traveling with scissors: The Doctor Is In

Ayurveda that is. If you are negligent, please allow me to enlighten you on the subject at once. Ayurveda is India's medical system that has existed for thousands of years. The word Ayurveda translates to "study of life" and everything they believe is the polar opposite of how we conduct anything related to health in the west. They treat the cause and not the symptoms, they prevent diseases instead of waiting for them to develop, and they believe the mind and body are one and the same. It's all about balance and being intuitive to what your body needs. They treat you with therapeutic techniques and through diet. The initial consultation was ten dollars, a far cry from the $150 in New York, so I decided to do panchakarma, a purification of the body. From merely listening to my pulse, Dr. Rana gave me specific details about my life. Within seconds she knew how much I despised the morning hours, that I ate a lot of bread that day and my thought process on decision making. The first four days I went to her, I drank an elixir of herbs mixed with ghee, which is clarified butter to unblock obstructed energy channels and got a massage and steam bath. Ghee is believed to have many healing properties. She also did a daily assessment of my tongue since the tongue is the "mirror of the body". The fifth day I had to drink warm water boiled with licorice root used to induce vomiting. She made me do this three separate times to prove to me how much mucous I had acquired in my lungs over a lifetime of pollution and smoking. I hacked up and dry heaved until I could endure no more. Dr. Rana was not completely satisfied and claims that I had much more to go but I had to put my foot down with this one. The sixth and seventh days I got the shirodhara and netra basti which look like this:

Shiro, meaning "head" and dhara meaning "flow", warm sesame oil pours down the scalp for about thirty minutes activating the third eye chackra followed by a scalp massage. It's a meditation of sorts, it sends me into a serious trance. The netra basti is an eye treatment where cold dough is placed around the eyes as a barrier and warm ghee and herbs are poured into the eye to nourish the skin around the eyes and improve eye sight. It takes some adjusting to wrap your head around eastern concepts. For panchakarma to have maximum results you must follow a diet for the week that omits dairy, sugar, meat, eggs, oil, nuts and anything spicy accompanied by two liters of water each day. At the end, you get the down low on your body type and the foods you need in your diet. Besides the forced vomiting and the grand finale of an enema it proved very effective and sure beat the master cleanse in respects of nourishing the body while detoxing as well as being an amusing process.
This country is corrupt in many ways but I am intrigued by the culture. I went to the post office to mail some things home and I stepped back in time. My packages were covered in a cloth that was hand sewn at the edges and sealed with wax. Much more exciting than what I usually do. For hello they say "namaste" which translates to the divinity within me perceives and adores the divinity with in you. The same word is used for yesterday and tomorrow, "kal", which sums up the Indian perspective on time and my personal favorite for goodbye is "fir milenge" that translates to until we meet again.
In total, I've taken three Indian cooking classes, two Tibetan and one French if you count when my friend Antoine rented Reeta's kitchen to show me how to make crepes and jam. Reeta also let me make four types of Tibetan bread in her kitchen so I could show her what I learned.
The end of season was nearing in Dharamsala, so it was time to move on before it got too cold and turned into a ghost town. Onto Rishikesh the "yoga capital of the world"(question mark)All my attempts to find a great class has been unsuccessful. The ashrams I went to were either too strange or you have to make a commitment for a length of time or I've shown up for a class that the teacher just decided he didn't want to teach that day, no yoga on Sundays and I even showed up to one class where someone brought their two year old son(wtf?). India has exceeded almost all of my dreams....except the yoga. I found the classes lacking flow and taught in a very mechanical manner. I finally surrendered to the fact that it just wasn't working out for me. The only ashram that impressed me was the Maharishi, where the Beatles wrote The White Album. The story is that Ringo left early because he was homesick and didn't like the vegetarian food. The ashram is no longer in use but still has a great energy about it. Rishikesh is located at the foothills of the Himalayas and is littered with wondering sadhus(holy men) in loin cloths and hippies and has the holy river, Ganges running through it. There is an ashram, temple or shrine at every turn. It was a great city but I'm pretty sure that everyone that loves Rishikesh so much is because they haven't experience heaven on earth in Dharamsala.
My energy has been crazy. I'm talking on a scientific level. In the past few months I've purchased four watches and replaced the battery in two of them. All have lasted less than a day or two. The last one, the second hand started moving counter clockwise. It's not just the watches, it's my ipod freezing up, and not being able to upload video or pictures anywhere. I googled it and this is a fairly common problem with people who have too much of certain types of metal in the body. I finally realized the problem was me when the last watch I bought wouldn't work when it was on my wrist but functions perfectly when in my bag, it just can't touch my body.
All I know is that I feel better than ever. I mean ever in my entire life. Is it the Ayurveda? The fresh mountain air? The great company? Yummy food and chai? Mediation? Vegetarianism? Seeing the Dalai Lama? It's hard to put a finger on it, perhaps it is best to question it no further.