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Jill Leslie, Ayurveda Alchemy

COLUMN = HEALTHY LIVING

Jill Leslie is a certified Ayurvedic practitioner, herbalist, wellness chef, and yoga teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area who, for more than two decades, has been immersed in the study and practice of natural healing.

The entrepreneur, who has owned her own businesses since graduating from the University of Maryland in 1986, founded the award-winning retail shop Milk & Honey in Sebastapol, CA, in 1999. She sold it in 2006 so that she could dive deeper into her study of yoga and Ayurveda.

As she discovered the life-changing wisdom of these ancient practices, she began sharing her knowledge at wellness retreats, yoga studios, and through cooking classes. Her passion for herbal medicine and nutrition, and her love of sweets, inspired her to found Ayurvedic Alchemy, in 2008.

In addition to hosting classes and events, and providing consultations and dietary advice about Ayurveda, she has created a line of healthy and delicious confections, which are available online at Kitchen Alchemy Treats. “When I learned the adage of Ayurveda, ‘Let your food be your medicine,’ I put on my apron and said, ‘Let your medicine be delicious,’” she says.

Learn more about her services at www.AyurvedaAlchemy.com.

‎Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.”

– Booker T. Washington

Women once had the goal of being Superwoman; I think most of us now simply strive to have a super day.”

– Author, Activist Lee Woodruff

You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead, pursue the things you love doing.”

– Maya Angelou

We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”

– Joseph Campbell

The mind is everything. What you think, you become.”

– Buddha

Do not be afraid of mistakes, providing you do not make the same one twice.”

– Eleanor Roosevelt

Do not follow where the path may lead. Go, instead, where there is no path and leave a trail.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you would create something,
 you must be something.”

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

We are perfectionists. We are hungry to work all the time. We are entertained by every aspect of business and we never want to stop working.”

– Suzy Welch

If it isn’t good, let it die. If it doesn’t die, make it good.”

– Ajahn Chah

Happiness is an attitude. We either make ourselves miserable, or happy and strong. The amount of work is the same.”

– Francesca Reigle

When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.”

– Jimi Hendrix

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”

– Dalai Lama

Happy are those who dream dreams and are ready to pay the price to make them come true.”

– Leo Jozef Suenens

A discovery is said to be an accident meeting a prepared mind.”

– Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.”

– Charles R. Swindoll

We need to learn to set our course by the stars, not by the lights of every passing ship.”

– General Omar Bradley

The quality of your life is directly related to the amount of uncertainty you can comfortably live with.”

– Tony Robbins

I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent.”

– Thomas Edison

The less effort, the faster and more powerful you will be.”

– Bruce Lee

Look at everything as though you were
seeing it either for the first or last time.
Then your time on earth will be filled with glory.”

– Betty Smith

Destiny is a name often given in retrospect to choices that had dramatic consequences.”

– J.K. Rowling

The great use of life is to spend it on something that will outlast it.”

– William James

The biggest flaw in our existing theory of capitalism lies in its misrepresentation of human nature.”

– Muhammad Yunus

Death is to lose the earth you know, for greater knowing; to lose the life you have, for greater life; to leave the friends you loved, for greater loving; to find a land more kind than home, more large than earth.”

– Thomas Wolfe

Whatever you do may seem insignificant, but it is most important that you do it.”

– Gandi

Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value.”

– Albert Einstein

You’ve got to be willing to crash and burn. If you’re afraid of failing, you won’t get very far.”

– Steve Jobs

You must learn to be still in the midst of activity 
and to be vibrantly alive in repose.”

– Indira Ghandi

That which grows fast withers as rapidly; that which grows slowly endures.”

– J.G. Holland, novelist

Of course there is no formula for success except perhaps an unconditional acceptance of life and what it brings.”

– Arthur Rubinstein

Practice kindness all day to everybody and you will realize you’re already in heaven now.”

– Jack Kerouac

We need to learn to set our course by the stars, not by the lights of every passing ship.”

– General Omar Bradley

Instead of loving your enemies, treat your friends a little better.”

– Edgar W. Howe

What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?”

– Magical

The follow-your-gut mentality of the entrepreneur has the potential to take you anywhere you want to go or run you right out of business.”

– Bill Rancic, "The Apprentice"

Just don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do.
 Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.”

– Ella Fitzgerald

If your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all.”

– Anna Quindlen

Speaking more than one language is no longer just an asset in today’s job market; it is a requirement.”

– Tom Adams, CEO, Rosetta Stone

When a dog runs at you, whistle for him.”

– Henry David Thoreau

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

– Leonardo da Vinci

I have spent a good part of my life convincing people that a blank sheet of paper is the greatest opportunity in the world, and not frightening at all.”

– Marty Skler, executive vp, Walt Disney Imagineering

To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.”

– Robert Louis Stevenson

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”

– John Quincy Adams

If you do not tell the truth about yourself
, you cannot tell it about other people.”

– Virginia Woolf

How do you stay resilient? It’s about momentum. Like riding a bicycle. If you stop you fall over. So I keep pedaling.”

– Diane Lane

No matter how difficult and painful it may be, nothing sounds as good to the soul as the truth.”

– Martha Beck, from "Leaving the Saints"

Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love.”

– Jalaluddin Rumi

You only live once. But if you do it right, once is enough.”

– Mae West

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.”

– Mark Twain