In this enlightening MysticMag interview with Dr. Mahesh Krishnamurthy, founder of Nadichikitsa Wellness, we explore his journey into Nadi Pariksha and the unique pulse diagnosis techniques he practices today. Dr. Krishnamurthy shares how his work found him, offering insights into traditional healing methods that bridge ancient Ayurvedic wisdom with modern wellness practices. Continue reading to learn more.
What were your professional beginnings like and how did you get into the work you do today?
When people asked me how I started the work, initially, I would try to explain it, which was both time-consuming and, at times, the listeners would find it difficult to connect to how I expressed myself. I thought about it and came up with a relatively simple answer. My work found me.
After learning Yoga in 1999 at Chennai, I was invited to join an Ayurveda and Yoga Research Institute named FRLHT (Foundation for Revitalisation of Local Health Traditions) in Bangalore, a centre of Excellence in neurological disorders. Here, I learnt about the theoretical works of Ayurveda and its practical application. A few months into my new role, my brother called me from the foothills of the Himalayas and asked me to visit him. I planned my travel and visited him. He was keen to show me what he had learnt. It was Nadi Pariksha. He taught me how to read the pulse. He had learnt it from someone in the Himalayas.
After that, I spent much time reading the pulse of my clients. The initial days were tough as no one would believe what I did, including my wife and father. Hope was strong, but finances were bleak. I did not have money when I wanted to have a cup of coffee. I would buy a sachet of instant coffee powder on credit and pay the shopkeeper later. Growth happened steadily, and the word began to spread.
When movie actors began visiting me, my wife began to trust my work, and when people whom my father respected visited me and talked about me, my father began respecting my work.
Through the journey, two people helped me with books on pulse diagnosis, which helped me immensely in going deeper into Nadi Pariksha. I am grateful towards both of them. One book was published in 1885, while the other was an old treatise which was republished. I read and researched these two books in sequence for about ten years. I have over 23 years of experience but I am still learning.
What are Nadi Pariksha and Doot Nadi Pariksha and what are their benefits?
Nadi Pariksha is the knowledge of understanding human beings by listening to their pulse. The human being is more than blood vessels, muscles, bones and tissues. Some feelings and emotions extend beyond the physical frame. Then, the intellect, intelligence, thoughts, and memory bank feed the thoughts and judgements. All of these put together is the human being.
While we can measure most of the physical parameters, scientists still cannot measure many of the non-physical parameters. However, in traditional health practices, such an understanding exists. One of these techniques that has standardised measurements is called Nadi Pariksha.
Your next question is of benefits. Let us take some of the most common symptoms that people living in the cities have today. Constipation, sleep disturbances, hyperacidity and stiffness. We will choose constipation for the sake of explanation. What causes constipation? The most common answers are bowel inflammation, lack of fibre in the diet, dehydrated colon and so on. This is where traditional health investigation begins. What causes it? This is so important. We are not defining. We are searching for answers. The answers are different in each individual based on the lifestyle, habits, hobbies, addictions, emotions, beliefs, judgements and perceptions. Instead of asking the person… If I ask you for example, as a modern medical practitioner, do you have constipation? Your answer will either be a yes or a no. If I take your answer as no, then, my investigation hits a dead end. I move on to the next question. In traditional health investigation, the next question will be, what time do you ease yourself? Do you have to consume hot water or a beverage to initiate the pressure? There are more questions of this sort.
The shortcut is to listen to the pulse. It reveals everything.
Nadi Pariksha is an in-person consultation. Now, there are three kinds of consultation I do. One we have discussed. Then, there is Sutra Nadi Pariksha. This method of investigation is employed primarily for clients of the opposite gender. By tradition, we must not touch a person of the opposite gender. This requires some more understanding.
According to the Hindu tradition, which is also mentioned by the psychologist Carl Jung, we all have masculine and feminine aspects. The masculine aspect is the breadwinner, thinker, implementor, and decision maker and the feminine role is the caretaker, compassionate, loving, caring, giving, and nurturing. The masculine must not be understood as male or female.
When you come to me for a consultation, let’s say you are of the opposite gender. I am the company CEO, director, visionary, whatever, I am the masculine here. Let us say, these are attributes which you so badly want to have, but you are compassionate, loving, caring, giving, and nurturing, let’s say you are a nurse. And I am deficient in these qualities. When I touch you, my beingness will absorb what it needs from you and so will your beingness. We will get mutually benefitted and with that, will be born, a desire to receive more frequently. You see how this works?
So, in Sutra Nadi Pariksha, I tie a cotton thread around the client’s wrist. Then, I hold the thread and feel my own pulse. This way, I am insulated and so are you. The investigation does not influence the beingness that you are.
Now, coming to Doot Nadi Pariksha. This is the third type, which you were particularly interested in. This is an ancient technique which I have modified because technology has stepped in. Doot in Indian lingo means messenger. In the days when technology was not available, there was a method of long distance investigation. Can you believe what I am saying? It is hard to believe, and yet, it is true.
Let us say, someone in your home, a great-grandparent is unwell and unable to travel for a consultation. Then, you come to me asking for help. This is where it gets interesting. The traditional healthcare practitioner will hold your pulse, and connect to your great-grandparent through the pulse and he will be able to tell you what the great-grandparent was ailing with.
Those are the old times. I haven’t tried that method. I am not sure whether I will be able to do it! Maybe someday, I will try. What I have done instead is to circumvent the challenge. I use a video call as a medium. I focus my attention on the client’s forehead and listen to my own pulse. My pulse changes. I note the changes and describe what is happening to the other person. So far, I have been accurate with all my clients’ readings.
I would like to illustrate an experience here. These were the COVID times. A yoga teacher got the vaccine and his body reacted. His blood pressure changed. His higher level, the systolic pressure, went up to 170 and his lower one, the diastolic pressure shot up to 100. His pulse rate went down to 40, is what the hospital staff shared. They did not know what to do with him, what treatment to give. They did not even know what was happening to him. Someone suggested they contact me to find out what was happening. He was quanrantined. So, this consultation happened over a WhatsApp call. As I continued to focus and listen to my pulse, all of a sudden, my pulse lost a beat. I became anxious. For a moment I forgot that it was his pulse I was listening to in my wrist. His heart was affected and he had a missing pulse.
How are your trainings structured and what different ones do you offer?
We have several trainings, the first being of course Nadi Pariksha. We have an introductory training and an advanced on. The introductory level is not exactly an introduction. When practised properly, it can help the practitioner investigate more than eighty percent of the beingness of the client.
The advanced training is for Ayurvedic doctors only. It gives detailed information about the health of the organs, tissue regeneration and degeneration, and more. They will require this information to medicate their clients. These two are classroom training, meaning one has to come to the place and receive the training.
Then we have another classroom training. Did you know that in traditional healthcare systems, we have emergency care? Yes. Most people are not aware. It is called Marma Chikitsa. This is a fabulous training that we offer. We teach how to reduce inflammation, stiffness, and pains in the body quickly. Sometimes, some people have shoulder and back pains, headaches, and so on. Then, we put them through the therapy, and within a few minutes, they felt amazing!
We have split Marma Chikitsa’s training into five parts, catering to the head and neck, arms and shoulders, chest and abdomen, and the back and legs. Each training happens for 4 hours and then the student has to practice them for a month before taking the next training.
We have specific online training also. One can learn the fundamentals of Ayurveda and, more importantly, emotional well-being. This is so needed today.
With your motto for general health being “Prevention is Care”, what are some main pieces of advice you would give to someone in regard to maintaining health and preventing illness?
Maintaining health and preventing illness is not a big challenge. It is simple. Cook or boil your food and eat it fresh. Keep it simple.
The big challenge is not listening to your desires. Don’t feed your desires. Desires are not in the body. They are in the mind. It is a vibration gone bad. It is like a guitar string, which strikes the wrong note. It is like getting the wrong advice. When you listen to wrong advice, the person giving the advice does not suffer. You do. Similarly, the mind does not suffer while creating the desire. Your body suffers.
What is Agar Healing and can you share a few details about the work you do through Agar Healing Meditation?
Here are a few tips. If you are born in the city, as most of us have, I would ask you to find out what the traditional food of the land is. Eat that. City food is different. We eat bread, pasta, and pizza made of refined wheat flour. Our food is not even cooked at times. They are instantly heated in a microwave. City foods are primarily harmful. They are to satisfy your desires. They are not meant to provide nutrition to the body.
I will break it down further. Look at your lifestyle. If your lifestyle involves much sitting, then be frugal in your eating. A sitting lifestyle does not require much energy. But then, you need to exercise to move your body and your limbs. That, too, does not use up a lot of your energy. So, be frugal.
Learn to listen to your body. Today, while I was at the airport, the flight was delayed by two hours. The staff announced that the passengers can have coffee and biscuits. Most passengers stood in a queue to get their coffee and biscuits. They were eating what was provided. What did their bodies need? I did not want coffee. My body needed water, so I got that instead of coffee.
Next is how you eat your food. Food provides nutrition to the body. How does that happen? Have we thought about it? Food transforms into nutrition when it digests. Does digestion happen whenever we give food to the body? Actually no. The body digests food only when it requires nutrition. This means we need to feed the body when it expresses hunger. Look at infants. When they are hungry, they want food. Nothing else. They will cry their head off if they don’t get that food. The whole house will fall in line to feed the infant. Growing up, we add taste to food and aromatic spices to tinger our senses.
Now, we want food because it smells good and not because the body is hungry. Keeping our sensory glands confused is the way the industry operates. Look at all the food ads. They show how amazing the aroma is, and then they show the actor eating the food. What does aroma have to do with hunger?
Do not add entertainment to eating. This is a pandemic. People either want to watch television or mobile, read a book or a newspaper or talk while eating. All of the above indicate that the person eating food has a habit of eating but is not particularly hungry.
Finally, avoid all ready-to-eat packaged foods.
Is there anything else about your work that you’d like to share that we haven’t covered?
Through my work of Nadi Pariksha (Ayurvedic method of investigation by reading the pulse), I realised that the root cause of almost all ailments lies in how we feel, process our feelings, and judge people and situations. My thoughts went towards correcting how we think, feel, and judge. That is how Agar Meditation was conceived. The name Agar was chosen based on the Acquilaria tree species, which is called Agar. This is a fragrant wood that exhibits self-healing properties. Like Agar, our bodies also exhibit self-healing every night. When we meditate, we stop interfering with the body and begin observing all the happenings. This is the basis of healing. Agar meditation is all about paying more attention and allowing healing to happen.
I conduct weekly online meditation focusing on forgiveness, gratitude, self-love, self-worth, rising above the mind, resolving unresolved past emotions and allowing the Self to manifest whatever is appropriate for us. We have over six hundred members. About five per cent are active, while another fifteen per cent listen to the meditation recordings. We put up the recordings on our website, agarhealing.com, so that people who are looking for help but are too shy to ask can discreetly listen to the audio and benefit from it.
To learn more about Dr. Mahesh’s work, you can visit Nadichikitsa.com, ncias.org, preventioniscare.com, and agarhealing.com
