There is a kind of clarity that only comes from crisis.

From watching injustice and refusing to look away.

From standing at a historic crossroads and choosing to be counted.

From the moment a system — political, medical, or otherwise — fails you completely, and you decide that failure ends with you.

I have lived each of those moments.

They are why I practice the way I practice.

And they are why I built something Canada has never seen before.

Durban, South Africa — Where Justice Became Personal

I grew up in Durban during apartheid.

Not as an abstract political reality. As the texture of daily life — the signs, the boundaries, the silences, the things you were permitted and the things that were simply closed to you because of who you were.

I watched injustice operate as a system. Methodical. Institutionalised. Ordinary.

And I knew, from a young age, that I wanted to be someone who could challenge it from the inside — with precision, with language, and with the force of the law.

So I studied law.

I completed my B.A. (Law) at the University of Durban-Westville — a university that existed, under apartheid, exclusively for Indian students. A separate institution, built to keep us apart from white South Africans, even in education.

Then I applied to study my LL.B at the University of Natal — a whites-only institution under the apartheid regime. As a non-white South African, I was not permitted to attend.

So I applied directly to the Minister of Internal Affairs for special authorisation to enroll.

And I was granted it.

I want you to understand what that means. Under a system designed specifically to deny people like me access to institutions like that — I went to the government that built that system and made them let me in anyway.

I completed my LL.B at the University of Natal. I then completed two years of articles. And I founded my own practice.

Both universities have since merged into the University of KwaZulu-Natal — a unified institution that could only exist after apartheid ended. I hold degrees from both of its predecessor institutions. One built for people like me. One I had to fight to enter.

That is who I was before I ever saw a patient.

Building a Practice in a Country Rebuilding Itself

When I graduated, I completed my articles at a prestigious law firm. Then I built my own.  

Arlini Singh & Associates was my property law practice in Durban — operating in one of the most contested legal landscapes of the post-apartheid era, where questions of land, ownership, and what rightfully belongs to whom were not abstract. They were the unfinished business of a country trying to rebuild itself after decades of deliberate dispossession.

I understood those questions intimately. I had lived them.

A property lawyer understands that what has been taken from someone, what has been diminished, and what needs to be restored — these require careful examination, not surface-level assessment.

I still bring that same precision to every Ayurvedic consultation I conduct today.

Why We Left The Country We Had Helped Build

My law practice was broken into three times.

After the third break-in, the insurance company refused to renew my policy. A practice I had built from nothing that I had fought a government minister to earn the right to build — was no longer insurable.

And then came the night that made the decision final.

My husband and I were hijacked on the Durban beachfront by five men carrying AK-47 rifles. Our children were in the vehicle. They were three and five years old.

The men wanted the vehicle. And the children.

The incident was reported in the Durban press at the time. We survived. Our children were unharmed.

But we knew, with absolute certainty, that we could not stay.

In 1995 we left Durban for Newfoundland, Canada — carrying two small children, two law degrees, and the quiet, unshakeable belief that we were meant to build something meaningful with the lives we had been given.

In 1999 we moved from Newfoundland to Ontario, where we have remained ever since.

Starting Over. Building Something New.

Canada was not a retreat. It was a beginning.

My husband, Dr. Kishore Singh, is a Family Physician and Assistant Professor of Family Medicine at McMaster University Medical School, with a thriving general practice in Burlington, Ontario.

Together we co-founded Appleby Medical Centre — a full-service Family Medicine clinic that became the foundation of everything that followed.

I managed the practice. I understood medicine from the inside — its rhythms, its gaps, its extraordinary capabilities, and its equally extraordinary blind spots.

I did not yet know that I would soon experience those blind spots firsthand.

When the System I Knew Could Not Help Me

I was healthy. No chronic conditions. No history of skin issues. Nothing.

Then one morning I woke up covered in a rash. Head to toe, everywhere my clothes touched my skin — angry, red, and unbearably itchy. My dermatologist said it was a reaction to my laundry detergent. The same detergent I had used for twenty years.

I was prescribed prednisone. The rash settled — but what came next was far worse. A severe reaction left me so profoundly fatigued I could not get out of bed. Could not lift my head off the pillow. Could not function.

Two months of doctors. Tests. No answers. I ended up in the ER in a wheelchair because I could not stand. X-rays normal. Bloodwork normal. And yet I could not hold myself upright.

The ER doctor prescribed antibiotics — not because I had an infection, but in case I got one, since prednisone suppresses the immune system.

I refused to fill that prescription.

I went home angry, heartbroken, and determined. I had survived apartheid. I had fought a government minister for the right to my own education. I had survived a hijacking at gunpoint with my children in the vehicle.

I was not going to be defeated by a medical system that had simply run out of ideas.

That same day — sitting in the ER — I searched for answers outside everything I had known.

And I found Ayurveda.

What Ayurveda Showed Me That No Test Ever Had

For the first time, I encountered a system of medicine that was not chasing symptoms.

Ayurveda asked why. What was I eating? How was I sleeping? What stress had I been carrying? What had depleted my body so profoundly that it simply could not protect itself anymore?

And suddenly the root cause was clear.

That detergent had not changed — but I had. I had been pushing through an intensely stressful period, quietly depleting my body until it simply could not protect itself anymore. The rash was not the problem. It was the signal. Everything that followed — the prednisone reaction, the fatigue, the endless cycle of appointments that treated each symptom in isolation — happened because no one stopped to ask what had made my body vulnerable in the first place.

Root cause. So obvious once I saw it. So completely overlooked by everyone I had turned to for help.

I began studying Ayurveda. I started applying what I learned. And I began to heal.

A Decade of Clinical Practice. Built With Rigour.

I did not take a weekend course. I did not complete an online certification.

I enrolled in the multi-year clinical training program at the California College of Ayurveda — one of the most respected Ayurvedic institutions in North America — and completed three progressive programs, each followed by a supervised clinical internship:

•  Ayurvedic Health Practitioner + supervised clinical internship
• Clinical Ayurvedic Specialist + supervised clinical internship
• Doctor of Ayurvedic Medicine + supervised clinical internship.

From my very first internship in 2014, I was seeing patients at Appleby Medical Centre — a fully functioning Family Medicine clinic. Not a classroom. Not a simulated environment. A live clinic where real patients came with genuine health concerns.

Every internship across all three programs was conducted under direct clinical supervision by the California College of Ayurveda. Before each patient consultation I reviewed the case with my supervisor. After each consultation I debriefed. Every patient. Every time. Without exception.

This was structured, accountable clinical training of the highest standard — embedded within an integrated medical environment from day one.

I have been in active clinical practice since 2014. That is over a decade of seeing real patients, in a real clinic, with real outcomes.

The Doctor of Ayurvedic Medicine designation, completed in 2019, was not where my clinical journey began. It was where it reached its fullest expression.

Two Locations. One Integrated Practice. Worldwide.

Today, A-YUR-VEDA — founded and owned by Dr. Arlini Singh — and Appleby Medical Centre together form Canada's only integrated Ayurveda and Family Medicine practice.

At Appleby Medical Centre, Dr. Kishore Singh leads a full-service Family Medicine practice — bringing conventional medical expertise, lab interpretation, and referral pathways to every patient relationship.

At A-YUR-VEDA, I offer classical Ayurvedic consultations, deep clinical assessments, and personalised protocols rooted in more than a decade of supervised clinical practice.

Together, we offer something that does not exist anywhere else in Canada — the ability to hold your health through both lenses simultaneously. Conventional medicine's precision alongside Ayurveda's depth. In one integrated model. Consultations are available in person in Burlington, Ontario, or virtually from anywhere in the world. No referral required.

Training & Credentials

Founder & Owner — A-YUR-VEDA, Burlington, Ontario, Canada

Co-founder — Appleby Medical Centre, Burlington, Ontario, Canada

Doctor of Ayurvedic Medicine (Ay.D) — California College of Ayurveda, United States | 2019

Clinical Ayurvedic Specialist — California College of Ayurveda, United States

Ayurvedic Health Practitioner — California College of Ayurveda, United States

All internships conducted under direct CCA clinical supervision | Active clinical practice since 2014

Bachelor of Laws (LL.B) — University of Natal, South Africa (now University of KwaZulu-Natal) | Attended with special ministerial authorisation as a non-white student under apartheid

Bachelor of Arts (Law) — University of Durban-Westville, South Africa (now University of KwaZulu-Natal)

Two years of articles — Durban, South Africa

Founder, Arlini Singh & Associates, Property Law Practice — Durban, South Africa

Presiding Officer, South Africa's First Democratic Elections — April 27, 1994