Ayurveda: A True Story

Indira is a unique individual, for whom her father gave life not once, but thrice. If it was not for him, she would have been bed ridden, for fifty years now. She had developed arthritic problem with severe pain and swelling all over the body, and was bed ridden at the tender age of seventeen years. Her father, the great Ayurvedic doctor, Dr. K. K. Karta treated her and she was back to normal after two weeks.

When Indira was eighteen and her son was ten months old, arthritis struck again. Some friends told her father that there was an allopathic injection that would cure her problem and asked his permission to give her the injection. He agreed. Three days after the injection Indira was on her feet.

But after eleven days the disease returned with a vengeance and Indira was debilitated and bedridden. Her bed was near a door, through which she watched the moving legs of people outside the house. She watched them with envy, sighing she’ll never be able to walk.
Then her father stepped in. He started his treatment in all earnest, and slowly Indira was freed from the problem. Her father assured her that the illness will not recur. It is 50 years now and his promise has withstood the test of time.

When I met Mary(name changed), she was sitting on the bed in a slanting way, putting her weight on the left thigh. She told that the right leg was so painful, she couldn’t sit on a surface and straighten her legs.

It had taken just two years to convert Mary from a busy, mobile person to one with pain on walking and inability to climb stairs. She was a medical nurse in Kerala and two years back went to the Middle East. Sitting in air conditioned room 24 hours, with more of paper work than the running around she was used to back home, her muscles were not being used and were frozen by the AC.

Against the sarcastic remarks of her colleagues, she chose to get Ayurvedic treatment and took the flight to Kerala.
After five days into the treatment, I saw her face bright with a smile. The creases of pain were gone. She told me excitedly,’ See, I can sit like a normal person now.’
When there is a crisis and in emergency situations, allopathy has solutions. What people fail to understand is that allopathy has no cure for majority of illnesses. It just suppresses the symptoms. The basic flaw is in the approach to the disease as a manifestation of the problems of the physical body parts.

Ayurveda on the other hand considers the constitution, the psychologic aspect and the whole system (not separate organs) when instituting the treatment.

A properly done Ayurvedic rejuvenation therapy for a middle aged person can turn his biologic clock back by five years. An individual with an active life style, healthy food habits and adequate sleep doesn’t have to think about rejuvenation therapy before fifty years of age.

But in this IT revolution era when people are sitting in a fixed posture for hours together in air conditioned rooms, the muscles of the body are frozen, with reduced blood supply. To add to this, there are junk food habits and erratic and inadequate sleep. So after some time, their bodies become just ‘lumps of flesh’. The deleterious effect is more so, if the individual was very active in sports or in the gym before he joined the IT profession.

In such cases, when they start such a job, it will help to maintain health if they get a five day Ayurvedic rejuvenation therapy every year.
Ayurvedic massage therapies being a fad, there are Ayurvedic massage parlours in every nook and corner. Before you enroll into one, it is mandatory that you find out about the authenticity. In the rejuvenation therapy, the toxins that have accumulated in the body are eliminated through internal medicines, external application of oils, and steaming. Then the whole body structure is given nourishment by application of warm medicated oils and medicines cooked in milk.

Coming from a family of Ayurvedic background, I did a lot of searching before deciding the place where I wanted to go for the rejuvenation therapy. Kottakkal, of course is the established name in Kerala. Second to Kottakkal is Thampan’s Ayurvedic center , situated in Mevida, a scenic village just one hour drive from Kottayam in Kerala.

The chief physician Dr. Rajagopal will first find out your body constitution by questioning on various aspects of your life. Then he decides the medicines that will be freshly prepared from the herbs and trees that are locally available. The soil of Mevida is very conducive for the growth of Ayurvedic plants. Even the growth of ordinary trees like grape fruit, coconut, and nutmeg is very striking. A cycus tree (  30  feet tall ) with fruits can even be seen there.
Just leave yourself free and enjoy the Ayurvedic massage for five days and you will get a brand new body, so supple and flexible.

For food, there is a hotel nearby, where you can get the Kerala meals brought to your room.
An additional attraction is a visit to Kumarakom (about  20  km from Mevida), which is very famous now in the map of tourists.

The Centre being situated in a village, you are away from the city life and I use this opportunity to go to a higher spiritual plane. Early morning you can feel the fresh breeze on your face and watch and listen to the songs of a variety of birds.

If you miss the city sight so much, just take a 15 minutes drive and you are in Pala, a very developed and rich city.

Dr Beena