How to know peace, and how this spiritual journey started when I was 5.

And why I call this my Ayurvedic life

me & Larry enjoying a moment together on our fast and furious friend’s birthday trip to Los Angeles

I was not happy as a child.

I was born in Seoul, and my grandmother accompanied me to Chicago at 5 years old to join me back with my family. My dad came to the U.S. the year I was born, and my mom joined him two years later. They meant to return 6 months after that but didn’t; they sent for me 3 years later.

I was introduced to my 2-year old sister at the airport for the first time. She called me by my first name, and I was offended. In Korea, you don’t call your elders by their name, and at 5, I was clearly her elder. I expected her to call me 언니 (older sister).

I didn’t know my parents, and they didn’t hug and love on me the way my grandparents did, so it was strange to be introduced to them as my parents. I wasn’t sure how to feel about these people, so I was stand-offish. My Dad took offense, and we didn’t recover from this moment until sometime after his stroke 45 years later (still a work in progress).

In the car, on the way to my new home from the airport, I was given an American name and told I must speak English from now on. This was to acclimate me to this new country fast so that I may fit in when I started kindergarten in a few weeks.

It was 1973. In those days, K-Pop wasn’t a thing, people judged the smell of kimchi, and Korean wasn’t a language people were interested in learning (or even hearing) the way it is today. We were doing our best to fit in, to be American.

From this uprooting from Seoul to Chicago, I never felt grounded in my childhood. No one reassured me that I’d be okay. In fact, I was given all sorts of confirmation that I was not. At least this is how I experienced and remembered it. I was a mess inside, unable to find comfort in my own skin.

Still, while I desperately sought validation from the outside, I found I had trouble validating the world back.

Being shy, I became an observer. I wasn’t distracted by trying to fit in, so I saw things I might have otherwise missed.

In high school, I quietly observed both my peers and teachers. I thought how crazy it was, what people, including teachers, did to fit in, or grasp at some sense of control.

What we do and say to be liked is insane.

I was to learn later, in coaching, what a dichotomic life so many of us live between (a) how we feel about things, and what we want deep inside, and (b) the life we create on the outside. We’ve habitualized our thoughts and actions to fit in so much that, over time, we forgot who we are. We could only sense that something is incomplete.

At some point, I grew up. And I was set on healing this fracture within me.

SELF VS EXTERNAL REFERRAL

I was introduced to words like self-referral and external referral. Self-referral looks within for approval, and for the important answers, while external referral looks around, at the world, for validation, deferring to the “professionals,” “experts,” and just about everyone else, to know what we think, feel, and need more than ourselves.

External reference runs so deep in our society that even when we want to help others, we give them “answers.”

Self referral knows that the best answer is to point ourselves and others back to inner wisdom.

Spiritual teacher and author, Eckhart Tolle’s pivotal moment was when, at his lowest point, he said to himself, I can’t live with myself anymore.

In that moment, an epiphany came through in the form of a question:

Who is this “I” …that can’t live with myself?

Finding the answer to this question set him on a path that would transform his life as well as the lives of millions.

The moment I was able to tap into that part of me, I tasted self-referral in the truest sense…

• Not: I’m confident I know this because I’m well studied in this and this is what I’m trained for… and look, I have back-up data.

• But rather: This is true for me. I know because I know who I am.

I was finally able to live into my own, and stretch beyond it. I grew roots within myself. I became acutely aware of my mind and body.

My habitualized reactions disguised as sound and logical thoughts began to melt away. It was a delicious, grounding, and expansive state to be in. I felt in my power, in my own being.

I do forget from time to time - the world seems to want to bring us back to the old us - but you can’t fully turn back once you’ve felt it. It’s an awakening.

Once you find your internal compass, you begin to let go of what you’ve been groomed into. Two steps forward, one step back. Keep looking forward, and no one can direct you anymore. You direct you.

This is Spirituality: to know yourself.

The more you know yourself, the better you understand others.

It doesn’t happen the other way around: you can’t know others if you don’t know yourself.

This is also the main tenet of Ayurveda, the science of life.

I bring this in now because when Ayurveda comes up, people usually focus on the doshas (the elements that make up your mind-body constitution) and on what to eat to stay balanced based on your dosha.

While looking to Ayurveda for good health is a great call, only looking outward (i.e. food lists) for the answers in keeping with Ayurveda misses the point.

Ayurveda means to guide you inward.

It seeks to make you whole by having you look in and get to know yourself better. Teachers (and teachings) can only ever point. You must get yourself there the rest of the way.

By knowing yourself better, you understand that you are not static, but like a river, effortlessly moving and flowing over and around the rocks that are “in the way.” You might live your entire life with the same name, but you become a different person day by day, like a river, dynamically alive.

Following Ayurvedic guidelines are important, especially when out of balance and out of touch with ourselves, because in those times, we feel unable to tap into our own inner wisdom.

Then as we heal, instead of staying static, it’s important to look inward to see what our body needs now to thrive, and what our mind needs to feed our bodies right action.

Staying static is the reason you might experience things working for a while and then not. You are a new person now with different needs. Check in with yourself regularly.

There is a balance to find between maintaining good habits for efficiency and cultivating the agility to change in real time. The river doesn’t stop to decide how it’s going to get around the rock and yet it flows like it always did.

We don’t spiritually thrive on autopilot.

By checking in with yourself, you will know what to eat, how much, and when. You’ll know when to sleep, and what decisions to make.

Can you be happy without being this aware?

Perhaps, if you excel in the things the world approves of, you’ve fully embraced those same values, and you don’t hold those same expectations over others.

While happiness may be felt from being good at winning at the societal game, many experience emptiness, or a sense of feeling duped because the joy of winning was fleeting. There’s an endless need for more.

The moment the rules change and you are affected by them, you will know if that sense of happiness was true for you.

The moment something goes against these beliefs, you might either shut out the opposition and dig deeper into your beliefs by using labels to keep everything black and white (there’s a false sense of safety in this), or you will experience cognitive dissonance (the gelatinous stage of a caterpillar about to turn into a butterfly).

If you arrive at the latter, welcome to the crack in the Universe. Plato’s allegory of the cave. Alice’s Wonderland. Siddhartha’s discovery on the other side of the wall that made him Buddha. Neo’s red pill that broke the Matrix. Eckhardt Tolle’s moment that woke up millions. My moment of yearning for validation and simultaneously recognizing that I was unable to validate others and engage in the performative actions of fitting in.

In my moment, at 15 years old, I concluded I was simply from another planet.

It wasn’t for another 15 years that I’d start knowing what to do with this feeling, and to realize that I was indeed more than okay.

Yes, circadian rhythms and doshas exist to guide us towards wellness. Start here or here.

But the most important part of Ayurvedic, or shall I say, spiritual or conscious living, isn’t about following rules and guidelines for the rest of your life. It’s about living according to your true nature. Not to your domestication.

In order to distinguish between the two, it helps to get still, turn everything off, and go in. Listen to your body, it will tell you. When the boredom comes and you sit through the tantrums (i.e. this is dumb, I can’t do this, I’ve got stuff to do, this doesn’t work, this isn’t for me, I don’t need this), you will begin to hear your inner wisdom.

It helps to stop looking for explanations and start dwelling in questions.

They say that the most dangerous people are the ones who can be alone in their own quiet and silent space. That’s because they are difficult to groom. Meaning, it’s difficult to use their vulnerabilities to control them… because they know that they are already safe within themselves.

These people love because they want to. They make time because they want to. They have nothing to prove.

The truth is, we are all looking for validation. The one that counts is the one that comes from yourself.

I’ve since rewritten my history.

In many ways, I was lucky to have been plucked out of my rich, familial surroundings (I have a lot of family in Korea) and placed where I didn’t feel I belonged at such a young age. It made me who I am today.

My parents loved me the best they knew how, and they wanted the best for me.

My dad struggled with his own demons, as we all do, and he was brave to leave an impressive life in Seoul, a progressive and radical man, ahead of his time, to start again as a foreigner - from ambassador to bus driver - to provide us with a better life.

I was to come to the States to become a fish out of water, an alien in a different planet, so that I can see what’s beyond the only water I knew. So that I can break through the expected; to even know that I had something authentic to unleash instead of living forever bound by what I was domesticated to be… and inspire others to do the same…

To live a conscious, Ayurvedic, and spiritual life.

Love, Savitree