Press it

The perfect way to perfect health is at your finger tips:

Title: Health in your hands

Author: Devendra Vora M D

Translated by Yasapala Karunasinghe

by Mallika Wanigasundara

If you feel pain-press it out. This in a nutshell is what Acupressure is about. You have prevention, diagnosis and the cure of the disease at your fingertips. You can achieve all this by pressing certain designated spots on your palms and the soles of your feet with your fingertips and by yourself, according to Dr. Devendra Vora. He calls it a simple way to perfect health, based on Acupressure, Refelxology and natural therapy.

What you would need if you care to seek, what seems to me, miracle cures is patience, some practical skill and persistence. And just imagine all you need are your very own fingertips or a blunt instrument like an unpointed pencil.

You do not have to fly before you can walk; so you do not have to get too ambitious about curing serious illnesses. You could concentrate on common ailments like colds and coughs, sinusitis, catarrh, diarrhoea, acidity, a pain here and a pain there, migraine, falling hair, sleeplessness or even hysteria.

The book now translated into Sinhala by Yasapala Karunasinghe shows the strange process which does not even take too much, time-ten minutes at the most. But then, 30/40 years ago we found acupuncture strange till James Reston, the American journalist underwent an operation in China under acupuncture anaesthesia.

We have no difficulty now in believing that there are meridians running along the body and that they are the path of bio-electricity. Dr. Vora claims many successes, in both diagnosis and cures with pressure on spots which are related to corresponding organs, glands and parts of the body.

Such as the nerves, the neck, the heart, the bladder, the eye, the ear, the pituitary or lymph glands, the thyroid, the spleen, the pancreas, the gall bladder, the hip, the knee, the lungs and thymus, the spine, and many more and especially the solar plexus.

The book is amply illustrated with pictures of the palms and the soles of the feet showing the points which are connected with particular parts of the body and are themselves in the path of the meridians which carry the bio-electricity.

The points form a kind of switchboard; pressure switches on the electricity. If there is something wrong with a corresponding part or organ of the body when you press the connected point there is pain below or around it says Dr. Vora.

The first part of the book gives a very imaginative description of the physiology of the body, comparing it to a modern air-conditioned factory, with an atomic reactor, a super computer, a good communication system - all of which work and co-ordinate automatically. This complex phenomena you can reach with your fingertips, says Dr. Vora.

The body becomes listless, sick when the power supply, energy, electricity, 'pran' life current, call it what you may falls or fails. Dr. Vora describes how the body can be recharged. He talks about 'Kundalini' (stored energy known to practitioners of yoga).

When this stored energy is activated with pressure it illuminates the microchips of nature's computer, the brain and re-activates 2.2 to 3.3 billion cells which stimulate the body and the mental processes.

And aging, the only certainty after death too is explained by Dr. Vora. According to him when the electricity dries up the cells too dry up and become brainsand, further slowing the flow of electricity and consequently the functions of the body. This then is the beginning of the aging process.

In this therapy the solar plexus is very important. This controlling centre for all the organs below the diaphragm (a concept unknown to other therapies except Ayurveda) has to be given pressure in order to check disturbances in these organs.

Dr. Vora tells you how you could check whether the solar plexus has shifted, and is causing trouble in the bodily system. He tells you how you can bring it back to normal order.

Among the unusual procedures, Dr. Vora says that just by rolling your feet on a foot roller, you could activate a sluggish digestive system. Or, you could correct constipation by rubbing the middle of your chin. I would not advise you to try any of this until you read the original or the translation of the book.

What I found most informative was his interpretation of the language of the body - pains, itching, loss of appetite, listlessness etc. Dr. Vora explains the misdemeanours of the body in terms of this therapy.

There are lots of information on nature cures, yoga, common and serious illnesses, childcare, problems of men and women, on how to keep diseases away and the secret, unadmitted hope of all women and most men - how to slow down old age and maintain youthfulness.