Maharishi Vedic Approach to Health
[5] Maharishi Ayur-Veda has been variously characterized as emerging from, and consistently reflecting, the Advaita Vedanta school of Hindu philosophy, representing the entirety of the ayurvedic tradition.
[6][7] A 1991 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found that promoters of MVAH failed to disclose financial incentives when they submitted a letter for publication and that their marketing practices were misleading.
Sharma says that "Vedic thought discusses a unified field of pure, non-material intelligence and consciousness whose modes of vibration manifest as the material universe."
[12][13] In Alternative Medicine and Ethics, Stephen Barrett describes 20 components to Maharishi Ayurveda: The full range of the Maharishi Ayur-Veda program 'for creating healthy individuals and a disease free society' has 20 components: development of higher states of consciousness through advanced meditation techniques, use of primordial sounds, correction of the "mistake of the intellect', strengthening of the emotions, vedic structuring of language, music therapy, enlivening of the senses, pulse diagnosis, psychophysiological integration, neuromuscular integration, neurorespiratory integration, purification (to remove 'impurities due to faulty diet or behavioral patterns'), dietary measures, herbal food supplements, other herbal preparations, daily behavioral routines, prediction of future imbalances, religious ceremonies, nourishing the environment and promoting world health and peace.
[28] Based on "imbalances", recommendations related to herbal preparations,[29] diet, daily and seasonal routines, exercise, and physiological purification are offered.
Ingredients include herbs such as white musali, liquorice, giant potato, aswagandha, gum arabic tree, Indian asparagus, caper, aloe, Curculigo orchioides, amla, Tinospora cordifolia, simpleleaf chastetree and elephant creeper.
[43] A 2008 study by Robert B. Saper, published in JAMA,[44] found that one-fifth of 213 ayurvedic samples manufactured in either the U.S. or India and obtained via the Internet contained detectable levels of heavy metals such as arsenic, mercury or lead.
[60][61] Andrew Skolnick describes Maharishi Yagyas as Hindu ceremonies to appease the gods and beseech their help on behalf of afflicted followers that can cost tens of thousands of dollars, and which the patient neither takes part in nor witnesses.
[62] According to Skolnick, patients with serious illnesses often paid hundreds or thousands of dollars for gemstones prescribed by Maharishi Jyotish astrologers.
According to Rainer Picha, Minister of Health for the Global Country of World Peace, training in the therapeutic use of gemstones is conducted at the Maharishi European Research University (MERU) in Holland.
[66][67] A form of classical Indian music called Maharishi Gandharva Veda is purported to integrate and harmonize the cycles and rhythms of the listener's body.
[73][74] Listening to recitation in Sanskrit from a specific branch of the vedic literature that corresponds to the appropriate area of the body as determined by a MVAH expert.
The faculty and curriculum committee of the MAAA include: Stuart Rothenberg, Robert Schneider, Walter Moelk, Nancy Lonsdorf, Richard Averbach, Gary Kaplan, and Vaidya Manohar Palakurthi.
[83] The faculty includes Rainer Picha, Walter Mölk, Robert Keith Wallace, Roswitha Margarete Geelvink-Tradel, and Bob Apon.
[2] The knowledge and technologies of MVAH are based on the understanding that the order displayed throughout the entire universe, including within the human physiology, is governed by a fundamental underlying intelligence.
[88] As with traditional Ayurveda, Maharishi Ayur Veda describes material creation according to panchamahābhūtas theory, in which the five elements of earth, air, fire, water and ether combine to form three doṣas: vāta, pitta and kapha.
[93] The practices of Maharishi Ayur-Veda are said to be authentic, though Francis Zimmerman says that they are biased toward gentleness, avoiding violent or painful treatments that were historically part of ayurveda in early India.
[95] The principal difference between Maharishi Ayur-Veda and traditional Ayurveda is the emphasis on the role of consciousness and the use of Transcendental Meditation, as well as the highlighting of the need to express positive emotions and attuning one's life to the natural rhythms of the body.
[97] Tony Nader, called Maharajadhiraj Raja Ram, who is the Sovereign Ruler of the Global Country of World Peace, identifies this concept of "quantum healing" with the Maharishi's theories of Vedic Science.
MAV considers taste and quality to be central features in the classification of foods, and seasonal factors as crucial in determining nutritional needs.
Authors Smith and Wujastyk attribute the virtual disappearance of MAV as an influence in global Ayurveda to the following factors: (i) isolating and describing itself as being authentic, thereby inferring that other forms of Ayurveda are "disbarred from legitimacy"; (ii) raising "its prices stratospherically" for its medicines and treatments, which placed it beyond the means of all but "the most committed and enthusiastic (and wealthy) followers"; and (iii) "become stridently opposed to allopathic medicine".
[101] Author Frederick M. Smith writes that in the UK "the Maharishi organization had a clear marketing plan and a full-time public relations officer up until at least 1992.
"[102] In 1991, journalist Andrew Skolnick wrote that the TM movement's marketing of Maharishi Ayurveda was a "widespread pattern of misinformation, deception, and manipulation of lay and scientific news media.
[103] In October 1991, the Professional Conduct Committee of the British General Medical Council found Roger Chalmers, Dean of Medicine of the unrecognized Maharishi University of Natural Law, Mentmore and Leslie Davis, Dean of Physiology at that institution, guilty of "Serious Professional Misconduct" in connection with their use of Maharishi Ayur-Veda for the treatment of AIDS and HIV, and ordered them erased from the List of Registered Medical Practitioners.
[32] The article reported that Nader and David Orme-Johnson were criticized by the organizers of the Annual Meeting of the Society for Economic Botany, which was held at the University of Illinois in Chicago in June 1987.
Chopra and Sharma wrote that many of the criticisms they had received in letters to the editor were inflammatory and had depended heavily on emotional and unfounded charges, without sound scientific backing and few references.
[116][117] In response, two TM organizations then headed by Deepak Chopra sued Skolnick, JAMA's editor George Lundberg, and the AMA in 1992, seeking an injunction and $194 million in damages.
The suit alleged Skolnick's news report on TM's health care products and services was libelous and that it tortuously interfered with their business interests.
[124] In 1994, Jonie Flint sued Chopra, the Maharishi Ayur-Veda Health Center in Palo Alto California and Brihaspati Dev Triguna over her husband David's death from leukemia.
Two months following a visit to the center at which a primordial sound treatment was prescribed by Chopra, Triguna declared Flint cured of leukemia.
