveda we teach that that time of birth is such a forcing of energy downwards. We're taking all pranic energy and pushing it the opposite way of where it normally goes. So brain health is affected, gut health is affected and that campfire I was talking about gets blown out because the energy is just all being used to force the baby out of us.

That's why here in the West I think we have so many issues post-baby. I have so many friends who, just like, ran at the birthing room at 200 miles an hour, hit it, didn't have a great happy outcome in their birth experience, but the kid was fine.

Postpartum they're like oh, I got to go back to work in two weeks.

Hospital's calling work is calling, never honoring like true healing. Not that everyone can. I know we all have different circumstances, but that's why five years, 10 years, 20 years, we're seeing health issues still.

Some women say, I never felt the same after I had a kid. 

Well, why is that? Our hormone issues, our hormone system's shot. 
Our gut system is shot everything is shot, and we just need to remember surgeries, babies. 

These are the biggest life events that our body will ever experience and it's our job, to just stop life and honor it and heal, or it's we who pay that price forever. 

Maranda Bower: 17:32

And I think so many women are starting to experience that in menopause and we're starting to recognize that how we've handled our healing and our health, especially in the years after birth, are deeply affecting the way we're experiencing menopause and perimenopause, and a lot of women are suffering through that and coming back to the realization of, like, wait a second, I have not honored my body, I haven't cared for my body, but, in all honesty, how many people are taught how to do that?

Maranda Bower: 18:04

The wisdom you're bringing here has been around for thousands of years, but you're making it more accessible, and I so appreciate that.

I'm wondering you not only have this incredible website where you can take quizzes and you have courses, but you also offer some herbal remedies that you really just can't live without.

I want to talk about turmeric, too, which is a huge role for anti-inflammatory properties and gut health, and all of this and and and, of course, I want to pack it all in with like, how people can connect with you. 

Dr. Gupta: 18:48 Sure. So I am a master's in Ayurvedic sciences person who also did a PhD on turmeric, and when I finished my PhD I was such an evangelist around turmeric I was like the whole world just needs to understand this spice could have done it all for us. It's not only anti-inflammatory, which inflammation is the root cause of so many of our issues.

It's also antioxidant, antiviral, antibacterial, antifungal.

So as a mom, I use turmeric all the time. When the cold starts, I defend my entire system with turmeric. Then it's anti-inflammatory.

So anytime I hurt something or want to prevent in general, I'm using turmeric and then, if we're not sleeping well, we're not going to clear the inflammation. So I invented a sleep tea that's Ayurvedic and functional and a sleep gummy, and then I designed something called menopause support tea, but truly that's hormone rebalance tea is what I called it before.

Menopause support tea, but truly that's hormone rebalance tea is what I called it before.

And that has Shatavati, which is a powerhouse herb, even postpartum, to help support us. It has Tulsi, which is holy basil, which is supportive to us as well.

So my dream is really, can we reach into Ayurveda's toolkits, understand the lifestyle, which is the most important part, and then, when we need support and to get like high quality, potent support.

Reach into the toolkit to get those herbs and spices in the right form, utilize them, but then again, remember the lifestyle is what's going to hold the result.

And so the best way to find me is on my website. That's where I have like the seven-day inflammation challenge and the quizzes and that stuff, and I'm on Instagram as @drshivanigupta.

Then my website for the supplements is fusionaryformulascom. It's F-U-S-I-O-N-A-R-Y and I made you a special code for your audience.

Postpartum will give them 15% off on their order.

Maranda Bower: 20:32

And all of this, all of these links, your discount code and everything is going to be in the show notes, so definitely take a look there. She's absolutely incredible. I highly recommend taking a look at her information. Thank you so much, Shivani. I appreciate you and all the work that you're doing here.

Thanks for being part of the PPU Community!

I am so grateful you turned into the Postpartum University podcast. We hope you enjoyed this episode enough to leave us a quick review and, more importantly, I hope more than ever that you take what you've learned here, apply it to your own life, and consider joining us in the Postpartum University membership. It's a private space where mothers and providers learn the real truth and the real tools needed to heal in the years to come and the real tools needed to heal in the years Postpartum. You can learn more at www.postpartumu. That's the letter U.com. We'll see you next week.