Julie Hilsen: 0:00

Life of Love. Life of Love Life of Love. Life of Love With Julie Hilsen. Hello, dear friends, and welcome to another episode of Life of Love, where we meet each week to explore curiosity and things that we might not experience every day but could change our lives every day. So this is going to be a great conversation with my friend, Mira Katyal. She has been a divine force and her nurturing spirit has guided her to go on paths less traveled, and she comes from a family of medically trained doctors I believe it was your dad and your grandfather.

Mira Katyal: 0:46

My parents and my brother-in-law and sister, four doctors.

Julie Hilsen: 0:52

So four doctors and you’re like I want to help people but I’m going to go a different way. So, oh my goodness, mira, thank you for being here today on Life of Love. I’m so excited about our conversation and your lens that you can look at life. You’re a holistic life coach and a mental health coach and you have experience you’re telling me about with Ayurveda, yoga, reiki, and I’m just really excited to pick your brain about. You know, living authentically and getting to know your body and how everyone has these lenses they can show up in their best self. So thank you so much for being here.

Mira Katyal: 1:33

Thank you, julie, for choosing me and taking the time to listen to me. And you’re very right, we learn through pain, through difficult times in our life, through frustration, through losing health. And then I started seeking answers. Of course, I first saw them in the medical field, as you said, my family has four doctors. But the problem with medicine is that the problem stays throughout life. You just have to keep taking the pill. If you have depression stays throughout life, you just have to keep taking the pill. If you have depression, take it for life. If you have allergy, take it for life. And I said to my father but I don’t want, I want that problem to go away. And that’s how my quest for led me down the holistic path, because nobody else can address full health other than holistic knowledge.

Julie Hilsen: 2:28

So you wanted to take your health and have ownership of it instead of being passive. You wanted to be proactive, and I heard you on another podcast talking about how your sons were sick, like they were getting sick.

Mira Katyal: 2:43

Yeah, it was my girls twins.

Julie Hilsen: 2:46

Oh, your twin girls yeah.

Mira Katyal: 2:49

And I didn’t get breast milk, so you know how immunity develops when they’re breastfed. So they used to fall sick every month like viral flu, whatever. It was a botheration also and also, like you, are worried for them. Little babies just keep falling sick and I had no idea how long this would keep going on. They were twins, so they were a little premature. So all these things add up for their overall health. And I asked the doctor how can I improve their immunity? And she did give me a pill which I didn’t buy.

Mira Katyal: 3:24

But at that time I encountered Edgar Cayce. He’s a sleeping prophet from America and he talks about spirituality, health, holistic knowledge, and much of the stuff he says is very similar to Ayurveda, which I now realize. But I thought vaccines and antibiotics is the ultimate thing, you know, because that’s where my family came from. And he said that if you have a celery, carrot and lettuce juice it will build your immunity. And I still remember thinking carrot will build our immunity. Is he joking? But I’m a very experimental. So I just started giving them juice every now and then maybe two, three times a month and I actually in September school opened, so you know they get the flus and everything and I actually noticed that they were less prone, but I still didn’t believe it. It took me two, three years of juicing to realize that they actually fare better than their neighbors and their cousins and their schoolmates, that they’re actually getting less viral infection and everything. And then I realized and also all his other beautiful concepts that he talks about.

Mira Katyal: 4:44

Then I realized that we are not seeing the whole world of healing and medicine, especially from the Western medicine lens. We are excluding a big part and that is the spirit, the energy, the connection to the cosmos. All of this also helps with healing. We don’t explore it because we are disconnected and we are not encouraged to explore it. But my journey it’s been a very long journey because one by one I had to try everything. Now I integrate everything. Our life force is connected to the cosmos. Our cost, life force is received through the cosmos. Anything that stops the flow, through obstruction or negative beliefs or something that’s stopping the flow in the body, a fracture or a growth, that life flow will be impeded. So if you don’t trust the universe, if you don’t believe in life, then that’s impeding the flow of life flow.

Julie Hilsen: 6:02

Just that the idea that you’re not open to a life flow blocks. It is what you’re saying.

Mira Katyal: 6:08

Yeah, so it’s like this, like heat and cold Cold is the absence of heat, right, or light and darkness. Darkness is the absence of light, so the absence of faith and experience of that connection is distrust and fear and disbelief and ill health and lack of care for our own bodies. And it all leads to, you know, eating badly, sleeping badly, not exercising. I mean, the more you go away from life force and cosmic health, the more you will be pulled into ill health and ill way of thinking.

Julie Hilsen: 6:58

To me it sounds like you become separated from the whole and then you keep trying to medicate or adjust, but that’s not the source of your pain or your disease. Your source of pain and disease is you’re not connected to the flow.

Mira Katyal: 7:19

You cannot heal anything Because when you go to the doctor he removes a tumor or he fixes the. He puts the fracture, aligns it, but the healing is the natural way the body lives. There is an obstruction. We cannot create life. Life is there always, like trees grow, seeds grow, we have babies, it’s natural. If you stop it, if you stop the flow anywhere, then that life stops flowing. So we cannot create life. We can impede life with our patterns of life.

Julie Hilsen: 7:59

And that the natural state of life is to be healthy, healthy and flowing.

Mira Katyal: 8:06

Everywhere, nature is always growing, forests are growing, soil is renewing, animals are producing other animals. It’s just the circle of life. But if you denude a forest, then the forest cannot grow, because now you’ve removed the, you’ve produced an obstruction where now life cannot grow.

Julie Hilsen: 8:33

Wow. So you’ve learned this through your study in Reiki Ayurveda and I found it changed your fam. I know it’s changed your immediate family, but have your, has your other family like your parents? Are they more in tune with more wisdom traditions?

Mira Katyal: 9:05

or is it you’re sort of the outlier and suggestions and they sort of say, oh, yeah, okay, I am the outlier, and it’s always a choice, because out of all my siblings, only one person is a little bit 10% to 20% interested. And it’s always a choice. Even when I was sick, when I didn’t have knowledge or interest, I was also having that lifestyle of you know, not exercising enough, eating more processed food, grabbing for medicines. It’s my curiosity and research and trial and error which led me down this path and that, and then I saw that you can heal more, whole, you, you, you put your put back together better. So only that convinced me.

Mira Katyal: 9:59

But it is always a choice and I don’t believe in forcing anyone who’s not ready or interested, because there’s nothing wrong between light and darkness. It’s just a choice and everybody has the right to choose. If I want to sit in darkness, so be it. So I do have a YouTube channel, I do share my knowledge, but I think it’s only when you have that spark inside you, or something inside you is already there and you’re ready, that you will start.

Julie Hilsen: 10:42

And it’s so cool, yeah, and it speaks on. You know there’s so much coming at us all the time techniques and medicines, and and you said it’s something inside you that gets a curiosity that sparked. But you know, it’s like it’s your ability to discern, your ability to say this makes sense for me or it doesn’t. And I think that’s the beauty of even just Ayurveda, because you’re matching up with what resonates with your specific needs and to think that we’re not all cookie cutters. We all have our individual things. We’re not all cookie cutters. We, we all have our individual. You know things. And even within those groups there’s individuals. You know there’s outliers. So, yeah, I wanted to talk to you about how, like when you’re, when you’re giving an assessment of somebody you’re coaching, do you start with Ayurveda, Do you start with energy, Like what’s the foundation that you can get the most insight? And then lead me through how you’ve fine-tuned your art and your ability to act.

Mira Katyal: 11:48

I go with what the person is coming with. I also do mental coaching and counseling. So if they are coming purely with the mental issue, then we will go into more the counseling route of compassionate inquiry, because you look deep inside your emotions and beliefs and attitudes which actually create the template for your whole persona. And then if they’re interested and you have the time, then we can go into the body or they might come just for the body. But I think the best approach is both because I have lived in yoga camps and retreats and you do get back a great body but then you lose it and the missing thing was I hadn’t addressed my foundational beliefs. So unless your deep subconscious mind is on board, it’s very hard to maintain it. You get that wellness but then because of your anxieties and worries and whatever that’s bothering you, it just kind of upsets again. So you have to align them and in Ayurveda the mind and body are not separate and it’s the oldest science given to mankind, so it’s very ancient, it’s based on, it’s supposed to be given by a god. God gave some spiritual knowledge, these um therapies and everything, and it’s eternal. So the thing is that before science came, there was always this plants and natural resources and the, the rhythms of the season which mankind lived with and attuned to and we were healthy at. So that’s the science.

Mira Katyal: 13:37

They don’t, they just use the five elements, you know, space, air, fire, water and earth to adjust the body. So basically, we have three constitutions One is fiery, one is airy and one is watery. So if you’re too watery, you’ll need to bring in other elements to bring in balance. If you’re too airy, you need to bring in fire and water. And this airiness also comes into our minds, like a fiery person is very ambitious or anger prone, you know. So the constitution is showing up in your body, like when you come, you will already have the excess fire showing up and you will talk about this problem if you’re airy. So I don’t have to, I just have to see what’s disturbing you which is a part of you and then you use various things to bring it back like airy.

Mira Katyal: 14:30

People need to rest more. They should be active. They should not do so much social media. They should rest their mind, because too much air is like a storm. You don’t want storms, you want a calm wind.

Julie Hilsen: 14:45

And I love how you tune into the person’s state, their emotion, what’s coming up for them, and it’s like so in your face, right like you’re, I’m sure you talk to people and you’re like duh.

Mira Katyal: 15:00

It’s very basic, intuitive laws in ayurveda which you are responding to. It’s very it’s. It’s fundamentally very strong and common sense knowledge there.

Julie Hilsen: 15:14

Yeah, I mean, when you say it it’s like oh yeah, that’s common sense. I agree it’s like wild. So I wanted to ask you, when you meet a baby, say, there’s a six-month-old baby in front of you. Can you tell their element, or is that? Something that sort of comes with their life experience.

Mira Katyal: 15:33

It comes with the knowledge. You have to take up the knowledge first. You have to understand the concepts of Ayurveda, which is a little complex for this modern world. Not because they’re complex, because we’re not used to them.

Julie Hilsen: 15:46

We’re used to the 3D and it’s tuning into something beyond our senses, right.

Mira Katyal: 15:51

Our template is fixed inside the body before the baby is born. It’s the eggs and the sperm. When they come and they have a particular quality, then at that time, at the point of conception, one of the elements will be prominent, and when that element goes out of order then you get ill. If it’s not in order and it’s healthy, then you will reap its benefits. But once it becomes ill, or too much, that’s when you become ill and you start getting the negative.

Mira Katyal: 16:21

So as soon as the baby is born, it will be either more fiery or watery or airy, and you can see it in its habits. For example, airy babies are cranky, they cannot sleep easily, they’re hyperactive. Then watery babies they love to sleep. They don’t like to get up in the morning, they’re a little bit slow. So they from day one. They I mean I’m not saying like as soon as they’re born but you will start discerning, because the water has its own habits, fire has its own habits and we are made from nature. We’re not something that we put together, we are components of nature. So it’s the pattern inside us which is showing up and the only choice we have is to regulate that pattern of nature.

Julie Hilsen: 17:17

You’re part of Mother Gaia. We’re all connected. If you forget, then you’re feeling this dichotomy and this aloneness and this separateness and that blocks your flow. Oh, I just I love how this comes together and it just fits.

Mira Katyal: 17:27

I want to share something interesting with you because I had twins and both the babies were different inside me and I still remember one of the babies used to jump a lot inside me and I asked my sister was the doctor, so I asked her which baby is this side Like? Who is which one? She’s so hyperactive and she still is hyperactive and they’re both different, you know, even though same time and everything, and I didn’t have that Ayurveda knowledge at that time and she was a restless baby and always when it was sleep time she would get cranky and everything and you had to swing her for so long. But now that I know Ayurveda, I would have put oil on her spine, just massaged her spine, because the nervous system is where the airy elements travel. Just use some sesame oil and wrap the baby. They want to be grounded. An airy baby needs to be grounded, so you have to reduce the movement and soothe them.

Mira Katyal: 18:26

Warm oil soothes a person, even if you’re feeling sleepless. You just put some warm oil on your spine and neck and feet and you’ll sleep a little better that’s just so lovely.

Mira Katyal: 18:43

It’s so lovely other baby was very contented and she would not cry so much and she was more of a happy baby. But she started walking later and that’s because she was water element, so she was more active later. And for the element you need to stimulate them more. You need to give them more play things, because they’re just like so contented not to try so much they’re just chill.

Julie Hilsen: 19:12

You got to sort of push them Like go get that, go get that book, go get your snack yeah.

Mira Katyal: 19:19

And you can even change things with food. So for an airy baby you can give more grounding things like root vegetables and carbs, but for a watery baby you can give more light things like greens. So greens have more air element. They’re lighter food, you know like spinach, you can hold it, it’s so light, right, and you hold a pumpkin, it’s heavy. So that’s the water element, you know so see how nature is. It’s so logical actually wait till you’re.

Julie Hilsen: 19:50

You know, if you’re lucky enough to be a grandmother, you’re gonna be like oh yeah, the perfect grandmother.

Mira Katyal: 19:56

We got my children, but I think I’ll be the perfect grandmother, knowing what to do with each baby.

Julie Hilsen: 20:03

I know I’m so excited for you. That’d be such a great space to be in and just, you know, just nurture them and just give them exactly what their body’s saying. There’s so many. I know I had a book and it talked about the five different and you know it was written by a British lady and there are five different personalities and I know that I had to soothe my boys in different ways and I sought that knowledge. But you wonder how closely that ties in with the Ayurveda. It’s just, I’m fascinated with that and the whole thing. I was going to ask about astrology, because your twins are born the same, within minutes of each other. I wonder how their charts compare.

Mira Katyal: 20:46

So, again.

Mira Katyal: 20:47

Indian astrology is also taking the five elements into consideration and what happens is that time changes every minute. You know the quality of time, so in our Indian astrology we have the five elements in time. So the hour, the minute are like. The hour is one element, the minute is one element. So when the combination, you will have a at each minute, you will have a different pattern. Wow, and that is incorporated into their um, higher body, which they have brought into this body as a functioning soul. And that’s how they are different, because now the pattern of reacting to life is different from when. Both the babies are different, right?

Mira Katyal: 21:37

but it’s so wonderful that elements come inside us through food, through the mother’s body, through the energy in that time and also the environment. The mother maintains If she’s stressed, angry, overworked, worried, it seeps into the baby. And if you are relaxed, meditating, you know, just making the effort to give a nice environment, that also comes into the baby. So we have both nurture and nature. Both come into the baby.

Julie Hilsen: 22:09

I love that and it gives people permission to get to know exactly what their body’s doing and how their body’s responding. So I think it’s a very powerful wisdom tradition and I’d love to see more and more. I know I looked up where you could get trained and there’s a lot of training facilities to learn.

Mira Katyal: 22:29

You do. It’s around for 30 hours, but it’s basic course without a certificate is 30 hours, but I am expanding it to 100 hours with a certificate and I have a basic lifestyle therapy. So basically you will be equipped at the very home level to manage your own life, own health and happiness and also the loved ones. Very easy I mean very doable, I would say very doable through food, through oils, through choosing when to sleep, when to get up, through choosing activities, through choosing. All of this will affect you.

Julie Hilsen: 23:13

I’m sure there’s so many layers to it and I know there was a time in my house I had one of my kids was eating vegan, the other one was eating regular meat, had one of my kids was eating vegan, the other one was eating regular meat, and then, um, my husband was eating something different. I was like I’m making three different dinners every night. I don’t know how sustainable this is. Yes, so like educating the people in your house to you know, know what they need so they can be more self-sufficient. You know it’s always a I don’t know also customs.

Mira Katyal: 23:49

But it’s easier because what happens is the fire person in your family would need to have a little bit more cooling spices. So you could produce a cooling spice mix and just sprinkle it and just add something to cool them down. But you give the same meal to an airy person, but you give more root veggies, like it just, or you put ghee on top, like things like that. It’s very, such a simple change that it doesn’t feel you’re making three meals, just tweaking them I love.

Julie Hilsen: 24:20

I love that the use of like seasonings and oils and you know you’re topping it, you’re finishing it with something or just adding that is really fun. I like the idea of that.

Mira Katyal: 24:33

That’s because of the five elements, as it’s always present in everything in the universe. So spices are like fire, like black pepper, but spinach is cooling, like air, and pumpkin is like heavy, like water, it’s like root vegetable. So the colors, the, the taste, you’ll know. Okay, this is a sweet thing is watery, fiery, spicy things are fiery, bitter things are airy, things like that, you just understand and you just know how to plate people’s dinner according to their like.

Mira Katyal: 25:11

I, the thing is, we try, we like to be who we are, but if you do it too much you get ill. So my airy daughter she likes to eat dry food and more salads, but it’s not good for her. And my other daughter, she likes to eat dry food and more salads, but it’s not good for her. And my other daughter, she likes to have heavy yogurt and, you know, more rice. And I joke with them. I said you know you should prepare your plates and exchange them, because you need this one and she needs this one. But this is where your willpower, or your will, comes in, where you realize, okay, to support myself, I have to do a little bit of the opposite, not give in to my constitution. If you’re fiery, don’t overwork. That’s your nature. Go out of your way to slow down. If you’re airy, go out of your way to sleep on time. They don’t want to. They’re the ones who are up all night.

Julie Hilsen: 26:08

It’s discipline right, it’s knowing who you are and having the discipline for the self-care and free will Like.

Mira Katyal: 26:16

this is where we choose every day.

Julie Hilsen: 26:20

Choose to be the best version of yourself. Choose to see your divinity, yes, and you’re worth it, like this is, yeah, I mean.

Mira Katyal: 26:32

I have got rid of a lot of my issues just through holistic healing. You know, like I’ve got rid of allergies, I support my mental health with herbs and I have improved my sleep routine. So I was actually more ill 20 years back than I am now.

Julie Hilsen: 26:54

Well, it’s so funny because I was like, do I have the right mirror? Because I watched a video of you like 10 years ago and you look younger now. Well, I don’t know. Wait a minute, who do I have here?

Mira Katyal: 27:08

If you keep good health and you do the herbs. They do cleanse your skin and things like that. So it’s just an, as I said, life. That’s what healing and life is. It wants the best for you, but we impede it. So now that I know what to do, I kind of follow it. So that’s why you’re seeing a little better. But this is supposed to be the natural way, but we stop it just by not understanding what is life, what is healing, what is the body requires from us.

Julie Hilsen: 27:41

Yeah, and that ties into my next question. I was going to ask you about the compassionate inquiry because that’s one of your special. You’re trained in that and I’ve never heard of it, so could you share with me about that?

Mira Katyal: 27:52

Yeah, it’s actually. Dr Gabor Mete is very famous physician and trauma addiction expert. He’s a doctor and he’s written many books. It’s his his course. I have trained for more than one and a half years. Um, I’m just going to be certified.

Mira Katyal: 28:09

So basically it is using the body, somatic. Look inside the body and the mind to understand why you are the way you are. Because, gabor says, we are shaped in our childhood through trauma. Everybody is and we get we we, erroneously or correctly, whatever the reason we hold on to certain beliefs which we are ourselves not aware of and that affects our whole life.

Mira Katyal: 28:38

We might think that we are not good enough and then you don’t try hard enough in life to reach the place you want to, just because of this internal belief. So when we look inside this it is an hour-long consultation and you look and you take like I have looked inside myself for one and a half years now so you see so many layers and you first of all see, oh, this is my belief. Then you give yourself time to let go of the belief. It’s not easy, right, right, and then to do the opposite is um, how do you empower, how do you honor yourself, how do you grow because you don’t want to be in that I am not good enough position for the rest of your life. You know, that’s just a belief, for whatever reason we got, but we can release it now.

Julie Hilsen: 29:28

It’s just so amazing how and I’ve heard this before our beliefs, these things that we hold on to, that are part of our subconscious. They could be inherited or they could be things that somebody just said something to us when we were six years old. We are so impressionable and we’re just little sponges as children and we don’t have the ability to say well, that doesn’t make sense. You know, we just take everything for truth.

Mira Katyal: 29:56

I’m just going to go a step further because Dr Gabor deals with this lifetime, but because I’ve also trained in past life regression, I’ve experimented with it. I have clearly seen in a past life, where I was exiled from a village and I had to die in a forest how that belief came back in this life and always kept me my energy down because I didn’t want to engage in life.

Julie Hilsen: 30:26

It wasn’t safe because you could be expelled Exactly.

Mira Katyal: 30:29

Wow, I mean you’re right. You said we can bring it and we do, because I never addressed it before. And one of the reasons why I’m doing, why this is my passion, is the opposite of it’s engaging in life. When you bring back health and happiness and energy to your body, you’re engaging in life. You’re allowing the life force to flow again. So I am actually working counter to my basic belief that life is not worth engaging. It is worth engaging, it’s worth healing, it’s worth growing, enjoying, blooming. It is worth engaging. It’s worth healing.

Julie Hilsen: 31:05

It’s worth growing, enjoying, blooming. It’s so great. And then when you go on a podcast or you show up in the public, you’re telling your soul, your life force, that it’s safe and it’s okay. And you’ve switched timelines and you’ve trusted.

Mira Katyal: 31:22

Yeah, it’s taken me 30 years to reach this point. First it was a lot of trial and error and I always started with skepticism, not trusting half the knowledge. But when you keep trying, trying, experimenting, you realize it works and everything is a part of the journey, this revelation, this embracing this. But it’s a slow and steady journey. Everybody has their own journeys, everything, everybody has something to grow into, you know.

Julie Hilsen: 31:53

Right, you’re talking about at the beginning of our conversation this pain, these obstacles. These are, these are action steps. These are the things that lead us to our next. Yeah, aha, our next.

Mira Katyal: 32:06

Okay, I, I conquered that and I can go on, and so the pain is saying are you going to stop here or are you going to conquer me? That’s the choice we have every day, right? Are you going to succumb or are you going to get up and fight it?

Julie Hilsen: 32:21

and that’s the free will, the free will to switch. I just love that.

Mira Katyal: 32:28

So passionate inquiry, wow. So one of the best things I’ve learned, other than ayurveda, is the top two things of my. I mean, I love reiki too, because that’s spiritual healing energy. You just borrow the energy to heal the body. But for self-awareness, I think the two best modalities is compassionate inquiry and arvada, because you know your subconscious mind and you know your body from inside, your elements from inside, and you learn to dance with the elements and you’re.

Julie Hilsen: 32:58

I love it because you’re not fighting it, you’re not fighting who you are, you’re not pretending you’re someone else. No, you’re dealing with the divinity that you are.

Mira Katyal: 33:06

And the thing is, when you stop being who you’re not supposed to be, you just naturally bloom. You know, like a rose becomes a rose or a mango becomes a mango. It’s their job, just to be who they are. You don’t have to work hard to be who you are, but we do work very hard to be who we should not be.

Julie Hilsen: 33:30

That’s going to go on the reel. I love that. Such a great quote, and so people can go to your website to find out more about what you’re.

Mira Katyal: 33:39

You’re outside Toronto, but I mean virtually virtually no virtually most 90% is virtual consultations on Zoom and I’m also starting the course in March. In case anybody’s interested, the for 2024, the next Ayurveda course. So it’s about 30 hours wow, okay yeah, I’ll be putting up the information soon. And actually it’s in combination with another teacher who is an astrology teacher. He gives 100 hours of training in Indian astrology, so we together are giving this next one in March.

Julie Hilsen: 34:13

Now, ancient astrology is that the tropical or the sideral Indian one is more sidereal yes, and it’s also more detailed.

Mira Katyal: 34:27

It has higher predictive ability and it’s more complex than both. It has a lot more concepts, so a lot more steps. I think the homeland of astrology is connected, probably, to India. The mother, the motherboard, yeah.

Julie Hilsen: 34:50

Yeah, I do too. I do too. Well, I’ve just had such a great time talking to you about these things and I know that when someone hears this for the first time they might be like what? But if there’s something sparked, please people go look into it. It can change your life and make you more interesting Part of living your best life is living differently every day and exploring these things. Because, because otherwise you’re just repeating the same patterns that got you to where you are so there needs to be a disruption in your pattern to find a new way.

Julie Hilsen: 35:28

So I’m so honored to be part of any kind of disruption. I’ll take it. You guys can blame me if you’re thank you kitchen’s upside down, but yeah, thank you so much if they want, they can go to my website, which is miraom m-i-r-a-o-mcom oh, that’s beautiful. Oh well, much love to you and thank you so much, okay, thank you thank you so much.