A woman in her late 40s arrived at Ananda with a familiar complaint- disturbed and interrupted sleep, coupled with high work and personal stress and severe anxiety. Her situation was exacerbated by severe sciatic irritation because of lumbar herniation.
With the lean build common to her vata dominant pitta prakriti, the woman was agitated and anxious as her health issues had caused her sleep quality to deteriorate to a daily maximum of barely 4 hours only.
The Wellness Journey
Understanding her combined physical and emotional struggles, Ananda’s experts customised a Sleep Enhancement programme to address her excruciating pain and a mind experiencing frequent spurts of worry. The healing journey comprised of detoxification therapies, restorative elements and lifestyle recommendations through phases.
Time-tested Ayurvedic shamana treatments like abhyanga and sneha vasti were administered at the start of the programme. The physicians observed the guest’s initial struggle to relax or feel grounded and further customized the entire programme. Elements of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Oriental therapies, and holistic physiotherapy stepped in, to address her various health concerns. A therapeutic diet was planned alongside to help balance the highly disturbed vata, the primary constitutional imbalance giving her physical pain, the inability to sleep or process stress.
The physiotherapists and acupuncturists started addressing the source of her significant sciatic discomfort, which was due to herniation in three lumbar discs, while specific movements and de-stressing grounding aromatherapy began to uplift the pain, emotional healing sessions were prescribed to understand the root cause of her manifested health problems.
Along with the Ayurvedic and aromatherapy’s therapeutic offerings, the guests routine at Ananda also consisted of mantra chanting, nature walks and treks in the soothing environment of the Himalayas. Personal sessions of Yoga, pranayama and meditations helped enliven the deficient prana or life force, which naturally soothed the guest’s mind to make her feel more, relaxed and collected.
The End Result
The guest responded exceptionally well to the emotional healing process, calling it the missing link that finally healed her body in a deeper way to complement the physical therapies prescribed. Yoga and meditation sessions helped imbibe sustainable methods of keeping the mind still and stress away.
Oriental therapies like reflexology, shiatsu, and traditional Thai massage helped with chronic pain and grounded her, with a 100% improvement on her right side and a 75% improvement on the left. The acupuncture sessions helped her overcome the dependency on e-cigarette by addressing withdrawal symptoms, while other TCM therapies increased the blood circulation in her neck, by releasing the pressure from nerves, positively affecting the stiffness in those areas, which consequently improved the quality of her deep sleep hours at night.
Observing the mild, yet evident residue of restlessness in the guest, Ananda’s experts recommended her to continue with the sleep medication to avoid a relapse of physical symptoms and old mental patterns. The fatigue levels and agitated responses noticed at the beginning of her stay had subsided considerably.
She ended her nearly 2 week stay much calmer with less stress and anxiety, more energy and stamina, improved digestion and an uninterrupted sleep through the night for up to 6 hours!