With interest in ayurvedic medicine growing, so too is the number of people travelling east for treatments . HELENE HOFMAN reports from Sri Lanka
IN THE PAST 10 years, Sri Lanka has seen the number of tourist-oriented ayurveda centres multiply. What began in the 1970s as a handful of luxury hotels offering massages and meditation has grown into a million-dollar industry with dozens of dedicated resorts and many smaller day centres and spas.
Clients come from across Europe – particularly Germany, Austria and France – but also from the Middle East and Russia, with a small, but growing number arriving from Ireland.
“There is definitely more and more interest in ayurveda in Ireland,” says Edie O’Reilly from the Amruta Ayurveda Clinic, which opened in Swords last June. “It’s really new here, but it’s growing as more people take an interest in alternative treatments and realise what ayurveda is.”
Ayurveda is a traditional healing system that originated in India about 5,000 years ago. It’s based on the principle that illness occurs when the three energies that make up the human body – vata (wind), pittar (bile) and kapha (phlegm) – become unbalanced.
In restoring and maintaining this balance through a combination of surgical procedures, herbal remedies, dietary changes, yoga, meditation and massage, ayurveda is used not only to cure illness but also to improve overall health.
“At the moment people who travel overseas for ayurveda go for the leisure side rather than to treat a specific ailment. You can get the therapies here, but there are several reasons why people would want to go overseas,” says O’Reilly.
The main reason, she says, is cost. “By going overseas you can get two weeks for the price of one in Ireland, maybe more. Also the environment: the warm weather and the fact that you’re far away from everything and can relax completely.
“And yes, there is that factor that you can go to a place with a tradition of ayurveda. Although for the moment the interest is more in India than places like Sri Lanka.”
Both the Sri Lankan government and the country’s tourism promotion bureau are intent on changing that. Ayurveda wasn’t officially recognised in Sri Lanka until 1929, when the first dedicated ayurveda hospital opened in the capital Colombo.
However, Sri Lankan authorities argue that since then the country has made a huge contribution to developing and promoting ayurveda.
In 1961, it created the world’s first and only cabinet ministry dedicated to indigenous medicine, which includes a department for ayurveda.
Today there are 62 public ayurveda hospitals in the country and 438 ayurveda dispensaries, which treat more than three million patients every year.
But what the ayurveda tourists are exposed to is often very different to the kind of ayurveda overseen by the ministry.
“There is a small number of people who come to have a specific ailment cured and go to the hospitals, but for most tourists ayurveda is really just part of the package,” explains Madubhani Perera, director of marketing for the Sri Lanka tourism promotion bureau.
“The ayurveda that most tourists come for goes together with spas and meditation. It’s contemporary ayurveda that’s joined with yoga and beauty therapies. There are facials, for example, and oils and lotions to take home.”
The main difficulty with the private operators frequented by these tourists, according to the ministry of indigenous medicine, is that they are not regulated.
Perera says that there are at least 60 dedicated ayurveda resorts in Sri Lanka, but no more than 15 employ a qualified ayurveda practitioner. The proportion is even smaller among the day centres and beauticians offering ayurveda therapies.
“The problem is, at the moment we have no way of knowing what’s happening in these places. Some are good but we have no way of knowing which,” says Lionel Wijerama from the ministry of indigenous medicine.
“The private sector hotels picked up on ayurveda before we could do anything about it and they are there to be profitable, nothing else.
“Currently, we cannot even get a true picture of what is happening in these commercial practices and that needs to change.”
A set of amendments to the Ayurvedic Act of 1961 is currently being debated by the Sri Lankan legislature and is expected to be passed within the next six months.
These changes would give the ministry the power to monitor and issue guidelines to service providers. In the meantime, the ministry has devised its own plan to develop ayurveda tourism, with plans for paying wards to be built onto existing public hospitals.
Construction on the first of these will begin at the Ayurveda Training Hospital in Colombo later this year, and will target foreigners seeking ayurvedic treatment for more serious illnesses.
It’s expected that these wards will initially appeal to people coming from the more established markets of Germany and eastern Europe, rather than Ireland.
“With the Irish, like those from the United Kingdom, it’s a little bit different,” says Asoka Hettigoda, president of Sri Lanka’s Chamber of Commerce and managing director of the Siddhalepa Ayurveda Health Resort in Wadduwa.
“At the moment, the Irish don’t come here specifically for ayurveda. They are starting to take an interest in yoga and meditation, and may find ayurveda as part of that. But they’re not yet committing to one or two weeks of ayurveda,” he says.
Hettigoda is part of the organising committee for Ayurveda Expo 2011, an international exhibition showcasing Sri Lankan ayurveda due to be held in Colombo in July.
Official figures for 2010, the first full year since the end of the country’s civil war, show a record 650,000 visitors came to Sri Lanka.
Now the government has set a target of attracting 2.5 million tourists a year by 2016 and ayurveda is to be put forward as one of the main attractions.
“Today, there is not a single hotel in Sri Lanka that doesn’t make some money from ayurveda,” says Hettigoda.
“The world over, people are looking for something different. They cannot find the remedies they want in western or so-called allopathic medicine and are looking east.
“People know their priorities. They don’t just want to be healthy: they want their mind, body and soul to be healthy. Sri Lanka and ayurveda can offer that,” he adds.
