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Therapeutic Massage in India

10/28/2008 8:51 am

The Good, the Bad and the Oily

Contributed by Buzzy Gordon, Explore Asia tour leader and travel writer

The third 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 and conditions that defeat Western doctors.

I have checked into the hospital at a time when my psoriasis shows red patches and mild dandruff-like flaking on my arms, legs and torso. Ordinarily, the disease is actually kept under complete control by means of very expensive injections; but I had just recently switched from one biologic to another, and a severe outbreak that had afflicted me during the transition has not yet disappeared.

My daily treatment for week one, known as abhyangam, takes place under the watchful gaze of a portrait of Dhanwanthari, the Hindu god of healing, whose statue in the courtyard stands guard over the in-patient hospital’s entrance. Abhyangam entails smearing me for 45 minutes with a soupy blend of medicinal herbs mixed into a base of coconut oil and heated in a wok over a butane flame right in front of me – like a chef would prepare crepes suzettes tableside, except my table is a “patti,” a traditional Ayurvedic treatment platform roughly hewn from the wood of the neem tree (the bark contains a natural germicide). The surface is smooth but hard – no padding, like on the treatment tables at the Ayushakti Clinic in Mumbai.

I am fortunate that my therapist, Shankar, is skilled and adept. The good ones have a soothing touch. Others can be a bit rougher, applying pressure more akin to Swedish massage; this is OK when it comes to some muscle groups, but is hard on the stomach, for example. Fortunately, the therapists are responsive to your desired comfort level, and the physicians good about honoring requests for particular therapists.

After having gently worked the oil into my body, Shankar seats me on a stool and washes off the oily residue with a gooey, brown detergent freshly created by mixing a vegetable-based powder with water; he applies it manually all over my body (genitalia excepted) and scalp (my hair has been cut fairly short), and then rinses me by dipping a large plastic cup into a large plastic bucket of hot water and pouring it over my limbs, torso and head. (It took me a few times, as I suppose it might many Americans, to become accustomed to being bathed by a stranger; my initiation had come in 2006, at AyurVaid.)

The remarkable thing is, after just one application, all traces of redness and flaking were gone from both my forearms. Itching, which was negligible before, was non-existent after. Hours later, some faint redness and mild flaking returned. But I feel confident that repeated applications will accomplish even more – even though the primary purpose of abhyangam is not to treat my skin condition: it is to lubricate and condition my body so that it will be ready to absorb the massive quantities of oil that will be used in phase two of my prescribed course of treatments.

An important errand Since scraping the tongue clean of its bacteria-laden coating every morning is a recommended Ayurvedic practice, I was hoping a tongue cleaner might be provided. No such luck, but also no big deal; I always buy new ones in India anyway. I head out of the compound to the nearest shop and purchase a package of Health Star brand’s “Good Morning” plastic tongue scrapers; they come two for a quarter in a pack that also contains two FREE plastic toothpicks. The label assures me that “Tongue cleaning protects 1. halitosis 2. gengivitis (sic) and plaque 3. unaesheticism (sic) (stain).” It’s obviously one of the greatest oral hygiene bargains around.

Meeting my new neighbors is one of the pleasures of settling into my new quarters. There are a number of repeat patients: B.K., the successful importer/exporter from Mumbai (Bombay), here for the third year in a row, after AVP successfully treated his kidney condition that his allopathic (Western medicine) physicians had said was irreversible; Vijaya, all the way from Calgary (Canada), who finds the best relief from her arthritis comes from her annual treatments; Helga, from Munich (Germany), here for the third time, as she keeps osteoporosis at bay.

They clue me in on the routine of the place. Laundry will be collected once a day (four articles of clothing per day, max) and returned 24 hours later (ironing extra); my medical chart will be collected once a day for the data to be entered into the computer; and most importantly, I can order 24-hour broadband Internet service for my room -- at a cost of “50 bucks a day” (I am relieved to learn that bucks is also slang for rupees, such that 50 of them comes out to about $1.15).

Incredible but true In the evening, we gather on the verandah overlooking the gardens to chat and get acquainted. We say goodbye to the departing Krishna, a stroke victim who had come to AVP a month previously shuffling his feet, with a dangling left arm that would not bend and a hand whose fist would not unclench. Now, he walks lifting his feet high, the fingers of his hand splayed normally. His smiling wife cannot contain her delight. Still, tonight he’s grumbling about his discharge orders. “I don’t understand why the doctors won’t let me eat potatoes for the next six months,” he complains.

The young Dr. Sarin is spotted in the courtyard and summoned. “He is one of the communicative doctors,” B.K. tells me. Apparently, many of them are not. But he and Dr. Somit -- both brilliant, B.K. assures me -- are always willing and eager to clue patients in.

Sure enough, the enthusiastic Dr. S. launches into a discourse about the properties of the foods that Krishna should avoid as he continues to heal. First, he explains things in terms of the Ayurvedic doshas (the three principal bodily humors) that are affected by the foods we eat; then, seamlessly, and to my utter amazement, he translates it all into the anatomic terms familiar to conventional medicine, talking about myelin sheaths and the like. He talks so fast I cannot absorb it all – perhaps also because my jaw has dropped open in wonder. How and where did this guy learn so much? And how did all this knowledge stay so secretly hidden away in deepest, darkest India, when stroke patients all over the “developed” world struggle for months in agonizing physical therapy to make the kind of progress Krishna achieved in mere days?

Explore all of Buzzy's detox experiences in India

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