‘I was feeling helpless with fatigue’: how Ayurvedic detox therapy panchakarma helped a yoga teacher end 5 years of poor sleep, and how it can work for you too
- A healthy 60-year-old meditation and yoga teacher, who had not slept well for five years, found relief at a wellness resort in India’s Himalayas
- She saw a specialist in Ayurvedic panchakarma – detox and purifying therapy – and mental health, and after 10 days was sleeping for seven hours a night
A good night’s sleep is something many of us take for granted. But Sharon, in her mid-sixties, had not slept well for more than five years. Night after night, she would struggle to drop off until the early hours.
Conventional doctors could not find the cause.
“I had no history of diabetes, hypertension, tuberculosis, heart problems, hypothyroid or anything else that we might think of. My appetite was normal, and bowel movement was good too,” recalls the American meditation and yoga teacher based in New Delhi, who gave only her first name to protect her privacy.
“I was simply tired and really wanted to be able to sleep … I was feeling helpless with discomfort and fatigue.”
Sharon went to Ananda in the Himalayas, a renowned wellness resort in the Indian state of Uttarakhand, desperate for a cure. She saw Chandan Malatkar Chandramohan, a specialist in Ayurvedic panchakarma and mental health, who takes a special interest in sleep disorders. He said the case was unusual. (Ayurveda is traditional Indian medicine.)
“She was a disciplined individual who was just unable to get herself to sleep,” he says.
