Health and Popular Psychology
Ayurveda in the Western Holistic Health Sector
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/rosa.37511Keywords:
ayurveda, health, popular psychology, seekership, spirituality, therapy cultureAbstract
This article examines a small selection of popular anglophone publications on ayurveda, authored by three well-known US-based writer-practitioners: Robert Svoboda, Deepak Chopra and David Frawley. It argues that these individuals' interpretations of ayurveda's principles and practices are deeply influenced by popular psychology, and by the therapy culture that it has spawned in Euro-American contexts. These writers draw upon some key tenets of popular psychology in their works: that physical illness is an outward manifestation of a psychological problem; that self-awareness and personal growth are essential for attaining optimum health; that individuals must assume active responsibility for maximizing health and wellbeing. Through their psychologized interpretations, Chopra, Frawley and Svoboda greatly expand ayurveda's scope. In their hands, ayurveda is not simply a medical tradition for remedying illness (its predominant focus in mainstream South Asian practice) but, more importantly, a means for personal growth, human potential optimization, and self-actualization.
References
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Chopra, Deepak. 1990 [1989]. Quantum Healing: Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine. New York: Bantam Books.
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—2001 (1990). Perfect Health: The Complete Mind Body Guide. New York: Bantam Books.
Chopra, Centre. 2018. https://chopra.com (accessed 19 February 2018).
Cyranski, Christoph. 2016. ‘Purifying Purges and Rejuvenating Massages: Ayurvedic Health Tourism in South India.’ Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Heidelberg.
Frank, Robert, and Gunnar Stollberg. 2002. ‘Ayurvedic Patients in Germany.’ Anthropology and Medicine 9 (3): 223–44. https://doi.org/10.1080/13648470216332
—2006. ‘German Medical Doctors’ Motives for Practising Homeopathy, Acupuncture or Ayurveda.’ In H. Johannesen and I. Lazar (eds.), Multiple Medical Realities: Patients and Healers in Biomedical, Alternative and Traditional Medicine: 72–88. London and New York: Berghahn Books.
Frawley, David. 2000 [1989]. Ayurvedic Healing: A Comprehensive Guide. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
—2002 [1999]. Yoga and Ayurveda: Self-Healing and Self-Realization. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
—2011 [1997]. Ayurveda and the Mind: The Healing of Consciousness. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
Fuller, Robert. 1989. Alternative Medicine and American Religious Life. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Furedi, Frank. 2004. Therapy Culture: Cultivating Vulnerability in an Uncertain Age. London: Routledge.
Hanegraaff, Wouter. 2008. New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Humes, Cynthia Ann. 2008. ‘Maharishi Ayur-Veda: Perfect Health through Enlightened Marketing in America.’ In Wujastyk and Smith 2008: 309–31. 8
Illouz, Eva. 2008. Saving the Modern Soul: Therapy, Emotions, and the Culture of Self-Help. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Jeannotat, Francoise. 2008. ‘Maharishi Ayur-Ved: A Controversial Model of Global Ayurveda.’ In Wujastyk and Smith 2008: 285–307.
Kessler, C., M. Wischnewsky, A. Michalsen, C. Eisenmann and J. Melzer. 2013. ‘Ayurveda: Between Religion, Spirituality, and Medicine.’ Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine 13. http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/952432 (accessed 5 January 2018).
Lad, Usha, and Vasant Lad. 2006 [1994]. Ayurvedic Cooking for Self Healing. Albuquerque, NM: Ayurvedic Press.
Langford, Jean M. 2002. Fluent Bodies: Ayurvedic Remedies for Postcolonial Imbalance. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press.
Leslie, Charles. 1973. ‘The Professionalizing Ideology of Medical Revivalism.’ In Milton Singer (ed.), Modernization of Occupational Cultures in South Asia: 216–42. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
—1974. ‘The Modernization of Asian Medical Systems.’ In John Poggie and R. Lynch (eds.), Rethinking Modernization: Anthropological Perspectives: 69–108. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
—1976a. ‘The Ambiguities of Medical Revivalism in Modern India.’ In Leslie 1976: 356–67.
Leslie, Charles (ed.). 1976. Asian Medical Systems: A Comparative Study. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press.
Lowenberg, June S., and Fred Davis. 1994. ‘Beyond Medicalisation-Demedicalisation: The Case of Holistic Health.’ Sociology of Health and Illness 16 (5): 579–99. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.ep11348024
Maslow, Abraham. 1993. The Farther Reaches of Human Nature. New York: Penguin.
Morningstar, Amadea. 1995. Ayurvedic Cooking for Westerners. Twin Lakes, Wisconsin, WI: Lotus Press.
Obeyesekere, Gananath. 1977. ‘The Theory and Practice of Psychological Medicine in the Ayurvedic Tradition.’ Culture, Medicine, Psychiatry 1: 155–81. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00114848
Partridge, Christopher. 2005. The Re-Enchantment of the West. Vol. II. London: T&T Clark.
Quora. 2018. https://tinyurl.com/quantum-97654 (accessed 19 February 2018).
Reddy, Sita. 2000. ‘Reinventing Medical Traditions: The Professionalization of Ayurveda in Contemporary America.’ Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
—2002. ‘Asian Medicine in America: The Ayurvedic Case.’ Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 583: 97–121. https://doi.org/10.1177/000271620258300107
—2004. ‘The Politics and Poetics of “Magazine Medicine”: New Age Ayurveda in the Print Media.’ In R. D. Johnson (ed.), Politics of Healing: Histories of Alternative Medicine in Twentieth Century North America: 207–30. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203506073
Rieff, Philip. 1987. The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith after Freud. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Rogers, Carl. 1961. On Becoming a Person. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Rose, Nikolas. 1989. Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self. London: Routledge.
Selby, Martha Ann. 2005. ‘Sanskrit Gynecologies in Postmodernity: The Commoditization of Indian Medicine in Alternative Medical and New-Age Discourses on Women’s Health.’ In J. S. Alter (ed.), Asian Medicine and Globalization: 120–31. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812205251.120
Singleton, Mark. 2014. ‘David Frawley and Vedic Yoga.’ Paper presented at conference titled ‘In the Name of the Veda’, CEIAS, Paris.
Smith, Frederick M., and Dagmar Wujastyk. 2008. ‘Introduction.’ In Wujastyk and Smith 2008: 1–28.
Ståhle, Göran V. 2010. ‘Coaching a Healthy Lifestyle: Positioning Ayurveda in a Late Modern Context.’ International Journal for the Study of New Treatment 1 (2): 243–60.
Steadman, Ian. 2014. ‘Deepak Chopra Doesn’t Understand Quantum Physics, so Brian Cox Wants $1,000,000 from him.’ New Statesman, 7 July, available at: https://tinyurl.com/quantum-95644
Svoboda, Robert. 1993 [1992]. Ayurveda: Life, Health and Longevity. Delhi: Penguin.
—1996 [1993]. Prakruti: Your Ayurvedic Constitution. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
—2018a. http://www.drsvoboda.com (accessed 19 February 2018).
—2018b. http://www.drsvoboda.com/about/ (accessed 19 February 2018).
Vedanet. 2018. https://www.vedanet.com/knowledge-center/ (accessed 19 February 2018).
Warrier, Maya. 2009. ‘Seekership, Spirituality and Self-Discovery: Ayurveda Trainees in Britain.’ Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity 4 (2): 423–51. https://doi.org/10.1163/157342009X12526658783691
—2014. ‘Ayurveda in Britain: The Twin Imperatives of Professionalization and Spiritual Seeking.’ In H. Naraindas, J. Quack and W. S. Sax (eds.), Asymmetrical Conversations: Contestations, Circumventions, and the Blurring of Therapeutic Boundaries: 237–59. ‘Epistemologies of Healing’ Series, Vol. 14. New York and Oxford: Berghahn.
Welch, Claudia. 2008. ‘An Overview of the Education and Practice of Global Ayurveda.’ In Wujastyk and Smith 2008: 129–38.
Witzel, M. 2002. ‘A Maritime Rigveda?—How Not to Read Ancient Texts.’ The Hindu, online edition, 22 June, available at: http://www.thehindu.com/thehindu/op/2002/06/25/stories/2002062500030200.htm (accessed 19 February 2018).
Wujastyk, Dagmar, and Frederick M. Smith (eds.). 2008. Modern and Global Ayurveda: Pluralism and Paradigms. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Wujastyk, Dominik. 2003a (1998). The Roots of Ayurveda. London: Penguin.
—2003b. ‘The Science of Medicine.’ In Gavin Flood (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism: 393–409. Oxford: Blackwell.
Yarema, Thomas, Daniel Rhoda and Johnny Brannigan. 2006. Eat, Taste, Heal: An Ayurvedic Cookbook for Modern Living. Kapaa, Hawaii: Five Elements Press.
Zimmerman, Francis. 1992. ‘Gentle Purge: The Flower Power of Ayurveda.’ In C. Leslie and A. Young (eds.), Paths to Asian Medical Knowledge: 209–23. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Zysk, Kenneth G. 2001. ‘New Age Ayurveda, or what Happens to Indian Medicine when it Comes to America.’ Traditional South Asian Medicine 6: 10–26.
Altglas, Véronique. 2014. From Yoga to Kabbalah: Religious Exoticism and the Logics of Bricolage. Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199997626.001.0001
Albanese, Catherine. 2007. A Republic of the Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Alexander, Kay. 1992. ‘Roots of the New Age.’ In J. R. Lewis and J. G. Melton (eds.) Perspectives on the New Age: 30-47. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Banerjee, Madhulika. 2009. Power, Knowledge, Medicine: Ayurvedic Pharmaceuticals at Home and Abroad. Hyderabad: Orient Black Swan.
Basham, A. L. 1976. ‘The Practice of Medicine in Ancient and Medieval India.’ In Leslie 1976: 18–43.
Bode, Maarten. 2008. Taking Traditional Knowledge to the Market: The Modern Image of the Ayurveda and Unani Industry 1980–2000. Hyderabad: Orient Longman.
Chopra, Deepak. 1990 [1989]. Quantum Healing: Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine. New York: Bantam Books.
—1991 [1988]. Return of the Rishi: A Doctor’s Story of Spiritual Transformation and Ayurvedic Healing. Boston: Houghton Miffin.
—2001 (1990). Perfect Health: The Complete Mind Body Guide. New York: Bantam Books.
Chopra, Centre. 2018. https://chopra.com (accessed 19 February 2018).
Cyranski, Christoph. 2016. ‘Purifying Purges and Rejuvenating Massages: Ayurvedic Health Tourism in South India.’ Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Heidelberg.
Frank, Robert, and Gunnar Stollberg. 2002. ‘Ayurvedic Patients in Germany.’ Anthropology and Medicine 9 (3): 223–44. https://doi.org/10.1080/13648470216332
—2006. ‘German Medical Doctors’ Motives for Practising Homeopathy, Acupuncture or Ayurveda.’ In H. Johannesen and I. Lazar (eds.), Multiple Medical Realities: Patients and Healers in Biomedical, Alternative and Traditional Medicine: 72–88. London and New York: Berghahn Books.
Frawley, David. 2000 [1989]. Ayurvedic Healing: A Comprehensive Guide. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
—2002 [1999]. Yoga and Ayurveda: Self-Healing and Self-Realization. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
—2011 [1997]. Ayurveda and the Mind: The Healing of Consciousness. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
Fuller, Robert. 1989. Alternative Medicine and American Religious Life. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Furedi, Frank. 2004. Therapy Culture: Cultivating Vulnerability in an Uncertain Age. London: Routledge.
Hanegraaff, Wouter. 2008. New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Humes, Cynthia Ann. 2008. ‘Maharishi Ayur-Veda: Perfect Health through Enlightened Marketing in America.’ In Wujastyk and Smith 2008: 309–31. 8
Illouz, Eva. 2008. Saving the Modern Soul: Therapy, Emotions, and the Culture of Self-Help. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Jeannotat, Francoise. 2008. ‘Maharishi Ayur-Ved: A Controversial Model of Global Ayurveda.’ In Wujastyk and Smith 2008: 285–307.
Kessler, C., M. Wischnewsky, A. Michalsen, C. Eisenmann and J. Melzer. 2013. ‘Ayurveda: Between Religion, Spirituality, and Medicine.’ Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine 13. http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/952432 (accessed 5 January 2018).
Lad, Usha, and Vasant Lad. 2006 [1994]. Ayurvedic Cooking for Self Healing. Albuquerque, NM: Ayurvedic Press.
Langford, Jean M. 2002. Fluent Bodies: Ayurvedic Remedies for Postcolonial Imbalance. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press.
Leslie, Charles. 1973. ‘The Professionalizing Ideology of Medical Revivalism.’ In Milton Singer (ed.), Modernization of Occupational Cultures in South Asia: 216–42. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
—1974. ‘The Modernization of Asian Medical Systems.’ In John Poggie and R. Lynch (eds.), Rethinking Modernization: Anthropological Perspectives: 69–108. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
—1976a. ‘The Ambiguities of Medical Revivalism in Modern India.’ In Leslie 1976: 356–67.
Leslie, Charles (ed.). 1976. Asian Medical Systems: A Comparative Study. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press.
Lowenberg, June S., and Fred Davis. 1994. ‘Beyond Medicalisation-Demedicalisation: The Case of Holistic Health.’ Sociology of Health and Illness 16 (5): 579–99. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.ep11348024
Maslow, Abraham. 1993. The Farther Reaches of Human Nature. New York: Penguin.
Morningstar, Amadea. 1995. Ayurvedic Cooking for Westerners. Twin Lakes, Wisconsin, WI: Lotus Press.
Obeyesekere, Gananath. 1977. ‘The Theory and Practice of Psychological Medicine in the Ayurvedic Tradition.’ Culture, Medicine, Psychiatry 1: 155–81. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00114848
Partridge, Christopher. 2005. The Re-Enchantment of the West. Vol. II. London: T&T Clark.
Quora. 2018. https://tinyurl.com/quantum-97654 (accessed 19 February 2018).
Reddy, Sita. 2000. ‘Reinventing Medical Traditions: The Professionalization of Ayurveda in Contemporary America.’ Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
—2002. ‘Asian Medicine in America: The Ayurvedic Case.’ Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 583: 97–121. https://doi.org/10.1177/000271620258300107
—2004. ‘The Politics and Poetics of “Magazine Medicine”: New Age Ayurveda in the Print Media.’ In R. D. Johnson (ed.), Politics of Healing: Histories of Alternative Medicine in Twentieth Century North America: 207–30. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203506073
Rieff, Philip. 1987. The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith after Freud. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Rogers, Carl. 1961. On Becoming a Person. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Rose, Nikolas. 1989. Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self. London: Routledge.
Selby, Martha Ann. 2005. ‘Sanskrit Gynecologies in Postmodernity: The Commoditization of Indian Medicine in Alternative Medical and New-Age Discourses on Women’s Health.’ In J. S. Alter (ed.), Asian Medicine and Globalization: 120–31. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812205251.120
Singleton, Mark. 2014. ‘David Frawley and Vedic Yoga.’ Paper presented at conference titled ‘In the Name of the Veda’, CEIAS, Paris.
Smith, Frederick M., and Dagmar Wujastyk. 2008. ‘Introduction.’ In Wujastyk and Smith 2008: 1–28.
Ståhle, Göran V. 2010. ‘Coaching a Healthy Lifestyle: Positioning Ayurveda in a Late Modern Context.’ International Journal for the Study of New Treatment 1 (2): 243–60.
Steadman, Ian. 2014. ‘Deepak Chopra Doesn’t Understand Quantum Physics, so Brian Cox Wants $1,000,000 from him.’ New Statesman, 7 July, available at: https://tinyurl.com/quantum-95644
Svoboda, Robert. 1993 [1992]. Ayurveda: Life, Health and Longevity. Delhi: Penguin.
—1996 [1993]. Prakruti: Your Ayurvedic Constitution. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
—2018a. http://www.drsvoboda.com (accessed 19 February 2018).
—2018b. http://www.drsvoboda.com/about/ (accessed 19 February 2018).
Vedanet. 2018. https://www.vedanet.com/knowledge-center/ (accessed 19 February 2018).
Warrier, Maya. 2009. ‘Seekership, Spirituality and Self-Discovery: Ayurveda Trainees in Britain.’ Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity 4 (2): 423–51. https://doi.org/10.1163/157342009X12526658783691
—2014. ‘Ayurveda in Britain: The Twin Imperatives of Professionalization and Spiritual Seeking.’ In H. Naraindas, J. Quack and W. S. Sax (eds.), Asymmetrical Conversations: Contestations, Circumventions, and the Blurring of Therapeutic Boundaries: 237–59. ‘Epistemologies of Healing’ Series, Vol. 14. New York and Oxford: Berghahn.
Welch, Claudia. 2008. ‘An Overview of the Education and Practice of Global Ayurveda.’ In Wujastyk and Smith 2008: 129–38.
Witzel, M. 2002. ‘A Maritime Rigveda?—How Not to Read Ancient Texts.’ The Hindu, online edition, 22 June, available at: http://www.thehindu.com/thehindu/op/2002/06/25/stories/2002062500030200.htm (accessed 19 February 2018).
Wujastyk, Dagmar, and Frederick M. Smith (eds.). 2008. Modern and Global Ayurveda: Pluralism and Paradigms. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Wujastyk, Dominik. 2003a (1998). The Roots of Ayurveda. London: Penguin.
—2003b. ‘The Science of Medicine.’ In Gavin Flood (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism: 393–409. Oxford: Blackwell.
Yarema, Thomas, Daniel Rhoda and Johnny Brannigan. 2006. Eat, Taste, Heal: An Ayurvedic Cookbook for Modern Living. Kapaa, Hawaii: Five Elements Press.
Zimmerman, Francis. 1992. ‘Gentle Purge: The Flower Power of Ayurveda.’ In C. Leslie and A. Young (eds.), Paths to Asian Medical Knowledge: 209–23. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Zysk, Kenneth G. 2001. ‘New Age Ayurveda, or what Happens to Indian Medicine when it Comes to America.’ Traditional South Asian Medicine 6: 10–26.
Published
2018-11-13
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Warrier, M. (2018). Health and Popular Psychology: Ayurveda in the Western Holistic Health Sector. Religions of South Asia, 12(1), 56-77. https://doi.org/10.1558/rosa.37511
