Panchakarma Part 1 - The beginning

In Dec 2020 I got covid whilst abroad and upon landing back in London, I was in ICU unable to breathe due to blood clots filling 3/4 of my lungs. I had an amazing community who helped me settle back when I got home, which was so helpful especially when having a 3 month, 1.5yr and 6yr old at that time. Through the help of my consultants at UCL and their prescribed treatments and medicines, I was able to retrain my lungs to function normally again and gained strength day by day to be able to do normal activities at home. It took a year for these clots to be at a normal level. However in Nov 2022, I found myself in hospital again and this time the clots filling to 4/5 of my lungs. It was then when the penny dropped and my husband encouraged me to look into Ayurvedic solutions. Ayurveda has no side effects, so what would be the harm we thought.

Knowing this would be a big step, I researched and enquired from 6 different ayurvedic clinics in India and went ahead with Dr Shivkumar at Hitayu Ayurveda Centre, Udupi, India who I had personal recommendations from a number of friends.

I explained him my history and presented him with my current issues, the clots, diabetes, pcos and a recent extra nerve in my left eye which Moorfields Eye A&E said could affect the brain but they said it’s a new nerve so could go itself and so they would want to review it in Aug 2023 when 6 months had passed. We decided on a 6 week treatment where I would stay on site and have 2-3 treatments daily as well as 90 mins yoga session every morning. The rules of the clinic were simple, no napping or daytime sleeping, nothing cold or frozen, warm water only, take ayurvedic medicines on time, eat the food they cook on site (naturally without onion garlic), wake up 530am and be in bed by 930pm.

Having 3 kids meant my sleep for the last 9 years was very random. There would be days I’d be up and active at 4am and there would be days when I had lost the will to live at 4pm, my energy was very temperamental and I would just force myself to wake up and get on with the day. My sleep was neglected.

So the first 2 weeks of treatment was focused on relaxing my body, learning to listen to my body and having a natural sleep pattern, early to rise, early to bed. For this, I would daily have Abhyanga for 1hr (oil massage) followed by 20mins bashpa (steam). The bashpa was a wooden cabinet with a seat inside, I would seat inside it, door closed and my head popping out and then that cabinet would be filled with steam from a pressure cooking. I would also have 1hr Shirodora (head massage) which would consist of a head massage followed by lying down on a wooden table and oil dropping from a hanging pot onto my forehead for 45mins continuous. I really struggled with this, for someone who wouldn’t even sit on the sofa for 5mins to watch TV, I had to lie down, still for 45mins with this oil tapping drop by drop on my forehead. But that night, I slept like a baby, and woke up 8 hrs later without the 6 alarms that I had set. Back in london I had about 10 alarms to wake up every morning, and dare I say the truth but there were days when I slept through those 10 alarms which were snoozing every 10mins too!

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