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Ayurveda Today
In 1989 I attended a conference on medical applications of Yoga in Mumbai. There were a number of Indian medical doctors on the panel but, strangely as a westerner, I was the only Ayurvedic speaker. After my talk promoting Ayurveda, someone in the audience remarked, "We in India believe in something only once it has been reimported." While most Indian medical minds are busy pursuing modern medicine, Americans are increasingly looking into alternative medicine including Ayurveda, and see India as the homeland of Ayurveda and yogic spirituality.
India’s cultural medical genius has recently gone into modern medicine. Families traditionally devoted to Ayurveda have switched over to modern medicine and forgotten their roots. Indian allopathic doctors are often opposed to Ayurveda which, with their western education, they consider to be primitive. I have found doctors in America to be more interested in Ayurveda than doctors in India who have a naïve faith in modern medicine such as was typical during the fifties and sixties in the West.
Unfortunately, Ayurveda is not adequately funded in India today, receiving only a small percentage of the medical budget. This amount is only enough to pay a low wage for Ayurvedic teachers. While the government funds allopathic treatment, people generally have to pay out of their own pockets for Ayurveda. This poor funding of Ayurveda is responsible for the backward state that occurs for Ayurvedic schools and hospitals, not anything necessarily inferior about the medicine itself.
Today there are several hundred Ayurvedic schools in India and thousands of practitioners. Ayurveda remains popular in the villages and has its place in urban life as well. Ayurvedic herb stores can be found in most communities, offering a wide variety of health care products from soaps to special formulas for boosting the immune system or improving memory and concentration. Modern Ayurvedic schools teach Ayurveda along with allopathy and the average Ayurvedic doctor knows a lot about modern medicine, including many of its diagnostic methods. Ayurveda is recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO) and is the subject of much modern medical research. Therefore, in spite of poor funding, Ayurveda is still flourishing and spreading anew.
A new modern Ayurveda is starting in India and in the West with Ayurvedic health spas that can be quite upscale in terms of facilities and treatment. This is not confined to the TM (Transcendental Meditation) movement, which first emphasized it, but includes hotels in South India and other Ayurvedic centers throughout the world sponsored by various groups and organizations. There is nothing necessarily archaic or poverty-based about Ayurveda. The new Ayurveda, like Yoga, is attended by those in pursuit of the spiritual life and many affluent people from the West. The western interest in Ayurveda is helping to revive Ayurveda in India and makes it more respectable, showing it as an important medical system in its own right, not just a poor alternative for those who do not have access to modern medicine.
Author - David Frawley
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