DASc, AD, LAc, MPH, E-RYT500
Sevanti Institute, Founder, Director, Instructor, Clinical Supervisor
Sevanti Wellness Center, Founder & Medical Director
Sevanti Adventures, Founder & India Tour Guide
Sevanti YTT, Yoga Educator for YTT Programs
DASc, AD, LAc, MPH, E-RYT500
Sevanti Institute, Founder & Instructor
Sevanti Online Clinic, Ayurveda & TCM Practitioner
Sevanti Adventures, Founder & India Tour Guide
Sevanti YTT, Yoga Educator for YTT Programs
James Bailey, DASc, AD, LAc, MPH, E-RYT500 is a third generation healthcare practitioner, an Ayurvedic Doctor, Doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and an Ayurveda and Yoga educator who has been practicing the wellness arts for more than 30 years. He is available for Ayurveda Consultations through the online Sevanti Wellness Center. He is the founder of Sevanti Institute, offering Ayurveda wellness education and professional training programs including its signature Ayurveda Wellness Counselor Program. Clinically, and in his teachings, James inspires an awakening to authenticity as the highest expression of faith in oneself on the path of healing. His teachings are eclectic and entertainingly provocative. He is sought out by yoga schools for his vast knowledge of traditional Eastern teachings and modalities and the ability to bridge them to modern-day living. His professional training includes 5 years of clinical studies in Traditional Chinese Medicine and training in Ayurveda under such luminary teachers as Dr. Vaijayanti Apte, Dr. Subash Ranade, Dr. Suhas Kshirsagar, Dr. Avinash Lele, Dr. Vasant Lad, and many Ayurvedic doctors and therapists in Kerala, south India where he spends time teaching and studying while on retreat. He is also the founder of Sevanti Adventures which offers an annual tour to sacred India each February.
Supporting my children to grow and learn, travel, teaching, practicing Ayurveda, touring India, and watching the wisdom lines on my face grow longer and deeper with time.
Ayurveda Institute of America (now Kerala Ayurveda)
Studied under Dr. Jay Apte, Dr. Subash Ranade, Dr. Suhas Kshirsagar, Dr. Avinash Lele, and others
DASc, Ayurveda Practitioner, 2003
Yo San University of Traditional Chinese Medicine
Studied with Dr. Maosheng Ni, Dr, Daosheng Ni, Dr. David Cohen, Dr. Hua Bing Wen, Dr. Xiao-Ting Jing, Dr. Lu Biao
MATCM, Master of Acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine, 1997
4-year, 4000+ hour program in Oriental Medicine
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
School of Public Health, Department of Epidemiology
Infectious Disease Epidemiology
MPH, Master of Public Health, 1987
The University of Texas, Austin (UT)
College of Natural Sciences
BS, Bachelors of Science, Pre-Med, 1985
Sevanti Wellness Center
Online Telemedicine
Founder | Director | Practitioner
Clinical Practice: Ayurveda Counseling
2018 – present
Sevanti Institute
Founder, Instructor
Ayurveda Wellness Counselor Programs | AWCP
2014 – present
Sevanti Wellness Center
Santa Monica, CA
Clinical Founder: Ayurveda, Oriental Medicine (TCM), Acupuncture
1997 – 2015
Tea Garden Herbal Emporium
Chief Herbalist and Vice President of Product Development | Venice, CA
Chinese Taoist herbology, formulation of 200+ herbal products
1991 – 1999
Sevanti YTT
Founder, Instructor & Guest Faculty at over two dozen yoga schools nationally
Offering 25+ unique Yoga Teacher Training weekend modules for 200/300 hr YTTs
Topics include: yoga psychology, pratyahara, subtle anatomy and practices, Ayurveda self-care for yoga
teachers, Ayurveda nutrition, marma vidya, prana vidya, agni, rasayana rejuvenation, and more
2008 – present
Bihar School of Yoga
2001 – 2007
Studied Classical Yoga and Tantra Yoga under Swami Shankardev Saraswati and Swami Atmarupa Saraswati
Yoga Journal Writer and Columnist: The Wellness Column
2003 – 2005 (3 years)
Wrote 21 columns and feature articles for Yoga Journal
Yogadventures
Co-Founder with Shiva Rea
Co-taught dozens of yoga teacher trainings, workshops and intensives with Shiva Rea
Co-lead local and international yoga retreats: India, Bali, Costa Rica, Santorini, Tulum, Hawaii, etc
Mid 1990’s – 2008
YogaWorks, Santa Monica, CA
1987 – 2000
Studied Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga under Chuck Miller
Studied with dozens of nationally recognized teachers and leaders in yoga during the early years of the yoga expansion in the US
Travels to India, Africa
1988 – 1989: Ghana for one year, worked as Infectious Disease Epidemiologist for Jimmy Carter on guinea worm eradication project
1989 – 1990: India for one year, studied Yoga, Buddhism, Hinduism, meditation, Indian philosophy, culture
1996: Yoga research and studies in Mysore, Thiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu
1994 – present: lead dozens of yoga and Ayurveda retreats to Kerala, Varanasi, Agra, Delhi, Bali, Costa Rica, Mexico
From as early as I can remember, I wanted to practice medicine. Along the way, I was raised by a successful and giving physician father, inspired by a reverent humanist, and healed by a traditional sound healer who would redirect my vision to a naturopathic wisdom of life.
My earliest inspiration was my father, Dr. Byron J. Bailey, a great father, role model, world-renowned surgeon, educator, and leader in the field of head and neck surgery. He passed on to me the love of medicine and medical service. In his practice he never turned a patient away, seeing patients for free if they had no means to pay. Even into his 70s, he spends time in Vietnam and Cuba on medical missions to treat patients and teach the doctors of those countries the advanced surgical techniques done here in the US.
In college, I discovered the writings of Dr. Albert Schweitzer, who’s ethic “reverence for life” awakened me to the heart practice of humanitarianism, altruism and medical service as a spiritual practice. Schweitzer gave my practice a global vision and a sense of compassion and altruism. His biography inspired me to travel and to serve as early as my late teens with philanthropic public health projects in rural mountain villages in Guanajuato, Mexico. Since my early twenties, my heroes have been those who sacrificed as they dedicated their lives to eradicating disease and poverty where it was most needed.
In 1985, I finished my studies at the University of Texas at Austin and went back to my birthplace UCLA to study Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Tropical Medicine at the UCLA School of Public Health. My studies took me to Burkina Faso in West Africa where I studied the prevalence of a nutritional (vitamin A deficiency) related blindness (xeropthalmia) that was known to be aggravated by infection by the measles virus. It was the thesis of my maser’s studies that this condition was worsened by the live-attenuated measles vaccine as well. Our research would play a role in proving that well-intended measles vaccination campaigns throughout the world were leaving a trail of blindness in vitamin A deficient populations that could be remedied by providing vitamin A supplements with the vaccines.
In 1988, I finished my studies at UCLA and returned to Africa. This time I lived and worked for one year with former President Jimmy Carter’s Global 2000 Project as an epidemiologist on the Guinea Worm Eradication Project in Ghana, West Africa. The guinea worm is a pernicious parasite, acquired from drinking infested pond water, and targeted by the WHO for eradication because it is endemic to agricultural regions of the developing world, having a broader effect upon food production and local economies.
During my time in Ghana, a pivotal experience occurred in my life: I acquired malaria, which was highly endemic to the area where I was living. Our Ghanaian neighbors suffered continuously from malaria. My treatment was attended over by my balafone teacher, a traditional healer from northern Ghana, who used traditional African healing music and a tea made from a small bag of dried, tangled herbs. Among the northern Ghanaian tribes, the musician family lineages were also the healers. Music and medicine were inseparable.
The tea was extraordinarily bitter. A balafone (traditional xylophone) made from dried hollow gourds was played throughout the night next to my body while the effects of the bitter tea took effect. The music pushed me further into a deep healing trance, which along with a delirious fever, I lost consciousness and went into a long deep sleep. When I awoke in the morning the fever was gone, the malaria was gone, and so was my conventional view of medicine and healing.
From Africa, I traveled to India for a year. While there I studied Yoga, Buddhism and meditation, and in the process acquired 5 different species of parasites, all of whom thoroughly enjoyed my enteric environs, and nearly bled me to death. Severely hemorrhaging and losing strength, this time the healing was performed by an Ayurvedic practitioner in Tamil Nadu, South India who used herbs and homeopathy. I was so weak that I have only a vague memory of the actual physician, however, his treatment was successful at stopping the bleeding and I recovered.
Later that year the critters were back while living in Dharamsala in the foothills of the Himalayas in northern India. I visited a 65-year-old Tibetan Buddhist monk and practitioner of Tibetan Medicine at the Institute of Tibetan Medicine and Medical Astrology. The monk doctor spoke no English and I spoke no Tibetan. No problem, he read my pulse for 20 minutes with eyes closed and diagnosed me entirely through palpation of the radial artery. The herbal pills didn’t knock out the parasites completely (I didn’t remain under his care long enough to see that happen), but it did stop the bleeding and afforded me the time needed to finally make my way home for more intensive treatments.
All of these experiences further confirmed that medicine and healing is a relative and creative paradigm that in most cultures arises from natural understandings. But I also learned that the best medicine is a collaboration between the old and the new. After two years abroad, my experience with traditional forms of healing peaked new interests in Oriental Medicine and Ayurveda, which have been my life path since. Now 20 years later, I am enjoying a deeper understanding of the “reverence for life” through the lens of the “wisdom of life” teachings and medical practices of Ayurveda.
To inspire an awakening to personal authenticity, as the highest expression of faith in oneself, on the path of self healing and self actualization. To evoke more mindful ways of living, thinking, and feeling. To provide tools for self knowledge. To bridge traditional eastern teachings and modalities to modern day living. To lead individuals to sacred places within themselves and on the planet. To remember to jump in bodies of water as often as possible.
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