My Father, Kameshwar Mishra,Vaidya and Baba…

My Father, Kameshwar Mishra, Vaidya and Baba…

By Vaidya Ramakant Mishra

June 14, 2012

I have memories of my father as a very hard core disciplined Brahmin. From as far as I can remember in my childhood, there were more rules to follow than liberty to do as I pleased. I was born in a small village in Bihar where everybody knew everybody else. And everybody knew that according to my Jyotish chart (Indian/Vedic horoscope), I was to be the future Vaidya of the SVA Mishra lineage. This fact added yet another level of restrictions. There were so many boundaries to maintain. As a father he always put me through very difficult paths, he made me follow the austere daily routine of a rishi living in an ashram. Just study.

And do tapas.

In 1974, after completing my GAMS degree (Graduate of Ayurvedic Medicine and Surgery), I came home thinking: “Now I have a degree and the license to practice. I am free to leave my village and move out into a big city to establish my independent ayurvedic medical practice.” It is at this point that he revealed his plan to me. He said: “Now the time has come for you to study and intern with me for the next 7 years.” I was totally shocked!

How could he say that? I had the highest degree in Ayurveda from the recognized University of Bihar. There was no way I was lingering another moment in the village, with him. I opposed the idea. I thought that 7 years with him would be a waste of my time and energy. But he was firm in his decision. So I suggested he test me out. If I failed his test then I would be his intern for 7 years. Otherwise I would be free to go.

Today, I am very happy to say that I failed his test. Back then, I thought he could not administer me any test I would fail. I was confident that I knew all there was to be known in Ayurveda, I had not only earned my license through hard work and extensive exams, but I had even interned and gained ©Adishakti LLC, 2012. The information contained herein is for educational purposes only. It has not been evaluated by the FDA. It is not intended to be used to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any medical condition.

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experience in hospitals in western medical protocols with leading medical doctors! I had definitely exceeded my father’s small-village-ayurvedic practice. But he was not dettered.

In Ayurveda, everything can be used as medicine, even toxic substances from the plant kingdom. The trick, however, is to know how to process or de-toxify these toxic substances, to purify them, so as to make them safe enough for intake without compromising their effectiveness for healing. So that’s what he wanted to test me on?! He asked me to detoxify and prepare 2 plants considered lethally toxic in their natural state, yet also known to be extremely healing when prepared and processed with the proper protocol.

That was not a big deal. I immediately set upon the processing of these plants. I not only had the knowledge of my years in college but I also remembered all that he had taught me while growing up.

The detox process took a few days as per the protocol, and I proudly presented the finished mixture to him once I was done. He examined it for color, texture, aroma. He looked pleased. So I had won? I was free? Free to leave and be finally independent… “But,” he said, “there is one more final step that would confirm the success of your preparation,” and he readied himself to drink the mixture… Just then I saw my dreams shatter in an instant as I rushed to stop him… “No!” I said, “No! you cannot drink it!”

“But why?” he said, “it is not for you!” I almost yelled. He paused and said, “Have you not followed all the steps in detoxifying it? Have you not used the full protocol? It should be an amrit or life-endowing mixture by this point? What harm could it have?”

He could not, should not drink it! What if I had not really prepared the mixture right? What if I had not filtered it properly? What if there were some toxic residues? What if who-knows-what had happened due to temperature variations… No, no, no! I could not take the risk of letting him drink poison… And then, it dawned on me and I sadly yielded to the realization: no, I was not ready… it was not yet time for me to leave…

I could not go and start my own practice just yet… I needed him to give me that confidence that only comes ©Adishakti LLC, 2012. The information contained herein is for educational purposes only. It has not been evaluated by the FDA. It is not intended to be used to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any medical condition.

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from actually practicing the knowledge one has intellectually acquired. I needed to practice the ayurvedic knowledge with actual patients under the guidance of an experienced and expert healer such as himself… My father stood there smiling silently, knowing I had finally understood what he had been trying to tell me all along…

And this marked the beginning of the best 7 years of my life. Why the best?

Simply because after having studied under the best professors in college, after having acquired and accumulated the gyan or wisdom of the ayurvedic shastras or texts, I was now given the opportunity to do repeated practice under an ayurvedic guru, an excellent teacher, so that I could acquire the siddhi or active experiential powers of confidence in action. He was giving me gyan siddhi.

As I think back on those days, there are some powerful memories that awaken the dormant love for him in my heart, but I also acknowledge all the lineage gifts he gave me, in-depth knowledge I never suspected he had. He completed my education by turning me into a SVA practitioner, a healer of the ancient Shaka Vansiya Ayurveda lineage transmitted from father to son, and daughter as well, for hundreds of generations. After 7 years at his feet, when I finally came to understand his greatness as a healer and not just his compassion as a father, I did not want to leave. That’s when he said it was time for me to go. I pleaded to be allowed to stay there with him, for his knowledge was endless, and I was far from having mastered even a small portion of it. But he was insistent that it was time for me. Time to go establish my practice in a big city, as I had wanted to years ago. But he always made sure to remind me that India was not my final destination, that I would have to go further away, but I was not ready to understand or accept such a prediction at that point.

Connecting me to the living wisdom and tradition of our forefathers that has been maintained and practiced generation after generation, he blessed me with great healing knowledge and practical tools. Here are some of the gifts I am indebted to him for.

9 Layers in the Pulse and all the Gaps in between too: A unique SVA lineage way of evaluating/reading the pulse which goes beyond scanning the 7 dhatus, and travels from the physical body to the mental sheath, and from the mental to the final vibrational/spiritual layer. ©Adishakti LLC, 2012. The information contained herein is for educational purposes only. It has not been evaluated by the FDA. It is not intended to be used to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any medical condition.

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When he taught me this pulse technique, I was amazed that during my GAMS years, I had never come across anything like it, nobody had laid any emphasis on the importance of the gaps or sandhi-s in between all the 9 tissue layers, not to mention that no one even considered there to be 9 tissues or layers – the usual pulse reading stops at 7 dhatus. A whole new world opened up before my fingertips when I started to practice the SVA pulse reading, that was true gyan siddhi. Through it, I have been able to isolate so many imbalances that would have otherwise been very difficult to detect in their early stages, just on time to be able to correct them before they turn into greater chronic imbalances.

Hetu and Tri-Sutra Ayurveda Throughout the 7 years I interned with him, he put Total emphasis on TriSutra Ayurveda. Tri-Sutra Ayurveda explains that the primary step for healing has to come through understanding the hetu, the etiological or root factor. Only after determining the hetu can a real practice kick in, only then can the six stages of pathogenesis, the samprapti “shad kriya kal” and samprapti chakra (circle of pathogenesis) be understood and used to determine the final healing. Because once the hetu has been determined, shad kriya kal based symptoms isolated, and samprapti chakra based pathogenesis identified, then treatment(s) can be effective. Before getting to go over these things with him, I was already familiar with these tough words, thinking that they are good only for passing the exams! That it was otherwise very hard to implement them in day-to-day practice. But my father’s expertise in explaining the tough sidhantas or principles of Ayurveda in the most easy, down to earth, day-to-day analogies made me practice these siddhanta-s successfully in each and every patient. Not only that, but he also gave me the confidence to teach other experts to use these successfully, such as all the medical and chiropractic doctors who currently work with me in the USA: Dr Marianne Teitelbaum, Dr Douglas Beech, Dr Lisa Raskin, Dr Sandra Brown, Dr Kimberly Hoffman, Dr Mark Vinick, to name a few.

©Adishakti LLC, 2012. The information contained herein is for educational purposes only. It has not been evaluated by the FDA. It is not intended to be used to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any medical condition.

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EMF The knowledge my father gave me was not static. It was alive and dynamic.

He instilled in me a living wisdom that I could use to address new unknown situations resulting in disease. He gave me a structured path to walk on, where I could identify new hetu-s in contemporary society, like EMF pollution, and still be able to apply the age-old healing precepts. In 1992, after I had joined Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s team of ayurvedic experts and had left India to conduct research in London, I remember coming across a pulse reading that was puzzling to me. I called my father from London to discuss the disturbed gaps in the pulse of a client. I could not understand the reading I was getting, and I could certainly not identify the hetu. My father was in Ranchi, India, at that point. He said: “Try to find out, based on Tri-Sutra Ayurveda, see what vibrational disturbing hetu or factor is in London that was not in our villages in India?”After meditating on that, I knew: it was electricity. I called him back and he reminded me about a specific pulse reading we had done together for a victim of lightning in my village. He directed me to read the chapters of the shastra-s where EMF and electricity are mentioned, and sure enough it was all there. Once I had identified the etiological factor or root cause, I was able to give the proper recommendations to that client so that he could get help in correcting his symptomatic imbalances. The EMF knowledge he imparted me with has helped me help hundreds who have developed unexplainable symptoms from extensive usage of their computers, or cell-phones, or even their TV sets.

©Adishakti LLC, 2012. The information contained herein is for educational purposes only. It has not been evaluated by the FDA. It is not intended to be used to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any medical condition.

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The Brain of the Brain Resides in the Gut! It’s been already 35 years when I first heard and understood the puzzling statement that “the brain of the brain resides in the gut!” My father always paid extra attention to the health of the gut, explaining how essential it was for overall health, particularly the brain.

He explained the role of the yogini-s or what we nowadays understand to be the pro-biotic bacteria that populate our gut and help in the necessary absorption of essential nutrients and minerals. He explained to me the medhya effect of yogini-s, and how their work is necessary for nourishing the brain. Now, decades later, I am moved to see how science is confirming, one by one, all his precepts.

Getting to Know the Plant Kingdom Experientially My father had a very unique way of teaching me about herbs, plants, spices. I was born in a village called “Baidyachak” – small village of vaidyas but due to political circumstances, my father had to move our family from that village to another one called Hansdiha, currently located in the state of Jharkand. That name means “land of forests”. Whenever we would be discussing the ©Adishakti LLC, 2012. The information contained herein is for educational purposes only. It has not been evaluated by the FDA. It is not intended to be used to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any medical condition.

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sutra of a specific herbs or plant, he would take me to the forest, make me find the plant, touch it, smell it, examine its stem and parts, if it was a tree he would make me hug the tree, if it was a fruit he would make me keep the fruit in the palm of my hand, if it was a root he would ask m chew the roots; or smell the flowers, and only then we would chant the sutras. After that, we would carry the plants with us to make medicine for the patients together.

From the subtle vibrational experience to the physical application and their impact on healing people, it was all so very amazing! The memories are still so vivid in my mind, the whole plant kingdom is animated when I discuss them through any sutras…

Food is Medicine!

He taught me that food is the primary medicine in life; that food and lifestyle are the first places to look to find hetu or the root cause of disease; he taught me that by telling people to avoid eating specific foods or specific preparations, bad combinations of food or bad preparations, it was possible to win the war against the most lethal of diseases. I remember how one young high-school teacher had come to see us with a very bad autoimmune skin disease, flaring bleeding painful eczema. My dad and I were trying to figure out the hetu or etiological factor. We asked him if he was consuming any milk in his diet, he said he was, and then added: “But I don’t like sugar in my milk, so I mix in salt instead! I’ve been doing this for the past 5 years.” Then we knew: Ayurveda explains that this is the biggest virudh ahar – combination of contradictory food items - which can create sever chronic skin problems. Based on this practical experience with him, I was able to heal another acute case of eczema, a young woman in her early thirties who had been to every doctor and used every remedy without results. She had been following my SVA diet, and was able to control the eczema, but whenever she traveled abroad to Europe for work, her eczema would flare up again. After questioning her about her diet, we found out she was consuming milk with French baguettes that contained yeast and salt. When she stopped that breakfast, her eczema calmed down. After staying on the SVA diet for several years now, her eczema has been completely healed.

Marma-s or the Body’s Vital Energy Points ©Adishakti LLC, 2012. The information contained herein is for educational purposes only. It has not been evaluated by the FDA. It is not intended to be used to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any medical condition.

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I studied about the science of marma in my ayurvedic college. It was part of the curriculum. The primary thing we were taught was to heed severe injury or death in case any of the 107 marma points were physically damaged due to surgery, or an accident, or by trauma. We were taught to identify symptoms, and some management protocols. But when my father started to teach me about marma, it was way above and beyond any of the things I had studied in college. He went into such depth I would have never suspected. In addition, he taught me about spinal marma points and divulged to me protocols for treatment through the spine that I have never encountered anywhere else ever. I understood that my lineage, the SVA lineage, had preserved a very special body of knowledge relating to healing through marma points on the spine. The doctors who have studied with me and currently practice SVA in addition to their medical practice are performing miracles through the SVA Marma™ protocols, particularly the spinal protocols. I have only started to slowly unfold the knowledge he imparted me with.

These are just some of the highlights of my 7 years at his feet. My father was an extremely successful Vaidya and I got to appreciate that when I interned with him, because after having had some knowledge myself I could see how deftly he would handle all kinds of cases. He used to see 30-40 patients a day, without missing his daily Brahmin routine of waking up at 4am, doing morning meditation/prayer, copious lunch around 11:30am and a 2 hour break/nap after lunch.

My father was also known for his compassion. Despite being a devout Hindu, he was totally secular when it came to his practice. He was a social visionary when it came to helping people. He extended his helping hand regardless of cast or creed.

During his healing sessions, he liked to resolve disputes between wife and husband, he sought to create trust and love between brothers, between fathers and sons, supporting the nurturing relationship between relatives and ©Adishakti LLC, 2012. The information contained herein is for educational purposes only. It has not been evaluated by the FDA. It is not intended to be used to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any medical condition.

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neighbors. He was a peace-maker. He would look into the dynamics of relationships, trying to find the hetu or etiological factors for disease. One older gentleman, very literate at heart, had a recurring sleep problem. At night, when he was about to go to bed, his heart would start to pound so hard he would not able to sleep. This had been going on for several weeks now and it was taking a toll on him. He came to see us and I was proudly ready to prescribe hridya somagenic (heart supporting and nurturing) herbs and diet. But he stopped me and said: “Wait a minute, how can you do that? We have to determine the hetu first.” My father engaged him in conversation, asking him all kinds of questions, and sure enough he isolated the hetu: his next door neighbor and him did not get along at all, they had problems and unresolved issues. The client had been hurt by him and he harbored so much dwesha or animosity that those feelings were creating some emotional toxins in the daytime and at nighttime, because of those accumulated toxins, his physiology was not able to settle into restorative sleep, his heart would pound, his mind would race! This patient received no herbs or medicine at all from my father for his condition. He already had a good diet, and kept a good routine by going to bed on time. Instead, his only recommendation was to go and talk to his neighbor and befriend him, and to do this at whatever cost. Otherwise, nothing would help him. It is because of such cases, of such social interventions, that my father, Vaidya Kameshar, came to be known as a baba, a spiritual guardian or leader in our village and neighboring villages as well.

In 1993, when he left his body and I was performing his final rituals, thousands came to attend his funeral. From all over our area near and far, from all religious backgrounds, all castes, rich and poor alike, came to bid farewell to their Baba, to him who had guided them, healed them, helped them. In my village, nowadays, he is still fondly remembered as The Baba.

©Adishakti LLC, 2012. The information contained herein is for educational purposes only. It has not been evaluated by the FDA. It is not intended to be used to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any medical condition.

1.888.9SHAKTI, www.vaidyamishra.com; 1.888.3.CHANDI, www.chandika.com

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