20 may 2022 - News from Atreya

Namaskar
As some of you know I started to have problems with my spine when I was 15 years old. I wore a corrective back brace for 3 years until I was 18. My journey of learning how to manage my back and neck problems led me to Ayurveda when I was 30 years old. Through Ayurveda I found how to manage the deformation and degeneration of my spinal column. In 2010 I had the first experience of losing my vision due to a compression of the cervical vertebrae on nerve and the blood vessels that irrigate the eyes. This kind of vision loss is very similar to low blood pressure where the vision become geometric and unable to focus; shapes and forms are still seen just no details. I was able to manage this occasional problem until November 2018 when I had a major vision loss and cervical pain in the neck and head. I underwent extensive exams of the eyes, brain, neck, etc. over several months. Basically, it is just degeneration of the cervical discs to the point where there is no longer any support to the cervical vertebrae. When the cervical move it is very painful and they compress the nerve and blood vessels which result in vision loss.

This condition became very bad again at the end of 2021 and all of this year 2022. In order to better manage this condition I have reduced my working hours by half. I used to work 6 days a week on the average of 10 hours a day in order to manage the school and my patients. From January 2022 I reduced to 30 hours a week. This means that I am unable to answer emails and I am sorry if you have sent me an email and did not receive a response. It also means that I will no longer teach English trainings on Ayurveda as of June 2022 when the current trainings end. Unfortunately, I will also stop the Jyotish training even though I enjoy teaching that subject very much.

What will not change is the Ayurveda trainings in French and my commitment to help students pass the Swiss Federal diploma if they are residents in Switzerland. I will not be able to guarantee that I will physically be able to teach the French M2 and M6 for students who start the level 1 in September 2023. So if you want the federal diploma in Ayurveda I suggest that you do not wait another year. For everyone who lives outside of Switzerland nothing really changes. As my problem degenerates further I will reduce the hours of live question and answer classes, but there remains hundreds of hours of recorded question and answer sessions.

I am writing this and posting it so that the future is clear for current students and prospective students. Often the information that circulates about my health is incorrect. I am basically healthy, unless of course I cannot see, which means I cannot work; which means no teaching, computer work, etc. When I say mainly in good health it means that I have to manage pain on a daily basis; I am always in some degree of pain due to the degeneration in my spine. This is nothing new and I am used to managing it. I have reduced the number of patients that I see drastically this year and will take a break over the summer. I may or may not continue to see patients depending on my health. For the moment I need to focus on reducing work / computer time and rejuvenation of the neck anatomy to be able to continue to offer education in Ayurveda.

Hari Om !

Atreya