What is Panchakarma?
Various Panchakarma Procedures

What is Panchakarma?

Panchakarma is a very powerful healing technique. To maintain health and alleviate diseases, Ayurved advocates "Panchakarma" as a powerful purification process to eliminate mental, physical and emotional toxins.

Panchakarma literally means "pancha" meaning five and "karma" meaning actions or therapies. It is a five-fold purification therapy aimed at correcting the imbalance of bodily humors viz. vata, pitta and kapha in order to maintain their health and strength. This therapy is widely used to cure neurological ailments like paralysis, arthritis, rheumatic pain, dermatological problems, mental disorders etc. It is also used for rejuvenation.

Aacharya Charak, the author of the most important ancient text on internal medicine, has described a wide use of Panchakarma therapy for almost all the major diseases.

These five therapies (pancha karma) are Vaman (therapeutic emesis/vomiting), Virechan (therapeutic purgation), Basti (therapeutic enema), Nasya (therapeutic nasal therapy) and Rakta mokshana (therapeutic blood cleansing). These main therapies are preceded by some pre-treatments like snehana (oleation) and abhyanga (medicated oil massage) and swedana (herbal steam bath).

Some of the special treatments prescribed in ancient ayurvedic literature, which are part of panchakarma, are very popular in Kerala, a southern state in India. These are dhara, pizichil, navarakazi, shirobasti etc. (various therapeutic massages / therapies etc.) These treatments are very effective in longstanding disorders like paralysis, rheumatism, arthritis, spondylosis as well as in psychosomatic disorders like hysteria, depression etc.