Ayurveda in Sri Lanka: Stress, let go!

The serenity of the white Buddha, who looks out over the highlands from the neighboring monastery, has yet to be learned by our author - for example when walking through the garden of the villa

Thoughts are free. And they know that tooLike a flock of hummingbirds, they came wallowing; fluttered here for a moment, then there. But now they have formed into a polonaise and rush too close around me, again and again and again. A ragged line that makes me dizzy, and all, they all chatter ridicule: Here we are, here we are, shut us away if you can!

Actually, I was given a simple task: I should lie on a treatment table, close my eyes and focus my mind on the warm jet of oil that flows down from an earthen pot to my forehead and is led back and forth by two ayurvedic masseuses. Unfortunately I had to think of a windshield wiper during this movement. From the windshield wiper I came to cars, from them to my ex, from him to more unpleasant stories of men.

I can not say any more about how it went on from there to various job problems. Whenever I noticed that I had wandered off and brooded, I was annoyed so much that I also began to brood about pondering. Somewhere here in the room, a jet of oil runs down my forehead, but I'm chasing thoughts and she's chasing me. Ayurveda in Sri Lanka - was that a good idea?

My thoughts were no longer my friends at home. They kept me from sleeping at night, scurrying into my office uninvited the day. They spread because my life had been hit: too much weekend work, too little vacation. Too much action, too little rest. My head reacted more and more with dull brooding. My body with colds, sleep disorders and tinnitus. A condition that can commonly be summed up in one word: stress. I needed a break. And that, even though I'm only in my mid-30s. In recent years, we have more and more young spa guests with exhaustion symptoms, some even have a burn-out, said Norbert Fischer, when I called him. He is a non-medical practitioner; his Stuttgart-based company "Nandhi Ayurvedic Therapies" gives spa guests to the "Greystones Villa", whose homepage I found on the Internet: an Ayurveda center in Sri Lanka, which is serious, does not offer "Wellness Light" for tourists by the sea, but three-week medical cures in the temperate healing climate of the highlands. Respiratory, metabolic and skin diseases are treated here, among other things, rheumatism - but also stress-related complaints and fatigue.

My thoughts just do not want to give rest

Soul massage: our author at a mantra workshop - the old songs should heal from the inside

"Especially younger women often come to the 'Greystones Villa'," said Fischer. "They are often more perfectionist in their job than men and they are putting more pressure on themselves. Many are also exhausted from the constant effort to reconcile work and family. "Weeks after the phone call, I land in the capital, Colombo, and meet the other spa guests in the hotel - a troupe so diverse that we could play long-term occupations: a lawyer, two physiotherapists, a demolition expert - including many freelancers like me.

The next day we board a bus that takes us inland. On the seven-hour journey, a kind of summary film about the island runs through the windows, surreally blurred by jet lag and dozing. The camera shows the city hall of Colombo, a white building with columns and dome, the rich district "Cinnamon Gardens" with its parks and villas blur in a blend of villages that seem almost built only on garish billboards. Incidentally, cows play the main roles, they run and lie everywhere.

Body massage: Ayurveda treatment with a lot of oil

It follows a sequence of rice fields, followed by the attempt of a glamorous Hollywood scene - the rock-looking city of Ratnapura with many gemstone mines and shops. Then it becomes jungleier and lonely, serpentines lead ever higher. Finally, a statue: a colonial villa of gray stones, surrounded by greenery. Open End.

At the entrance of the "Greystones Villa", we are greeted by a man of about 60 years with a full beard and very alert eyes: Mukunda Herbert Wolter, our yoga and meditation teacher. We sit with him in circles on the chairs and sofas in front of the fireplace in the lobby, drinking ginger-coriander tea. And Mukunda, who got his name from Indian yoga teachers, instructs us to come forward one by one.Everyone should light a wick on an oil lamp: "This is traditionally done in Sri Lanka, when something new begins, and wants something." Some want to quit smoking, almost all become healthier, process some strokes of fate. I ask for less stress and more balance; Claus world peace and that the "FC Schalke 04" finally German champion.

Tranquility car: ride in slow train

We will get to know the program, with which everything will be fulfilled, in the next few days. Ayurveda means "knowledge of healthy and long life". According to this millennium-old philosophy, everything in the universe is permeated by three doshas - bioenergies or active principles: "Vata" is responsible for movements, "Pitta" for transformations, "Kapha" for structure and substance. Every human being is born with his special combination of quantities of these three forces; and as long as she persists, he is healthy. Toxins, bad diet and stress, but the doshas get out of balance, disorders and diseases arise. Our treatment, the "Panchakarma cure", should bring the doshas back into their individual balance. Unfortunately, my Ayurvedic IQ, if there is one, seems to be somewhere between "dumb" and "cure jerk". Good, to take the healthy soups and vegetable curry to me, I can easily, they taste good too. And the herbal medicine - pills, powders, bitter potions that are simmered for hours every day for each of us from well-matched medicinal plants - is quickly swallowed.

Rest break: "Greystones" - doctor dr. Kumari Bandara

It becomes more difficult in the yoga and meditation classes: "Yoga," Mukunda has explained to us, "means in Sanskrit unity, we enter into ourselves, into a state of deep stillness and relaxation, thus uniting ourselves with a state of perfection in every human being, and in the cosmic field of consciousness, Brahman, the source of all things, so that physical and mental healing is possible. " But especially during meditation, I do not manage to watch my breath, to float with him in the direction of Brahman. My brain always reliably spits a new load of brooding into the silence; and after a short time I got together with almost everything, except Brahman. Most of all, however, the forehead casts with warm herbal oil cause me, for several days in a row, for 30 to 50 minutes each. Above all, they should reduce the kinetic energy "Vata", which is increased in almost all Westerners, because they rush around and communicate so much.

Rest area: lounging in the garden

Already after the second casting, a cloud of headache and stinging spirit is rising in me. With this inner bad weather front, to it still sleepless and heavy-minded, I stumble through time and space. Trying to cling to old patterns - cramping the flood of thought and escaping into outer charms: Should not you just run to the nearby village of Diyatalawa, even though we were advised not to do so during the frontal watering? Anyway, what could not visit everything in Sri Lanka: In the temple of Kandy allegedly rests a tooth of Buddha. And on the pilgrim's mountain Adam's Peak emblazoned a footprint that either Buddha, Shiva, the apostle Thomas or Adam should have left behind, which probably all had the same shoe size.

The Ayurveda doctor of the "Greystones Villa" looks friendly but unimpressed as I flood her with a lament over my brooding and restlessness. Dr. Kumari Bandara, petite, always dressed in colorful saris, was a senior physician in the nearby district hospital for 16 years before she retired. Already at the beginning of our journey, in Colombo, she had examined us; Now we have consultation appointments with her every few days. "Talk to a tree," she advises me now. "We do that in Sri Lanka when we have problems." It must be one, through whose leaves white juice flows like nourishing breast milk, such as a jackfruit tree: "These are the ones with the yellow-greenish, football-sized fruits."

Pray: Yoga teacher Mukunda

Using a tree as a therapist seems to me to be about as useful as using a psychoanalyst as a shadow donor. But as before, it can not go on. So I stroll through the garden, tree casting, you do not trust each other: Three jackfruit trees are on much used paths; a fourth between the dog kennel and the staff break room. One is rooted in a corner, almost hidden by bushes, one can not get much closer than three meters. A guy who can keep distance. Early the next morning I sneak up to him in the dark. "Hello Jack," I whisper and explain to him my sensitivities. He does not even rustle with the leaves. I stammer a few more sentences. Then suddenly I get hot: "What do you know, you woodhorst? Protected behind your hedge - nothing comes so close to you too fast I have no hedge I can not even meditate without being stalked by thoughts I can not do it! " I shut my eyes.And all of a sudden there is only the breath of wind that coolly flows in and out of me, in and out, in and out, in and out, nothing and everything. Then somewhere in the bushes, a monkey screams. I open my eyes again and cry. Since this accidental meditation, I trust. On what exactly - no idea.

Eat: Ayurvedic cooking demonstration

In any case, to give up the rudder to life, at least here, in these protected waters; and let him take me to new, hitherto hidden corners: During yoga and massages, I perceive parts of my body new, and again and again smaller details of these - as if he had been a rough wooden doll, which gradually turned into one complex human body transformed, a Pinocchio effect. While meditating the thoughts are still mostly there. But they no longer connect to nasty grudge chains. They emerge, pass by at a distance, as though a mental hedge existed now, disappear again. And between them small gulps of light slosh eternity. Instead of Sri Lanka I explore a land of silence in me, which was long spilled, and offers the holiday for free. The other guests seem to experience similar travel. And some have the Jack to thank - after my tree therapy, they wanted to know where he stands. Everyone here takes the treatment seriously, but still with humor: Mike, Claus and Wolfgang, a men's clique from the Lower Rhine, love to play Skat between treatments. And at mealtimes everyone is brought up who also gets served leaves of the plant Gotu Kola, should somehow be good for the brain, we call it the "memory salad".

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday - time flows evenly to the beat of the daily timetable; we dabble in it and let ourselves be driven. "When," says Martina, the physiotherapist, "do we ever have so much rest at home?" Nevertheless, no one defends itself, as we, after the days of the Stirngüsse are over, but now and then to make mini-trips.

And suddenly I find her - the silence in me

Live: the "Greystones-Villa"

We walk into the village where shops sell vegetables and dried fish, a swarm of three-wheeled tuk-tuks lurks on passengers, and a Hindu temple with colorful gods stands on the train tracks as if Shiva and his buddies were forming the local railway union. A train strolls us through the highlands to the Rawana Ella waterfall, which plunges over rocks more than 100 meters into the depths. One morning I walk alone to a nearby Buddhist monastery - small, bright buildings, of which about 150 steps lead up to a hill, on which a large white Buddha watches over the landscape. At the bottom of the stairs, a bald monk in burgundy-colored cowl sweeps the paths. "Are you from the Ayurveda Resort?" He asks, and, "Are you hungry?" In the monastic dining room, he hands me puff pastry sweets; Another monk comes, they talk, they watch me eat, they keep laughing: I guess I'm not the first spa guest, they provide the unhealthy extra food against the strict "Greystones" rules and transport them to Ayurveda hell.

With the excursions it is over again, as the end of the cure approaches. One could also say: the toilet days. Laxatives and enemas are now to transport the toxins that have been released from the tissue out of the body. At the last consultation, Dr. Kumari Bandara finally got my dosha-type: a mix of a lot of pitta, a little kapha and hardly any vata I was from birth; and all three doshas had been raised, especially the kinetic energy Vata. For home she gives me drugs that are to build up, nutrition tips; and behavioral rules, because the body is still weakened by the detoxification: for now no sex, no hard sport. For that, I should "seek the reassuring presence of seniors".

Despite the fattening monks, I've lost three pounds, certainly more in thought overweight - this cure, it was like a reset button. She calibrated us to zero again, on a new beginning. On the last evening, Mukunda calls us again for the oil lamp ceremony, the local ritual of beginnings. I just said goodbye to Jack, he winked at me with fireflies in the branches. Now I step forward in the fireplace room to light a small wick. The wick flickers briefly orange yellow. Glows. But then go out again immediately. "Help!" I shout, "that's a sign!" Mukunda looks and smiles. "That's right," he says, "that's a sign, that you have to stick to it."

Travel Info: Ayurveda in Sri Lanka

Highland cure

Greystones-Villa: The Panchakarma cleansing cures of the center in the highlands of Sri Lanka should u. a. Cure rheumatism, respiratory and digestive disorders as well as exhaustion and stress-related illnesses - and teach a healthy lifestyle. Elements of the comprehensive program are healthy nutrition, Ayurvedic medicine and massages as well as yoga and meditation. Appointments throughout the year, always at fixed times, together with the other guests.In addition to the described treatment, the center also offers a rejuvenation and rejuvenation treatment (Rasayana) for very weakened people. Three-week Panchakarma cure per person DZ / VP from 2125 Euro (Nandhi Ayurvedic Therapies, Norbert W. Fischer, Christophstrasse 5, 70178 Stuttgart, Tel. 07 11/234 81 44, Fax 234 81 45, www.greystones-villa.de ,

Jyotir Yoga: Mukunda Herbert Wolter is one of the yoga and meditation teachers of the "Greystones Villa". In winter, he runs courses in Sri Lanka, the rest of the year in his yoga school on Lake Chiemsee. His orientation, the ancient "Jyotir" yoga, literally light yoga, is not about sports. The gentle, simple exercises should lead to silence and heal. In addition to his ongoing courses, he also offers compact yoga retreats (Center for Ayurveda, Yoga and Indian Culture, Seeplatz 4, 83257 Gstadt am Chiemsee, Tel. 080 54/90 81 84, www.jyotir-yoga.com.

Getting there

Travel Industry Services The common arrival and departure of the guests at the "Greystones-Villa" arranged u. a. this organizer specializing in Asia travel. Organization incl. Scheduled flight with SriLankan Airlines from Frankfurt www.srilankan.aero, hotel stopover / double room in Colombo, on the return journey in Seeduwa as well as transfer to / from the spa center per person from approx. 1090 Euro (Hungener Str. 24, 61200 Wölfersheim, Tel. 060 36/90 42 44, Fax 98 84 81, www.TiServices.de.

Read

Self-healing with Ayurveda The Foundational Work of the Ayurvedic Doctor Vasant Lad explains Ayurvedic philosophy and dosha types. In addition there are tips for yoga and meditation, nutrition and cleaning procedures, with which one can avoid or treat various health problems (29.99 euros, O. W. Barth).

Ayurveda experience in India and Sri Lanka The book in handbag format offers a concise overview of Ayurveda, lists centers in India and Sri Lanka, gives tips for travel planning, stay and the time thereafter (7.90 euros, travel know-how).

Sri Lanka Comprehensive guide for individual travel. With extra boxes, about Buddha's tooth or the pilgrim's mountain Adam's Peak (21.95 Euro, Stefan Loose).