By Felicia Marie Tomasko
Dr. David Simon MD, board-certified neurologist, champion of the healing power of Yoga and Ayurveda, and co-founder (with Dr. Deepak Chopra) of the famed Chopra Center, passed away on Tuesday, January 31, 2012. His words, speech, healing presence, medical practice, books, and classes touched many in the 61 years of his life. His life and work is a powerful reminder that our words and actions matter and health and healing comes in many forms.
In 2004, LA YOGA founder Julie Deife interviewed Dr. Simon in a wide-ranging and powerful discussion about the intersection of medical paradigms and the work of the Chopra Center. We publish this here in tribute.
Julie: How are we coming, integrating Ayurveda into our western health care mindset?
Dr. Simon: Patience is a virtue. This is a pretty recent shift in western consciousness. It is really our generation who for the first time is approaching a critical mass of people who even know about meditation and yoga. And, even among people who know meditation and yoga, Ayurveda is something that is pretty unfamiliar. ?When you think about the progress, it’s really been quite remarkable and astonishing. Only in America can we think it’s not happening fast enough.
Julie: Is there movement in the medical community, per se?
Dr. Simon: The new generation is much more open and receptive than my generation. We have medical students rotating from UCSD every week now. I would say that half of them are enthusiastic about holistic and another of the remaining half are at least open. It is only those who know that they want to be an orthopedic surgeon and they don’t care about anything else, and that is fine, we need good orthopedic technicians as well, who are not interested.
Julie: What diseases do you think that we could effectively tackle at this point in time on a large scale with an Ayurvedic approach?
Dr. Simon: I think everything. But I think the most direct and obvious niche for Ayurveda in the west right now is gray zone conditions where people are clearly suffering, but medicine doesn’t have a lot to offer — chronic fatigue, irritable bowel, myalgia, and also a lot of psychiatric problems like low levels of depression, insomnia, anxiety, panic. I think all kinds of intermittent cardiac, palpitation conditions that people get put on different medications for.
Julie: Specifically you have done incredible work with people who have cancer.
Dr. Simon: The Chopra Center does a course called Return to Wholeness, which is for people with cancer and sometimes we see miraculous changes. But regardless of whether or not their disease is affected we know that there is a deep healing that takes place. We also see repeatedly that it minimizes side effects from interventions.
Julie: You consider yourself a nontraditional healer. What is one of your primary approaches?
Dr. Simon: I see patients one on one and I recognize that asking questions without judgment is the most powerful healing technology that I have and as a result of that people become aware of things that they are holding onto that they weren’t previously aware of. Then they can consciously choose as to whether it is time to let go of it or not.
Julie: Would you share another?
Dr. Simon: I use my body as a diagnostic technique. And most of the time I am comfortable in my body. So if someone comes into my space and I start to feel uncomfortable, I make the assumption that I am uncomfortable because I am feeling something about this person’s body. So I go into an intuitive mode of asking questions based upon certain mythological themes that we all carry with us, to see if I can get to a place where my resonance is being manifest in that person. Usually there is some release and then there is a commitment to start making changes in behavior that will start to release whatever is toxic and start bringing in some nourishment.
Julie: How is this Ayurveda?
Dr. Simon: I have this basic assumption that if we are suffering, it is because there is some retained undigested experience. That’s what ama is. It’s not just, I ate a double cheeseburger and I’m now feeling indigestion. There is something else that is not completely digested. So I feel that it is our responsibility as healers to help a person identify what is undigested, to loosen it from the system, to bring it into circulation, to help eliminate it and then to replace it with something that is rejuvenative.
Julie: The Chopra Center, you, as Medical Director, actively acknowledge the spiritual aspects in healing, do you not?
Dr. Simon: When somebody is going through a challenge they start to forget the fact that their central nature is one of wholeness and holiness and forgetting this is what causes all the pain. All we have to do is remind people that this too will pass and that your central nature is unborn and undying and unbounded infinite and eternal. Then whatever the issue is in their face right now goes back into its normal proportion.
Julie: Can the massive, violent fires occurring in Southern California be explained from an Ayurvedic perspective?
Dr. Simon: The reason that forest fires are in Southern California is a perfect example of not enough kapha – there wasn’t a soothing, nourishing, lubricating effect. All the dryness ended up inhibiting the natural flow of ojas so all the trees are vulnerable and all the bark and needles. Then there is a little spark of fire with vata blowing it so the whole thing gets combusted. Now, suddenly all that kapha that was retained in the trees, is in the air and so everyone breathing is getting kapha imbalance in their system. And ultimately what happens, is nature now has to come back with kapha, cool off the fire, ground the vata and reestablish the balance. So everything can be seen in those terms.
Julie: What are allergies?
Dr. Simon: Allergies go back to core immune confusion because what happens when there is a lot of chaos is there is question as to who is friend and who is not. That is often what chaos is. The safety that you felt is no longer present. So there tends to be either over- reactivity or under- reactivity of the immune system.??An analogy is that we have troops in Iraq right now and they are obviously nervous. If a disturbance is heard they may over react and fire their machine guns. It may turn out it was just a cat in the garbage cans. That is the same as an allergy and so it’s really vata driving pitta to respond aggressively. On the other hand, having gone over in that direction to fight the cat, they left open their flank and some enemy came into the flank and attacked them. That is cancer. Their immune system was diverted and it wasn’t paying attention. It was over reacting when it didn’t need to and therefore it left itself vulnerable.
Julie: Can you talk about western pharmaceuticals?
Dr. Simon: The problem with all of our medicines is that they are too good at eliminating symptoms. We can control depression with Prozac. We can put you to sleep with Ambien or Resteril; but it doesn’t deal with why are you not falling asleep at night. Gandhi lamented that the problem with western medicine is that it is too effective and it doesn’t compel people – either doctors or patients – to look to the underlying cause. Charaka defines a quack as a doctor who treats the symptoms of disease without looking to the underlying origins of the disease.
Julie: Why is that the case, yet today?
Dr. Simon: The problem that I see is that often medicines are prescribed when it is the only thing that a doctor knows how to do. And so it’s not really the most effective treatment; it is not even really what the body is asking for. Medical doctors are trained to diagnose diseases for which they can apply pharmaceutical intervention. But often a patient’s condition does not clearly require pharmaceutical intervention. Since as western medical doctors we’re often not trained to offer other interventions, doctors figure out ways to rationalize or justify pharmaceutical intervention.
Julie: What are the options?
Dr. Simon: Patients expect some pharmaceuticals. And you know the expression that ‘if the only tool that you have in your toolbox is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail.’ I think that is rampant throughout all healing. Acupuncturists tend to treat everything with acupuncture, chiropractors treat everything with adjustments, homeopaths treat everything with homeopathic remedies, and medical doctors treat everything with prescriptions. None of it is really holistic. ??Julie: You didn’t list Ayurveda in that group.??Dr. Simon: Ayurveda offers the best framework for a truly holistic practice because everything is Ayurveda. Chemotherapy can be Ayurveda if presented in the right context for the right condition.
Julie: You have said that we can identify our shadow side when we identify qualities in others that we are initially drawn to and then we are eventually repulsed by. Will knowing this help me?
Dr. Simon: Yes, it will help you. It will help you to be more self-accepting. Ultimately what ahimsa means is to reduce the need for conflict. Conflict is the origin of illness. People have tremendous internal conflict. And most of that conflict comes out of a sense of judgment, self-judgment and judgment of others. And in my experience both personally and professionally, the more that we can embrace the dark stuff in ourselves the less likely we are to judge it when we see it in other people. ??A shadow is an aspect of ourselves that we don’t really want someone to see. That is why we try to keep it hidden and out of the light. But it usually is there because at some point it served us. If I can be a sarcastic biting jerk, it is probably because at some time in my life it actually kept me from being hurt in some way. So I can embrace it and say ok, I understand I have this side of me in some previous time in my life and it served me well. But, isn’t there a way to get my needs met without expressing it in a way that causes harm to other people?
Julie: It feels like a jump in the expansion of Self.
Dr. Simon: In my mind the definition of spiritual evolution is two fold. It is expanding your sense of self from localized ego based to increasingly seeing yourself as a universal being. And along with that comes expanding your capacity for compassion. But you can’t be compassionate if you are constantly judging. And everything that we judge in someone else is really an expression of something in our own nature, which may or may not have been previously expressed.?Osha used to say that the greatest enlightened beings are not people that have never made mistakes or not done anything wrong. They are people who literally have their feet in the muck while their arms are reaching to heaven and embracing both the dark and the light; they become whole and in that wholeness they become holy and they don’t have to reject anything. ?In my awareness, spirituality means embracing all that stuff.
Julie: Would you talk about pulse diagnosis?
Dr. Simon: I take everyone’s pulse and I have witnessed amazing pulse diagnosticians. It’s a talent that can be learned but I think there are people who are just naturally better at it. I have studied many different systems on pulse and I think that being too intellectual about the pulse gets in the way of actually perceiving something.??I use the pulse at the beginning of every examination as a way of really quieting down. I have everybody close their eyes when I do their pulse and I feel their pulse with my eyes closed. And what I notice is that the person’s attention goes to the pulse and my attention goes to the pulse in complete silence and in that place where there is this meeting of attention and this deep silence, information gets transmitted. Although I could probably go back and rationalize and say ‘oh there is some imbalance in the upana vayu portion of the vata pulse or the second layer is suggesting some difficulty in dhatus’, it doesn’t work like that for me. What works for me is when something comes into my awareness that wasn’t in my awareness before I engaged in that ritual. And I’ve come to trust that awareness.
Julie: What would you like to say in closing?
Dr. Simon: Thank you.
For more about David Simon’s life and work, please visit: www.chopra.com
Felicia Tomasko has spent more of her life practicing Yoga and Ayurveda than not. She first became introduced to the teachings through the writings of the Transcendentalists, through meditation, and using asana to cross-train for her practice of cross-country running. Between beginning her commitment to Yoga and Ayurveda and today, she earned degrees in environmental biology and anthropology and nursing, and certifications in the practice and teaching of yoga, yoga therapy, and Ayurveda while working in fields including cognitive neuroscience and plant biochemistry. Her commitment to writing is at least as long as her commitment to yoga. Working on everything related to the written word from newspapers to magazines to websites to books, Felicia has been writing and editing professionally since college. In order to feel like a teenager again, Felicia has pulled out her running shoes for regular interval sessions throughout Southern California. Since the very first issue of LA YOGA, Felicia has been part of the team and the growth and development of the Bliss Network.