I have been to Ayushkati for a four week Panchakarma treatment. It was affordable and effective. The rooms were comfortable and well appointed. I question the wisdom of having a TV in the room but I guess that is personal choice. The treatments were good, with good treatment cubicles and staff. The only downside was the constantly changing treatment staff, so you never had a team that got to know you and your body. At other places the treatment staff were actual doctors and worked with you every day. Access to the doctors was frustrating. Having to take a ticket and wait in outpatients in your robe after treatments was not ideal and the system was not effective. In other clinics the doctor came to the room which was much more preferable. There is a huge focus on herbal medicines both during treatment and after. Having been to other clinics I now realise this focus is excessive. I was instructed to take over 40 tablets during treatment and purchased a similar amount for Rasayana after treatment. I do not think this level of focus is appropriate. All in all very affordable, good treatment and food, but in the suburbs of Mumbai so not a peaceful location and too much of a focus on tablets.
I have both good and bad things to say about Ayushakit and Dr Deepali from Dadar.
Good - The medicines are effective. They are good and proved effective on my mom, my aunty and my grannies till the time they used it.
Bad - The medicines are super expensive and not within the reach of common man.
Worse - Super commercialization. From the moment you walk into Dr Deepali's clinic this lady Dr Deepali talks complete business. Even if you sneeze in front of her she would sell you 10 medicines to cure that.
My Experience - Dr Deepali suggested me to do panchkarma to solve my skin problems but gave me in the hands of inexperienced personnel. So all it lead to was me having anal fissure as the panchkarma guy inserted some pipe in my anus to clean my bowels. but he inserted it so bad that I started bleeding. When I spoke to Dr Deepali about it she prescribed me 10 more medicines to cure my fissure which unfortunately did not get cured and I stopped her treatment. But ended up visiting a piles doctor to get operated by paying a bomb. As far as the panchkarma was concerned it did no good to my skin problems. All I realized was that my karma punched me back really hard. So stay away from ayushakti punch-karma.
I am an Ayurvedic Practitioner working in the UK. I studied at University in the Uk and in Karnataka for clinical experience. I have also studied pulse diagnosis at Ayushakti in Mumbai and been a Panchakrma patient there, so I think I can judge what is hype and what is real Ayurveda in action.
Personally I have learnt far more from working with doctors at Ayushakti than in my formal Ayurvedic training. I am getting good results with my patients using the pulse diagnosis and Ayushakti medicines, diet avice, marma etc. I use them myself, so I know they work!
I have been a patient of Ayushakti for six years and put (naively, I realise now) complete faith in the doctors abilities and treatment.
My first PK at Ayushakti was transforming; all my health conditions where 'solved' and I was thrilled. My new found health and happiness meant that I followed the diet and lifestyle instructions as recommended by Ayushakti without fault - of course, I wanted to preserve my sense of well being.
Six months after this first PK however, I developed a yellow-toned skin particularly on my hands, face and feet. Various alternative doctors put it down to carotene overdose (I did love papaya) but, even when I cut papaya out, my colour did not improve. I returned to Ayushakti (and saw various Ayurvedic doctors in between) and all put the yellowness, insatiable appetite and excess mucous down to Pitta. I continued to follow the prescriptions and regimes.
As time went by, my symptoms worsened. I developed melasma on the skin, amenorrhoea, very low energy and depression. I had also over the years broken several bones and been diagnosed with low bone density (at the age of 29) and was treating this with Ayushakti too. I do think that the bone density issue existed previous to my first PK, but certainly with correct advice at this early stage, I am sure its long standing effect could have been greatly curbed.
In May 2009 I was knocked off my bike and broke 3 bones; the shock of the accident, plus already extremely low energy reserves, sent my body into total decline. I went to another Ayurvedic clinic in South India, who made my condition severely worse. After being fed litres of ghee and having an insufficient virechan to remove the ghee, I returned home bright yellow, lost 10 kgs (I had only weighed 54 kgs when I arrived) and had difficulty breathing. I resigned from my work, packed up my life in London for a pause, and went to Ayushakti for 5 weeks to sort myself out.
My PK there was extremely helpful - they helped me out of the dire depression, my yellowness did improve, my skin improved dramatically - I was very pleased I had gone (and still am pleased).
On returning home however, I still felt extremely tired, I was still having breathing problems, my period had not returned, and I was still going yellow. Not willing to give up on natural healing, I went to see a phytochemist called Dr Claudia Louch in London. After full blood tests we found that I had been suffering from a severe deficiency in iron and specifically B12 (for those in the know, my Intrinsic Factor levels are healthy) resulting purely from malnourishment. B12 deficiency can show (amongst other symptoms) as jaundice, amenorrhoea, breathing difficulties, nervous disorder (which I was experiencing as numbness in the hands and feet), melasma on the skin, hair falling, high acidity (Pitta), AND low-bone density (megaloblastic anaemia); all of which had been expressed to Ayushakti over the years.
I am not saying that my dire health condition was all the fault of Ayushakti, we make our own diet and lifestyle choices at the end of the day. However, as professional doctors treating and advising people with serious conditions on diet and lifestyle, as doctors who allow patients to place complete trust in them, their skills are extremely questionable.
A week after starting B12 injections, and slowly altering my diet to include organic eggs, fish and meat, my period returned (I had not had a normal period in more than a year) and the yellowness literally vanished. Five months later and my cycle is completely normal again, my hair is no longer falling out, my memory is improved, I have energy, I'm not depressed, I'm no longer mucousy, I'm not constipated, and my skin is very slowly improving. Full healing will take time - it is wonderful to see my world waking up again.
Would I return to Ayushakti? I've not yet decided. It's a very relaxing place to be, I always feel incredible when I leave, the food is good, the guests are often very nice and, after four visits (over six years), I have very good memories there. I may go for a 3 week rest, detox and relaxation... but I would certainly not trust their opinion regarding any conditions again.
My experience has however made me question - do we really know the long term effects of PK? Sure, in the short term I always feel wonderful post Ayushakti-PK (I certainly can't say the same for the South India place), it seems though that the long term results have been far from desirable.
There is a huge hype with many miraculous claims surrounding the founder of Ayushakti, Pankaj Naram but it seems he is not schooled classically in Ayurveda at all and relies mostly on a more showman approach. Nadi Vidya or Pulse Diagnosis is just a tiny fraction of subjective diagnostic tools, but here there is a huge hype about the pulse. When I had my pulse read with Pankaj half was right and half was not so what is the point in a diagnostic tool that is only 50% accurate. Of course many diseases are very common these days so someone could easily get 50% just by speculating. It seems there is too much hype here and too little substance. When questioning Pankaj about basics on Ayurveda that even a 1st year student would know he quickly changed the subject so something seems highly misleading here. The hype seems to help though as people get pulled in and seem to get good results at least initially while they are mesmerized with the charm but Ayurveda is a very scientific system that does not need moods to heal it needs a doctor (Vaidya) to be properly schooled in the very fundamentals of the science, to live those fundamentals them self and to apply them in their treatment.
Many patients I have spoke with have had a mixed effect there and it seems this place really runs on it's hype. They are doing a lot correct, the restaurant has better food than 99% of the Ayurvedic centers in India, the building has a good feeling for an urban setting, the doctors working there seem sincere, though over the years they seem to have a huge staff turnover in general which is highly strange with many stories of disgruntled former staff members.
So all in all it's not all it is made out to be, there is a lot of reliance on creating a mood and hype focusing on the pulse diagnosis which is really used as a gimmick here to get you hooked.
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