Panchakarma: A Personal Journey to Health
by Buzzy Gordon
Explore Asia tour leader and travel writer
The first 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 first learned about Ayurveda at a weekend seminar sponsored by Chicken Soup for the Soul’s Mark Victor Hansen. The speaker was Dr. Pankaj Naram, founder of the Ayushakti Clinic in Mumbai. It was an eye-opening presentation, and I arranged to go to his center for a 5-week detoxification regimen known as Panchakarma (literally, “five acts” of cleansing).
It was a transformational experience. After the main purge, it was like being reborn: my eyes had a new, glowing brightness; my mood was elevated along with a new-found physical energy. The end results spoke for themselves: I was off my oral medications for diabetes and cholesterol, I had lost 22 pounds and never felt better.
I also learned a great deal about India’s ancient, holistic system of medicine, Ayurveda (literally, the science of life). I observed Dr. Naram as he saw hundreds of patients a day, needing only a few seconds to diagnose their ills using pulse reading, an art practiced throughout the Orient, yet mastered by few. He prescribed herbal medicines that, while effective, carried none of the side effects that we are constantly warned about in allopathic (Western) medicine.
I saw him minister to patients with chronic illnesses, treating them with marma, the technology of pressure point medicine. Pulse diagnosis and marma were techniques that spread throughout Asia along with the expansion of Buddhism, which, of course, also originated in India; in China, marma became acupuncture.
Unfortunately, both pulse diagnosis and marma are dying medical arts, even though, thankfully, there are some who carry on the traditions. They are not even taught in Ayurvedic medical schools, in spite of the renaissance Ayurveda is enjoying after centuries of denigration – a lingering legacy of British colonialism, which preached the superiority of allopathic medicine over the “primitive, unscientific” practices of the Indian “natives.”
Fortunately, the knowledge of herbal pharmacology and body treatments is as vital as ever, and even undergoing validation as modern science verifies the findings of centuries of Ayurvedic insight.
Following the success of Panchakarma at Ayushakti, under the expert guidance of detox specialist Dr Rajeshri Mehta, I tried to maintain my regained level of good health by adhering to an Ayurvedic diet and taking the herbal medicines I had brought back with me from Mumbai (diet is critical to the effectiveness of the medicinal herbs and maintenance of the all-important equilibrium of the forces in our bodies that determine our state of health). I did OK for a couple of months; but the temptations of Western abundance being what they are, the diet was the first to fall victim to the lure of forbidden foods. And it was not long before I was back to being dependent on the “quick fixes” offered by the big drug companies to control cholesterol and blood sugar, inter alia.
Two year later, I was ready – even overdue, I would say -- for another round of Panchakarma. In spite of the excellent results at Ayushakti, the traveler in me wanted a different experience. In particular, since the birthplace of Ayurveda as a practical medical system is in the south of the country, I wanted to try an “authentic” experience in the cradle of Ayurveda. Not unrelated to that urge was the desire to return to the beautiful state of Kerala, with its tasty masala dosas and fabled port city of Cochin (now Kochi, like Bombay is now Mumbai).
My research led me to a new Ayurvedic clinic, Ayurvaid, which promised “seamless integration of Ayurveda and allopathy” – the best of both worlds, so to speak. I was impressed by the intake procedure and got my wish to learn first-hand about the traditions of southern Ayurveda: the insistence on taking liquid medicines instead of tablets, the use of traditional wooden treatment tables instead of contemporary massage tables, and the like. Unfortunately, the doses of liquid medicine (kashayams) are very bitter; and the treatment tables, while beautiful, lack the comfortable padding of Ayushakti’s adoption of modern amenities.
My second encounter with Panchakarma yielded mixed results. The weight loss was more than satisfactory, and the blood work revealed undeniable improvements in the lab test results, both for glucose and lipids. But I had been spoiled by my first experience: there was no feeling of being “born again.” Perhaps that is a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence. Certainly, the fact that Ayurvaid was a relatively new operation with younger and less experienced physicians played a role. I also did not help matters by running around and exploring Cochin, when I was supposed to be taking it easy (although I did watch my diet, even outside the facility).
The medicines of southern Ayurveda proved much more difficult to contend with back in the U.S. than the pills of northern Ayurveda, and my slide back into pre-Panchakarma bad habits – and deteriorating health -- was all too fast. I needed to find the time -- at least a month, preferably five weeks, not including travel – and save up the money for a repeat performance. Again, it took exactly two years. The summer months are a good time anyway, because it is monsoon season in India’s western states; the rains have a cooling effect after the blistering month of May, not to mention that they dampen proclivities to overdo things by going sightseeing.
I found my inspiration in a PBS documentary about the Arya Vaidya Chikitsalayam and Research Institute (AVP) in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu. The producer, Washington Post journalist T.R. Reid, called AVP the “Mayo Clinic” of Ayurveda, since it has been chosen by both the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the World Health Organization as their center for collaboration in evaluating Ayurveda as an effective “alternative” or “complementary” system of medicine. (In other words, the West sees Ayurveda as something at least worth checking out.)
I was able to block off 31 days of actual treatment time (just under the ideal of 35 days) and reserve a room in the hospital beginning August 15, 2008. The private rooms, with en suite Western toilets, looked perfectly adequate, and reasonably priced at just under $10.00 per day (yes, that is for a private room in a top-notch hospital! of course, a host of other charges will apply). The process was incredibly simple: I went to the website sent them an email, and got an immediate confirmation. I did not even have to pay a deposit.
I knew, of course, that AVP was going to practice the Kerala brand of Ayurveda; I had watched Reid grimace in the film as he swallowed his daily kashayam. But if this place is arguably the best, it was the obvious choice. The fact that its gateway city is Kochi – a southern Indian hub for cheap flights from the Middle East, and only four hours from Coimbatore by train – was just icing on the cake.
NEXT UP: ARRIVAL – AND IMMEDIATE IMMERSION
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