Fourteen mornings of oil, breath and silence

Most of what is sold as Ayurveda abroad is a massage with a longer name. What Kerala practises is a clinical tradition with a licensing body, a pharmacopoeia and a consultation before anything begins.

A programme starts with a physician taking a history and reading the pulse. What follows is prescribed rather than chosen from a menu, and it changes across the fortnight as the body responds.

The properties we work with run programmes of seven, fourteen and twenty-one nights. Seven is restorative. Fourteen is the shortest genuine panchakarma, because the preparation cannot be compressed. Twenty-one follows Rasayana in full.