Kalari Rasayana – Leave Your World Here
When everyone else was turning Ayurveda into a spa experience, Jose Dominic, MD of CGH Earth, did something radical – he went back to the beginning. Not to sell wellness, but to preserve a science that was five thousand years old. I’m Keralan. I grew up with Ayurveda the way you grow up with a grandmother – you don’t f
ully appreciate her until she’s gone. Mine administered food as medicine and treated every ailment with herbs. I didn’t appreciate any of this until both she and my mother died and part of my heritage died with them.
In 2004 Dominic restored a 200-year-old palace in northern Kerala 7 Kilometres from where I was born and opened it as a proper hospital. Pure Ayurveda: No menus, no negotiation, medicines made on site from their own organic farm and every prescription drawn from the classical Samhita texts. Your doctor decides what you eat, when you sleep, what goes on your skin. In the beginning, no one came. By 2012 the waiting list told a different story, and Kalari Rasayana opened in the south – eight acres of coconut groves along the Paravur backwaters. The Kerala I remember from my childhood – lush greenery, soothing smells and beautiful people.
I needed to do something radical too. A year of holding everyone else together – an elderly parent, a teenager, a partner who hadn’t been well had left my nervous system in pieces. So, I did what made sense: I went back to my roots.
When the staff met me at the entrance with a jasmine garland, chanting a mantra and performing a welcoming fire ceremony, I had a mixture of emotions – firstly embarrassment at being seen. As a middle-aged woman I have the superpower of being invisible, and here was a team of people making that entirely impossible. And then, underneath the embarrassment, something that felt very much like gratitude. Help had finally arrived.
As I crossed the threshold, a wooden sign read: Please Leave Your World Here. I was ready. No qualms about surrendering to the white kurta pyjama to be worn for the duration of the stay, or adhering to the strict regime that I, as a free spirit and committed rule-breaker, would have ordinarily questioned. The white cotton pyjamas are doing something deliberate – making us all the same, stripping back identification with the outside world. None of us are leaving for at least the next fourteen days and will embark upon a cleanse for mind, body and spirit – not for the faint-hearted.
I’m led to see a Vaidya (Doctor) for a full consultation. My ailments are as long as a shopping list, but I pick just one that I’d love to work on – resetting my nervous system. My theory being that if I can address the tech-addicted, chocolate-soothing, crisis-to-crisis-lurching person I have somehow become, the rest might sort itself out.
Dr Firoz Varun leads the medical team and has the kind of calm that makes you want to confess everything, which indeed I do. After an examination and a five-page questionnaire I am told I am a vata-pitta constitution – vata being the energy of movement, air, instability. In imbalance it provokes anxiety, insomnia, dry skin, mental restlessness, difficulty focusing and nervous system chaos. That would be tick, tick, tick all the way and yes double tick at the end. I ask whether the vata imbalance also explains my conviction that chocolate cures everything. He nods and smiles politely and says, “Yes. Sweet cravings, but no desert here.” Adding that my mobile phone is to stay in my room. Given that tech addiction is the first item on my ailment list, this feels pointed. So, we’re not easing into this.
He explains the three-stage detoxification process. The preparatory stage, poorvakarma, preparing the body through massage and drinking increasing amounts of medicated ghee. Followed by purgation (pretty much says what it does on the tin) he either doesn’t go into too much detail on this part or I am concentrating very hard on what he says about the final rejuvenation stage with more massages. I tend to focus on things I like to hear.
I am introduced to Rashina and Anjana, my two massage therapists for the duration. The sun is shining and they walk with me holding an umbrella to shield me from the heat – even this small act of care makes me want to cry. It has been a while since someone held an umbrella up for me. We walk through the organic herb garden passing mango trees, palm trees, the scent of neem taking me straight back to my grandmother, who used neem leaves and twigs as my makeshift toothbrush when I was a child.
By the time I’m in the therapy room I’m trying to hold back tears, momentarily distracted only by the langotti (a cotton thong that really doesn’t cover much) which I have to put on. As I change into it, I walk back to the therapists with my eyes half closed. I’m not used to being visible – especially almost naked. They greet me smiling, sit me down, say a prayer and then I am helped onto the wooden massage bench.
The first treatment is Udwarthanam – medicated powder rubbed vigorously across the body in a synchronised massage. It takes me a while to get into as I cannot quite believe how synchronised four hands can be. The massage lasts about an hour before a shower is prepared and all I have to do is step into it.
The different treatments continue this way with a level of tenderness and care that I soak in for the next fourteen days. I am no longer distracted by the levels of synchronisation and learn to completely relax. Interspersed are Bihar yoga sessions and yoga nidras that I can never stay awake for – it has been a while since I have felt this level of rest.
The food is simple, organic and vegetarian – prescribed specifically for my constitution, one type of fruit at breakfast, herbal warm water always, even in the room. At every meal the finger bowl is brought to me. I literally do not lift a finger. Nothing is required of me.
I will not linger on the four days of medicated ghee – drunk in incrementally increasing amounts each morning, designed to penetrate deep into the cells and pull the toxins out from places you didn’t know toxins lived. Suffice to say all the toxins are then eliminated through a day of purgation. I stay in my room. I stay very close to the toilet. We’ll leave it there.
The rejuvenation came quietly, more like a gradual unveiling than a magician’s “ta-da.” I felt lighter. I could taste every flavour in the food; my sense of smell was heightened. Dr Firoz told me to give it a few weeks or months before I felt the full effects – which is exactly what a person who has just drunk four days of ghee and gone through a day and night of purgation needs to hear.
I had a lump in my throat as I hugged Rashina and Anjana goodbye. They had witnessed my tears, sadness and laughter – my transformation, and to be witnessed as an ‘invisible woman’ is in itself an incredible thing. It truly gives you a superpower – the feeling that there is more, much more, still to come.
A month on, I’m back home and on a Zoom consultation with Dr Firoz, I tell him that I’m sleeping well. No dry skin, no gas, no nervous anticipation of the next crisis – just renewed energy, a sense of self and an excitement at the quiet unfolding of a new chapter…
The chocolate though. Some things are simply beyond the reach of medicated ghee.
Kalari Rasayana, CGH Earth, Paravoor Village, South Kerala. Minimum stay 14 days. www.cghearthayurveda.com
