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A Detox Worth the Effort |
09/18/2008 3:11 pm   |
Panchakarma: Settling In
by Buzzy Gordon, Blog contributor and Explore Asia tour leader
(The second installment in a series about one of the most effective detoxification programs ever devised: Ayurvedic medicine’s Panchakarma, a powerful healing experience that consistently cures illnesses.)
While Coimbatore is a typically cacophonous Indian city, the medical compound reverberates with its own peculiar symphony: most of the courtyard and gardens wedged among the main hospital building, the conference hall, the pharmacy and the cafeteria is dominated by a sprawling Hindu temple, with its warren of anterooms, chapels and blossom-braiding workshops, where bells, drums, and conch shells sound at irregular intervals throughout the day and evening as accompaniment to the chanting of bare-chested priests flicking flower petals at idols in various states of undress. (At times, the drumming and clashing of mini-cymbals ratchet up to a frenzied rhythm.)
One can only imagine what goes through the minds of the Ivy League-trained physicians and researchers here on assignment to investigate the scientific underpinnings of Ayurveda, as they watch the half-naked priests trail the doctors on their rounds, delivering the remains of the flower offerings to patients on small squares of banana leaf anointed with dabs of sandalwood paste.
Initiation into Panchakarma
Like virtually every patient here, I am placed on a very bland diet of approximately 1,000 calories a day. The menu does not offer a great deal of variety; my selections are fresh papaya and milky oatmeal for breakfast; rice and stewed local vegetables for lunch; varied grains with an even more limited assortment of stewed vegetables for dinner. (I could have rice and vegetables for breakfast, too, if I want; I choose the monotony of the same menu every morning over the boredom of the same menu three times a day.) Dessert, an optional extra, can be a boiled apple, a steamed banana or a sectioned pomegranate; even a dusting of cinnamon for the apple or oatmeal is considered too spicy to handle. To drink, I am allowed only water and an occasional pomegranate juice, plus two mini-thermoses of ginger tea early in the morning and in the evening; tea or coffee is available with breakfast – but mysteriously, may not (or perhaps, since this is India, can not) be ordered with lunch or dinner.
As in any strict Ayurvedic diet, no raw fruits or vegetables or salad are permitted. My previous Panchakarma experiences allowed more variety, and the pounds still melted away like hard ghee in the Indian sun.
I already feel like I’m losing weight.
Diet is critical in Ayurveda, in regard to both particular courses treatment and general health. As far as the individual is concerned, certain foods aggravate – or ameliorate – certain dosha imbalances; in general, moreover, the process of digestion is vital to a properly functioning organism. The theory is that whatever is ingested must either be digested – the nutrients broken down and assimilated into the cells – or, if it is not useful, excreted. Whatever is not properly absorbed or eliminated builds up in the system as "aam", a toxic substance that, like a rejected suitor who will not go away, hangs around and causes all sorts of mischief, in the forms of disease and illness.
For this reason, in addition to eating the right foods, proper digestion hygiene should be followed: beverages should always be tepid, never refrigerated, chilled or iced (cold liquid douses the thermodynamics of digestions); any drinking should take place before or after the meal, not during; and the stomach should be never be more than half-full with soupy or stewed solid food (the process of cooking gives the digestive system a head start), and one-quarter full of liquid, leaving plenty of room for the body to digest its fuel.
Decoctions and timings
My daily herbal medicines consist of foul-looking brown concoctions I must drink at very non-irregular intervals: 6 o’clock sharp morning and evening, plus a different brew at bedtime. They taste bitter, but not enough to make one gag or even require more than a plain glass of water to wash it down with.
As the course of treatment intensifies, more unpalatable medicines will be added: doses at 10 am, 3 pm, after lunch, after dinner and at bedtime.
NEXT: THERAPEUTIC MASSAGE
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