Naturopathy and Yoga

We've been back in Delhi for a couple of days now, it took us about 10
hours to get to our new apartments from Jaipur, there was a screw up in
both picking us up at the bus station as well as our accommodations.
Now all eight of us are cramped into a three bedroom apartment with two
semi-functioning bathrooms, but I'm not complaining because it's not
the hostel atBapu and there are no furry creatures running around in our room.
Monday we started our rotations at Bapu Nature Cure Hospital and Yogashram's
Outpatient department (www.bnchy.org/). They split us up into groups of
two and we first visited the physiotherapist who was mostly treatingperiarthritis
clients with manual modalities and most of her patients were elderly.
It got me thinking about the differences and similarities between the
degenerative diseases in the West and the developing world. Most of our
degenerative disease andCVD comes from our inactivity and indulgence in
unhealthy foods, whereas here it seems most of the arthritis etc.
results in hard manual labor and just a hard life all around. Women
work so hard here, always bent down sweeping for carrying jugs of water
on their heads. Of course we also have preventive care in the West,
here people can only address their problems when it's too late, if they
can afford to do that at all.
Our next rotation was with the acupressurist and while I've been practicing what's called tennis ball accupressure (I'll wait for the laughter to die down now, but it is a legitimate way to break up the knots, tightness and chronic trigger points that form in the muscle, a skill I learned in physical therapy and one which has
helped me heal myneuromuscular condition (are you laughing still?). Nonetheless, I've never really been to an actual accupressurist or what they would call a reflexologist. She explained to us that all the nerve endings in the foot and the
palm correspond to different body parts (Farah & I are still
baffled by the science behind it) but Ioff erred her my foot and when
she pressed the inside curve, which corresponds with the lumbar spine
(the bane of my existence), I wanted to scream bloody murder it hurt so
bad. I've experienced this in massage therapy before and I am now a
believer and want to look into seeing one for treatment when I get back
home.
We also met with the Naturopathy doctor, whose name shamefully escapes me, but he does have a B.N.Y.S. - Bachelor of Naturopathy and Yoga Sciences which requires 5.5 years of training. The whole philosophy behind naturopathy is assisting the body in healing itself from within naturally, with diet, exercise and yoga.
After lunch we had a lecture on naturopathy
from Dr. Nair, wife of the founder and director of the clinic and it
was rather interesting and reminded me of the Ancient Greek beliefs
about medicine and the human body
(with the elements of air, fire, earth and inbalanace of elements = disease) before Aristotle introduced empirical scientific data.
While our rotations this week have nothing to do with HIV/AIDS, it is
intended to introduce us to traditional medicine in India as it is an
accepted form of medicine by the Indian government and really quite
fascinating.
After lecture we had a guided meditation during which I
think I fell asleep for about 15 minutes but it refuelled me for the
rest of the day, which was just amazing.
In the evening, we decided we wanted to expand our cultural immersion and went to see a Bollywood
movie at a mall. It was ridiculous, horribly done, but very funny
because of all those reasons. There goes 2.5 hours of my life I will
never get back but when in Rome....

This morning started out very early with yoga at 6:30, rotations in the morning, lecture and meditation in the afternoon and tonight, Paul and I are venturing out
to seeAkshardam Temple in
Delhi,(http://www.indiatravelportal.com/delhi-placestovisit/akshardham-temple.html)
while the rest of the gang may be going to a nightclub/restaurant.Akshardam is the most elaborately built temple in India and it looks just amazing. I will post some pictures tomorrow.
Thursday we're supposed to go to Taj Mahal, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed for that.
Now I have to get back to rotations. Namaste!