Kavitha M. Chinnaiyan - The Heart of Wellness: Bridging Western and Eastern Medicine to Transform Your Relationship with Habits, Lifestyle, and Health

About the Author

Kavitha Chinnaiyan (Michigan) is a cardiologist at Beaumont Health System and an associate professor of medicine at Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine. She was featured as one of the Best Doctors of America and has served on several national and international committees. Kavitha has served as a spokesperson for the American Heart Association and as the co-chair of the Go Red for Women event sponsored by the AHA. She has won several awards and grants for research in cardiology, was awarded the Seeker of Truth award for her research endeavors, and appears often on local and national radio and television. She also gives invited talks on Ayurveda, medicine and spirituality, and Yoga for heart disease. Kavitha created the Heal Your Heart Free Your Soul holistic prevention program and shares its teachings through weekend retreats, workshops, and intensive courses.

Visit her online at KavithaMD.com .

Llewellyn Publications

Woodbury, Minnesota

Copyright Information

The Heart of Wellness: Bridging Western and Eastern Medicine to Transform Your Relationship with Habits, Lifestyle, and Health 2018 by Kavitha Chinnaiyan, MD.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any matter whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Llewellyn Publications, except in the form of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

As the purchaser of this e-book, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. The text may not be otherwise reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, or recorded on any other storage device in any form or by any means.

Any unauthorized usage of the text without express written permission of the publisher is a violation of the authors copyright and is illegal and punishable by law.

First e-book edition 2017

E-book ISBN: 9780738754949

Book design by Rebecca Zins

Cover design by Shira Atakpu

IIllustrations on pages by Mary Ann Zapalac

The information in this book is not meant to diagnose, treat, prescribe, or substitute consultation with a licensed healthcare professional. The author and the publisher assume no liability or responsibility for any complications that may arise as a result of the practices outlined in this book.

Llewellyn Publications is an imprint of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Chinnaiyan, Kavitha M., author.

Title: The heart of wellness : bridging western and eastern medicine to

transform your relationship with habits, lifestyle, and health / Kavitha

M. Chinnaiyan, M.D.

Description: First edition. | Woodbury, Minnesota : Llewellyn Publications,

[2018] | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017049605 (print) | LCCN 2017040230 (ebook) | ISBN

9780738754949 (ebook) | ISBN 9780738751993

Subjects: LCSH: Holistic medicinePopular works. | Mind and body. |

Self-care, Health.

Classification: LCC R733 (print) | LCC R733 .C487 2018 (ebook) | DDC 613dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017049605

Llewellyn Publications does not participate in, endorse, or have any authority or responsibility concerning private business arrangements between our authors and the public.

Any Internet references contained in this work are current at publication time, but the publisher cannot guarantee that a specific reference will continue or be maintained. Please refer to the publishers website for links to current author websites.

Llewellyn Publications

Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

2143 Wooddale Drive

Woodbury, MN 55125

www.llewellyn.com

Manufactured in the United States of America

Contents

List of

by Joel K. Kahn, MD

: Models of Health and Disease

1:

2:

3:

4:

5:

6:

7:

8:

9:

: The Bliss Rx

10:

11:

12:

13:

14:

15:

16:

17:

Exercises

Foreword

Dr. Chinnaiyan offers an entirely new approach to wellth and illness. She calls the path Bliss Rx, which is a paradigm-expanding approach to health, illness, self, and peace that blends her strong roots in both Eastern tradition and practices and her cutting-edge practice of heart care at a major center. She asks the hard question, What if we are more than just body and mind? What if we have a pure light insideone that radiates bliss, one that has been covered up and hidden by the twists and turns of life but that can be rediscovered to understand and deal with suffering?

I have had the joy of knowing Dr. Chinnaiyan for nearly two decades in my role as an attending cardiologist and teacher. Her potential for greatness was obvious. She raised lovely daughters, developed an excellence in the clinical practice of cardiology and research, and began to teach other trainees to grow to her level of a caring, intelligent, and effective clinician. Not many of us around were aware of the hours she was spending studying and practicing advanced yoga and meditation before and after working the long hours that her trade required.

We are fortunate that she persisted on these demanding paths because her introduction of her six-month program Heal Your Heart Free Your Soul stood out at this shrine of technology. Just a floor above her meetings were millions of dollars worth of state-of-the-art CT and MRI scanners, ultrasound machines, and complex catheterization laboratories dedicated to exploring the workings and diseases that so commonly affect heart and arteries. At the same time, in her program on the first floor, hearts were being inspected with breath, silence, support, and calm.

Our good fortune is that Dr. Chinnaiyan has now distilled the profound experiences and gains she observed from her courses into a manual that challenges us to look within, slow down, and consider our lives. The Heart of Wellness is a paradigm shift in going beyond the body and mind that we are taught to consider in Western medicine (frankly, much more often the body than the mind). It brings an examination of spirituality and awakening from limitations that often are the root cause of pain and suffering of the heart and entire body.

Dr. Chinnaiyan doesnt promise us cures or disease reversal but uses her profound study of Ayurveda, Yoga, and Vedanta to present an opportunity to wake up to the blissfulness of our existence. This process may enhance healing as a side benefit, but it is worth pursuing on its own. This is not a seven-day or four-week radical cure but a life path that can be embraced at any pace at any time.

Although my path has not been as deeply steeped in Eastern traditions as that of my friend and now teacher Kavitha Chinnaiyan, it has included years of yoga and a period of practicing Kundalini yoga. The haunting music of that practice touched me deeply, as did the unusual flows that went on for an hour or more. Of the various chants I was exposed to, none touched me more than the words I am the light of my soul, I am beautiful, I am bountiful, I am bliss, I am, I am. Dr. Chinnaiyan has written a primer to help us truly accomplish those wordsto realize the bliss that is within and to use that bliss to address any health issues we may face. Once in a generation a book appears that defines a new paradigm in its field. The Heart of Wellness is that book for our generation. Your copy, like mine, will have corners bent over and pages highlighted to return to.