Live, Zoom, and Recorded Education with Kamie
Live Location TBA
Zoom links for distance learning are created specifically for each event. Most events will be recorded and available on YouTube.
Immunity Basics: Secrets to a Stronger Immune Systems and Practices to Support It
Coming soon!
When we think of immunity, we may think of factors contributing to our resistance to illness and infection. It’s a fact that our bodies immunity is affected by many factors, such as exposure and stress levels. But did you know the strength of our digestive system plays a significant role in the impact of illness on our body?
Ayurveda proposes that we reduce stress in our life to achieve harmony and live in connection with the cycles of nature. Eating seasonally and having a supportive daily routine are two of the most significant steps in accomplishing immune health.
Kamie will discuss the top 5 reasons you might feel sick this winter season with Ayurvedic remedies and herbal supplements to help boost your immunity.
Sleep Hygiene: Catching ZZZZZs
Coming soon!
How well do you sleep? Do you have difficulty falling asleep? Do you wake up in the middle of the night? Do you stay up too late and get up too early?
We spend approximately one-third of our lives asleep. This leads to the essential question: why do we need sleep? What is clear is that quality sleep is a staple of optimal health. But even though we know this, many of us are not making time for quality sleep. Because of busy lifestyles, we do not truly receive the health benefits of sleep.
As we drift off to sleep, our bodies begin their night-shift work. This is the time when it detoxifies and clears itself of physical toxins and processes daily emotions.
Learn why sleep is the most important life change you can make for recovery, stress management, immunity, detoxification, weight loss, and more.
Eat This! What is Digestion and What Causes Digestive Imbalance
Coming soon!
A few signs of a stressed digestive system and accumulation of toxins in our body are fatigue and lack of motivation, mental fogginess and forgetfulness, recurring infections, illnesses, and weight gain.
Today we experience many things that cause our bodies to get out of balance. Some issues are unhealthy or irregular dietary habits, unmanaged and accumulated stress, unsupportive relationships, inactive lifestyles, and environmental toxins that can challenge your body’s ability to digest food properly. A weak digestive system accumulates toxins (ama) that cause imbalance, disease, and premature aging. Our digestion also plays an essential role in our mental-emotional-physical state of balance or imbalance.
Kamie will talk about digestion for optimal wellness and weight management according to Ayurveda, Agni (digestive fire), Ama (toxin accumulation), and seasonal eating and why this is important.
Fat Facts! Why Are Fats Essential For Our Health
Coming soon!
Until now, we have been told that saturated fats like butter and animal fats cause us to be overweight and clog up our arteries. There was a push for highly processed vegetable fats that were considered okay and a better option. Over 40 years down the road, research shows that highly processed oils are toxic, and a fat-free lifestyle has caused cognitive decline, hormonal imbalances, and digestive issues.
Cholesterol is instrumental in producing cell membranes, creating hormones, and bile, along with maintaining brain health and nervous system function.
In this talk, Kamie will cover why fats are so helpful and the best food sources to feed your brain, balance your digestive system, and restore hormone health.
FUTURE EVENTS with Kamie
Build a Balanced Life: Sleep, Nutrition, lifestyle, and Energy Management
The path toward optimal health is a journey to understanding true overall wellness. We learn to live in harmony with the world around us as we connect with our true natures, develop, and evolve.
Ayurveda offers several approaches when illnesses do arise, there is a greater emphasis on preventative medicine. Ayurveda focuses on lifestyle choices and routine as foundational factors to providing health and wellness.
Many of the practices that are a part of the Four Pillars of Wellness have been adequately researched and documented. Many practitioners have different interpretations of the four pillars that reflect their styles of practice and clientele. With the wisdom of my teachers, I adjusted my perception to benefit my clients and feel it is manageable in our modern world. I know that all practitioners would agree on the Four Pillars, but each may have a different order of importance.
The Four Pillars of Ayurveda are:
- Lifestyle: routine
- Nutrition: what we take in through our senses
- Sleep: rest and digest
- Energy Management: dealing with stress
Deep healing and optimal health require time, connection to the rhythms of nature, and living in harmony. Ayurvedic wisdom guides us to live a joyful and healthy life; we need to follow guides such as these. I would love to support you on your journey to health and wellness.
Seasonal Lifestyle Routines and Nutrition for the Fall
Ayurveda offers many suggestions for supporting our body as the days get shorter and cooler. Fall is nature’s detox cycle and a great time to follow nature’s laws and change our diet and practices. Our focus must first be on dispelling heat, removing toxins without depleting our bodies, and then grounding and nourishing.
The heat accumulated throughout the summer rises and causes the leaves to dry out and fall off many trees. Our Bodies also accumulate heat. When this heat is not released, it causes dryness in our physical body and mucus membranes, affecting our digestion and immunity. We will also notice mental agitation, lack of focus, and mood changes.
When we have a balanced lifestyle and eat a seasonal diet, our transition into fall is smooth, and our bodies naturally detoxify. As a result, our liver, gallbladder, blood, and digestive tract are cleansed, our mood stabilizes, and we can fully enjoy the fall transition. Having robust digestion in the fall is essential to purge toxins, and to consume harder-to-digest but deeply nourishing foods, for example, seeds, nuts, root vegetables, meats, and grains. This cleansing process is crucial as we move into darker, colder winter months.
Ayurvedic Lifestyle Practices Improve Your Energy
What do you do to boost your energy and rejuvenate? Do you grab chocolate, a soda, or a strong cup of coffee? These provide a buzz for the moment, but quick fixes have crashing consequences on long-term health. Low energy and fatigue are the body’s first alert systems, urging us to take a closer look at what we are doing or neglecting to do.
Plenty of demands drain our energy. C​onstant stimulation and fixation on electronics preoccupy our attention. We are always on-the-go and many feel depleted and overwhelmed, proudly trading time for self-care for physical and emotional exhaustion.
Ayurveda’s holistic approach to wellness and energy considers whether we are overstimulating, underusing, or abusing our bodies, minds, and emotions. It examines social life, daily routine, nutritional habits, and spiritual practices, searching for the root cause of health concerns rather than treating the manifesting symptoms. When dis-ease appears, poor choices can overload or even obstruct the movement of vital energy. Fatigue, lethargy, loss of interest in life, inadequate digestion, aches and pains, depression, anxiety, and lack of energy result as a consequence. To find unlimited energy, we must understand the underlying cause of that fatigue.
The Ayurvedic Clock: Foundation for Health and Wellness
What does it mean to have vibrant health, live life with purpose, and have a deep sense of peace, contentment, and purpose? Ayurveda means knowledge of life, and it originated in India more than 5,000 years ago. It is the oldest continuously practiced health care system in the world, coming from an understanding of nature’s rhythms and laws, working with the imbalances that show up as signs of dis-ease in the mind and body.
The foundation for Ayurveda is the 24-hour clock, where a proper lifestyle routine begins. In our current life, most of us divide the day into work, personal time, and sleep, with work frequently given the most significant amount of our time. Ayurveda sees the day differently, breaking it into six four-hour pieces, like a pie. One of the slices divides the 24 hour day into day and night. Then the days are divided into the morning 6 AM – 10 AM, middle of the day 10 AM – 2 PM, and the afternoon from 2 PM – 6 PM, after which the cycle begins again.
The Ayurvedic clock is the foundation of how these pieces contribute to balance or imbalance in sleep, digestion, emotional health, and overall wellness.
Meal Timing: What Time You Eat Matters
A few signs of a stressed digestive system and accumulation of toxins in our body are fatigue and lack of motivation, mental fogginess and forgetfulness, recurring infections, illnesses, and weight gain.
Today we experience many things that cause our bodies to get out of balance. Some issues are unhealthy or irregular dietary habits, unmanaged and accumulated stress, unsupportive relationships, inactive lifestyles, and environmental toxins that can challenge your body’s ability to digest food properly. A weak digestive system accumulates toxins (ama) that cause imbalance, disease, and premature aging. Our digestion also plays an essential role in our mental-emotional-physical state of balance or imbalance.
Kamie will talk about digestion for optimal wellness and weight management according to Ayurveda, Agni (digestive fire), Ama (toxin accumulation), and seasonal eating and why this is important.
Ayurveda Basics: What is Ayurveda?
Ayurveda embraces each person as an individual. Every person is born with a blueprint (constitution) for optimal health and wellness. It is our lifestyles that either keep the balance or allow it to fall out of balance, creating illness and disease. Your personal constitution defines who you are. No two constitutions are exactly alike.
Svastha is the Ayurvedic (Sanskrit) term for health and literally translates as “established in the self”. Imbalances feed disease and illnesses, thus true health is not based on being physically disease free. Rather, it is based on the interaction of the body, mind, spirit, and senses, infused with a lifelong sense of self or purpose, balanced life, and a vibrant spiritual connection.
Ayurveda reaches far beyond the area of physical health, healing, and the prevention of disease, but can help each of us claim our authentic selves and align with our true nature. Through Ayurveda, we create awareness of body, mind, and spirit to develop our strengths, refine our needs, surface our challenges, redirect harmful tendencies, and offer genuine support wherever it is needed so that we can find balance in stressful times.
What is Digestion and What Causes Imbalance
Along with digestion of food, unhealthy or irregular dietary habits, unmanaged and accumulated stress, unsupportive relationships, inactive lifestyles, and environmental toxins can challenge your body’s ability to digest food properly. A weak digestive system results in the accumulation of ama, or toxins, that cause imbalance, disease, and premature aging. Your digestion is a true reflection of your mental-emotional-physical state of balance or imbalance.
A few signs of a stressed digestive system and accumulation of toxins are fatigue and lack of motivation, mental fogginess and forgetfulness, recurring infections and illnesses and weight gain. Kamie will talk about digestion for optimal wellness and weight management according to Ayurveda, Agni (digestive fire) and Ama (toxin accumulation), and seasonal eating and why this is important.
Supporting Digestion and Digestive Fire
Digestive fire, “Agni” a Sanskrit term, explains our body’s digestive process of breaking down the food we eat, assimilating what is beneficial, and eliminating the remainder. Ayurveda teaches us that weakened or impaired agni is at the root of imbalance and illness in our body. Agni regulates and organizes many physiological processes—including the digestion, absorption, and assimilation of foods and processing information that our senses take in and our experiences in our life. If our agni weak, our digestion limited, and we produce toxins, a byproduct that accumulates in our body. According to Ayurveda, this toxic residue “ama” is the root of all diseases.
Ayurveda recommends a variety of efficient and yet simple techniques to maintain a healthy digestive fire. Incorporating these practices into your daily life can stimulate agni, eliminate ama, and in turn not only improve digestion but create balance throughout your entire body, boost immunity and help you to function at an optimal level right through your lifespan.
- What is Agni?
- Stages of digestion
- Better Digestion with Food
- The Drains of Our Body: Our Lymph
- Helpful Hints to Get Started
Food as Medicine
Proper digestion plays a pivotal role in our physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing. In Ayurveda, when we mindfully strengthen and support our agni and digestive system, we form the foundation for good health and vitality right through our life. While what we eat is incredibly important, how we eat and our emotions around eating are equally, if not more so, important.
- Digestive Issues and Ama
- Stress, Digestion, and Food Sensitivities
- What next?
Tools to Manage Stress Matters
Society places a badge of honor on those who are over-committed and upholding a busy life. With continual outside pressure, the adrenal glands have to work overtime to make enough stress hormones to sustain the habitual cycle.
Throughout a stressful day, our body struggles to balance the increased levels of adrenaline and cortisol in the bloodstream due to the activation of the sympathetic nervous system. Our body’s natural response is to increase the production of balancing hormones that have opposing energies (ie. estrogen, progesterone, testosterone). In turn, this puts a strain on our adrenal glands and hormonal systems. Eventually, our bodies can’t keep up with the demand.
At first, our endocrine system gives us signals that something is off but eventually more serious health concerns show up such as weakened immunity, digestive issues, anxiety, depression, hormonal imbalances, and more.
Join Kamie as she explains what the hormones in our body do and simple practices to activate the parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest)to stop the sympathetic (stress response) from activating.
Healthy Hormones
Society places a badge of honor on those who are over-committed and upholding a busy life. With continual outside pressure, the adrenal glands have to work overtime to make enough stress hormones to sustain the perpetual cycle.
Our bodies struggle to balance the increased levels of adrenaline and cortisol in the bloodstream. In return, the body responds by increasing the production of balancing hormones with opposing energies (ie. estrogen, progesterone, testosterone).
This strains our adrenal glands and hormonal system. Eventually, our bodies simply can’t keep up with the demand. The endocrine system then gives signals that something is off.
Building Immunity and Practices
When our immune system is compromised, we need to ask ourselves why? And are we willing to change the course we are on and correct the underlying problems—whatever they may be? ~Kamie Slegers
According to Ayurveda, strong immunity is a product of good digestion, quality liver functioning, and appropriately balanced hormones.
We’ve all experienced our body crashing and our health deteriorate as we fall to the inconvenience of a cold, the flu, allergies , or COVID. Most of us would rather not get sick at all and given the choice, who would refuse a strong immune system? We all want to be healthy and would rather avoid illness and disease. So, how do we support our immunity?
Ayurveda teaches us that Ojas (vitality) and immunity are the natural outcomes of optimal health, which depends on strong digestive fire (agni), a healthy diet, a supportive lifestyle, and a balanced nervous system. With this knowledge, supporting our immune system is often more about basic self-care than anything else. Our bodies thrive with proper nutrition, and adequate sleep; they do even better when we commit to stress management, cultivate healthy relationships, embrace joy and purpose, and living in alignment with our own authentic self.
We will cover a few basics to give you a foundation for building your immunity. Routine, practices and movement, and herbs and vitamin supplementation.
Move Your Body!
Exercise has been an important part of the Ayurvedic routine for thousands of years but it is looked very different. Today exercise focuses on rigorous routines, with exhausting results. It has become a modern fad, not suitable for optimal wellness. According to Ayurveda, exercise gets rid of heaviness and stiffness of the body, because it burns digestive impurities and toxins (ama) this creates more flexibility, lightness, smoothness, and ease of life.