Health In The Hills - Dr. Modi's Health Resort

The week I spent at Dr Modi’s was one of the best in my mis-spent last decade. It was so satvik, like Yudhishthira I was walking two inches off the ground when I left.

But the satvik-ness apart, there is much else to keep one’s feet off the ground at Dr Modi’s. The resort covers some 55 acres (22 hectares) of which 27 are developed, and is pleasantly tree-laden and landscaped. Karjat in the last couple of years has received 250 inches of rain between late June and late September and there is commensurate greenery in the area. The low hills of the Western Ghats stand around, and altogether it is very pleasant.

The feel and facilities of Dr Modi’s Health Resort are at par with a 4-star hotel. The service is good and the people who work there well trained, despite not being from catering or hotel institutes. This owes perhaps less to Dr Modi — who focuses on his patients — and more to his charming wife Usha, who has managed his affairs for 30 years.

There is precious little to do at the resort except to commune with yourself and concentrate on your health, and that is as it should be. I only switched on the TV once, soon after I arrived, to see what channels were available. Otherwise there is the walking track, a nicely designed oval of 320m surrounded by green; there is a 25m-long swimming pool with a walking jacuzzi; there is table tennis; and there is a fine long road to walk up and down. The road is lined with the cottages for guests. At its end is the Health Club with Dr Modi’s consulting room and the rooms for all the treatments.

It is worth taking the Health package for a week, just to detoxify the system. We Indians eat a lot of oily food, but the feeling of well-being produced by the diet here will make you want to change your lifestyle. Diet, in fact, is a very important component of overall health to the Modis. They are almost finicky about it. Mrs Modi asks, “What can be eaten raw or sautéed, why cook it?” Dr Modi sets out the body’s timetable: “Absorption is from 8 pm-6 am; only water should be taken then. The time for elimination is 6 am-12 noon; during that period, eat only fruit, raw vegetables and sprouts. Assimilation takes place between noon and 8 pm, lunch and dinner come in that time. But no milk products at all, or fried things, or sugar.”

Dr Modi recommended that I eat only fruit for three days. I could have done it, but knew I would be unhappy, so we compromised on one day. Since breakfast on the Health package is always only fruit, that meant I went 40 hours without eating anything else. But it put the roses in my cheeks. I also lost 2 kg in five days.

The special treatments are also well worth it. Of course they are old hat to many city dwellers now, when apartment buildings have gymnasia and saunas and jacuzzis. It is different, however, when someone is taking care of you. (I even enjoy a visit to the dentist, simply because it’s so rare in our crowded lives that a comparative stranger evinces such concern for your health.) So to be oiled and pummelled and massaged into shape by the masseurs at the resort gave me a feeling of supreme contentment.

As it happened, I was suffering from some back pain when I visited the resort, and had a perfectly legitimate reason for consulting Dr Modi. I’ve also had a bad knee of old. Dr Modi made an examination, just as any physician would, and recorded my case history. Then he asked me to lie on a high couch and set to work.

Osteopathy is all about manipulation, not massage, and some of Dr Modi’s holds resembled scenes from the akhara. He seized my leg, thrust his arm behind the knee and threw his weight on it; he worked the joints around; he pressed my spine into place. Though short statured he is quite powerful, and long years of this work have trained him to use his weight. Some of the manipulations approached the threshold of pain but, after half an hour of therapy, when I stood up I felt curiously lighter. (See ‘Osteopaths and their manipulative ways’ on facing page).

Some of the patients I saw visiting Dr Modi were unable to even lie down with ease, and many were unable to walk. Clearly his osteopathic self is consulted by serious ‘patients’. There is usually a two-week gap given between osteopathy treatments.

The Health Club has a women’s and a men’s section with separate attendants, all trained personally by Dr Modi. Tell them of any specific aches you suffer from and take some old clothes along, especially underwear, since massage oil has a way of sticking to you.

The oil massage, lasting most of an hour, is done in the North Indian Naturopathic style (not the Kerala Ayurvedic, now so popular) with copious amounts of oil. The mud bath is not really a bath: it involves sitting in a chair on a sunny terrace while clay is liberally plastered all over you. You stay there till it dries — good for the skin. The full body wrap means you are wrapped in soaking wet sheets and stay immobile — the only treatment I found actively uncomfortable. The jacuzzi here is a sit-down bath for two, while powerful jets of water assail your body. (There is a 'walking jacuzzi' at the swimming pool.) The steam bath is a box in which you sit with only your head outside and have the sicknesses sweated out of you. Very enjoyable, as is the sauna, a small room with fresh-smelling wooden benches on which you sit while you are literally steamed. The temperature goes up to 80o C here.
The health package is flexible. Dr Modi prescribes, but if you feel any particular treatment — such as those for weight loss — is doing you good, you can probably ask for a repeat.

Strangely, there were relatively few guests at the resort on the Health package. Dr Modi’s regular patients for his osteopathic treatment come every weekend, mostly from Mumbai but sometimes from farther afield. But there is always at least one conference going on. These could be workshops, or marketing conventions, or simply company pleasure trips. Everybody lets their hair down and relaxes. But Dr Modi’s Health package definitely deserves a try: staying for a week or so on this package is itself a rare chance to rid oneself of stress and to detoxify the system in idyllic surroundings.

ABOUT DR MODI’S
Dr Modi’s Health Resort was opened in April 1998, but Dr Modi himself continued to practise in Mumbai and visit the resort weekly. In 2003, however, he and his wife shifted here for good. They manage the place themselves. Since the resort as it exists is only four years old, it cannot be said to have taken final shape. The Modis have plans to develop it and offer more therapies, including Yoga.

The chief attraction of the resort is undoubtedly not the resort itself: It is Dr Modi’s reputation as India’s first osteopath, and his record of treating some 50,000 patients over 35 years without using invasive techniques.

The ailments he has successfully combated include slipped disc, sciatica, cervical spondylosis, tennis elbow, migraine, arthritis, knee pain and dysmenorrhoea. He is also consulted about high blood pressure, weight loss programmes, diabetes, chronic stomach problems, and de-stressing and rejuvenation programmes. Some 30 patients, mostly from Mumbai, visit him from Friday to Sunday, and another half-dozen during the week. His dream is to found a college of osteopathy, which would be India’s first.

TREATMENTS AND TARIFFS
Osteopathy, Rs 2,000 per session with Dr Modi personally.
Health Club treatments (included in the Health package): Full body massage Rs 400; Mud bath Rs 400; Full body wrap Rs 250; Aroma facial Rs 350; Jacuzzi Rs 250; Sauna bath Rs 250; Steam bath Rs 250; Head massage Rs 200. The main massages are for 45 mins, facial for 30 mins, and the baths for 15 mins.

THE THERAPISTS
Dr Krishna Murari Modi claims to be the first osteopath to practise in India, and he is certainly one of the very few. His father, Dr Vithal Das Modi, was interested in Naturopathy and travelled all over India collecting and studying therapies. In 1947 he set up Arogya Mandir, now a 100-bedded Naturopathy hospital, in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, and also founded a health magazine, Arogya, which is still being published.

Dr Modi took his MBBS from GSVM Medical College, Kanpur, in 1964. Until 1966 he was at the Central Institute of Orthopaedics, Safdarjung Hospital, New Delhi. Dissatisfied with what he considered an incomplete science, in 1966 he went to the UK and joined the London College of Osteopathy, of which he is a Member. From 1969, he worked at Arogya Mandir for seven years.

In 1976, he and his wife moved to Mumbai where he quickly attracted a large and varied clientele. He practised in Mumbai from 1976 to 2003, and had a number of illustrious patients, including painter MF Hussain and illustrator Mario Miranda who helped him with his book on health farms.

Dr Modi takes a keen interest in sports. A story he proudly recounts is about how he cured Test cricketer Dilip Vengsarkar, now Chairman of Selectors, of a back ailment, and helped his career to flourish without surgery.
Dr Modi has published two books: Health Farming (Health Farm Publications, 1989; now out of print but to be re-issued) and Cure Aches and Pains through Osteopathy (Orient Paperbacks, 1997; Rs 95).

The masseurs and other attendants at the resort have been personally trained by Dr Modi.