20 chapter
Patient experiences with various treatments—such as ayurvedic mudpacks,
allopathic electroconvulsive therapy and healing through singing and prayer—
not only engage the senses. Th ey engage the senses in both pleasant and
adverse ways. Th ere is no ideal term to designate this variety of sensorial
engagements, but they can be described in terms of the relative presence
and absence of “pleasantness.” Th e term “pleasant” has limitations, however,
and thus I will defi ne how I am using this word. I use “pleasant” to indi-
cate not only a positive sensory reaction but, in some contexts, engagement
on the nontangible, “spiritual” level. “Pleasant” appropriately describes many
patients’ experiences in therapy, such as experiences in ayurvedic psychiat-
ric procedures that patients say gave them a “cooling” eff ect, a local idiom
for a pleasant physical sensation that has connotations of mental balance, or
experiences living among the music, smells, color and scenic architecture of a
Hindu temple. However, “pleasant” is at times too strong a term to indicate
a healing process that is simply less abrasive than another form of treatment.
For example, patients did not claim to like the purgatives or ghee some were
given as part of ayurvedic treatment, but they were more averse to the elec-
troconvulsive therapy they received during allopathic therapy. At other times,
“pleasant” is too mundane a term to describe the more exalted changes some
patients report in undergoing healing.
Th e observation off ered earlier by Ajit that ayurveda can help one attain
“another level” of health and pursue a “supreme aim” in life problematizes the
notion of health as a simple remediation of symptoms and a return to function-
ality. While remediation of symptoms is a basic goal of therapeut ic practices,
some therapies also aim at instilling or increasing one’s state of well-being, a
state that is more enhanced, more vibrant than a simple return to a pre-illness
or “baseline” state. Farquhar (1994) says that patients of Chinese medicine in
China often expect to achieve a positive and active sense of health as a result
of therapy: “It is often the case that neither patient nor doctor is satisfi ed
with clinical work if all it achieves is a disappearance of symptoms. Th ey are
working with a language that can articulate a highly nuanced, positive, good
health, and their goals are high” (482). Based on an analysis of ayurvedic
texts, Alter (1999) likewise emphasizes that one of the goals of ayurveda is
the continued pursuit of increasing good health—or “heaps of health” as he
puts it. Th ese are not just “exotic” ideals attributed to Chinese and ayurvedic
medicine. A similar defi nition of “health” was once put forth by the World
Health Organization.^11 Ajit feels such ideals of health are eroding, and he
laments that “this is the level at which we maintain our health” referring to
peoples’ compulsions to fi nd a quick fi x for their problems so that they can
return to work or school.