foxwoodsfiend.com

(5/3/2009)
I have come to the conclusion that he is a total idiot. Not too shocking considering that Ayurveda is basically an ancient form of homeopathic medicine, but I was still surprised to see it in action.

First of all, he asks me if I have any injuries and I tell him about my labrum tear. The second I finish he very confidently states “I need you to not do any more heavy lifting for 3 to 4 months. You are 80-85% healed but there is still a 15-25% chance of reinjuring yourself, but if you wait 3 to 4 months you will be fine.” I find this funny as I didn’t mention anything about my recovery timetable and he didn’t inspect me, but hey the numbers don’t lie. Then again, it’s not entirely clear that the values for “percentage you’re healed”+”chance of reinjuring yourself” should add up to 100. But I’m not a doctor. Who knows, maybe it’s a coincidence.

Then he explains to me the basics of Ayurveda medicine. He casually asserts that all things are made of one of five elements: earth, fire, wind, water, and space. He gives me the common sense explanation of this position very casually as if we’re already agreed and this is a mere formality. “You cannot imagine the world without any of these things,” he says and runs through the reasons why: no fire (which he indicates might mean internal metabolism and body temperature), everyone dies. no water, everyone dies. no earth (at this point he indicates he means earth means moss, which both weakens the “everybody dies” claim and starts a pattern of equivocation while thoroughly confusing me as to why he didn’t just say moss the first time), everybody dies. He skipped wind, but i imagine he thinks it’s very hard to imagine a world without wind. When he gets to space and says we can’t conceive of a world without space I’m inclined to bring up Kant’s position on space and ask why time isn’t one of the elements. He notices I have a question and says “feel free if you have any complaints or questions to let me know” but instead of talking about the difference between conceptualizing and imagining I decide that nothing will be gained by actually taking him up on his offer and questioning every single thing he says.

Next up is using a hodgepodge of analogies that don’t make any sense to explain how Ayurveda is all about restoring balance. The injury to my ligament (A LABRUM IS NOT A LIGAMENT, READ A BOOK!) is a textbook example of too much wind (PLEASE DEFINE YOUR TERMS MORE SPECIFICALLY SO I CAN ASSESS YOUR CLAIMS!) and he will counterbalance that by applying earth in the form of herbs (I assume the herbs have moss in them). At this point I zone out as he explains the remainder of my treatment.

Then he asks me if I have ever heard of Vata-Pitta-Kapha body-typing. I tell him no and he explains that each one of those words indicates a different element or combination of elements and he would have to ask me a bunch of questions to figure out which my dominant type was. To get a sense for what I’m dealing with, here is a link:

http://www.indiaoz.com.au/health/ayurveda/bodytype.shtml

I then was asked a questionarre like for one of those personality tests, except for with an even greater disconnect between the information presented and the type to which that information corresponds. So my thirst, being “surplus” as opposed to “weak” or “inconsistent” is, of course, a Pitta sign as Pitta comes from fire and an aspect of water. My belly button,being moderate instead of deep or swollen, marks me as a mixture of Vata (from space and air) and Pitta. Most questions were unrelated to each other and only offered me 3 options, rarely all 3 exhaustive of the possibilities, but each of them would indicate one of the 3 types. So I had a 30-minute interview that went like this:

Doctor: Financially, are you poor, do you spend on luxury items, or are you rich?
Me: Um…both of the last two
D: So Pitta and Kapha!

D: Your chest, is it expanded, round, or indented?
M: You tell me
D: Expanded. Kapha again!

D: Your speech: slow and monotonous, rapid and unclear, or moderate?

Anyway, I’m done breaking this down. I’m 15 parts pitta, 11 parts vata, and 8 parts kapha. I’ll let you figure out what that means.

-Ariel

P.S. Only 14 more days of this!
P.P.S. I suppose this doesn’t really matter because I just want massages and yoga training so I don’t really care what herbs the guy feels he has to put in my food. And it’s likely that the justification of the medicine is insane but they’ve backed their way into effective treatments despite this. But when I’m taking shots of disgusting, sludge-like herbs on the doctor’s orders it’s hard to keep my hopes up.