Transcription of Charlotte Clews for the show Replenish #4
Dr. Lisa: Each week we feature a segment we call Maine Magazine minutes sponsored by Maine Magazine. This week we have a very interesting guest who I will let Genevieve Morgan, the Wellness editor for Maine Magazine introduce it to you. Thank you Genevieve.
Genevieve: Thanks Lisa. I’m very excited today because we’re joined by Charlotte Clews who is a popular certified Anusara yoga teacher living and practicing in Blue Hill. She is the creator of Wild Open Heart Yoga, a physical and spiritual practice that combines yoga, ancient ayurvedic practices, barefoot running and wilderness submersion.
Hi Charlotte.
Charlotte: Hi there.
Genevieve: Thanks for driving down from Blue Hill.
Charlotte: It was nice.
Genevieve: I’m so impressed by everything that you do. Wild Open Heart Yoga, even the name is exciting. First I want to say congratulations on becoming a certified Anusara yoga instructor. That takes a lot of work.
I remember doing a yoga class with you maybe eight years ago, a workshop and you’re pregnant with your first child here in Portland in a studio that doesn’t exist anymore. As I was saying to you, you must have to have done yoga every day since.
Charlotte: I do practice every day. One way or another I practice and it is the backbone of my life, it’s fantastic. The certification process in Anusara is a really fantastic process too.
Genevieve: How did you come to combine all your other interests with your yoga practice?
Charlotte: I grew up in Down East, Maine. I always grew up in a wild landscape and I love wilderness and I love being outside and I love the natural rhythm and I’ve just had this attunement that even from a very young age. Being out on the beaches, being barefoot, I’d take my shoes off and march and try to keep them off until November.
That really resonated with me and when I have stepped away from that and live in big cities and I have travelled all over, I lose something and I feel busy and distracted and even a little bit disconnected and sad.
For me, bringing yoga and bringing wilderness to people is a really fantastic way to awaken and enliven their connection to self and to, really, that life force that bubbles up in all of us. There’s really this sense of joy and a sense of freedom that we all long to connect with and that is what Yoga does and that is really actually what being in wilderness does for most of us. That’s where I’m coming from.
Genevieve: This is really interesting to me Charlotte because you have this wilderness background, you have this Maine background and yet you chose to incorporate something that is actually quite different, i.e. Ayurvedic medicine. Tell me a little bit about Ayurvedic medicine.
Charlotte: Yeah. Ayurveda is actually the way that I learn it and practice, it is really much about attuning to the natural world. That attunement takes a great deal of sensitivity that we build up over time through attuning to the life force that’s in everything. Both in the plants and trees that we’re wandering through just as visitors but also in the plants that we’re eating.
It’s about regaining our relationship to the world. Eating is essentially the medium in which we relate to our ecosystem. Ayurveda is right in line with that.
Genevieve: I find the same thing is true in Chinese medicine. It’s interesting those are very related practices, they are related to the silk trade route, the traditional Chinese medicine, Ayurveda. There’s so many parallels and they believe the same is true that food has an essence. This idea of living foods is really important.
Charlotte: Yeah, and really waking people up to the deeper relationship that they already feel but that they maybe can’t articulate or is damped down or a little bit cloaked in our culture and just trying to have that authentic relationship for ourselves.
Genevieve: Our theme of today’s show is Replenish. How do the diets techniques and the advice that you give, how does Ayurvedic diet relate to refilling your gas tank or getting ready for the change of season and particularly as we’re heading into the darker months and winter?
Charlotte: Think of it as a little bit like surfing. For most of my, into my early 20s, actually probably late 20s, I was swimming against the current, pretty strong. I liked the sensation, I liked to work hard, I liked difficulties. I would swim super hard and then I’d be really burnt out and I got a lot of … I was pretty sick in my 20s.
What I learned though Anusara and through Ayurveda is if you turn yourself around and you surf with the waves, it’s fun, it’s great and you’re not working so hard. The life force is fueling you. That way what I’m teaching people to do is align, align with life, with the current of life and it’s much easier, you’re going to feel better and you’re not going to get burnt out.
Dr. Lisa: I want to point out to people that you can’t see Charlotte but there’s a sense of joy that just permeates the entire room by her being here and that is something I’m struck by is people who practice this type of life living they have that sense of joy. Do you find that in your own life?
Charlotte: Absolutely. For me, the freedom that have found in … Really, just giving myself permission to align with what I am, you know to be true is just, like I said, so much easier and I do, I wake up happy most days.
Genevieve: I’m hoping that’s true because I’m about to embark on a journey with you. I’m a little frightened because I’ve never done something like it before. You are about to launch your annual Ayurvedic fall cleanse on October 16th? Is that right?
Charlotte: 26th.
Genevieve: October 26th. Do you want to give me a sneak preview?
Charlotte: Yeah. October 26th and November 16th, three weeks, we’re going to take to hone in on this relationship with food. One of the things that damps down our sensitivity is this and we’ve eaten a lot of what I call dead or dumb food in the past, or we’ve eaten out of sync with the seasons.
We’re just not … our sensitivity is not so refined and so it’s hard for us to make intuitively intelligent decisions freely. What I like to do with the cleanse, I recommend it for anybody, is that you’re then really just clearing the way for you to feel what is intelligent to nourish your body. I don’t believe that there’s anyone dietary system or one magic food that’s going to heal us and lead to enlightenment. I do think that we can uncover our own intelligence.
A cleanse in this three week cleanse is going to be … we have three weeks of menu plants so every day is planned out. You get a shopping list. We incorporate some spices and herbs that are traditionally used in Ayurvedic cleanses. They work particularly well when you’re lightening up your food.
This time of year, any shift in seasons you’re going to have a weaker digestive system so we’re really trying to nurture that and baby the digestive system to make this shift. Fall and spring are the times to do cleansing so that we’re staying in line with the seasons, we’re not swimming upstream. That’s what we’re going to do, we’re going to line up.
Genevieve: Charlotte, what are the benefits of doing a cleanse like the fall cleanse?
Charlotte: Aside from really clearing your channels, you have a greater sensitivity to what foods are going to nourish you. It makes you more resilient to being sick. For the next coming months when we go into the holidays, it’s going to help you out big time and I find that success of cleanses aid that process quite a bit. It helps you attain a more ideal weight as you start to, again, maybe not, during the cleanse you’re not trying to lose a ton of weight but then overtime it allows you to become more sensitive to what will nourish you and what’s appropriate. It refines your taste, so you start to have natural cravings for what’s naturally good for you.
Genevieve: How do people find out how to reach you and if they want to take a barefoot run or an Anusara yoga class. I know you have a lot of workshops and a lot of interesting things happening.
Charlotte: Yeah. I teach Anusara, I teach the barefoot workshops, I do wilderness yoga adventures and then cleansing. I’m at wildopenheart.com and you can register for my e-mail list there and then I send out a newsletter about once a month, maybe once a week if things are really hopping.
Genevieve: We will link through to your website through the doctorlisa.org website so that people can find you there as well.
Charlotte: Yeah.
Genevieve: Maybe there are a few of you out there who want to join me on the fall cleanse, do the fall cleanse challenge.
Charlotte: It’s a fun group. We have a really good time honestly. It’s probably the most fun you can have doing a cleanse. I won’t say that it’s not hard, so fun and hard are not opposed to each other but there’s some tough days and then you really do, everyone feels fantastic. It’s really fun to see people’s eyes afterward. Everyone’s eyes just sparkle, it’s great.
Genevieve: Well, I can’t wait. Thanks so much for coming down to the studio.
Charlotte: Yeah, you’re welcome. Nice to talk with you.
Genevieve: To sign up for this year’s fall cleanse with Charlotte Clews visit wildopenheart.com. To read more about Anusara yoga and it’s connection to Ayurvedic tradition read my article Om State in the June issue of Maine Magazine. Available online at mainemag.com.
This month’s edition of Maine Magazine is available at your local newsstand across the state.