By: Vasudha Rai
UPDATED: JULY 19, 2019
I was only 22 when I visited a luxurious spa for the very first time. It was in the early 2000s, when Ananda in the Himalayas had opened its doors to the (more discerning) public. I was at my first job at a fashion magazine, and this was the location for our shoot. Despite, or because, we were working all day, the stylist and I made time in the evenings to enjoy their lush hydrotherapy rooms till our fingers puckered in water. Nothing could be more luxurious, I thought. But obviously, I was wrong.
Since then, I have been to many beautiful spas. In India, nothing beats Vana, near Dehradun. It offers authentic treatments based on Ayurveda, Tibetan and Traditional Chinese Medicine. I also had a brief stint at The Farm in the Philippines for the detox program, a dip at Chiva Som, Thailand and a few days at the Bulgari Spa in Bali.
This summer, a health condition forced me to look into the world of panchakarma, which scores much lower on the luxury scale, but ranks higher in terms of efficacy. Obviously it’s just my personal preference, but I do love the more hard-working, almost cringe-worthy Ayurvedic techniques. But panchakarma isn’t for the faint-hearted. You could get an enema of bone soup or smoke from a bitter, medicated cloth thrown into your nostrils. However, if you do manage to get through it all, you will be rewarded with beautiful skin that lasts longer than a laser facial.
I visited the Tanman Ayurvedic Research Centre near Pune, to help treat my endometriosis. Panchakarma stands for five therapies: nasya to clear the chest; virechana to clean the intestines; basti for the colon; vamana to detoxify the stomach, and raktamochan, that’s blood-letting using leeches. Yes, leeches. I didn’t get the last two because these weren’t suitable for my dosha type, but I got the other three.
For a week, I drank medicated ghee every morning, with the quantity increasing alarmingly from 15 to 150 ml. When my body couldn’t take it any more, they gave me pills that helped purge all the heat. I was also given water from boiled rice for three days to give rest to the intestines. The first thing that I noticed after virechana was the aversion I felt for social media. Over the years, my right hand had basically mutated into a phone, but for the first time in years, I didn’t want to look at it.
The second thing I noticed was that my nails had become super-smooth, my skin was moist and buttery — and this was after I had not used any skin products after stepping into the Centre. What was this sorcery?
