While doctors trained in Western medicine rely on a host of tests to diagnose patients' ailments, Pankaj Naram depends only on one tool -- the pulse.
The pulse, most commonly felt at the wrist or the neck, is the throbbing of arteries caused by the heart's contractions. There are 350 variations of it, says Naram, an Ayurvedic physician who spent more than five years (2,000 days, he says, more precisely) studying pulse-reading under his guru Baba Ramdas about 30 years ago.
Naram says he has since treated thousands of people suffering from high blood pressure, diabetes, heat disease and other ailments. He has more than 600,000 patients all over the world, and meets hundreds every day at the Ayushakti Ayurved Health Centers (www.ayushakti-usa.com) that he has founded in Mumbai with satellite locations around the world.
Naram's wife Smita is also an Ayurvedic physician and nutritionist. He is touring the United States; will be here through March.
On February 6, the 52-year-old answered listeners' questions on Dhoom FM radio network in Iselin, New Jersey. This was their third port of call that day, said his friend Marian, who runs the Seva Foundation with Naram in Westchester, New York.
Naram and Marian (who preferred to use only her first name) spoke of the time she was travelling in India, and was supposed to fly back to New York that day. Throughout the trip, Naram had been asking her if she had high blood pressure. She was surprised at the question because, if she had anything, it was low blood pressure. A few hours before her flight, he measured her blood pressure, and it came to 184/118.
"I panicked so much that he told me to lie down, but I couldn't," Marian says. She said he administered a process called marma that involves pressing certain points in the body to create better physical and emotional
health.
The procedure involved him applying ghee (purified butter) to her temples, massaging it clockwise, pressing on a pressure point, saying mantras in her ear, then again applying ghee on the belly button, pressing around the philtrum, in the area between the nose and the mouth, between the eyebrows, applying ghee on the top of her head and the bottom of her feet.
In about 15 minutes, she says, her blood pressure came down to 134/78. What had happened? "This is a secret," Naram says, adding that he is only a messenger for that ancient wisdom. Research is being conducted at the University of Torino, Italy, on pulse reading. "After one-and-a-half years, the research will come out, and you will know why it is working," he says. "But the million-dollar point is that it works."
Ayurveda is based on the premise that the human body is a part of nature and the five elements of nature -- air, water, earth, fire and ether or space -- also govern the body. These elements combine to form three subtle energies, called doshas: vata (wind energy), pita (fire) and kapha (water), which must be in balance for good health. It's a person's pulse that can tell the doctor that there is an imbalance.
Naram says six instruments are used to balance the doshas. "One is diet, the second is lifestyle, herbal preparations (food supplements), home remedies, marma and the sixth is panchkarma -- cleansing of the body," he says.
Naram's journey started in 1981 after he graduated from an Ayurveda college in Bhagalpur, Bihar. He was frustrated that he could not bring much success into his patients' treatment. His hair was falling and he was overweight.
"I had a lot of time then, but no hair," he says, laughing. "Now I have lots of hair, and no time."
A patient whom he could not treat went to Baba Ramdas, who, he says, was then a 115-year-old monk. Naram, through his persistence, convinced the Baba to take him in as a disciple. He learnt pulse reading, which he calls an art and a science, and marma treatment, from the Baba, who, he says, passed away at the age of 125.