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Dr. Claudia Welch

Healthy Happy Sexy Bonus

Below are resources and bonuses from Healthy Happy Sexy: Ayurveda Wisdom for Modern Women

Did the book help you uncover something or find more bliss? Let us know your thoughts and feelings with the hashtag #HealthyHappySexy

✨ Founder of Jivamukti Yoga, Sharon Gannon’s First Experience of Ayurveda

✨ Sianna Sherman's mythic story of Durga - Fierce Mother Goddess of Love

✨ Love Makes Us Receptive to Change, with Special Guest Dr. Claudia Welch

✨ Try this Body Yantra practice for 40 days! You might also like the Inner Bliss Meditation, or the Womb-Heart Meditation

✨ Yoga Nidra Recording

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Dr. Claudia on Using Love, Focus, and a Morning Practice To Re-pattern Our Energy

I am so delighted to share this love note and contribution to the Healthy, Happy, Sexy bonuses from Dr. Claudia Welch, my all-time fave Ayurveda Trailblazer.

Dear Katie,

I hope this finds you well, and send my congratulations on your book, and best wishes for your endeavors. May your work inspire many to good changes and kind hearts.
in Love,
CW

Using Love, Focus, and a Morning Practice To Re-pattern the Pranamayakosha

The Pranamayakosha

Prana. We hear about it in yoga classes and discussed in hushed, milk-of-magnesia tones, and often relegate it either to that place in our brains where woo-woo garbage goes, or to some high level position—too lofty or esoteric to be attained or understood by any but the most advanced and practiced yogis. Either way, many of us may have never actually consciously experienced prana—often translated as, “life force,” as a tangible substance or experience.

But it is indeed a tangible force, and we can begin to feel and experience it if we turn our attention from our external environments to the subtle sensations that pervade the space our bodies occupy. These sensations include variations in temperature, feelings of heaviness, hollowness, tightness, stickiness, and variations in the direction, gait, and pace of movement in different areas. We may even sense colors associated with different parts of this internal space. As we become more attuned to paying attention to our internal environment, our internal sensory apparatus becomes more refined. Our internal sensory apparatus allows us to see inside our bodies without aid of our external eyes, feel inside without nerve endings, hear inside without the aid of our external ears, even smell or taste what is inside without the aid of external organs.

With an even moderately refined ability to “turn on” our internal sensory apparatus, we can feel sensations and impressions, not only in the space our bodies occupy, but also in the space extending some inches or feet beyond the boundary of our skin. When we feel and experience these sensations, we are feeling prana. The combined field of prana that pervades our body, and extends some measure beyond, is called the pranamayakosha. This is our prana body, and it pays to become familiar with it.

Prana has a distinct feeling when it is unobstructed and flowing smoothly. Though invisible, at least to most of us, it does not feel empty. When it is flowing smoothly, it feels warm, full, and homogenous. To imagine what an unobstructed pranamayakosha feels like, imagine being in a comfortably warm bath of water that surrounds and permeates you—a porous version of you, and in which you can breathe. Like being a fish in water.

Only when the flow of prana is obstructed or constricted, do we feel lumpy, choppy, sticky, tight, black or hollow-feeling areas in the pranamayakosha. It is a sad truth that prana will not flow in the face of tension (or in the neck, back or legs of tension either, I’m afraid). Sad, because most of us hold some tension somewhere in our bodies, and that tension constricts the flow of prana.

There is a pithy saying in Chinese medicine that says, “Xue follows Qi.” If we translate this into terms and ideas related to Ayurveda and Yoga, we could say that the blood and other dhatus (tissues) of the body coalesce around whatever prana is doing. If prana is flowing smoothly, blood will flow smoothly and the bodily tissues, organs and systems will be well nourished by prana and blood. When the flow of prana is constricted or obstructed, blood flow also slows and our tissues, organs and systems suffer either from malnutrition, or stagnation.

If we are interested in irrigating our tissues and organs with energy and blood, it is useful first to dissolve or remove whatever may be constricting or obstructing prana.

What constricts or obstructs the flow of prana? Acute or chronic tension or stagnation. Tension constricts, and stagnation blocks a flow. Either way, the flow of prana is obstructed. Obstruction may be temporary, like when we are briefly shocked or scared, or it may be long standing, like when we have chronic anxiety, injury, tension or physical or emotional pain.

In my experience, most effective, non-surgical techniques for dissolving obstructions in the pranamayakosha, involve a combination of love and focus.

Love Makes Us Receptive To Change

Almost every time my guru would put his students into meditation, he would say to do our practices lovingly, without thinking of them as a burden. He said this so often that I stopped hearing him. His words almost ceased to mean anything to me. Until I was studying hormones and ran across this interesting fact: When we are in love, the hormone oxytocin increases. When oxytocin increases, it makes our brains more receptive to the creation of new neural pathways. And that comes in handy when we’re trying to meditate and transform our thought patterns and perceptions.

When behavior is either strong, or repeated enough times, the resulting patterns become set, like cement hardening over time, memorializing whatever impressions were imprinted when it was new and wet. Some obstructions in our pranamayakoshas may have been planted in early childhood. Or we may have repeated behavior—consciously or unconsciously—throughout our life that has constricted prana in certain areas of our body.

Our brains and pranamayakoshas are intimately connected. When one is softened, the other softens. When oxytocin levels increase, it acts as a softening serum for the cemented patterns in the matrix of the pranamayakosha, as well as the brain, so we may more easily clear impressions and obstructions.

This is why it is helpful to do pranayama—techniques that affect the pranamayakosha—in an attitude of love.

Naturally, there may be mornings we don’t feel like doing our practices, and it might be hard to get to Love. When I feel this way, I find I can sometimes more easily find my way to gratitude. Even being grateful for a nice fragrance, sound, vision, or the fact that I just had the privilege of sleeping in a warm, dry place, or gratitude for the fact that I will likely be able to enjoy a particularly nice cup of tea or type of jam after my practice—gratitude is gratitude, and gratitude for any one of these small things is enough to get gratitude flowing in my veins. And, to me, the feeling of gratitude irrigating my consciousness feels similar to the experience of Love. In either case, I feel more receptive to change.

Focus Creates Change

Prana follows focus. Once love or gratitude has softened the matrix of the mind and pranamayakosha, we can employ focus, first to dissolve obstructions, and then, if desired, as a tool to etch new patterns into that now oxytocin-softened matrix.

There are many techniques that have been developed that serve to move and cultivate healthy prana. As long as they work, any of them are good. I often share a technique I have found effective to dissolve obstructions in the pranamayakosha. [This technique is described in the “Dissolving Obstructions” track on Dr. Welch’s “Prana” cd.] It involves cultivating a loving mood, visualizing the pranamayakosha and using focus and breath to dissolve obstructions.

Getting rid of patterns and pockets of obstruction in the pranamayakosha can happen instantaneously, but keeping the prana flowing smoothly requires practice and attention. It is helpful to practice throughout the day, but especially to devote some time every morning. Early morning is to the twenty-four hour period of a day, as birth is to a lifespan.

The Transformative Potential of a Morning Practice

Each morning we have a little window into a kind of energy present at the beginning of life, and we have the potential to set or reinforce new patterns for the day ahead. We know from science that what we do and experience in infancy and early life shapes our experience in the rest of our lives, and so it is with early morning shaping our experience from day to day. And if our days change, our lives change.

With love, focus, and practice—especially in the early morning, it may even be possible to shift old patterns that originated in trauma in our own birth, infancy or early childhood.

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TheShaktiSchool

Goddess - I can’t wait for you to get your hands Goddess - I can’t wait for you to get your hands on my Summer Ayurveda Recipe Mix Tape - where every slurp, sip and spoonful is a devotional act of beauty, pleasure and full-body honoring. 🍓💦 ⁠
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Inside its 30+ drool-worthy pages you’ll find smoothies that melt like silk on your tongue, hydrating herbal coolers that will kindle your inner flirt and goddess-approved, belly-loving meals that whisper: ⁠
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Because that’s what Summer of Love is really about.⁠
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👉🏽 Here’s the download. ⁠
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Right now we’re offering the LOWEST price, PLUS the highest-value free gifts, that we’ll be offering for Shakti Ayurveda School all year. Period. ⁠
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And it only lasts until August 11th.⁠
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Sign up for the 2026 Ayurveda School before 8/11 and you’ll get my Ayurveda Summer Recipe Mix Tape e-book FREE, plus:⁠
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Ready to claim 2026 as your most transformational, soul-honoring, juicy year yet and join us in Shakti Ayurveda School? ⁠
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🌹Use the code SummerofLove at checkout and let the kitchen seduction begin. 😉
What Vanilla ice has to do with our Ayurveda progr What Vanilla ice has to do with our Ayurveda program. Ice ice baby summer! 🔻🌺🪐😉🌹🙌🏻😝
The Summer of Love Sale is ON, babe. ☀️⁠ ⁠ The Summer of Love Sale is ON, babe. ☀️⁠
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This is your invitation to turn up the pleasure, turn down the heat and say YES to healing, soul purpose + reclaiming your innate feminine wisdom.⁠
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When you join our Ayurvedic Wellness Coach Certification Program now through August 11th, you’ll receive:⁠
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— 💸 $100 off tuition on any payment plan (which is already the lowest earlybird price you’ll see all year)⁠
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— 🍹 A downloadable, 30+ page Ayurveda for Summer Recipe Book chock full of brand new recipes like Creamy Cucumber-Mint Kitchari, Herbed Turkey Patties with Yogurt Mint Sauce and Strawberry-Rose Moon Smoothie (trust me, you’ll be drooling 🤤)⁠
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🎁 Gifts only available until August 11th. Grab your spot + your gifts now at the link in bio.
Katie here. The real one.  It is summer in Virgi Katie here. The real one. 

It is summer in Virginia and today it’ll reach 101 degrees. I’m covered in rose oil, drinking coconut water and main-lining some sweet watermelon chunks to power up the morning. 

In other words - it’s HOT.

And I seem to always forget how activating the summertime can be. It comes out of nowhere, right? The intensity. The anger. The insomnia. The hot-flash.

But, there is one thing I come back to time and time again - and that’s The Shakti School Basics. 

Here is what that looks like:

1. Stop. Pause. Lay down or sit down. 
2. Make a commitment to be still for a bit.
3. Feel and open to everything that is arising in this moment.
4. Breathe. Let your awareness drop in and down your body. 
5. Breathe. Let your awareness rise above your body. 
6. Breathe. Let your heart soften and open and receive. 
7. Rest in the opening and stillness and energy that is always there. 
8. Wash, rinse, repeat. 

This is the starting point for everything we do in Level 1 Ayurveda School, which BTW we have just opened for early bird registration! 

And in honor of cooling our collective summer heat - I want to give you SO much cool stuff. Plus, a way to connect and start studying with me RIGHT NOW! 

🌞 Summer of Love is Here, Sister! 

When you sign up for 2026 Ayurveda School during our Summer of Love Sale (now through August 11th only), you’ll get:

💖$100 off tuition 

🌿FREE Paavani Pitta Summer Kit (aka a mini Pitta-reducing spritzer, cooling body oil and soothing spice blend)

🌸A YEAR-LONG FREE MEMBERSHIP to our thriving Spirit Sessions membership platform where you get immediate access to ALL of my Spirit Sessions meditations, classes, workshops and other resources. Plus! Immediate access to my ground-breaking CHAKRAS course (a $1000 value!) and LIVE monthly workshops with yours truly and special guests.

✨A downloadable Ayurveda for Summer recipe book, straight outta’ Katie’s kitchen

Just use the code SummerofLove at registration check out to receive the discount and ALL the gifts (and YES, this applies to 2026 Level 1 & Level 2)!

🍉 Sign up before 8/11 to claim your free gifts.

With sunshine + soul,
Katie + The Shakti School Team
The best food on the planet can’t help you if yo The best food on the planet can’t help you if you don’t have the digestive fire to transform and assimilate what you are putting in your body.⁠
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The ancient texts called this digestive fire AGNI.⁠
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Agni is what transforms and assimilates what we are taking in, whether it’s food, life experiences or thoughts. ⁠
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Ayurveda holds that many of our diseases start with the accumulation of toxins (ama) in the body. This sludge builds up when our metabolic fire is unable to burn what we are putting into the body. ⁠
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When our agni is functioning well, Ayurveda teaches that our body will be healthy, our skin radiant, our mind clear and our energy balanced.⁠
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The good news is this: You can start boosting your agni right now with this little tip. ⁠
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👉🏽 Add Ginger Pickle to your routine! And no - it’s not the kind of pickle you pile high on a sandwich - it’s more of an agni-honoring, pre-meal ritual.⁠
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A small dab (about the size of your thumb tip) is traditionally taken before meals to stimulate the digestive fire and awaken agni.⁠
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🫚Here’s the Ginger Pickle how-to: Slice a few pieces of fresh ginger. Add a pinch of rock salt and a spray of fresh lemon or lime juice. Eat before meals to kick-start your metabolic fire!

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