I met Dr. Rajan at a Christmas party a few years ago and I was immediately drawn to her positive disposition and energy. She was also the first female Tamil chiropractor I’d ever met, with her own Toronto-based practice offering traditional and cutting edge chiropractic care, in addition to holistic therapies.
We caught up to chat about bringing Ayurvedic practices to an East-coast city like Toronto, finding your tribe and cultivating her deeper purpose through her practice.
Bringing Cali vibes to Toronto
Dr. Rajan’s describes her clients as those “looking for proactive wellness options because they may not be seeing results from traditional healthcare.”
Dr. Rajan trained in Chicago, and initially practiced in San Diego and Los Angeles, where she was exposed to innovative, holistic methods of treatment. Moving back to the East coast, she hoped to bring these services to a largely untapped market.
Her services include chiropractic, ayurveda, yoga, meditation, essential oil aromatherapy, and other light touch energy medicine techniques. Using these therapies, she helps tap into an individual’s parasympathetic nervous system to help reduce the stress response which shows up as those “fight or flight” feelings.
I was particularly interested in one of her services: Scientific Hand Analysis.
This isn’t your cornershop psychic reading – hand analysis is not meant to predict the future. Instead, it is believed that the lines in our hands, including our fingerprints, mimic neural pathways in our brains. Similar to the way that repetitive thoughts and actions can create “hard-wired” neural pathways, one’s tendencies can appear more defined in corresponding lines in our hands.
Dr. Rajan describes scientific hand analysis as a self-discovery tool to help you reveal your life purpose and live in mastery of your gifts. A major tenet of this system focuses on our fingerprints, which remain constant once they are formed during the gestation period, while the lines in the palms of our hands may change over time. Compared to other personality tests, hand analysis is conducted independent of an individual’s input, and arguably more consistent.
Bringing some of these services to a city like Toronto can initially be difficult as the East coast is usually playing catch up to the more holistically inclined West coast. Nonetheless, the wellness industry and allied health services have become increasingly popular as mentalities shift.
Sharing Eastern Wisdom
For Dr. Rajan, coming from the East Indian community, ayurvedic techniques were part of her cultural upbringing. As with many practitioners offering holistic services originating outside of Western cultures, her clients are mostly based on referrals and a mix of clients from both BIPOC and non-BIPOC backgrounds.
Dr. Rajan balances western training with eastern wisdom by sharing these philosophies with her clients, and a large part of her work involves patient education. She believes that as every individual is unique, teaching them to understand their own body constitution and the tools that work for them is essential for the best treatment.
When choosing a provider, she recommends asking for referrals from friends, looking at online reviews and checking a provider’s credentials. Dr. Rajan notes that most healthcare professionals want to make sure they’re the right fit for your needs, and will often provide a free consultation.
Living a Blissful Life
Pre-COVID, Dr. Rajan was often the only Tamil female chiropractic doctor at networking events. She found it difficult to relate to the mostly corporate male crowd, handing out business cards without organic connection. She found her “tribe” by joining women’s virtual groups/communities = and surrounded herself with ambitious female entrepreneurs, leading to client referrals as a bonus.
Dr. Rajan believes her practice is connected to her deeper purpose by “helping others see how their life can be really blissful.” She encourages patients to take time each day to ask themselves: “What are you going to do today to make your heart happy?” It can range from taking that vacation (or staycation), or spending 5 minutes breathing – no matter how big or small – with the intention of reminding you not to wait for happiness and joy.
Her clientele is largely female, and she hopes her work helps women stand in their power to fully express themselves. Dr. Rajan admits that she’s working on this for herself, as she’s most comfortable expressing herself as a classically trained dancer. However, she believes that allowing yourself to be vulnerable with your clients allows for personalized care. Therefore, as much as she’s providing care to her clients – she’s also learning from them.
One lesson she’s hoping her clients take away from her experiences: “Be ok with the present. Life is in session, and have faith that you’ll adapt to whatever comes your way.”
Quick Questions
- What’s something important to you now due to the pandemic? I focus on spending my energy where I really want to; I ask myself: “what fills me up?”
- When was the last time you tried something new? I tried kickboxing last year and loved it!
- What are you most grateful for right now? My family.
- When was the last time you celebrated? A couple weeks ago for my birthday.
- What do you know for sure? That my presence is my power.