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Yoga popular, Ayurveda gaining ground
After yoga, ayurveda is the next big craze for Americans, who see it as an alternative therapy, reports Lalit K Jha.
As a by-product of Yoga becoming highly popular across the United States of America, Ayurveda too seems to be slowly but firmly gaining ground.
What could be the best testimony to this than the mere fact that nearly 80 people would be attending a three-day comprehensive seminar-cum-workshop on this Indian system of medicine from June 3 at the City of Orange, some 32 miles south east of Los Angeles.
"A few years ago, we could not have thought of having such a large number of people registering for an introductory three-day course on Ayurveda. But now this is a reality," Vandana Tilak, an Ayurveda practitioner in California told HindustanTimes.com. She is organising the event.
Attributing this sudden increasing popularity of Ayurveda, she said: "The entire credit goes to Yoga. It has become so popular that Yoga is now visible in nook and corner of this country. As a result, people now have now become more curious about Ayurveda. Many of them have even started taking it as an alternative or supplementary to the main system."
Among the participants at the three-day conference include physicians, yoga instructors, therapist, masseurs and even quite a few health conscious people, who want to give it a try, she claimed. Classes would be taken by Vasant Lad, who came to the U.S. way back in 1984 as founder director of Ayurveda Institute in New Mexico.
Author of several books on Ayurveda, Lad is known in the U.S. as an authority on this traditional Indian system of medicine.
Tilak said the three day workshop was being organized on popular demand as smaller conferences in the past were increasingly becoming popular. She recently launched a series of Ayurvedic products under the brand Tulsi Herbals to encash on the increasing popularity of Ayurveda.
While, a majority of the Ayurvedic medicines were being imported from India right now there is lot of potential to use the locally available herbs in the U.S, she said. However, it is in its infancy stage. "Both Ayurveda and its local production has a "long way to go" in the U.S.," she said.
In May 2006, Lad is planning to hold a major conference on Ayurveda along with the mainstream doctors to deliberate on the various case studies and hold discussions on integrating this with allopathic system of medicine. "All this shows that Ayurveda is gaining ground in the U.S.," she said.
Tilak claimed, Ayurveda was slowly gaining ground because of the basic difference with the western system.
Much of the Western System of medicine focuses on the treatment and cure of diseases when system manifests. On the other hand, Ayurvedic science provides a system to look at pre-disease states when the subtlest symptoms become apparent.
"Often the cause is not purely physical but physiological as well. In this medicine system the patient is treated as a whole and treatments are tailored to each person uniquely," she observed.
As per an estimate, every third patient in the U.S. enquire about any supplementary treatment system. "Although, Ayurveda is not the most preferred among the patients, but at this rate we might soon become very popular," she hoped.
