Healing without harming
By Tribhuvan Nath

THE BODY beneath the skin surface is a complex texture of nerves, veins and arteries, each performing a precise function apart from ensuring blood flow and activating the movement of muscles and organs. Not everyone can identify the actual vein which has got disjointed or blocked when one is gripped by a sudden onset of pain or some other common ailment like asthma, backache, heart attack or sinus. The clue to the source of the disorder lies hidden within a confusing jumble of veins, often invisible. Its location may be far from the actual site of pain or some other disorder.

The ancient science of healing such ailments by acupressure or massage was known in India. It travelled in the days of yore to Buddhist Sri Lanka and thence to China, where it was developed as acupuncture.

Fed up by the side-effects of allopathic drugs, the West is now turning its attention both to acupuncture and acupressure therapies — essentially nature cure methods that offer easy, home treatment without expensive drugs that leave side-effects.

Acupressure therapy is very simple. Nerve sites that control the local reflexes, whose dislocation or rupture is causing disorder, are massaged or pressed with fingers. The Chinese resorted to using needles to stimulate these sites while the Indian acupressurist uses bare fingers.

The Chinese have discovered that these are over 1,000 points on 14 meridian lines going up and down the body, says an American acupuncturist, Dr Keith Kenyon, of the University of Southern California School of Medicine. In his book Acupressure, he writes that it is one of the simplest, safest yet effective methods of stimulating the site.

"It can relieve many types of arthritis, back pain and sciatica and many other every day ailments. It can prolong one’s ability to perform in athletics and sports such as golf, tennis, swimming, skiing and bowling. It can be used in conjunction with other treatments for a whole variety of general illnesses such as menstrual cramps, abdominal disorders, asthma, bronchitis, chest pain."

The mystery aspect of the treatment lies in locating the pressure point, the acupressure point which offers connectivity to an area of pain or ailment. Expert acupressure therapists say the pressure sites are embedded at places within a few centimetres below the skin and at others slightly deeper. One tiny nerve that calls for stimulation is embedded sometimes near a muscle or tendon sheath which serves to attach a muscle to bone. A patient’s shriek out of pain is confirmation enough that the right site has been located by the acupressurist.

More popular the world over, acupuncture is painful while acupressure is easier to put up with, easier to apply. Tried by novices, it can prove risky. As such it should be left to a licensed acupressurist to identify the site. When properly applied, acupressure yields relief within a few sittings with the therapist. It offers relief without an intake of medicine, pills, potions, hot or cold application, steam or stretching.

In 1991, the Haryana government set up at Panchkula along the Delhi-Shimla highway off Chandigarh, an institute of alternative systems of medicine — lately rechristened Institute of Indian Systems of Medicine and Research — in four faculties — yoga, ayurveda, acupressure and homeopathy. On weekdays, it runs an outpatient department under the charge of four experts in their respective faculties, offering treatment free of charge. Many distressed patients, a majority of them females, turn up here for treatment.

The institute is run by the Haryana Council of Indian Systems of Medicine and Research, an autonomous body presided over by the Governor. It has the Chief Minister as its deputy chairman and its members include the ministers of finance, home and PWD, besides departmental secretaries. It is currently running under the direct charge of the Haryana Director of Ayurveda, who is also member-secretary of the council.

The government is apparently running the institute on a shoe-string budget aggregating Rs 5 lakh a year — barely adequate to do justice to research and training. The idea behind setting up the institute was to train a sizeable body of young men and women in these therapies. On completion of training they would fan out in the countryside and deliver free treatment at the doorstep like the ‘barefoot doctors’ of China.

India needs thousands of such dedicated paramedical cadres. The institute faculty possesses the potential to train them up. No step has been taken so far in this direction, at least none that is visible.

Likewise, little effort has been made to select, bring and replant herbal saplings for cultivation and research. No laboratory has been set up for ayurvedic research in herbs.

All that the state council has done so far to develop the institute is the purchase of 12 acres of land from the Haryana Urban Development Authority on which it has built the ground floor of an OPD building. The green area around it is to be utilised for the cultivation of herbal plants.

The acupressurist’s consultation chamber inside this impressive building is more simply furnished than a vet’s. A high examination table, two big chairs facing each other with a stool in between and the barest office furniture are all that’s inside.

After a brief hearing from the patient, the doctor would seat him on the chair and ask him to spread the ailing part on the stool. Soon enough he pulls up his sleeves to treat the part relaxing on the stool. "Does it ache," he asks, as he runs his fingers over several points on the skin surface. Sometimes he pinches, and sometimes uses rubber knuckles available in the market — all very simple gadgets that hurt and shock no end. But his exercises are over in time and the patient heaves a sigh of relief. The treatment requires a few more sittings to deliver a lasting cure.