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Demi Moore is into it. Roberto Baggio swears by it. Sarah Ferguson
has crossed continents to experience its healing touch.
All three are enthusiastic adherents of some form of alternative
therapy - be it Deepak Chopra's 'Seven Spiritual Laws of Success',
Iyengar yoga, or Ayturvedic massage. For, no longer are the likes
of unani, siddh and ayurveda the domain of pugri-topped hakims and
vaids. The gurus of today are glamourous globe-trotters. Their
followers, international stars and celebrities.
Rather ironically, the fact that Elizabeth Taylor, Donna Karan,
Michael Jackson and their ilk are busy opening up their chakras and
downing bhasmas, is having an impact on the home of holistic health
systems. For, rather than restricting themselves ' to the
wide-eyed West, NRI and foreign practitioners are setting their
sights on the Indian market as well. "We are today witnessing a
very strange phenomenon," says Dr Leo Rebello, practitioner of
traditional medicines. "Our own sciences are being repackaged and
sold back to us. Certainly this is making a difference to the way
we perceive them."
So last month, two American doctors from the Maharishi College of
Vedic Medicine toured seven cities to inform Indians that Vedic
medicine offers a "more complete system of health care". Quick upon
their heels was Master Choa Kok Sui from the Philippines, along
with his svelte Californian public relations manager, to spread the
message of his World Pranic Healing Foundation and the Institute of
Inner Studies. And later this month, 250 people will attend the Rs
85,000-per-head 'Seduction of the Spirit' workshop in Goa conducted
by Deepak Chopra - the New Age guru with old-found wisdom - where
participants will practice primordial sound meditation and tantrik
lessons.
How do our practitioners of alternative medicine, who have long
struggled against prejudices and closed mindsets, respond to this
virtual blitzkrieg from the outside?
"The educated class in India is pathologically obsessed with
running after westerners because they feel their claims are more
authentic," says Dr Meher Master Moos, president, Zoroastrian
College and active proponent of alternative medicine. "We readily
accept something that the West spouts forth. It's alright if it's
practised correctly. But one should be careful of half-baked
knowledge."
Concurs Dr Rebello, "While there are a few genuine people, most are
only interested in the profit that the holistic health science
label will provide."
That alternative therapies make for booming business is quite
apparent from a Harvard Medical School Study which found that one
in three Americans has used at least one unconventional therapy in
the last year. In 1990, Americans spent almost $14 billion on such
therapies.
No wonder then that asanas and ayurvedic rasayanas are quite the
rage even on the Internet. While outlets like Health Trek's
Bookstore are busily advertising tomes on traditional Indian
therapies, health food suppliers like Good Earth Ine boast a
strange range of Mutra Teas and primrose poultices.
Holistic Health clinics and Unani Foundations proliferate in
America, as do outfits like John Douillard's Ayurvedic Life Spa and
Dr Randy Stein's Florida Vedic College. While yoga centres and
meditation clinics have become mainstream enough to be mushrooming
in the smallest of towns and touting super-super-specialists of the
ilk of the director of the Houston Yoga Centre who apparently
"executes a great Garudasana".
The irony is that popularity of alternative medical systems abroad
has made them more acceptable here. "The success of alternative
practitioners in the West has meant that things once considered
offbeat here are now quite mainstream," says Jehangir Palkivala,
yoga instructor and proponent of raw foods. "They are igniting
something that is already part of our collective consciousness and
putting us in touch with our roots."
Which in a city like Mumbai could be anything from health food
dabbas and herbal cures to yogic asanas, aroma, gem and colour
therapy, and even, pranic or energy healing.
Many alternative practitioners acknowledge that a major reason for
the success of western gurus is skilful Packaging. "Despite our
depth of knowledge, we aren't very good about packaging and
marketing. We need to learn this from them," says Dr Moos.
According to prominent ayurvaid Suresh Chaturvedi, practitioners of
Chinese medicine are adept at this. "They use modem methods of
diagnosis and investigation before prescribing Chinese medicines.
This gives their patients a sense of security and has allowed them
to capture the Western market."
"Unfortunately, the West has realised this while we are still
napping. I can quite see European Ayurvedic doctors coming here to
teach us in the next four to five years," says Vaidya Chaturvedi,
whose guru perceived this trend in 1979. "He told me: 'If you want
to propagate ayurveda in India, then you first have to go abroad,
teach and popularise it there. It is only when ayurveda comes back
from there that it will be taken seriously here.
Two decades later, the guru's point has been proved.
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