Your body has an innate ability to heal itself. All it needs is awareness, knowledge - and a facilitator to help you on your way.
With that in mind, and a host of aches, pains and niggles I've been ignoring for a while, I set off to explore a new integrated health centre in Newlands.
Called Sivanna, the centre is a dream come true for medical doctor Jaimini Raniga, who has walked a long journey of discovery since graduating 23 years ago. Her latest qualification is as a practitioner of Unani Tibb medicine, which originated in Greece and Persia.
Before that she worked in a large integrated practice in the UK, where she worked with the Ayurvedic system and learned the importance of lifestyle and nutrition. She travelled to India to study Ayurveda, purification and detoxification therapies.
Her journey to explore new ways of healing began when she was in family practice in Australia. "I realised I was not treating the person but only the symptom. I asked, 'What am I doing here?' And at the same time patients were asking me: 'What about acupuncture?' I had to open my mind - after all, our patients are our teachers."
She studied acupuncture, then homeopathy, which opened her to the mind-body connection, and how important the mind is in the disease process. "But I knew the body also had to be addressed, and I trained in the Bowen Technique."
Ranigan bought the technique to South Africa when she emigrated here, teaching it to practitioners.
Sivanna, which means "oasis of enlightenment", is a large rambling home with different therapy rooms, including a steam bath, a yoga room and Raniga's consulting room.
When I arrive I fill in a long questionnaire on everything from my food likes and dislikes to my sleep patterns, to my physical characteristics. From this Raniga can see what my constitution is, a concept central to the practice of Unani Tibb. There are four basic constitutions, or temperaments, and people usually have one dominant and one sub-dominant type.
"We treat people on an individual level, according to their constitution," says Raniga. She assesses all clients at the centre.
There are many simple measures a person can take to right imbalances, based on the six regulating lifestyle factors, which are:
- Food and drink.
- The way we breathe (most of us only use a third of our breathing capacity).
- Exercise.
- Sleep patterns.
- Mental state (a huge causative factor in health).
- Elimination.
"With the knowledge I gain, I provide a regime," she says. This can include diet, lifestyle changes, detoxification using Ayurvedic or deep tissue massage, or the Bowen Technique.
Raniga will treat anyone, but stresses that this approach requires commitment. "This is a way of life," she says.
What Raniga highlights for me are simple changes in diet, plus deep breathing and yoga, and a series of therapies to help detoxify.
Now to implement the changes...
- For more details see the website www.sivanna.co.za or call 021 674 7117.