So today has been three weeks since I came to Dharamsala in the North of India and started my Ayurvedic treatment, panchakarma (=cleansing, detoxication). As you may remember, I wrote two posts: about my first night and then after my first week here.

Tomorrow is going to be my last day in the clinic, and on Tuesday I am moving to a hotel in McLeonganj. The results of my treatment are not yet really visible. According to what I’ve been taught in the Ayurvedic classes it will take up to 35 days for all the effects to be seen, as it is exactly this length of time which is needed for food and medicine to get delivered to all seven tissues of my body.

So what has happened in these three weeks?

Procedures and medicines

I have had procedures every single day, one or two of them daily, normally early in the morning (7 or 8am). These varied:

• deep full-body massages and milder but very oily ones;
• using a steam box after oily massages (twice);
• drinking ghee (clarified butter) (three times up to half a glass each time);
• having two types of enemas (smaller oily and larger herbal ones) in the course of twelve days;
• drinking herbal teas in the mornings and evenings;
• eating special diet (no spices, all properly cooked, blended, soupy with lots of rice);
• regular drinking of rice water;
• overall drinking lots of herbal or normal hot water;
• taking herbal medicines, which again varied from neutrally tasting small pills to dry sour powders to extremely bitter mixtures.

I did not react to the treatment as was expected at first, as I had some issues with my stomach which required additional medicine (it worked super-fast, like in the matter of hours!). However, after week one everything went smoothly.

Feeling

For the most of the time I felt extremely weak and sleepy, almost lethargic. Of course, hot weather possibly aggravated it, but I was said panchakarma makes this effect, as essentially you eat very plain vegetarian food, with not much variety; it is enough to only sustain you as you are, but doesn’t really contribute to development of fats, muscles etc. I lost almost all my muscles in the legs and arms.

Secondly, you get rid of all the toxins and it is a constant process for which your body utilises all the possible resources. It reminded me my radiotherapy course, it is just I had no pain this time round.

My mood was changing all the time and going primarily down towards the end of the treatment. Again, I’ve been taught it was due to eradication of toxins from my mind. I would also associate it with the lack of food I prefer eating normally (God, I have been craving for a pizza!!) and with low energy which would not let me do anything meaningful, so I watched some enormous number of videos (motivational talks on Ted, channels about relationships, minimalism, living in a van, animated books etc) – I have never watched so many things at once! And then I slept nights and afternoons.

My appetite has swivelled too: from almost no appetite in the weeks one and two to excessive eating for the better part of last week to normalised one portion three times a day.

For the last three days it all has radically changed: I almost at once felt a burst of energy, I got more focused and cracked the idea of a new possible business, I have been doing research on it almost non-stop for the last 2,5 days, for 15-16 hours in a row. And still am full of energy, my mood is much better. I have not had this much energy for the past 2.5-3 years (well, fingers crossed it will last).

Physical effects

Interestingly, I can now sit crosslegged, something I could never do in my life. It is still an early stage, but I can easily sit like that for half an hour or so.

My posture has dramatically improved, obviously there is more to be done to get even straighter, but I hope that having muscles in place will help it.

The pain in my neck muscles, which were affected during the second operation (surgeons cut the muscles to remove lymph nodes from underneath), has significantly reduced. It hasn’t disappeared completely, but I am still hopeful it may happen two or three weeks from now as that’s the time needed for the medicine to get to the third tissue (muscles).

For a week I felt dizzy every time I had to get up from my bed or from any sitting or lying position. Doctors gave me some pills for it a day before yesterday and now dizziness has reduced dramatically.

I do not seem to have lost any weight (being 65kg for the past three weeks; for comparison: 84kg prior to my cancer, 67-68 at the end of my radiotherapy), but my body has an amazing shape, I just need to get back in tone and get my muscles back.

On a worse side I hoped my facial skin would improve, but it hasn’t. I am promised some medicine for this though.

As I mentioned before, I am going to leave the clinic on Tuesday. For a week or ten days I shall have to carefully choose what I am eating (no white wheat, more soupy stuff, limited raw fruits and vegetables, no refined sugar, no black tea or coffee), I am going to receive a monthly supply of herbs to take, after a month there is going to be a revision and another set of tablets will be sent to me and again two months from now after yet another revision I am going to receive my last set of medicine. According to the treatment plan, so far most of the medicine have been about detoxication (balancing all three doshas, reducing vata and pitta), from Tuesday onwards they will be about building up my body (increasing kapha).

Tomorrow I am also going to have my last class on Ayurveda so I shall try to write another blog post about the theory I have learnt there.