At Kalari Rasayana, in southern Kerala, Ayurveda is practised as medicine rather than spa indulgence, with a doctor guiding every step of your stay.
Part one: Kalari Rasayana
The sign above the entrance says it plainly: leave your world behind. So I took it at its word.
Kalari Rasayana sits in a coconut grove overlooking Lake Paravur on India’s south-west coast. The minimum stay is two weeks, and many guests stay three or four. Most arrive to be brought back into balance, a phrase you’ll hear a lot in Ayurveda. Nobody comes for a spa weekend.
More than massage
Ask most people what they associate with Ayurveda and they’ll mention beauty products, oil massages or a treatment menu at a resort. All of that is real, but it’s only the surface of something much deeper.
Ayurveda, from the Sanskrit for “knowledge of life”, is one of the world’s oldest systems of medicine, with roots stretching back more than 5,000 years. Its classical texts were compiled over centuries.
I found my own introduction to the subject in my room, in Dr Robert E. Svoboda’s Prakriti, which I highly recommend. The library, near the three huge yoga rooms on the second floor of the main building, holds many more books on the subject.
Ayurveda’s central idea is that health is not simply the absence of disease but a state of balance between body, mind and environment. Each of us is born with a unique constitution made up of three doshas: Vata (air and ether), Pitta (fire and water) and Kapha (earth and water). Illness, in this view, begins when you drift out of balance through diet, stress, season or the way we live. Treatment aims to restore that balance, not just suppress symptoms.
And here at Kalari Rasayana, I’m told by one of the team, the mission is transformation which is exactly why I’m here.
Kerala has long been a stronghold of the tradition, and Ayurveda is still practised in this region as a medical discipline. Doctors train for years; my doctor – Dr Belraj DN – has been practicing medicine for 17 years. He told me his Bachelor of Ayurvedic Medicine, & Surgery (BAMS) took five years to complete followed by a long internship. Places like CGH Earth’s Kalari Rasayana and its sister hospital, Kalari Kovilakom in Palakkad, operate more like hospitals than wellness resorts. At Kalari Rasayana, they have six doctors – three senior consultants and three resident doctors.
The name itself is telling: rasayana is the branch of Ayurveda devoted to rejuvenation and longevity.
And who doesn’t want longevity, or, to be precise, healthy longevity?
A place that slows you down
The quiet is the first thing you notice. Mobile phones and computers must stay in your room, and a digital detox is strongly encouraged. About 30 guesthouses are scattered across eight lush green acres, and at this shoulder time of year – definitely the best time to visit – the property is far from full. However, that’s not the case from October onwards, so it’s best to book your stay during the quieter months.
You can arrive from Australia with a small carry bag and be fine for the duration. The best route from Australia is via Sri Lanka, which is a ten-hour flight from Sydney, and then a one-hour flight onto Thiruvananthapuram, the capital city of Kerala, India. From there, you get collected by a car and it’s a two-hour drive. On arrival, you’re given a flower necklace, and three sets of white cotton tops and pants, so all you really need is underwear and a few personal items. Your washing is done daily, and because you don’t leave the grounds during your stay, it’s easy to imagine flying to India for nothing but this. During my stay there are people visiting from Portugal, Uzbekistan, USA, and Dubai, all drawn to the hospital because of its renowned reputation globally.
All of them throw themselves into the programme wholeheartedly, and so do I. It’s rare to spend days on end focused on nothing but healing, giving yourself permission to put your own wellness first. Before long I begin noticing what I’d normally rush past: a brown and white bird of prey circling between the trees, a squirrel scampering up and down the tree trunks, frogs calling through the night.
The rhythm of the days
I’ve been assessed as a Kapha type, the dosha linked with structure, steadiness and stamina, but also with heaviness when it accumulates. My regime is designed accordingly.
Hot water arrives in my room twice daily, usually infused with ginger, though the drink may differ for each patient. Everything here is individualised to you.
At Kalari Rasayana, Ayurvedic doctors are revered, and rightly so. I see mine twice a day, and watching him adjust my treatment as my body responds, I understand what Dr Svoboda means in Prakriti when he calls the good physician “an artist of prescription”, someone with the same feel for his or her therapies “that an expert cook has for his recipes”. That feel, he writes, comes from attuning to Nature, and it turns technical proficiency into intuitive healing. Ayurveda, he adds, “is not unscientific; it has progressed beyond mechanistic science.”
Svoboda’s best line is “Nature performs the miracles; doctors need only teach their patients how to tap into Nature’s wonder working.”
I love yoga nidra at 11.30am. Our yoga teacher Kishore Kumar has a soothing and melodic voice, and by the end of the half hour I’m so relaxed, it’s a struggle not to be lulled to sleep. Lunch follows at 12.30pm, then pranayama (breathing practice) at 5pm and fish feeding at 5.30pm, an ideal time to socialise with the other guests, or patients as we’re known here. I’m also advised by my doctor to walk at least six laps of the property each day, and I enjoy these long, slow loops through the tropical greenery. Evenings bring cooking demonstrations, a traditional Indian Veena recital, dancing and a meditation, gazing at a candle flame for five minutes at a time.
All meals are vegetarian and are eaten in silence and separately from one another to encourage conscious eating. The cuisine is truly delicious and each meal is served in small bowls, I mean particularly small bowls, but you can ask for seconds. Lunch is light: typically one steamed vegetable, often green beans, okra or carrot, and rice soup (for those who have begun their ghee treatment). Dinner at 6.30pm is more substantial, usually soup – beetroot or white pumpkin and then kedgeree or dahl served with a steamed vegetable like broccoli. You can have more, but you rarely want it.
Ghee, and a prayer
For my first two days, on my doctor’s advice after a full check-up, I have a body scrub and, later in the day, a hot herbal compress treatment designed to reduce inflammation. Then the programme, for me that is, shifts to snehapana: drinking medicated ghee in gradually increasing amounts. Each morning, instead of breakfast, I have my dose. The idea is that the ghee loosens and draws out accumulated toxins, known as ama, from the body’s tissues so they can be eliminated. It’s the preparation for panchakarma, the classic Ayurvedic cleansing process, and in particular for virechana, a supervised therapeutic purgation, which I will write about next week as I’m yet to experience it.
The ghee tastes like butter, because, well it is clarified butter; but infused with medicated herbs uniquely chosen to improve your individual condition. It comes with a glass of water, a slice of lime and a lime leaf to clear the palate afterwards. I swig it down quickly.
But each day, the amount of ghee increases and it becomes increasingly more difficult to finish – and that’s what Dr Belraj DN is watching for. On day five, he tells me that I’ve reached ‘saturation’ and I am to come off the ghee.
But while on the ghee, which one patient aptly describes as “nature’s own Mounjaro”, I enjoy gentler head-to-toe massages which involve more long sweeping motions to improve circulation. A medicinal herb-infused oil is generously applied. Later, I visit the place where the oil (sesame oil is used as the base) is prepared in a huge vat over an open fire here on the premises. It’s a process that takes three to seven days of blending herbs with the oil and even milk.
Now on day seven of my 14-day stay, I can say I have rarely felt hungry, as the ghee takes away the appetite, and I’ve lost almost four kilograms. That’s mostly fluid and reduced food intake, but weight loss isn’t the only point albeit an important one for me. The overall aim is cleansing and rebalancing.
Trusting the process
Earlier this week, I met a patient here who had come to grieve someone dear to her. She told me she needed the stillness, and that this place helped heal her so much she’ll return next year. She shared tips for my days ahead and told me to simply trust the process and surrender to it.
I’m doing just that, and can’t wait to see where it takes me.
Next week: virechana, the supervised purgation at the heart of panchakarma. I will tell you what it involves and what I noticed once it was over. See you then.
Robyn Foyster is currently staying at Kalari Rasayana as a guest of CGH Earth. Women Love Travel retains full editorial independence.