Vitality, Self-healing and Ecology: The Flow of Naturopathic Thought Across the United States and India

Abstract

For over 5,000 years, the region now known as India has held a rich reservoir of medical systems, each providing distinct orientations towards illness experience, aetiology, cure and prevention. Since the turn of the twentieth century, there has been a considerable rise in the cultural recontextualisation of European and North American medical traditions in South Asia. With a focus on the guiding concepts of vitality, self-healing and ecology, this article maps the transnational trajectories of naturopathy across three sites: its instantiation into the United States’ early 1900s cultural climate of health epidemics and industrialisation; its rearticulation into the context of Gandhian anti-colonial movements in India; and its transformation into a mode of asserting public health and environmental advocacy in contemporary India. After tracing the trajectory of naturopathic thought, this article will provide a practitioner profile of naturopathy Dr Jacob Vadakkanchery as well as a framing of his politicised response to the 2018 floods in Kerala, south India. This particular examination serves as a microcosm of a larger trend: contemporary practitioners in India overtly re-frame naturopathic concepts in relation to immanent environmental and public health concerns.

Recommendation of yoga and naturopathy intervention for the effective management of post covid syndrome

“…All of which relies on the basic Naturopathy principle of ‘promoting health and vitality’. According to Naturopathy, vitality refers to the ability of the body to adapt and self-manage, which also governs immunity and overall functionality of the human body [ 18 , 19 ]. During post-covid state, immunity of the individual was compromised to great extent, Naturopathy and Yoga paves way to promote health, by improving natural immunity through various treatment modalities.…”

Yoga and meditation as a health intervention 1

“…Gandhi was also critical of ayurvedic vaidya s whom he also saw as largely being part of and serving a metropolitan elite. In a pragmatic and nationalistic response to what he saw as the inability of either ayurveda or western medicine to provide for the majority of the Indian population, Gandhi promoted naturopathy (nature cure) as well as yogic breathing and strengthening and cleansing exercises, in addition to other forms of Indian physical culture (Alter 2000 ;Priya 2012 : 119-120;Sheldon 2020 ). He emphasised techniques that could be done by poor individuals themselves, without needing to pay for expensive herbal or medicinal compounds (Gandhi 2012(Gandhi [1948).…”