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65. The Secrets of Ayurveda: Ancient Medicine for Modern Health w/ Austin Vantastic
29th October 2024 • Global Health Pursuit • Hetal Baman
00:00:00 00:35:37

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Ayurveda, often dismissed as mere "woo woo," might just hold the key to understanding our health in a more holistic way.

In this episode, Austin Vantastic shares his transformative journey from a high-pressure career in film to discovering the healing potential of ancient Indian medicine. Together, they explore how Ayurveda addresses chronic conditions that Western medicine often overlooks, highlighting the importance of balance among the body's three doshas: Vata, Pitta, and Kapha. Austin recounts his own health struggles, the stigma surrounding traditional practices, and how Ayurveda offers preventive solutions through diet, lifestyle changes, and meditation. This episode encourages listeners to rethink their approach to health and consider integrating Ayurvedic principles into their lives.

Check out the shownotes to learn more!

To get in contact with Austin and get your very own one on one Ayurvedic consultation, shoot him an email at austin@ayurvedafor.us or and tell him that the global health pursuit podcast sent ya! You can also learn more at ayurvedafor.us

Takeaways:

  • Ayurveda, a 5000-year-old medical system, emphasizes the importance of balance among the body’s doshas.
  • Western medicine often provides quick fixes, but Ayurveda focuses on prevention through holistic lifestyle changes.
  • The journey to understanding Ayurveda can be transformative, as it addresses mysterious health issues holistically.
  • Ayurvedic practices, such as dietary adjustments and meditation, can significantly enhance overall well-being.
  • Austin Fantastic's transition from film to Ayurveda showcases the diverse paths to healing.
  • Ayurveda encourages fresh food consumption, avoiding leftovers to maintain optimal digestion and health.

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Transcripts

Hetal Bahman:

You clicked on this podcast episode because of one of two things.

Hetal Bahman:

You want to know if Ayurveda is completely and utterly woo woo.

Hetal Bahman:

Or you realize that maybe my Indian ancestors were onto something thousands of years ago.

Hetal Bahman:

Hey, and welcome back to another episode of the Global Health Pursuit podcast.

Hetal Bahman:

This episode is a little bit different than my usual content, but I wanted to highlight it because the world of Ayurveda and Eastern medicine is just fascinating to me.

Hetal Bahman:

Because what if.

Hetal Bahman:

What if we could prevent our body's aches and pains by being more thoughtful of what we consume mentally and physically?

Hetal Bahman:

And as I say this, I feel like this is just a no brainer.

Hetal Bahman:

But living in a Western society, taking a daily pill to curb migraines or suppress heartburn is just easier, right?

Hetal Bahman:

It's the quick solution.

Hetal Bahman:

So in this episode, I got a chance to chat with Ayurvedic practitioner Austin Fantastic about all things Ayurveda.

Hetal Bahman:

How the Western healthcare system let him down, how his body forced him to find Ayurveda, how he finally healed, and what your poop eyeballs and tongue can say about your health and more.

Hetal Bahman:

My name is Hetal Bahman and this is the Global Health Pursuit.

Hetal Bahman:

Couldn't help but think the world of Ayurveda is deeply connected to India and it's part of my ancestry.

Hetal Bahman:

What's interesting to me, I was just thinking about this today, where there's a whole stigma right around Indian families studying Western medicine and that becoming very prestigious.

Hetal Bahman:

And I feel like there's a part of India that's just being like, so detached to its roots.

Austin Fantastic:

I can see, you know, as an American Indians coming to America wanting to do something more than where they came from.

Austin Fantastic:

Like you said, the prestige of doing Western medicine and the doctor and the white coat and all those things and the imagery and making your parents proud and the familial generational honor and things like that that go, I think is.

Austin Fantastic:

It's understandable and juxtaposed with that.

Austin Fantastic:

I thought it was really interesting.

Austin Fantastic:

When I was in India studying Ayurveda, so many Indians would come to me and be like, oh my God, you're here for Ayurveda.

Austin Fantastic:

Like, tell me all about it.

Austin Fantastic:

And I'm like, I'm here to learn it from you.

Hetal Bahman:

From you.

Austin Fantastic:

Yeah.

Austin Fantastic:

And, you know, a lot of that has to do with history, the English rule and stomping out a lot of Indian traditions and like, thank goodness Ayurveda survived that time period and it's making a resurgence now.

Austin Fantastic:

Yeah, I think it's Beautiful.

Austin Fantastic:

And I hope the future is embracing both sides.

Austin Fantastic:

Western medicine is amazing for trauma care, you know, cancer, like, really severe life conditions.

Austin Fantastic:

And Ayurveda is really beautiful for solving a lot of, like, the mysterious kind of problem.

Austin Fantastic:

You know, you go to the doctor and you're like, oh, it hurts here.

Austin Fantastic:

And they do all the tests and scans and they say, oh, nothing's wrong with you.

Austin Fantastic:

Go home and you're left in pain.

Austin Fantastic:

You know, so things like that.

Austin Fantastic:

Ayurveda is great for.

Austin Fantastic:

And it's amazing for prevention.

Austin Fantastic:

I've been practicing Ayurveda for five years, and I've been seeing therapists for probably a couple more years longer than that.

Austin Fantastic:

I don't know how many times I didn't get sick, you know, thanks to Ayurveda.

Austin Fantastic:

But there's just so many things you can learn and understand about your body where it's like, you can see something coming out on the horizon and be like, let me make a change, you know, to my diet, or do something different today.

Austin Fantastic:

You stay healthy.

Austin Fantastic:

It's about, you know, navigating this path of health.

Hetal Bahman:

I want to really dive into your story first because your story is really interesting in terms of just how you got into Ayurvedic practices.

Hetal Bahman:

And when we first connected, you had told me that you had worked in film in the very beginning.

Hetal Bahman:

So bring us back to that.

Austin Fantastic:

Yeah.

Austin Fantastic:

Growing up, I chose film and television as a career, my career path.

Austin Fantastic:

I moved to New York City at 21 and just hit the ground running, like, blazing, full steam ahead.

Austin Fantastic:

For those familiar with the film television show went from a production assistant to a director of photography and four and a half years, which is, like, insane, you know, to move through kind of all the ranks up to heading the camera department for mostly TV shows I worked on and, you know, some films and stuff like that.

Austin Fantastic:

But the industry is, you know, your work day on paper is 12 hours every day.

Austin Fantastic:

If your call time's nine, your break time is nine, you know, when you wrap.

Austin Fantastic:

So, you know, that's a lot of pressure and that's a lot of stress, and that's just what's on paper.

Austin Fantastic:

That doesn't include the commute to set and back from set and, you know, all the things you gotta try and figure out for yourself in the meantime.

Austin Fantastic:

So working in film and television, a lot of pressure and stress from being a director of photography, dealing with the network, dealing with the directors making the show.

Austin Fantastic:

Right.

Austin Fantastic:

You know, my own personal life, stress, emotional baggage, and the lifestyle that I was leading all those Factors built up to the point of me getting sick.

Austin Fantastic:

And it started.

Austin Fantastic:

It was this kind of like, ooh, like, weird pain in my left side.

Austin Fantastic:

I thought, oh, maybe I.

Austin Fantastic:

Like, I pulled something or, you know, I've been carrying the camera around a lot, kind of wrote it off.

Austin Fantastic:

And then one night when I was falling asleep, it was just like.

Austin Fantastic:

It felt like something inside me popped or, like, broke.

Austin Fantastic:

And I thought, you know, left side, you know, your stomach, you're like, did my appendix just explode?

Austin Fantastic:

And, like, I thought I was gonna die in my bed that night.

Hetal Bahman:

Oh, gosh.

Austin Fantastic:

Yeah, it was brutal.

Austin Fantastic:

So I called 91 1.

Austin Fantastic:

I was getting, like, tunnel vision, and I was in bed.

Austin Fantastic:

So I grabbed whatever I could to put on and walked out to the street.

Austin Fantastic:

And I was like, if I pass out, at least they'll find me on the sidewalk.

Austin Fantastic:

Luckily, I didn't pass out.

Austin Fantastic:

The ambulance came quick and got me to the hospital and figured it out.

Austin Fantastic:

But four hours later, they were like, oh, we think you had a kidney stone.

Austin Fantastic:

And I was like, what?

Austin Fantastic:

And so, you know, four or five days went by, and, like, the pain hadn't subsided, and you were still in.

Hetal Bahman:

Immense pain at this point.

Austin Fantastic:

What happened that night happened once a month for the subsequent months.

Austin Fantastic:

It was like this shredding, ripping pain through my abdomen.

Hetal Bahman:

Oh, wow.

Austin Fantastic:

And I would be in bed for, like, two or three days every time that happened.

Austin Fantastic:

And then when I wasn't going through, like, that severe pain, what it felt like was just kind of like.

Austin Fantastic:

It was like a hot iron prod, like, on the inside, like, trying to push out.

Austin Fantastic:

It was just like this burning, like, pushing pain under my left rib.

Austin Fantastic:

So that night at the hospital was the beginning of, like, four or five months of doctor's tests, you know, CT scans, ultrasound scans, X ray.

Austin Fantastic:

They did all the tests on me, endoscopy, you know, And I couldn't figure out, you know, they looked at everything.

Austin Fantastic:

They were like, there's nothing broken, so you're fine.

Hetal Bahman:

Isn't that the worst feeling ever, though?

Hetal Bahman:

Like, just going to the doctor and feeling pain and then them being like, no, you're fine.

Hetal Bahman:

And you're like, well, I'm actually feeling something in my body.

Hetal Bahman:

So you.

Hetal Bahman:

I'm actually not fine.

Hetal Bahman:

So can we figure it out?

Austin Fantastic:

You know, prior to this experience, every time I went to the doctor, it's like, oh, I got an earache.

Austin Fantastic:

I broke up something.

Austin Fantastic:

You know, so it was, like, pretty straightforward.

Austin Fantastic:

So people are familiar with the health landscape, you know, are familiar with this type of story, but it was an entirely new dialogue for me.

Austin Fantastic:

I was not familiar with people going to the doctors and being let down in this type of way.

Austin Fantastic:

And I was like, you guys, you have all the machines, like you're supposed to know you're a doctor.

Hetal Bahman:

Where did Ayurveda come into play at this point?

Austin Fantastic:

Yeah, that was just a magical accident, honestly.

Austin Fantastic:

So a year ish, you know, prior to all of this stuff happening, it was somebody who I actually went on a date with.

Austin Fantastic:

We later ended up becoming friends.

Austin Fantastic:

She started telling me about this thing that to me at the time sounded so hippy dippy.

Austin Fantastic:

I was like, that's not real.

Austin Fantastic:

She was telling me about Ayurveda.

Austin Fantastic:

And so at the time of the conversation, I remember just being like, huh, you know, whatever.

Austin Fantastic:

But what she mentioned was like, you know, I had completely transformed her life.

Austin Fantastic:

And it was after.

Austin Fantastic:

So I'd done all the tests and the endoscopy was like the last thing that I had done.

Austin Fantastic:

And I gotten the test results back from that.

Austin Fantastic:

I was just sitting, you know, at my kitchen table looking at my laptop, just like defeated, so broken.

Austin Fantastic:

And in this moment, that conversation came back to mind and just her saying, like, it completely transformed my life was the only thing I could think about.

Austin Fantastic:

Like, I don't have anything to lose, I've tried everything else.

Austin Fantastic:

So I text her and I was like, yo, what was that thing you told me about, yo?

Austin Fantastic:

And she responded back to me and I looked up the woman who she referred to and I went and saw her, you know, the next available appointment that I could.

Austin Fantastic:

And that was the beginning of my journey with Ayurveda through her.

Austin Fantastic:

It started with meditation and then she referred me to an Ayurvedic therapist and he started changing my diet and telling me about my dosha, how I could cater to my health between the dietary recommendations and the meditation.

Austin Fantastic:

I mean, within like a week I started feeling better and within three months I would say I had completely healed.

Hetal Bahman:

When you hear about things like this without really experiencing it, you might think it's like, woo, woo, you know, like new age.

Hetal Bahman:

But that's just so, like mind blowing to me.

Hetal Bahman:

So I want to take it back to the basics and just ask you, what is Ayurveda?

Hetal Bahman:

You threw out some terms like dosha, where even as an Indian person, like, I don't even know.

Austin Fantastic:

Yeah, so ayurveda is a:

Austin Fantastic:

It's not defined by the country lines now.

Austin Fantastic:

And the principles of Ayurveda are understanding like the body and how the body operates.

Austin Fantastic:

So there's three doshas in the body.

Austin Fantastic:

Vata, which is air and ether element, Pitta, which is fire and water element, and kapha which is water and earth element.

Austin Fantastic:

So they figured the whole entire universe is made up of these five elements.

Austin Fantastic:

You can see obviously the earth everywhere you go, the water everywhere we go, Fire, you know, is the sun, air, you know, the wind that blows, and oxygen.

Austin Fantastic:

And then ether is space, is nothingness.

Austin Fantastic:

So we have space on earth.

Austin Fantastic:

You know, they translate a little bit differently, but, you know, we can also equate it to actual physical outer space.

Austin Fantastic:

So then those five elements and then the combination of those elements create the doshas.

Austin Fantastic:

And then the doshas govern different systems in your body.

Austin Fantastic:

And everybody is a combination of all three doshas and everybody is going to have something that's more predominant in your body, which is why we say you are pitta dosha or you are kapha dosha.

Austin Fantastic:

And it's not because you're missing vata dosha.

Austin Fantastic:

It just means that the pitta is predominant or the kapha is predominant.

Austin Fantastic:

Just like in the world, all the elements need, you know, balance and counterbalance each other.

Austin Fantastic:

Without one, there can't be the other inside your body.

Austin Fantastic:

We want to keep the doshas in balance so that the body stays in harmony, our internal universe stays in harmony.

Hetal Bahman:

So how does that pertain to medicine?

Hetal Bahman:

How does that pertain to healing?

Austin Fantastic:

Yeah, it's taken me a long time and all these years of study and working with people directly to understand the translation from like Ayurvedic principles to medical principles.

Austin Fantastic:

You know, like I said, Ayurveda is very scientific, but it has a completely different paradigm of looking at and understanding the body than Western medicine.

Austin Fantastic:

So there's not a one to one translation of like how things work.

Austin Fantastic:

You know, it's like we think of things like vitamins and minerals and proteins and nutrients and things like that.

Austin Fantastic:

And then hormonal imbalances and like this is how we get sick, you know.

Austin Fantastic:

And so we say, oh well, if you have, you know, low immunity, then you need to take vitamin C.

Austin Fantastic:

Or if your APT is off and you need more energy, then you need to take vitamin B.

Austin Fantastic:

And they're like, oh well, the vitamin B is not working, so you need to take vitamin D.

Austin Fantastic:

Unless you're getting constant blood tests and scans, how are you knowing what you're doing to your body and influencing it?

Austin Fantastic:

And in Ayurveda we look at the systems, the processes of the whole entire body.

Austin Fantastic:

You Know how on the large scale, like, chunking first, you start with, like, vata dosha, pittadocha, kapha dosha, and you're like, what are they doing?

Austin Fantastic:

And then, you know, we can look at different things, like kaphas in the lungs and the heart and the throat.

Austin Fantastic:

So it's like, are you having an issue there?

Austin Fantastic:

And then if you're having an issue, there is kapha dosha.

Austin Fantastic:

The culprit of that problem, pittadocha, is in your digestive system.

Austin Fantastic:

So it's your stomach, your spleen, your appendix, your liver, your gallbladder.

Austin Fantastic:

So if you're having a digestive issue, then we look at pittsa dosha, and we're like, oh, that's where the problem is happening.

Austin Fantastic:

I'm having digestive issues.

Austin Fantastic:

But who's causing the problem then?

Austin Fantastic:

You know, it could be vatadosha could be causing the problem, but it's pitta dosha who's under attack, you know, and then vata dosha lives in the colon, in the large intestine, you know, so you could be having problems there.

Austin Fantastic:

So, so we.

Austin Fantastic:

We chunk first by, like, trying to look at which dosha is out of balance based on the symptoms, and then we reverse the process of disease.

Austin Fantastic:

The disease itself is kind of the symptom.

Austin Fantastic:

We go backwards from the disease to who caused the problem in the first place, and then we correct it from both ends.

Austin Fantastic:

We can work on the conditions symptomatically, like, what is the symptom that you're having?

Austin Fantastic:

So it's like you're having digestive issues.

Austin Fantastic:

Then we can start to give you some digestive herbs, but then we can also give you therapies to correct the dosha.

Austin Fantastic:

And then we can meet in the middle with complete cure.

Hetal Bahman:

Wow.

Hetal Bahman:

So, okay, you found Ayurveda, and then you basically got obsessed with it and wanted to learn everything about it.

Hetal Bahman:

Right.

Hetal Bahman:

Which makes sense, you know, if it's something that totally transformed your life.

Hetal Bahman:

You want to know more?

Hetal Bahman:

What was some of the things that really drew you in when you were going through the learning process?

Austin Fantastic:

Right.

Austin Fantastic:

When I started healing, I was just like, what is this stuff?

Austin Fantastic:

How do I get more?

Austin Fantastic:

And I started, you know, reading books and talking to everybody and trying to find resources that I couldn't.

Austin Fantastic:

I didn't know it would lead to me being a practitioner, an ayurvedic practitioner.

Austin Fantastic:

I thought I was convinced I would stay in film and television for my life.

Austin Fantastic:

But a few months later, yeah, I had this kind of, like, universe moment of like, oh, I could change my career and do something different.

Austin Fantastic:

That inception moment was I could change my career as like I could help people heal through Ayurveda and I could be an Ayurvedic chef and introduce people to Ayurveda through food.

Austin Fantastic:

So that was the kind of like the initial thought process and so I started taking types of steps towards that.

Austin Fantastic:

So the first thing is I went to culinary school.

Austin Fantastic:

I went to the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York which was an amazing experience.

Austin Fantastic:

And I learned a lot interestingly about like food and digestion through that school and like how food works, kind of like the chemistry of the kitchen.

Austin Fantastic:

So at that time I was still just self studied in Ayurveda.

Austin Fantastic:

And then immediately after culinary school I took my first year of Ayurvedic school.

Austin Fantastic:

Ayurvedic health counselor consultant.

Austin Fantastic:

In the US there's like three levels.

Austin Fantastic:

So I did my first year and then I went to India and I studied in India for eight months and I was at two different Ayurvedic clinics there, one in Rajasthan and one in Mumbai.

Austin Fantastic:

So I did just hundreds of clinical hours, lots of work.

Austin Fantastic:

back to the US in the end of:

Austin Fantastic:

And it's much more.

Austin Fantastic:

The Ayurvedic health counselor is more like diet, lifestyle, understanding the structure of the body, kind of like learning all the working pieces of Ayurvedic anatomy.

Austin Fantastic:

And then this program, the Ayurvedic practitioner program is more like, it's much more disease involved.

Austin Fantastic:

You know, each month of school we just focused on nervous diseases, mental diseases, reproductive dise is.

Austin Fantastic:

I've had so many revelations.

Austin Fantastic:

I feel like in Ayurveda it's hard to say that there's like one outstanding concept.

Austin Fantastic:

But you know, modern science is starting to look more into epigenetics and individualized medicine, which is the Ayurvedic model.

Austin Fantastic:

From the beginning, before we treat someone, we seek to understand that person.

Austin Fantastic:

Who are you?

Austin Fantastic:

What's going on with you?

Austin Fantastic:

How are we going to help you heal?

Austin Fantastic:

So it's always been the individualized approach.

Austin Fantastic:

Ayurveda had a system of basically understanding epigenetics.

Austin Fantastic:

That's the doshas.

Austin Fantastic:

I mean it's broken down again.

Austin Fantastic:

It's like in these like kind of archaic language.

Austin Fantastic:

But where I had the revelation is so we have the five elements.

Austin Fantastic:

The five elements Combined create the three doshas, those elements and those doshas and their interplays with each other create qualities.

Austin Fantastic:

20 qualities, the gunas.

Austin Fantastic:

And it's 10 pairs of opposites.

Austin Fantastic:

So 20 qualities in total.

Austin Fantastic:

It's like hot, cold, dry, wet.

Austin Fantastic:

One day I was actually listening to a book on physics.

Austin Fantastic:

It was called the Physics of God.

Austin Fantastic:

Something in that book triggered this moment.

Austin Fantastic:

And I was like, the 20 gunas are the 20amino acids in a DNA strand.

Hetal Bahman:

Oh wow.

Austin Fantastic:

I was like, our DNA, our genetic expression.

Austin Fantastic:

I was like, Ayurveda was onto this 5,000 years ago.

Austin Fantastic:

And I was like, could this be real?

Austin Fantastic:

And so I started doing research.

Hetal Bahman:

Is this real life?

Austin Fantastic:

I was like, could they, could they have really figured it out?

Austin Fantastic:

Like epigenetics 5,000 years ago, before you know, a machine was ever invented to know that there that were that body cells are even made out of DNA?

Austin Fantastic:

And so I did a little bit of research and just some preliminary study has shown that, yes, that those 20 qualities are in fact Ayurveda's understanding of epigenetics and the DNA expression.

Austin Fantastic:

And you know, how we either prevent or cause disease.

Austin Fantastic:

It's like, how could two identical twins, one goes bald and one doesn't, one gets leukemia, the other doesn't.

Austin Fantastic:

Like how does that happen?

Austin Fantastic:

And it's all because of nature versus nurture.

Austin Fantastic:

It's like you're, you're born with your nature, that's who you are.

Austin Fantastic:

You're born with your makeup from your parents.

Austin Fantastic:

That's your genetic code.

Austin Fantastic:

But how do you treat that genetic code throughout your lifetime will produce different results, it will produce healthy results or it'll produce unhealthy results.

Austin Fantastic:

And yeah, that's the whole entire Ayurvedic model.

Austin Fantastic:

So one of that's been something that's extremely fascinated me and I'd like to go a lot deeper on that.

Austin Fantastic:

Just to be able to kind of communicate that to other people is like, keep going back to the same thing.

Austin Fantastic:

It's not woo woo.

Austin Fantastic:

It's not fake, it's not weird science.

Austin Fantastic:

It's science science.

Hetal Bahman:

Why is it so hard to comprehend?

Hetal Bahman:

No, as like somebody in western society who has only experienced Western medicine.

Hetal Bahman:

Why is it so hard to comprehend that treatments like that of Ayurvedic treatments is science, like you're saying?

Austin Fantastic:

I think it's just communication.

Austin Fantastic:

You know, the way we were raised.

Hetal Bahman:

The way we learned things like for example, meditation.

Hetal Bahman:

Right.

Hetal Bahman:

There's so many benefits to meditation, but people are like, what is that going to do for me?

Austin Fantastic:

I do have A pseudo scientific explanation for why meditation is good for you.

Austin Fantastic:

Your pituitary gland sits in between the two hemispheres of your left and right brain.

Austin Fantastic:

And that is like the governor of pretty much all the systems and processes inside your body.

Austin Fantastic:

When you're stressed, your brain is creating electrical signals that are going back and forth when you're stressed, it's like a storm.

Austin Fantastic:

And your pituitary gland is sitting in the center of that.

Austin Fantastic:

And I had always thought of it as kind of like air traffic control.

Austin Fantastic:

So like it's on the center of the, you know, tarmac.

Austin Fantastic:

Tarmac.

Austin Fantastic:

I was like, tamarack, what?

Austin Fantastic:

So the air traffic control is like kind of in a prime location of the tarmac and it's watching incoming planes and outgoing planes.

Austin Fantastic:

Right for the brain and it's communicating to everybody.

Austin Fantastic:

Like you go here, you go there, and it's keeping order and everything organized.

Austin Fantastic:

Well, now picture like it's cloudy and foggy and like they don't have visual anymore, you know, to the planes, but they still have their instruments.

Austin Fantastic:

Well, now add lightning, you know, and add whatever like strain, rain and hail.

Austin Fantastic:

You're going to start disturbing all of the controls.

Austin Fantastic:

Ability to organize everything.

Austin Fantastic:

And so if you're stressed, all this electrical signals going back and forth over your pituitary gland, it's going to have a hard time functioning and saying this needs to go there and that needs to go there and like keeping control of the whole entire system.

Austin Fantastic:

So when we meditate, we actually harmonize the left and right hemispheres of the brain and they have shown this in scans, whereas like there's, you know, just this ton of confusion.

Austin Fantastic:

And then, you know, we go into like rhythmic, like sine waves, you know, for how the brain is like operating.

Austin Fantastic:

And there's, you know, beta, alpha, theta, delta.

Austin Fantastic:

It's like the different brain wavelengths in gamma moving the brain from more chaotic places into more harmonious places.

Austin Fantastic:

And then, you know, the pituitary gland can be at rest and like organize things a lot better.

Hetal Bahman:

I like the air traffic controller analogy.

Hetal Bahman:

That was good.

Austin Fantastic:

It's a pseudo side explanation.

Hetal Bahman:

Where do you draw the line between treating with Ayurvedic practices and treating with Western medicine practices?

Austin Fantastic:

Yeah, I feel like the line can probably be moving back and forth.

Austin Fantastic:

There's not like a static answer of where you start and stop.

Austin Fantastic:

Eastern and Western medicine practices.

Austin Fantastic:

Ayurvedic medicine is amazing for prevention and it's really great for solving like those mysterious illnesses that aren't life threatening.

Austin Fantastic:

In Western medicine, if there's a trauma and you have a life threatening disease, your best course of action is to go with western medicine.

Austin Fantastic:

If you have stage four cancer and you know your terminal, get treatment through that system.

Austin Fantastic:

And this would take a more individualized case by case understanding.

Austin Fantastic:

But when you're ready, you know, move in ayurvedic supporting medicine.

Austin Fantastic:

And once you are no longer terminal and you're stable, all the things that you should have done to prevent the cancer in the first place, now you have to do after the fact to heal the body and heal the tissues and heal those structures and things like that.

Austin Fantastic:

So that's kind of like grand scale, but on a little bit smaller, like relatable scale for anybody at home, like practical.

Austin Fantastic:

If you're sick and you have to go into work and you know, your head is pounding and you're stuffy and groggy and you can't function, like, take Dayquil and go to work.

Austin Fantastic:

You know, if you have to.

Austin Fantastic:

Ideally, you know, you'd stay at home and rest, right?

Austin Fantastic:

But you know, the world that we live in, it's like we have to function.

Austin Fantastic:

So you're not going to health jail if you take dayquil, but you should also be taking herbs, you know, treating understanding like, well, how did you get sick in the first place?

Austin Fantastic:

Like what caused the cold?

Austin Fantastic:

And then so using ayurvedic medicine to treat that at the same time.

Austin Fantastic:

And you know, for me in my own life and you know, with my clients that I work with, that's, you know, I carry that through.

Austin Fantastic:

You know, it's not like something I just say, it's like something I believe in.

Austin Fantastic:

I had a client a few years ago.

Austin Fantastic:

This was like relatively quick out.

Austin Fantastic:

It was when I was studying in India, so it was just after I'd finished school.

Austin Fantastic:

She had chronic migraines for two or three years before we saw each other.

Austin Fantastic:

You know, at the time that we saw each other, she was having like five to seven migraines a week and like cluster headaches and she's like totally debilitated.

Austin Fantastic:

She was taking all the maximum dosages of the different drugs that the doctors had given her to try and allay the problem.

Austin Fantastic:

She'd gotten to an impasse.

Austin Fantastic:

She was like, there's nowhere further for me to go in western medicine.

Austin Fantastic:

So we started working together, we did all the ayurvedic stuff.

Austin Fantastic:

We do the consultation, understand how it started, and kind of put all the pieces together and get a real map basically of her condition and then started to navigate her way towards health.

Austin Fantastic:

And pretty quickly, you know, with some Diet and some herb changes and lifestyle changes.

Austin Fantastic:

She went down to like three days a week.

Austin Fantastic:

She'd have a migraine, and the intensity went from a 10 to a 6, you know, so it wasn't as debilitating.

Austin Fantastic:

I don't remember what it was now, but whatever pills like, she was taking to, like, relieve the migraines, I didn't stop her.

Austin Fantastic:

I was like, go ahead.

Austin Fantastic:

I was like, take it.

Austin Fantastic:

If you're in pain, take it.

Austin Fantastic:

But we're still doing the protocol.

Austin Fantastic:

And after about three and a half months of working with each other, she now gets a migraine a couple of times a year.

Hetal Bahman:

I think the fact that you're not somebody who's saying, oh, don't take Western medicine at all, that's bad.

Hetal Bahman:

It makes it so much more easy to implement because, hey, if you're in pain, sure, take some medicine that will alleviate it, but at the same time, let's continue.

Hetal Bahman:

So you're an ayurvedic practitioner and you're taking clients.

Hetal Bahman:

What are the conditions that you see most of that your clients have?

Austin Fantastic:

It's so interesting that you asked that.

Austin Fantastic:

So my marketing and advertising and a lot of my copy kind of is around, like, my condition.

Austin Fantastic:

So I talk a lot about IBS and digestive issues, and that's kind of where I hang out.

Austin Fantastic:

But I get clients with all sorts of different conditions.

Austin Fantastic:

Of the last four clients I've just recently seen, two of them were IBS and the other two, one was cancer and another one was actually similar to the migraines client.

Austin Fantastic:

He's got vestibular migraines and tinnitus and vertigo.

Austin Fantastic:

Chronic debilitating.

Austin Fantastic:

So, yeah, I get kind of like a myriad of different types of people that I attract.

Austin Fantastic:

And I've worked with all sorts of different things, but I think usually people latch on to, yeah, I have a digestive issue or something like that and these other symptoms.

Austin Fantastic:

And so that's how kind of like the spread of clients that I get.

Hetal Bahman:

When a client comes to you, like, what is your process in terms of the consultation?

Hetal Bahman:

What does that look like?

Hetal Bahman:

And then how do you educate your clients and motivate them to make these changes in their life?

Austin Fantastic:

When somebody first comes to me, usually it's just a.

Austin Fantastic:

It's a lot of back and forth conversation.

Austin Fantastic:

You know, it's like, oh, what do you have?

Austin Fantastic:

How'd you get it?

Austin Fantastic:

And da, da, da.

Austin Fantastic:

And then they asked me, you know, how I'm gonna help them.

Austin Fantastic:

They're like, well, I don't know how I'm Gonna help you right now until we do a full consultation.

Austin Fantastic:

But, you know, I help people through diet, lifestyle and herbs, and then usually also to meditation, if they're open to it.

Austin Fantastic:

If not, there's other psychological therapies that you can do in Ayurveda that are helpful.

Austin Fantastic:

But I would say meditation among them is king.

Austin Fantastic:

So, yeah, somebody comes to me and let's say, you know, we've gone through that process.

Austin Fantastic:

So they say, like, yes, let's do this.

Austin Fantastic:

What happens then is I send them a health questionnaire.

Austin Fantastic:

So they fill everything out.

Austin Fantastic:

It's kind of just like you go to a doctor's office, like, what are you allergic to, what hurts?

Austin Fantastic:

Or what are you coming to this visit for?

Austin Fantastic:

Health history, those sorts of things.

Austin Fantastic:

And then the consultation itself, it's about an hour and a half, long process for most people.

Austin Fantastic:

And we go really deep into all sorts of different weird symptoms that signs that they might have.

Austin Fantastic:

And it's weird in the sense that they seem unrelated.

Austin Fantastic:

But in Ayurveda, everything has a string.

Austin Fantastic:

Do you have aches and pains?

Austin Fantastic:

Do you have cracking and popping joints?

Austin Fantastic:

You know, people would think like, oh, yeah, my joints crack all the time.

Austin Fantastic:

But what does that mean?

Austin Fantastic:

Well, it means you have, like, really high vata, you know, so it's like, we need to know that to diagnose and understand.

Austin Fantastic:

So we go through that whole entire thing, you know, what are you eating and how's your bowel movements?

Austin Fantastic:

And, you know, if anybody who's familiar with Ayurveda, we know we talk about poop a lot.

Hetal Bahman:

I love that.

Austin Fantastic:

Yeah, it's important.

Austin Fantastic:

We need to know.

Austin Fantastic:

And then I do a mixture of distant and local clients.

Austin Fantastic:

So a lot of people who are virtual, I'll have them send me photos of their fingernails, their tongue.

Austin Fantastic:

And then now, more recently, I was doing it before, but I'm getting back into it again.

Austin Fantastic:

As a picture of your eye, this is Ayurvedic, like iridology, so you could read the patterns in the iris and see what those mean, the implications for health.

Austin Fantastic:

And so between the physiological evidence, you know, the look of your fingernails and your tongue and your eyes, coupled with the interview, then with all that information, like I said, I can kind of get a real map of your state of imbalance.

Austin Fantastic:

Where did it start?

Austin Fantastic:

How did it start?

Austin Fantastic:

How did it progress?

Austin Fantastic:

Where are you at right now?

Austin Fantastic:

And then I can create the pathway towards healing and then the healing part with Ayurveda.

Austin Fantastic:

So like I said, I use diet, lifestyle, herbs, meditation.

Austin Fantastic:

But there's also Stages to that.

Austin Fantastic:

So the beginning stage is palliation and it's usually a bit more gentle.

Austin Fantastic:

What we're trying to do is bring the doshas back into alignment and harmony with each other.

Austin Fantastic:

The reason you have disease is because they've gone out of harmony with each other.

Austin Fantastic:

And I think of it as like bone setting.

Austin Fantastic:

Right.

Austin Fantastic:

So it's like first we gotta like soften the area, prepare the tissues, make sure everything is nice and gentle and ready.

Austin Fantastic:

So that's the palliation stage and then there's a detoxification stage which is like the.

Austin Fantastic:

You're gonna put it in place.

Hetal Bahman:

This reminded me of like a chiropractor.

Austin Fantastic:

Exactly.

Austin Fantastic:

Yeah.

Austin Fantastic:

You're just like crack it and you're like realign.

Austin Fantastic:

You know, it's a very aggressive but also fast that can be a few days to a week long process of resetting the doshas, the detoxification process, and then there's the rejuvenation process stage which is now that things are back in line, we want to strengthen and tonify and bake in those results in a state of balance.

Hetal Bahman:

What about people who don't necessarily have huge issues?

Hetal Bahman:

Have you seen any clients like that that were just like, oh, I just want to know how to strengthen my diet or bring more energy into my life or something like that?

Austin Fantastic:

Yeah, I do get some people who are like ayurvedic, curious.

Austin Fantastic:

It's not as strong of a motivation.

Austin Fantastic:

You know, people are like in pain, they're like, I'll do anything, it doesn't matter.

Austin Fantastic:

So I do get those clients very rarely at this point, but for them, you know, it's interesting too, even with those like just slight differences of how your body feels or like, yeah, I want to like make my digestion better.

Austin Fantastic:

It's amazing how different you can feel when you follow ayurvedic principles.

Austin Fantastic:

So for one example, like me and my family, my mom is the only one who's really like bought in to Ayurveda.

Austin Fantastic:

We'll do family parties or something like that.

Austin Fantastic:

And people try and send me home with leftovers and I just say no.

Austin Fantastic:

I was like, I won't take food home.

Austin Fantastic:

It's one of the big things in Ayurveda is like not to eat leftover food, frozen, canned shelf goods, preserved, things like that.

Austin Fantastic:

Because it's heavy food.

Austin Fantastic:

It has a sitting energy.

Austin Fantastic:

And so when you put food that's been sitting for a long time into your body, it's going to create this heaviness, the slowness, the static energy and it can really mess up your digestive system.

Austin Fantastic:

And for me, the ayurvedic rule then is like, you eat fresh food every single day.

Austin Fantastic:

Freshly cooked, you know, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, you know, fresh vegetables.

Austin Fantastic:

If it's meat, then you get fresh meat.

Austin Fantastic:

Whatever it is, it's just fresh, so nothing left over.

Austin Fantastic:

And for me, having eaten that way for so long now, if I eat food that's left over for one day, I might be okay.

Austin Fantastic:

But if I eat leftovers two days in a row, then it messes me up and I just feel like blah.

Austin Fantastic:

You know, I feel heavy and I feel gross.

Austin Fantastic:

So people who are doing this chronically, that's just how they understand their body to feel.

Austin Fantastic:

If you're eating leftover and preserved and food out to go and all these things all of the time, you don't know that once you optimize your digestion, you don't know what it feels like to have the energy, have the clarity of mind, have the focus, have all these things.

Austin Fantastic:

It's like you're stuck in the mire and you don't know that you're there.

Austin Fantastic:

So, yeah, it's interesting.

Austin Fantastic:

You know, people come with the digestive issues, and then they start to do these things, and they're like, wow, I can't believe how much energy I have.

Austin Fantastic:

I can't believe how I feel, and I can't believe all these things.

Austin Fantastic:

And it's like, you can't believe it because you just don't know because you haven't tried yet.

Hetal Bahman:

Wow, that makes me not want to eat my leftovers.

Austin Fantastic:

Yeah, it's honestly, like, I feel bad, and it's a big lifestyle change to.

Hetal Bahman:

You know, for me, always be making fresh food.

Hetal Bahman:

You need to have the time to even do that.

Austin Fantastic:

Yeah, you need to have the time to do that.

Austin Fantastic:

A lot of the health stuff online, it's like meal prepping and, like, having all your stuff ready to go, and it's healthier, but it's not that healthy.

Austin Fantastic:

There.

Austin Fantastic:

There's a lot to it.

Austin Fantastic:

But the benefit, the payoff is monumental.

Austin Fantastic:

You know, I don't like wasting food, so it's been a learning curve to make sure.

Austin Fantastic:

It's like, how do you cook just enough for each meal?

Austin Fantastic:

And usually a breakfast is simple because I can make a very small breakfast and that's fine.

Austin Fantastic:

And then lunch, you know, if there's anything left over, I can eat for dinner.

Austin Fantastic:

So leftover means leftover night.

Austin Fantastic:

So you can eat lunch and dinner the same food the same day, and that's okay.

Austin Fantastic:

But if you put it in the fridge and it goes overnight, that's considered leftover.

Austin Fantastic:

I've conceded a little bit and I'll eat a one day leftover so I don't waste food.

Austin Fantastic:

But I won't go beyond that because then now I'm being wasteful of my health.

Hetal Bahman:

That's interesting to say it that way.

Austin Fantastic:

Yeah.

Hetal Bahman:

Wow.

Hetal Bahman:

So for anybody who's listening in who might be curious about possibly changing their life through Ayurvedic practices, are you currently open to new clients?

Austin Fantastic:

Yeah, absolutely.

Austin Fantastic:

I wish I could help everybody in the world.

Austin Fantastic:

I do take new clients and if anybody wants to connect with me, you know, Ayurveda for dot us, but it's Ayurveda for us.

Austin Fantastic:

You know, they can find me on my website and contact me through that.

Austin Fantastic:

And so yeah, for people who are Ayurveda curious and same, you know, with my website, you can go on there just for blog information and tips and things and then to work with me.

Austin Fantastic:

The best way to reach me is through the website.

Hetal Bahman:

Amazing.

Hetal Bahman:

And I'll put all of the links in the description so that it's easy for you guys to find all of that information.

Hetal Bahman:

Thank you so much.

Hetal Bahman:

Austin.

Austin Fantastic:

Hey, thank you so much.

Austin Fantastic:

It's been such a pleasure.

Hetal Bahman:

Ethics and policies of the US Government, maybe in a good way or bad way, depends on how you see things.

Hetal Bahman:

But I'm just here to share some dialogue with an expert who's been on both sides of the equation.

Hetal Bahman:

According to the americanimmigrationcouncil.org, uS immigration law is based on the following the reunification of families, admitting immigrants with skills that are valuable to the US Economy, humanitarian protections and promoting diversity.

Hetal Bahman:

Now.

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