Ayurvedic approach to skincare

Ananda in the Himalayas had opened its doors to the (more discerning) public. nothing beats Vana, near Dehradun. It offers authentic treatments based on Ayurveda, Tibetan and Traditional Chinese Medicine.

This summer, a health condition forced me to look into the world of panchakarma, which scores much lower on the luxury scale, but ranks higher in terms of efficacy. Obviously it’s just my personal preference, but I do love the more hard-working, almost cringe-worthy Ayurvedic techniques. But panchakarma isn’t for the faint-hearted. You could get an enema of bone soup or smoke from a bitter, medicated cloth thrown into your nostrils. However, if you do manage to get through it all, you will be rewarded with beautiful skin that lasts longer than a laser facial.

I visited the Tanman Ayurvedic Research Centre near Pune, to help treat my endometriosis. Panchakarma stands for five therapies: nasya to clear the chest; virechana to clean the intestines; basti for the colon; vamana to detoxify the stomach, and raktamochan, that’s blood-letting using leeches. Yes, leeches. I didn’t get the last two because these weren’t suitable for my dosha type, but I got the other three.

For a week, I drank medicated ghee every morning, with the quantity increasing alarmingly from 15 to 150 ml. When my body couldn’t take it any more, they gave me pills that helped purge all the heat. I was also given water from boiled rice for three days to give rest to the intestines. The first thing that I noticed after virechana was the aversion I felt for social media. Over the years, my right hand had basically mutated into a phone, but for the first time in years, I didn’t want to look at it.

The second thing I noticed was that my nails had become super-smooth, my skin was moist and buttery — and this was after I had not used any skin products after stepping into the Centre. What was this sorcery?

Next up, a week of enemas that were administered twice a day. Alongside, I was given medicated oil massages every morning and shirodhara every alternate day throughout my three-week stay. I didn’t wash the oil with soap; the longer you keep it on, the more benefits you reap. By the end of the treatment, every pore of my skin and strand of hair was dripping with oil and ghee. Two weeks after coming back to Delhi, the detoxification still continues.

I’ve lost some weight, but my skin and hair are in excellent shape. There was pre-panchakarma skin, which was nice enough, but lacked the creaminess that’s apparent now. It’s not inexpensive but it costs less than cosmetic detoxes at spas. The real cost is time — 10 days minimum, but six weeks recommended.

I plan to do it again later this year, at Aatma (near Thrissur) which is run by the sixth generation of Astavaidyans, Dr ET Ravi Mooss.

So have I given up luxe skincare forever? Not a chance. As I write, my face is slathered with The Medical Beauty Research Cross Lift Serum Ultrapeptide. This brand is formulated by plastic surgeons and is considered the La Mer of clean skincare. Old habits die hard, but more on this next time. 

A column to remind you about all things skin deep. Vasudha Rai was beauty director, Harper’s Bazaar, Cosmopolitan and Women’s Health. She blogs at vbeauty.co

How To Make Throw Everything In Soup

This is a very basic clear soup, but one that is nourishing and always welcoming on a cold day. Use your imagination and innovation and make it whatever you want it to be!”

Vegetables: Broccoli, iceberg lettuce, radish, carrot, tomato, potato, coriander, beans

Other Ingredients: Salt, pepper, lemon and cornflour

Procedure: Clean the vegetables and segregate them. Chop the vegetables and boil them in a vessel with water for 30 minutes. Add salt and pepper for taste. Add coriander and lemon. Add a bit of cornflour for some body and take it off the stove. Serve hot.

Non toxic cleaners

Making bio-enzymes

  Mix three parts fruit peel (preferably citric, like lemon, oranges or sweet lime), with one part brown sugar and 10 parts water.

  Store in an airtight plastic container for two to three months. (Plastic because glass containers may explode.) Stir the contents every day, to release gases formed by the fermenting peels.

  In two months, a multi-purpose liquid cleaner is ready. (It has a very long shelf life, and can be kept at room temperature, but away from sunlight.)

Great cleansers IN THE KITCHEN

  Lemon juice with salt

  Besan with bio enzymes/orange peels powder

  Coffee grounds

  Vinegar and baking soda

  Dosa batter

  Sour buttermilk, after removing the butter (works well with salt water stains)

  Wood ash with shikakai powder

  Gooseberry juice for hair (Soapnut soaked overnight in an iron vessel, also makes hair strong and shiny)

Food forests’ with BeForest

Farming collectives become thriving ‘food forests’ as the BeForest Lifestyle Solutions team Sunith Reddy, Shaurya Chandra and Sameer Shisodia engage the city’s agri-hopefuls to go beyond the topsoil. Ultimately creating a community of earthly appreciation.

“I’d always wanted to own and run a farm one day,” shares Sunith, “but I knew it required a huge life change and a massive amount of commitment and funding. Then Shaurya and I met Sameer, who’d actually founded BeForest in Bengaluru and we really resonated with not just the vision but the effectiveness of bringing people’s interaction with farms to create a cohesive ecosystem in which the trees, the land, the air — the entire ecosystem, really, is working towards productivity and sustainability.”

At just over a year old, the Hyderabad leg of the startup operates out of Workafella in Banjara Hills.

Core concepts

So how does it work? The idea requires financial input, of course, given there’s a lot to do with land ownership here.

With BeForest, the first step is to buy a large estate collectively to plan and implement estate management techniques which — and this is the hook — don’t bring harm to the earth.

Shaurya adds, “See, it’s very easy to examine the ground and soil, and simply add fertiliser and take care of your next harvest, but what we are furthering with BeForest are the researched actions taken with the soil to ensure that the coming harvests — not singular — are successful. That’s what we found lacking in many farming communities.”

According to the BeForest team, the core ideology of sustainability has taken a back seat in the interest of aggressive growth, which has resulted in urban centres being the primary drivers of the economy. It’s the toxic cycle we’ve become far too familiar with: the ever-increasing urban population vacuums natural resources from rural and peri-urban zones, rendering them degraded over time. In fact, this whole she-bang has brought about water and food security issues.

That being said, the central idea with the BeForest farming collective is human-to-Earth dedication. Sunith elaborates, “What we’ve seen is that a person or group may invest in a farm, build a farmhouse, harvest some mangoes or some other fruit, and bring it to the city to sell. For the rest of the year, they’ll either have someone else take care of the farm land or they’ll forget about it altogether. That’s our USP, we actively have people fully engaging with their estates to bring to life not farms, but food forests. In that sense, the members, as we call them, feel a holistic connection with their food forests, and it becomes a part of their quotidian lives and not just a seasonal time-pass.”

But the team is clear that there’s no need to compromise on a modern lifestyle. BeForest makes sure that the type of self-sustaining farming undertaken is also financially sustainable. A caretaker is an added cost. So is a yearly revival of soil that’s been neglected.

The collectives

The topographical setup of these collectives is also integral to BeForest’s USP; the housing is close to natural water bodies (no earth-moving irrigation systems here) and thoughtful placements of the farm plots, whether they’re on a slope or otherwise.

Collectives underway

So far, BeForest has three active farming collectives outside of Bengaluru: Poomaale Collective(18 members), Tamarind Valley Collective, and Alphonso By The Lake (4 members).

Hyderabad’s Rachala Collective has 20 members with 210 prospectives

“We’ve also been wise to use the mulch to help with the cultivation and long-term enrichment of the soil. It’s all very old-school, but that’s what’s worked for centuries,” Sunith points out. If you’re curious about the details of the collectives, Sunith and Shaurya simply state that you’ll have to get in touch with them.

So what’s the deal with Hyderabad? There’s the growing Rachala Collective located 100 kilometres away from Outer Ring Road. Sunith states they’ve been mindful to acquire estates free of conflict and close to the cities so that members can go back and forth regularly. Shaurya tacks on, “We do take into account that commutes to and from the estates are a pollutant-emitting process so that’s another reason to have the farms as close as possible.”

Shaurya admits that the severe drought has put a hamper on progress but that’s where the sustainability plans come in. “There are people likely to grow tamarind and create secondary products on a business line... products such as tamarind jam, but in limited quantity,” he comments. “Cities like Bengaluru and Hyderabad have more family-oriented systems so we’ve had quite a few families, kids and parents alike, engage with the land.”

Sunith adds that they are not restricted to Bengaluru and Hyderabad set-ups. “If a group of seven to eight members in Chennai is interested in creating a BeForest forest collective, please do reach out to us via our website beforest.co, and we can talk about adapting the movement.”

Techies at heart, the partners wanted rigorous research to be a huge part of the actions they take forward. Do they use a lot of technology, given they’re a techie lot? Sunith shakes his head, chuckling, “We do use carbon-measuring equipment and other tools, but they’re not the driving force of what we do at BeForest. Here, you just have to get your hands dirty.”

Planet Healers celebrates green initiatives.