Healer, priest, confessor, chef

A soldier once went to Ayurveda practitioner Jacob Gnailan, a native of Kerala, India, to find a cure for his insomnia and lack of zest for life and ended up confessing a 40-year-old sin.

You see, this Ayurveda doctor is also a Catholic priest.

That’s what he means when he emphasizes that he treats the root cause of an ailment, not the symptom. In this case, the symptom was the patient’s insomnia and his inability to live his life fully, but the root cause was a sin he had committed 40 years ago and was dying to confess to a priest for the past five years.  

There is no conflict in his practice as a Catholic priest and Ayurveda practitioner, he says, hence no need to reconcile the two. Fr. Jacob even started his Ayurveda practice when he was ordained a priest in 1971 in India. He would celebrate Mass in his church, then go to his office where, waiting there, were patients with all kinds of ailments   snakebite was his specialty and he cured 300 cases in India. 

Ayurveda, according to Fr. Jacob, predates organized religion, predates even Christ. It is a 5,000-year-old medical practice originating in Kerala, India, a country where there are more Ayurvedic clinics than allopathic or western medicine clinics.

Fr. Jacob has been in the Philippines since 1984. He has no parish now but his clinic Panchakarma Center and Ayurveda Clinic is filled with patients suffering from diseases such as diabetes, insomnia, stress-related disorders, heart ailments, cancer.

Sometimes, people come to him with hardly a real physical disease but their spirits are broken, their mental states worn-out.

“Christ was not sitting and praying in a chair he was going around and healing everybody,” he points out. “The philosophy of Ayurveda is that man is not just a body but a spiritual being with an animal body. The body can get sick, the mind can get sick, the spirit can get sick, and these are interconnected. When one is affected, the other parts are affected as well. Ayurveda does not treat the symptom. If you have a headache or stomach pain, we are not treating that the pain is a symptom of something else. If you give a pain reliever, how can it be corrected? The pain may be released for a while but it will come back again. You have to see the root cause and treat that.”

“Man is composed of three principles,” he says. In Ayurvedic philosophy, the three dynamic forces or interactions are called doshas, which means “that which changes.” The doshas move in balance, one with the others. They are Vata, Pitta and Kapha.

According to the various websites on Ayurveda, “Vata governs breathing, blinking of the eyelids, movements in the muscles and tissues, pulsations in the heart, all expansion and contraction, the movements of cytoplasm and the cell membranes, and the movement of the single impulses in nerve cells. Vata also governs such feelings and emotions as freshness, nervousness, fear, anxiety, pain, tremors, and spasms. The primary seat or location of the Vata in the body is the colon. It also resides in the hips, thighs, ears, bones, large intestine, pelvic cavity, and skin. It is related to the touch sensation.

“Pitta governs digestion, absorption, assimilation, nutrition, metabolism, body temperature, skin coloration, the luster of the eyes, intelligence, and understanding. Psychologically, Pitta arouses anger, hate, and jealousy. The small intestine, stomach, sweat glands, blood, fat, eyes, and skin are the seats of Pitta.

“Kapha is responsible physiologically for biological strength and natural tissue resistance in the body. Kapha lubricates the joints; provides moisture to the skin; helps to heal wounds; fills the spaces in the body; gives biological strength, vigor and stability; supports memory retention; gives energy to the heart and lungs, and maintains immunity. Kapha is present in the chest, throat, head, sinuses, nose, mouth, stomach, joints, cytoplasm, plasma, and in the liquid secretions of the body such as mucus. Psychologically, Kapha is responsible for the emotions of attachment, greed, and long-standing envy.”

Fr. Jacob says, “Getting to know a person’s background and lifestyle helps us recommend the most fitting healing process,” he said. “Let’s say you come from a family of diabetics or a family of hypertensive. Even if you are not, you are prone to being a diabetic or a hypertensive. By an extensive consultation, Ayurveda becomes preventive as we give medicine (90 percent of which are herbal) that helps you avoid those ailments.”

Fr. Jacob believes that the method can serve as an inexpensive “healthcare program” for Filipinos. “People generally want everything in an instant, from instant food to instant coffee everything must be ‘instant,’ and that is not healthy. People should think of the right thing to do, the right things to eat and they will live a long and healthy life. Here in Ayurveda we will teach them all about that kind of healthcare.”

In his clinic in Mandaluyong, Fr. Jacob has seen it all well, not as much as he had seen in his practice in Kerala, for sure, where spiritual possessions and snakebites were as common as a headache. And where unmarried ladies looking for partners sought him out for a “cure.”

Rabies, according to Fr. Jacob, is one ailment that he cannot treat because it is not as locatable as the poison of a snake bite. Everything else including HIV and AH1N1 can be healed, depending on the stage of the illness and provided that the patient faithfully follows the prescribed process. “HIV is actually a problem of the immune system. The immune system is where the virus hits. So the main principle of Ayurveda is to boost the immune system.”

He has also treated a 23-year-old man with hypertension, cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy, insomniacs, people with depression, people who have had broken bones and dislocated joints, people with digestive problems, and many others. He admits that there are also patients he wasn’t able to cure.

Do you have to believe in Ayurveda to be healed? “Belief is an important factor for any healing. According to Ayurveda, man has the healing power in himself. Unfortunately, because of our lifestyles, the healing power in the body can close or be diminished. Our immune system is weak, but we can improve that.”

Is it harder to heal a person with a physical problem or a spiritual problem? “It depends on the faith of the person and his physical condition. One may be chronically sick physically, or mentally sick, that’s why I cannot tell you how long treatments last. spiritual condition. The soldier who could not function in his daily duties, with his confession, he ‘released’ what was nagging in his mind and he became happy and healthier.”

Fr. Jacob clarifies that “people who are taking medicines for a long time, we are not stopping them if they are dependent on it like for their hypertention or diabetes. We also give them medicines and when they are improving, we lessen their allopathic medicine and then stop it. And then we stop their Ayurvedic medicine when they are healed.”

He says that yoga helps a lot in the treatment. “Yoga in a real sense is a step by step practice to reach the state of perfect happiness.”

Is that at all possible in this world? “It is possible, but it’s not easy. One can experience perfect happiness when one is alive that is the teaching of yoga philosophy and Christ.” 

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Fr. Jacob Gnailan’s Panchakatma Center and Ayurveda Clinic is located at 613-B Lee St., Mandaluyong City. Call 717-2824.