Avashta Therapies is the seed of a dream I wish to bloom within the world. A dream that blends two of my great loves, psychotherapy and Astrology. With this writing, I hope to spark others interest, by sharing my love and excitement surrounding the synthesis of these two great modalities. I hope to communicate what they can offer for your own life, by telling a bit about how they have changed mine. When I discovered Vedic Astrology, I was already practicing as a licensed therapist. I wanted to help others, I desired meaningful work, and I seemed to have a natural tendency towards calming anger and fostering trust. But I felt that something was missing. My orientation is primarily psychodynamic and I could see the personality theories at play throughout my client’s behaviors and psyches. But it often took a very long time to map out the dynamics and there were few directions on how to actually use the theories to help facilitate growth and healing. Healing is something that seems to be lacking in the West in general, but noticeably in the field of mental health. While the pharmaceutical companies would have us “fix” things with medication, much of the focus of modern therapy is on skills training, adjustment to society, and symptom management. I didn’t want to just help people adjust to a sick society. Skills are helpful but not if you don’t feel good enough to use them, and symptom management will allow you to function, but what about really thriving? I wanted to see transformation and healing and I simply wasn’t finding it in what I was being taught.

Through my study of psychology, I learned to manage my life pretty effectively, but found myself on a path of true healing when I began my relationship with yoga. It taught me through experience how the body interacted with and affected the mind and emotions and how negative emotions and traumas become stored in the body, harming us over time. Eventually, my romance with yoga lead me to Jyotish, (the study of light) or Vedic Astrology. The deeper I went into my studies, the more I recognized the overlapping components of much of the psychology I had learned, but being expressed in more profound spiritual ways. Jyotish allowed me to go farther and see my deep unconscious patterns more clearly. Through it, I continue to experience deep healing because the spirit’s destiny is included, which is often absent from our modern-day materialist and behaviorist perspectives. Through the birth chart, one can learn what is actually possible for your life and provides the opportunity to synch your actions and will with the current energies at play, allowing you to harmonize with the world, rather than fight it or feel victimized by it. In psychodynamic theory, your emotional patterns can be traced back to your childhood, but with Jyotish, those are the karmic emotional patterns you were born to experience, and your parents simply provided the settings that would trigger them. Regardless of how you want to look at it, they are your emotional patterns and when brought into consciousness and out of the “shadow”, you are one step closer to liberating yourself from emotional enslavement.

My favorite technique is using the Lajjitaadi Avashtas, which communicate the internal relationships of the different aspects of consciousness (the Grahas or planets) as described by the ancient sage, Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra and interpreted and expanded upon by Ernst Wilhelm. While the avashtas usually won’t predict an event, they will communicate exactly how you will be feeling during any given time period. The Lajjjitadi Avashtas are the outline of the internal emotional landscape of a person’s life, thus allowing us to see exactly what kind of internal dynamics and emotional patterns a person struggles with, all within a few minutes. They illuminate the psychodynamics of a person without having to drudge through hours of therapy to get there. This not only makes my work more efficient, but essentially less expensive and time consuming for the client as well. In my work, predictions are not offered because predictions do not usually facilitate healing and are generally not therapeutically helpful. If you learn how to manage your internal dynamics and emotions, you will be able to handle whatever comes your way. The planets are all various aspects of consciousness and the state that each one is in determines our strengths and weaknesses. This knowledge, combined with counseling interventions, can become very powerful and is not limited to symptom management, but can be used for long-term healing and self-actualization. The birth chart lays out your destined path, the energies you are working with, and indicates the purpose of your life; dharma. Exploring these can lead you on the journey to self-actualization and the evolution of consciousness.