After being at the Ashram for about a week I decided to sign up for the two week Panchakarma detox treatment.
This would mean of course that my two week stay would be turning into three weeks and three days but I was settled in the ashram and I had wanted to have panchakarma for some time and it was a really good price, 19,000 rupees which is about £280. Still that is a fair whack out of a back packers budget but I had spoken to a few people who had paid almost triple that in the resorts of Varkala and Kovalam.
I wouldn't have bothered with it if I had still been drinking but I had not touched a drop for nearly nine weeks and I thought the Panchakarma would be a great way to rid my body of toxins that had been inside me for months and would be a good incentive to carry on with my healthier lifestyle.
I was in the ashram after all and all my food and yoga was included so it made sense to have the treatment there.
Panchakarma is an ancient ayurvedic treatment that has been practised in India for centuries. It helps the body to eliminate toxins through vigorous oil massages, hot bundle treatment were dry herbs wrapped in muslin cloths are heated in oil and the body is pounded with them to create heat and unblock tension and Dharsa which is a treatment were ayurvedic oil is poured in a constant steady flow on to the forehead of the patient. Dharsa helps to calm the patient and helps with anxiety and insomnia and helps to balance the mind and open the third eye chakra. Then Nasar which is oil that is dripped in to both nostrils which helps to clear sinuses, ease headaches and calm anxiety. Also the more drastic side of the treatment includes purgation were a oily concoction is drank and a couple of hours later the world falls through the seat of your pants and then induced vomiting to eliminate toxin build up in the stomach and four days of oil enemas to thourally detox the whole colon of everything it has been holding onto for years.
The entire treatment is preformed over a two week period and fortunately not all parts of the treatment are done every day because I would imagine you would have a bottom like a chewed orange and due to my existing stomach hernia I was excluded from the induced vomiting.
The first ten days of the treatment are just really preparatory. Getting the body ready for the impending evacuation. Oily massages and kizhi hot bundles are done daily to loosen the toxins in the body, stimulate the lymph system which deals with the waste and toxins in the body and to make the insides and the outside of the body oily making it easier to shift everything along.
I would love to say I loved the treatment but I got a crippling heat rash during the first week of panchakarma and when your body is hot and itchy the last thing you want is an oily massage and two scolding hot oily bags pounded on your delicate body. I just kept telling myself that it would be all worth it when I walked out of Sivanada, slim, toned healthy and glowing with purity and serenity!!
The oil dripped through the nasal passage was agony. I had had a wonderful selection of substances inhaled up my nostrils over the years but the oil inhalation came right at the arse end of that list of enjoyment.
The Dharsa treatment were oil is poured from above onto the forehead was bliss it was so so relaxing and I felt like a wave of peace was passing over me and all my worries were being untangled from my mind and spirit. The only down side to that was for about four days I was walking around with hair smelling like George & Hellen's fish shop on a Friday night. I washed my hair twice after every treatment but it was so thick with oil that it would just not come out. For days I just scrapped it back and walked around the ashram looking like Olive off On The Buses with a swarm of flies buzzing around my head like I was a giant cow patt.
After about fifteen years of constipation I could not wait for the enemas to get started. The therapist Sini who had been doing the treatments for me everyday told me not to worry as she forced me down butt naked onto the wooden table on my side while another lady spreads my legs in the recovery position, I was thinking will I ever recover from the shame. A pipe the length of a cobra was pushed up to my throat and 2 litres of Castor oil, Honey, herbs, salt and pepper were rudely forced into my intestines, all that was missing up there was pie and bloody chips. I imagined my poor intestine's looking like a rabbit in a headlight being faced with 2 litres of fluid at 100 miles and hour all rushing upwards in the wrong direction. I glanced over my right shoulder to see the serious expressions on sini's and her side kicks faces and Sini was holding a Tupperware bucket attached to the pipe that was attached to my bottom in the air shaking it like it was a tambourine making sure every last ounce was pushed in.
I have to admit it was worth all the shame I felt fantastic the next morning refreshed, lighter, energized and after 2 hours on the squat loo I was exahusted and I slept like a baby.
I don't know if Panchakarma is as amazing as what Dr Vishnu said it was, I mean it is relaxing and all that well the massage and oil being poured on the forehead part, but I suppose over the coming months I will know if for me it was a success and if my stomach and digestion is calmer and more regular then it was money well spent.
I had all sorts of problems with my digestion system over the years and too be honest I blame years of Bulimia during my teens and the wild partying years of my twenty's so it was all self inflicted and I felt I deserved it. I had had several stomach ulcers from all the excess acid that vomiting and alcohol had caused and a few years ago after collapsing in the street in Brighton with my poor Mother looking on I was diagnosed with a stomach hernia. You would think that little lot would convert me to a healthier lifestyle but after a couple of weeks flat on my back in agony I was back on the gin and back dancing on the bars in Brighton.
Dr Vishnu assured me that Panchakarma would help to heal my offended digestion and sooth my partied out colon and calm my fraught mind. I also decided to leave the dorm and check into a twin room for the duration of the panchakarma treatment as Dr Vishnu said it could be quite an emotional experience and all sorts of emotions would arise and things I had kept bottled up inside would come flowing out of me like the water gushing out of the nearby Neyyar Dam.
I was sad saying goodbye to the girls in the dorm which was daft as I was only going to be staying a few feet away in one of the rooms under the dining room but we had had some great times. They all hugged me goodbye and said they would miss my antics, I used to run around with my mosquito net over my face pretending to be the fly which they all found highly amusing.
My beautiful friend Alla had already left surrounded by a haze of peace and beauty. She gave me the most delicate kiss on the cheek and asked me to stay in touch that she wanted to do a trip with me to the Himalayas in a few months. I was flabbergasted, I was so loud and buzzing around and she was just so lady like and elegant and peaceful and she wanted to go on a trip with me. I couldn't believe it, she said some lovely things to me that made the tears run down my cheeks and even though people will probably think 'oh look at that stunning girl how sweet she has bought her mother with her to the Himalayas' I will go on a trip with her. It's strange how opposites can fit together so well. Alla would just sit and giggle behind her elegant hand as I arsed around dancing around the dorm in my g-string under my mosquito net telling crude jokes and taking the mick out of the cock from Canada. I had no idea she liked me so much I thought I just embarrassed her but I just cant help being the clown it's just the way I have always been. I was sad when she left with her sweetness and her little bed looked sad too I mean who wouldn't miss that gorgeous goddess lying on top of them every night.
Alla was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen and I mean real beauty, physically and from within, not like the plastic beauty I see everyday in England, faces full of botox, boobs full of silicone, plastic nails and faces painted like drag queens, real natural beauty and sweetness and kindness.
My second friend to leave was the lovely porcelain skinned Amber from Canada but she was not a cock like the Karma yoga dude thank God. Amber was a Yoga teacher at home but the Yoga she had been taught was purely physical and she came to India to see if the spiritual side of yoga appealed to her. She said she felt like something was missing.
I don't want to go too much into Amber's private life but she had had a few unhappy years and lost some people who she loved very much and like myself and a lot of people I met in the ashram an inner sadness and a need to heal had brought her here.
Amber was a smart lady. I loved listening to her, she was younger than me but she really had her head on her shoulders and knew all about yoga and Ayurveda and the doshas, caphor pitta Vatta I think they are called. When she was explaining things she would talk with her hands and she had lovely boney fingers and lovely nails.
Amber ended up leaving two days before the end of the two week course which initially I thought was crazy and something I cold never do is quit anything early, but after talking to her and unsuccessfully trying to convince her to stay I realised that she was right and it was time for her to move on. She said she had enjoyed the Satsang but she was so exhausted and the yoga was very different to the yoga she taught at home and she felt we were asked to stand on hour heads for far longer than was neccessary and she was fed up to the back teeth of her Karma yoga duty up at the health hut were she felt un appreciated and disrespected. She had had a complete melt down after a stressful shift and slammed her notebook down and told them 'I'm done' in true Canadian fashion and walked out.
Once Amber said she was leaving loads of the other girls left too, Nicole from Austria , was next who was a great girl. Her English was good, well better than she gave herself credit for but she used to get words mixed up and come out with the funniest things like 'lets come to the dinner and eat some many vegetable missing tasty' she had us in complete hysterics all the time, Rahil from Switzerland left with Nicole, they headed to Varkala beach to lay in the sun and eat pizza and drink filter coffee. Rahil always looked stoned but never was and never went to any lectures or Satsangs and then the lovely and eccentric Josephine from Australia but lived in London left also. In a way I was glad I had left the dorm the week before the mass Exodus because I would have been so lonely with all of my best buddies gone.
Josephine was an interesting character. She was curvaceous and bubbly but in her eyes I could recognise a deep sadness. I don't know why but I knew it was linked to alcohol. I suppose I know the signs and I guess I had seen that same sadness in my own eyes in the mirror many times. We talked a lot in that first week and she said I reminded her of herself, that she was always the clown making people laugh but inside she was crying, lost in regret, shame and self loathing.
Eventually Josephine told me about her drinking, like me she did not need to drink everyday but when she did drink she could not stop. She told me about all the trouble she had gotten herself into over the years and I knew exactly how she felt. I really like Josephine she always said lovely things to everyone. Telling the girls how pretty they were and how nice their clothes were and I could see that she was always giving to others but really didn't receive much in return.
Josephine left in the middle of the night, we woke up and she was gone, no one heard her leave but next to my bed she left me her email address and a bottle of aromatherapy oil i had commented on the day before as she applied It to her thighs. She told me she was on a health kick and wanted to get slim and sexy to seduce some guy she was crazy about. I thought fair play bird fill your boots. She told me she was going to 'Own the fukin room' which I thought was incredible, she said she came from a middle class background and didn't want to be middle class and fukin boring, ha ha ha.
Josephine was a real woman and a real character and I really hoped she would stay sober and be happy oh and of course seduce her man.
This would mean of course that my two week stay would be turning into three weeks and three days but I was settled in the ashram and I had wanted to have panchakarma for some time and it was a really good price, 19,000 rupees which is about £280. Still that is a fair whack out of a back packers budget but I had spoken to a few people who had paid almost triple that in the resorts of Varkala and Kovalam.
I wouldn't have bothered with it if I had still been drinking but I had not touched a drop for nearly nine weeks and I thought the Panchakarma would be a great way to rid my body of toxins that had been inside me for months and would be a good incentive to carry on with my healthier lifestyle.
I was in the ashram after all and all my food and yoga was included so it made sense to have the treatment there.
Panchakarma is an ancient ayurvedic treatment that has been practised in India for centuries. It helps the body to eliminate toxins through vigorous oil massages, hot bundle treatment were dry herbs wrapped in muslin cloths are heated in oil and the body is pounded with them to create heat and unblock tension and Dharsa which is a treatment were ayurvedic oil is poured in a constant steady flow on to the forehead of the patient. Dharsa helps to calm the patient and helps with anxiety and insomnia and helps to balance the mind and open the third eye chakra. Then Nasar which is oil that is dripped in to both nostrils which helps to clear sinuses, ease headaches and calm anxiety. Also the more drastic side of the treatment includes purgation were a oily concoction is drank and a couple of hours later the world falls through the seat of your pants and then induced vomiting to eliminate toxin build up in the stomach and four days of oil enemas to thourally detox the whole colon of everything it has been holding onto for years.
The entire treatment is preformed over a two week period and fortunately not all parts of the treatment are done every day because I would imagine you would have a bottom like a chewed orange and due to my existing stomach hernia I was excluded from the induced vomiting.
The first ten days of the treatment are just really preparatory. Getting the body ready for the impending evacuation. Oily massages and kizhi hot bundles are done daily to loosen the toxins in the body, stimulate the lymph system which deals with the waste and toxins in the body and to make the insides and the outside of the body oily making it easier to shift everything along.
I would love to say I loved the treatment but I got a crippling heat rash during the first week of panchakarma and when your body is hot and itchy the last thing you want is an oily massage and two scolding hot oily bags pounded on your delicate body. I just kept telling myself that it would be all worth it when I walked out of Sivanada, slim, toned healthy and glowing with purity and serenity!!
The oil dripped through the nasal passage was agony. I had had a wonderful selection of substances inhaled up my nostrils over the years but the oil inhalation came right at the arse end of that list of enjoyment.
The Dharsa treatment were oil is poured from above onto the forehead was bliss it was so so relaxing and I felt like a wave of peace was passing over me and all my worries were being untangled from my mind and spirit. The only down side to that was for about four days I was walking around with hair smelling like George & Hellen's fish shop on a Friday night. I washed my hair twice after every treatment but it was so thick with oil that it would just not come out. For days I just scrapped it back and walked around the ashram looking like Olive off On The Buses with a swarm of flies buzzing around my head like I was a giant cow patt.
After about fifteen years of constipation I could not wait for the enemas to get started. The therapist Sini who had been doing the treatments for me everyday told me not to worry as she forced me down butt naked onto the wooden table on my side while another lady spreads my legs in the recovery position, I was thinking will I ever recover from the shame. A pipe the length of a cobra was pushed up to my throat and 2 litres of Castor oil, Honey, herbs, salt and pepper were rudely forced into my intestines, all that was missing up there was pie and bloody chips. I imagined my poor intestine's looking like a rabbit in a headlight being faced with 2 litres of fluid at 100 miles and hour all rushing upwards in the wrong direction. I glanced over my right shoulder to see the serious expressions on sini's and her side kicks faces and Sini was holding a Tupperware bucket attached to the pipe that was attached to my bottom in the air shaking it like it was a tambourine making sure every last ounce was pushed in.
I have to admit it was worth all the shame I felt fantastic the next morning refreshed, lighter, energized and after 2 hours on the squat loo I was exahusted and I slept like a baby.
I don't know if Panchakarma is as amazing as what Dr Vishnu said it was, I mean it is relaxing and all that well the massage and oil being poured on the forehead part, but I suppose over the coming months I will know if for me it was a success and if my stomach and digestion is calmer and more regular then it was money well spent.
I had all sorts of problems with my digestion system over the years and too be honest I blame years of Bulimia during my teens and the wild partying years of my twenty's so it was all self inflicted and I felt I deserved it. I had had several stomach ulcers from all the excess acid that vomiting and alcohol had caused and a few years ago after collapsing in the street in Brighton with my poor Mother looking on I was diagnosed with a stomach hernia. You would think that little lot would convert me to a healthier lifestyle but after a couple of weeks flat on my back in agony I was back on the gin and back dancing on the bars in Brighton.
Dr Vishnu assured me that Panchakarma would help to heal my offended digestion and sooth my partied out colon and calm my fraught mind. I also decided to leave the dorm and check into a twin room for the duration of the panchakarma treatment as Dr Vishnu said it could be quite an emotional experience and all sorts of emotions would arise and things I had kept bottled up inside would come flowing out of me like the water gushing out of the nearby Neyyar Dam.
I was sad saying goodbye to the girls in the dorm which was daft as I was only going to be staying a few feet away in one of the rooms under the dining room but we had had some great times. They all hugged me goodbye and said they would miss my antics, I used to run around with my mosquito net over my face pretending to be the fly which they all found highly amusing.
My beautiful friend Alla had already left surrounded by a haze of peace and beauty. She gave me the most delicate kiss on the cheek and asked me to stay in touch that she wanted to do a trip with me to the Himalayas in a few months. I was flabbergasted, I was so loud and buzzing around and she was just so lady like and elegant and peaceful and she wanted to go on a trip with me. I couldn't believe it, she said some lovely things to me that made the tears run down my cheeks and even though people will probably think 'oh look at that stunning girl how sweet she has bought her mother with her to the Himalayas' I will go on a trip with her. It's strange how opposites can fit together so well. Alla would just sit and giggle behind her elegant hand as I arsed around dancing around the dorm in my g-string under my mosquito net telling crude jokes and taking the mick out of the cock from Canada. I had no idea she liked me so much I thought I just embarrassed her but I just cant help being the clown it's just the way I have always been. I was sad when she left with her sweetness and her little bed looked sad too I mean who wouldn't miss that gorgeous goddess lying on top of them every night.
Alla was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen and I mean real beauty, physically and from within, not like the plastic beauty I see everyday in England, faces full of botox, boobs full of silicone, plastic nails and faces painted like drag queens, real natural beauty and sweetness and kindness.
My second friend to leave was the lovely porcelain skinned Amber from Canada but she was not a cock like the Karma yoga dude thank God. Amber was a Yoga teacher at home but the Yoga she had been taught was purely physical and she came to India to see if the spiritual side of yoga appealed to her. She said she felt like something was missing.
I don't want to go too much into Amber's private life but she had had a few unhappy years and lost some people who she loved very much and like myself and a lot of people I met in the ashram an inner sadness and a need to heal had brought her here.
Amber was a smart lady. I loved listening to her, she was younger than me but she really had her head on her shoulders and knew all about yoga and Ayurveda and the doshas, caphor pitta Vatta I think they are called. When she was explaining things she would talk with her hands and she had lovely boney fingers and lovely nails.
Amber ended up leaving two days before the end of the two week course which initially I thought was crazy and something I cold never do is quit anything early, but after talking to her and unsuccessfully trying to convince her to stay I realised that she was right and it was time for her to move on. She said she had enjoyed the Satsang but she was so exhausted and the yoga was very different to the yoga she taught at home and she felt we were asked to stand on hour heads for far longer than was neccessary and she was fed up to the back teeth of her Karma yoga duty up at the health hut were she felt un appreciated and disrespected. She had had a complete melt down after a stressful shift and slammed her notebook down and told them 'I'm done' in true Canadian fashion and walked out.
Once Amber said she was leaving loads of the other girls left too, Nicole from Austria , was next who was a great girl. Her English was good, well better than she gave herself credit for but she used to get words mixed up and come out with the funniest things like 'lets come to the dinner and eat some many vegetable missing tasty' she had us in complete hysterics all the time, Rahil from Switzerland left with Nicole, they headed to Varkala beach to lay in the sun and eat pizza and drink filter coffee. Rahil always looked stoned but never was and never went to any lectures or Satsangs and then the lovely and eccentric Josephine from Australia but lived in London left also. In a way I was glad I had left the dorm the week before the mass Exodus because I would have been so lonely with all of my best buddies gone.
Josephine was an interesting character. She was curvaceous and bubbly but in her eyes I could recognise a deep sadness. I don't know why but I knew it was linked to alcohol. I suppose I know the signs and I guess I had seen that same sadness in my own eyes in the mirror many times. We talked a lot in that first week and she said I reminded her of herself, that she was always the clown making people laugh but inside she was crying, lost in regret, shame and self loathing.
Eventually Josephine told me about her drinking, like me she did not need to drink everyday but when she did drink she could not stop. She told me about all the trouble she had gotten herself into over the years and I knew exactly how she felt. I really like Josephine she always said lovely things to everyone. Telling the girls how pretty they were and how nice their clothes were and I could see that she was always giving to others but really didn't receive much in return.
Josephine left in the middle of the night, we woke up and she was gone, no one heard her leave but next to my bed she left me her email address and a bottle of aromatherapy oil i had commented on the day before as she applied It to her thighs. She told me she was on a health kick and wanted to get slim and sexy to seduce some guy she was crazy about. I thought fair play bird fill your boots. She told me she was going to 'Own the fukin room' which I thought was incredible, she said she came from a middle class background and didn't want to be middle class and fukin boring, ha ha ha.
Josephine was a real woman and a real character and I really hoped she would stay sober and be happy oh and of course seduce her man.
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