Shreya Svoboda delves into her specialty of combatting hair loss with Ayurveda. Shreya shares her upcoming, sustainable herbal shampoo, embodying Ayurveda’s holistic approach to well-being designed because of her personal struggles with hair loss.
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Transcript
Hi and welcome to the You World Order Showcase podcast. Today we have with us Shreya Svoboda. Did I get it? Yeah. You got it.
Oh, good. Practiced and practiced. She's an Ayurvedic traditional.
Healer who specializes in helping people overcome hair loss and thinning hair problems. Welcome to the show. Shreya
Thank you, Jill. Yeah, thanks for having me on.
Welcome.
Yeah, I'm so glad. I'm excited to kind of talk about what, what your journey was that led you to.
Coming up with.
Helping people with thinning hair problems because it's it really is a big deal to a lot of people.
Yeah, it is.
I'm going to back pedal just a little bit.
I don't know that very many people know what Ayurveda is just yet.
It's definitely growing in popularity, but it's still kind of a mysterious word. Ayurveda means life, wisdom.
And it's based on the five elements.
And the way that they meet inside of our body and the way that we can manipulate them through our lifestyle, food habits, thoughts.
And it's from ancient India. It's over 10,000 years old. It's an oral tradition and it's been protected by families.
Who have taught students that met certain.
Qualifications to learn this this knowledge.
And we're losing it to the university system now.
Which is interesting because.
Ayurveda is an incredible science, but there's also a lot of mysticism inside of Ayurveda.
And that mysticism is taught through incredible self-discipline.
Tapasya is what we call it, and there are various ways to do that, but.
We're not going to talk about that today.
And I come from the traditional classical teachings I learned under a guru in a guru Tulum.
I studied for 12 years under her under her tutelage.
And then I also have a.
Board certification from NAMA, which is the National Ayurvedic Medical Association in the United States. So I've had a private practice for over 13 years and I recently shifted into.
Hair loss because they think Ayurveda is actually a little bit overwhelming. Like, yeah, that sounds great, but what can it do?
For me.
And so narrowing in on how Ayuveda can help with hair helps people find me also.
And I came to this through my own struggles. I was wearing extensions for some years because my hair was thinning because of my.
Own issues around health which I can share if you want.
To talk about it.
And then when I moved to Sicily about a year and a half ago, I started pulling out chunks of hair when we were moving my extensions and my daughter said she wouldn't put them back in my hair and.
At first I was mortified also because my husband was going to see me with all.
Of these bald patches and I, I really thought I was going to have to wear a wig and.
I didn't actually think that my relationship would survive. It's kind of.
And also because I I'm a health practitioner and to have such obvious signs of ill health, I was afraid would hurt my practice.
But I was.
Alone in the house, in in Sicily, and.
I said OK, we're going to, we're going to do this. I'm going to do everything that Ayurveda says to do, to grow back your hair, and I'm going to see what happens because nobody's going to see me with.
Oily hair or?
Herbs in my hair, or all the crazy things that I thought I was going to have.
To do.
For over 20 years I've been trying to make an herbal shampoo that didn't leave behind a greasy residue.
Because even though I really like natural product, I want to be able to work in the corporate world, and there are some requirements to do that. You know, we can't have greasy hair in this country.
In India, it's a totally different thing. Everybody has oil in their hair and nobody cares. That's kind of freeing
No, it is really freeing my daughters like that.
I used to wash.
My hair every day and my daughter's like, don't do that, mom, she's young and she doesn't.
Wash her hair. She washes her hair. I think once, maybe twice a month.
Ohh good. Her hair doesn't.
Look, real oily.
I mean it.
It I think your hair, if you don't wash it that much but you brush it every day it'll it doesn't get oily as fast.
Yeah. So this actually different people have different hair types. Ayurveda talks about the three body types and the doshas, which I'm sure many people have heard about and it's a combination of elements that express themselves inside of the individuals physiology.
And this kind of decides what kind of hair we're going to have if it's dry and brittle or light and fluffy or thick and heavy, or if it gets greasy quickly or not. And so taking someone’s individual Physiology into account is always going to be the first step.
In understanding well how much hair can we actually grow eventually, because everyone has their limitations.
And then.
So I'm someone who needs to wash my hair every three days because I'm I have more pit that I have more fire and fire is has a has an oily relationship unfortunately and so I have to do that every three day thing. But I finally found.
And an herbal solution.
That that is based on Ayurvedic ancient herbs. Ancient hair care is also used in North Africa and Iran. There's a lot of crossover there and probably other countries too and.
And there is no, there is no greasy residue whatsoever. It's.
So this is this is my hair. When I had extensions, it's the it's the same thickness.
It's thick. We're doing the podcast too, so I'm going to describe it for people. She has very thick, luscious, slightly curly hair that does not look greasy and does not have extensions.
OK.
And it's like.
Yeah, it's amazing.
No extensions. Yeah, and she's holding her hair up so I can see that there are no extensions.
Yeah. And that and that took about a year to grow. And I and I still feel like it's recovering and I didn't really start to see a significant change until six months after, which is pretty normal for regrowing.
Hair because hair is actually related to our reproductive tissue health and this is the last tissue in our body that gets fed from the nutrients that we eat.
And this is so there are 7 tissues in the body and it takes 30 days for the leftover nutrients to reach our Shukra Dhatu, which is the reproductive tissue. And this decides.
What our hair is going to be like.
And so we had a joke in class about me and my extensions. I would say it was, I was my fake shoe crate tattoo you.
Know because people look at like your sensuality, or they judge your sensuality and your sexual vitality, even though people don't talk about that, I think it's just a.
Like instinct, right. We look at people's hair and this is something that we find attractive about them and that's because it signals to our animalistic self that this person is healthy to reproduce.
So for women.
We lose nutrients every month through our menstrual cycle.
Which is also why we have a lower calcium in our body and this of course also relates to our hair health, right.
And so there's.
There's something called the Yucatan, which means ready like a horse, and it's a it's a therapy which rebuilds the Shukra Dhatu, the reproductive tissue of the body. And there's a series of cleansing.
That you need to go through before you can go through that therapy because the food that you eat during that time is very heavy and very nourishing. And we have to make sure that the body is actually able to absorb the nutrients.
Other instead of having it turn into toxicity, so when our digestion is low, we end up creating something we call which is sounds great for toxicity in the body, which is just undigested food basically.
And it can block the.
The channels.
And micro digestion that needs to happen on that cellular level that feeds our.
Reproductive tissue, which is also, you know, if we get a cut on our skin, that's our reproductive tissue that's closing that cut on our skin.
And I feel like I'm rambling here now, Jill.
It's fascinating. Like, OK, tell me more.
Sure. Yeah. Tell you where. So there are different reasons why an individual might have hair loss. It's not just one reason. Hair is really about full body health. One person may have hair loss because of obesity.
Not because they eat a lot emotionally and they've gained some weight, but actual.
Pathological obesity, which is categorized as a disease in Ayurveda that where the nutrients actually stopped at the level of the fat tissue and cannot get to the deeper tissues of the bone and the reproductive tissue, which is why you will see that many obese people.
Actually have very, very thin hair and they also are prone to breaking bones more often than someone who is.
Let's say in their optimal state of health.
Because we have so many different body types, right?
So that's one reason then there's just stress.
Overthinking.
Which strangely depletes the body.
I don't know that it's actually that strange. Our brain eats up most of our energy, right? And there's some people who.
Talk too much.
Listen to too much music.
Think too much and then they lose their hair.
But you could have blockage in other areas or you're just not able to digest the nutrients that you're eating or the food that you're eating is incorrect for the time of year or for your body type or the exercise that you're doing is actually being done at the wrong time of.
Day or.
Wrong for your particular body type.
So those are some of the.
The various reasons.
That could be affecting hair.
It's really fascinating.
I honestly haven't really thought about hair that much. It's just like other than what my daughter told me and.
I do tend to listen to my daughter.
Pretty smart.
When it comes to these kinds of things, but.
So do you work with people? one-on-one? Does everybody get worked on one-on-one?
Or do you have group things do you have?
I've mostly worked with people one-on-one. I'm kind of bubbling with doing some spring cleanses and moving into kind of group.
UM sessions, but I'm still working on what that looks like because Ayurveda is so specialized in treating the individual and because.
Ayurveda is based on the idea that that you can't. You can't make a blanket statement. You can't give one medicine for everyone. It's not going to work. So when we get into the into the group stuff, I think we can do a lot of seasonal support around understanding what can be eaten at different seasons to really strengthen the digestion.
Strengthen the body, but I think that individual support and Ayurveda is really key.
It sounds like you'd maybe do like a combination group and then private coaching to like kind of get help them get the most out of that, or at least a an onboarding call where you'd go over everything for them personally and then you could work as a.
Group with them.
I like that idea, yeah.
Yeah. So.
You were talking about your the shampoo that you're developing. You're just using it for yourself. Do you sell it?
I'm trying to sell it.
I have a manufacturing unit that I've partnered with and.
There have been some employee problems over the holidays and it's Italy and things move very slowly in Italy. Much like Mexico, if you.
Have any experience there?
Or maybe everywhere in the world except.
The United States, I think really does work that way. Maybe some countries in the Orient.
Right, right. In Germany, I mean, they're pretty fantastic. Switzerland. Yes. They're on top of things. I have a friend in the UK and she's like, no.
Things don't work the same here.
It's slow and the quality is not as good.
But there are other great things.
Right. So shampoo, it's on its way. I'm trying. It'll be here.
It's a dry powder. You put water into a squeeze bottle and you add the powder and you shake it up and then it's ready.
To go.
Part of what I love about Ayurveda is that it's extremely conscientious around protecting not just the.
Human Organism. But the animal and plant life.
And while we can't live without leaving behind some waste, it's really about doing the best we can to minimize that.
And that's something I love very, very much.
So are you going to?
Be packaging it in like a paper.
Sort of biodegradable.
There. Yeah, it will be.
As it's gonna be, that's awesome.
I like that on so many different levels. That's really.
Let me know when you.
Get it? You.
It is not because I want to buy it. I.
I'm all about that there. I know there are other companies out there that are really.
Looking at.
Closing down their footprint there, we've just.
Plastics have come in and like they took over our world for about 30 or 40 years and now people are realizing that this is not sustainable. This is gross and it's just making a big mess everywhere and I love seeing the new packaging that's coming out around.
You know, if you're shipping a powder, you can ship it in paper. It's OK.
Yeah, I'm. I'm also pretty excited about some of the companies that have.
Really taking it as their responsibility to make the changes and that's.
Why I actually?
Open to corporation myself. I'm not a business person. I'm still learning about business. I'm definitely someone who wants to be alone and isolated and in the woods. But.
I felt like business is really.
Is really how we make a difference, at least in in the United States. And that's where I felt like my political voice would maybe have more power.
And I think just.
You know the little things like creating.
A sustainable shampoo we.
All need.
I have experience making soap. I had goats and.
I make good smoke soap.
Ohh nice.
From scratch.
So I know people who also make soap that they use that soap on their hair. Not entirely certain it's all that great for your hair to use.
On your hair, even if it's, you know, you know what all the ingredients are. I think that there's are.
That when you're stripping all that oil out, you're also kind of damaging the.
The actual body of the hair and it it's not really good for it.
What are your thoughts on that?
Yeah. I mean the best we can do for our hair is to keep the natural oils in it.
Removing dirt and build up.
Part of what happens when we use detergents on our hair is that it does break down those oils.
We lose the good oils with the funky stuff that we want to get rid of too.
And that was my struggle with. That's why it took me 20 years to get a shampoo that left my hair light and fluffy. I tried the bars, it left behind a residue that.
For thicker hair, I noticed that it.
Worked really well. The thicker hair strand. I have a very fine hair strand and it just weighed down my hair. And I looked like I'd been.
In the.
On a backpacking trip for a while.
The lie in the soap can sometimes be pretty intense, like even on my hands. You know, it can be pretty dry. I know not all bar soaps are that way, but I haven't made so many bar soaps that I can tell.
You the difference?
Well, there's a.
And then all right.
Trade off between the fats and the why that's the saponification is the combination. The chemical combination of the two of them and you're either going to end up.
Like with a little bit of oil leftover, which is going to stay in your hair or you're going to end up on the weaker side where there's a little bit of lie left and that's it's going to strip.
Base is just like acid in in terms of destructive qualities.
Right.
Life is very heating. I mean it. It can burn. It burns your skin, right? The only reason it doesn't is because it's been processed with fat.
People don't think about it.
And fat, fat has cooling and heavy qualities, so this is we're getting into kind of irate. Speak, which is exciting. So the cooling and heavy qualities of the fat are balancing the burning qualities of the lie. And this is also how we approach food.
In the Physiology of the individual, so we apply opposites to bring things into balance in the body.
That's really.
Just like with the soup.
I have to investigate that more. I honestly don't know that much about Air Vedic.
Practices and I have struggled with the word itself. It sounds like it's supposed to sound in my head when I.
Say yeah.
But then it never comes out of my mouth.
That way.
One of my colleagues has the worst because I'm.
We started school together.
That's OK. She's a great practitioner.
Yeah, it's hotter.
Some words we struggle with are fine.
So are you.
Are you working on actually creating a line of cosmetics, or are you just going to focus on the shampoo? Where where's your practice going?
Where there have been some funding issues and what it's come down to is, OK, I'm going to get one out on the market and then we'll go from there. And I need to, I struggle with my enthusiasm because I get so excited about some of the things that I've made.
But I need to do the one I also have a vaginal suppository for yeast infections and herpetic outbreaks, which is based on.
The traditional birth control method in India, I'm looking for funding for that. I made a skin care line for psoriasis and I've dropped that project. I don't know if I will take it.
Up again.
If the shampoo goes well, we'll go into the conditioner and the rest of the of the line that goes with it.
Honestly, I mean I use a shampoo.
I've used it for.
Well over a year now my family uses it. My friends use it.
UM and they all have, like, so my daughter has really tight ringlets and they were always frizzy before. Now they're not.
They're nice and smooth, and my husband also has ringlets that get frizzy and now they don't. He has a bald spot, which is now growing back. I'm a little bit cautious about saying that because I don't actually know if it's.
Coming or going or stay.
It's amazing how sometimes just you're changing shampoo or.
Changing your diet can really affect hair growth. I know there's, you know, the male pattern baldness thing that we've been taught to believe. But I think it's really a result of all of those things that you were talking about earlier that you know.
It used to just be men that would lose their hair, but those men they had to wear hats, a lot of them and hats are really bad for circulation in your scalp and.
Military men, almost all of them, are balding because they have to wear those hats all the time.
Right.
And it was popular in culture, in our culture, and especially the United States, but really everywhere for men to wear hats. Women wore hats too, but women would fix their hair and their hats were more of a decoration than an actual fit on your head and cut off the circulation.
In your scalp, right, right. And I do wonder if that doesn't play into why the balding epidemic around men.
I don't know. I'm sure that if we are wearing something tight around our head every day, that's got to have a effect.
I don't know either.
That they men actually run hotter than women.
I don't know if you heard about that, that they did some sort of.
I think NPR was talking about how men and women were uncomfortable in the office working together because the men always wanted to turn the thermostat down and the women wanted to turn it up. And when we have excess heat in our body, it generally affects the quality of our hair or how much hair.
We are able to keep over time. I mean naturally, we're going to lose hair as we get older because we're going through different stages of life and slowly losing our vitality. That's just natural.
But definitely heat and testosterone are also were like men.
The responsibility of taking care of the family.
Along, I guess that's changing, right? I'm sure that there must be some amount of.
Of worry and anxiety and stress that that that can create also and then you're talking about military men. And I was just thinking about like, well, OK, yeah, they're wearing hats. But then what is military life like, you have PTSD you have and one of the main symptoms of PTSD is.
Not being able to sleep, and if you're not going to bed on time at night and you're sleeping odd hours.
You are totally going to lose your hair.
Yeah, it makes your hair really thin. I know a lot of. I know a.
Lot of women who?
Work weird hours and they universally have hair problems.
Right. And then drinking and smoking, that's really heating and drying to the body and directly affects the reproductive.
Health even Western science will say that, right? What else is?
We are doing a lot of drugs these days.
Too, that doesn't help.
It doesn't. No, no.
It's really drying the more popular relaxing drug.
Yeah, the pharmaceutical drugs. So, like, even ibuprofen, for example, from the Ayurvedic perspective, it disturbs the blood.
And it creates so while you're getting some relief in the moment, it actually contributes in the long term with long term use, a kind of disturbance in in the, in the health of the blood and the balance of the blood in, in the body.
And I'm I take ibuprofen.
If I need it, I just don't take it when I don't really need it. You know, I try to do something else so I don't want to say, like, don't take pharmaceutical medicine. I absolutely.
Allopathy Western Medicine is a magic. It's an emergency medicine and it has its place in this world and I have a.
Lot of respect for it.
I couldn't agree with you more. I don't take ibuprofen unless it's like.
Really, really bad. But ibuprofen?
I would say save my life when I was young I had endometriosis really bad for like 20 years before I.
Was able to figure out what it was and the doctor that told me what it was.
Told me that if I took ibuprofen, it would help a lot and it was like it was like magic for me. I mean it was.
So painful and then.
And then it was not.
That's wonderful that you were able to get relief.
Yeah, but.
It's a pharmaceutical drug.
And I'm mostly against them. But like you said, there is a place for them and you know, if you need them.
To use them it's I think it's better for your body if it's not in pain, in pain is a signal that you need to do something to change the situation. And then I was able to.
Get I actually had surgery and they fixed it and I didn't have problems after that, but.
It actually it made me infertile and I ended up after the surgery because the lesions had wrapped around my fallopian tubes. I had three more children after that.
Yeah. So.
Kind of.
Wow, OK.
That's amazing. That's amazing story.
What you what you reminded me of, actually.
In the very beginning of.
Of the classical texts for Ayurveda, they they're they tell it in story form because it's an oral tradition and the teacher says to the students, OK, all of you must go and bring me.
Bring me back something that can't be used as medicine.
So I think there's like.
Five students. Let's say I'm just making a number I don't really remember, and they all go and.
They come back. Four of them come back and they only have something and the 5th is gone for a very, very long time.
And the floor students are complaining. Maybe something happened to him. He's never coming back. The teacher says. Oh, wait, wait.
He's going to come.
So eventually he comes back.
And he has nothing with him.
And the teacher goes through with the four students and asks them what they got.
And they explain why they think it can't be used. And the fifth student. He says well.
Why didn't you bring any anything?
Back and he said, well, I.
Feature I couldn't I couldn't find.
Anything that couldn't be used as medicine in this in this world on this planet.
And so.
UM.
Ayurvedic herbs, traditional Ayurvedic herbs from India, are not available everywhere in the world, of course. But when we have this, this understanding.
Of how the?
Elements work. We're able to innovate and make medicine in the moment when we need it.
If we remember that anything can be used as medicine, and I think about this with the Western medicine as well. I mean this the pharmaceutical drugs are.
They are medicine. It's when we, it's when we use it, when we don't need to or we use it.
To work more.
Harder. Instead of listening to our bodies and resting while also getting.
A little bit of relief while we heal.
I think that's culturally pretty difficult for us to understand that if we're in pain, it means that it's time to rest. Don't take a drug to cover it up so you can keep on going, you're going to pay for that.
Yeah, you're just doing more damage along the way.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Exactly so.
How can people get in touch with you?
OK, so I have a website WWW.
Alba dot Alba Del Monte.
Dot com. I'm feeling that we should write that down because it's not easy.
I'll put that in the show notes.
It's a LBADALMON te.com and it means sunrise from the mountain top.
Which is a reference to the volcano that I live under here in Sicily that's active, and I can't believe that I moved to the foot of an active volcano.
But if you want.
To get a.
Hold of me.
Morning sisters now.
UM, so yes, if you would like to get a hold of me, you can go to my website and you can drop me a message there. You can also find me on Facebook under Shreya Svoboda.
Yeah. And I know you offer a call with people to help them just determine where they're at with their health.
Want to talk about that a minute?
Yeah. So I offer a hair health strategy call and it's really an opportunity for us to get to chat. And UM for you to see how you feel about me and my methods because it's really important that we go into a healing relationship.
Feeling aligned because it's not going to help.
Either one of us otherwise and then we can also talk about kind of what what's been done already, how you felt about that and what you're hoping to get moving forward?
Awesome. So what's?
The one thing you want to leave the audience with today, what do you?
Hope they take away from our conversation.
I think we touched.
Kind of randomly, a lot of different subjects actually.
But I think the one thing I would say like whether you know Ayurveda or not or if you're struggling with hair health or not.
If you're feeling lost.
If you're feeling sick.
Get back in with nature. Go outside.
Lay on, lay on the ground.
It's grounding. I had a client the other day contact me and she said.
She was having, like, an emergency moment.
And I just said, you know, you can roll on the floor.
Roll on the floor and exaggerate your emotions. And why is this related to hair health? Well, because when we keep things inside, it comes out as disease, and if it's emotional stress, I mean, everyone has their.
Their weak points in their body that will express.
But oftentimes it comes as hair loss, especially for women these days.
Yeah, that's so true.
I like the idea of rolling around.
On the ground, thanks for sharing that.
It helps.
I swear by it.
Well, I'll have to give it.
A go. Thanks for joining me today. It's been really interesting.
I'm sure. Thank you, Jill. Thanks for having me.