How do external treatments aid Panchakarma?

Now Panchakarma process, there are three stages – one is the preparatory stage, then the cleansing stage and the recovery stage. Now the preparatory stage is the most important part of Panchakarma, why I say most important because how efficiently we prepare the person will decide the intensity of the cleansing that can happen. So during the preparatory stage according to the condition we decide various therapies. For example, in order to make the iron malleable what we have to do is we’ve to make it molten, after we make it molten then it’s much easier to make it malleable. Same way we have to prepare the body externally and internally to prepare for the cleansing to happen. So some of the therapies are our traditional Abhyanga which is the oil massage we do in different positions and other therapies, we use a therapy where we pour liquid over the body in some cases it is warm, in some cases we use herbal liquid, in some cases we
also use butter milk according to the condition, another one is we use poultices. We put some Herbs and tighten a cotton cloth and we punch. And today it is said that the big gest poison that we all are facing in today’s humanity is not alcohol or sugar or any kind of drugs, it is our habit to sit because our body is not designed to sit or body is designed to move.

It is designed to keep moving and movement is what makes our body energetic and flexible and because our body is less flexible and less moving today with different technologies, this punching with the poultices helps us to wake up many of the parts that are stiff. There are different types of punching therapies and apart from that we also have steam after that massage therapy or after certain therapies; we make you sit inside a steam box and that helps to activate the lymphatic drainage system because skin is the largest organ in our body and skin helps us to detox the most because through the
skin, we can release more toxins.

What are the benefits of combining external treatments with Panchakarma?

Now after the preparation we have the cleansing process and cleansing process is whatever is according to your condition either it is Vamana or Virechana or Vasti. And the preparation and recovery stage after this, once your body is clean we have to recover the body from the cleansing because a body can become a little bit tired because along with the toxins some of the tissues can also be eliminated so we use many kinds of therapies. One is you are pouring warm oil throughout the body, in some cases we use milk pouring throughout the body which is called as Dhara. Dhara means flowing of liquid continuously, it’s like going to a shower is a kind of Dhara where the water is flowing continuously. We feel so refreshed, so when this liquid which is nourishing for the body is continuously poured in a particular temperature it rejuvenates the whole system and we recover from that elimination of toxins and that stress of elimination of the toxins so that you can have your life from the outside world quite easily. So that is why preparation and recovery plays an equal important role as we do the cleansing process.