Health care is the fastest growing sector in the world today. Drug-based medicine is problematical in the West, with numerous damaging side effects. Drugs should be the last rather than the first means of treatment, beginning with natural healing methods like yoga and ayurveda instead. Special ayurvedic methods of oil massage and Pancha Karma, such as are popular in Kerala, can remove disease-causing factors before the disease even manifests.

Ayurveda takes the yogic view of consciousness and applies it for healing purposes. It teaches a yogic way of life as an ideal means of both health and happiness. Ayurveda recommends the daily practice of yoga, not just asana but also pranayama and meditation, for harmony of body and mind. If we are looking for a yogic system of medicine in terms of both diagnosis and treatment, we find that already beautifully structured in traditional ayurveda.

Ayurveda is as profound and sophisticated as traditional Chinese medicine and shares a great deal with it, particularly relative to the role of prana (chi in the Chinese system), with both viewing the human being as an intricate system of energy patterns, much like modern physics and its view of the universe. Both recommend herbs as their main healing modality, including special tonic and rejuvenative agents to improve longevity, immunity and higher awareness. Both are based upon ancient medical texts and have in depth methods of diagnosis and treatment. The two are regarded as the oldest and most extensive natural healing traditions in the world.

The complication is that because of the suppression of ayurveda during the colonial era, when yoga spread worldwide during the 20th century, ayurveda was not usually part of it. And while India at Independence brought ayurveda back to some degree, it removed most of its connections to yoga in an effort to make it more acceptable to modern medicine.

India should not over emphasise drug-based medicine and be forced to return to ayurveda later. The country should honor its own great tradition of natural healing through ayurveda, which is helpful to everyone, just as it is embracing yoga.