BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: We have a special report today on the alternative healing tradition called ayurveda. It's a holistic, Indian approach to health, evolved from ancient Hindu scriptures and based on bringing into balance, mind, body, and spirit. Like acupuncture and various herbal remedies, ayurveda is increasingly popular in the U.S. It's also controversial. Some swear by it, some don't, and it remains a mystery to Western science. Lucky Severson reports from an ayurvedic retreat center in Brewster, New York.

LUCKY SEVERSON: This treatment of dripping oil onto what some call the "third eye" may seem odd to many Americans, but millions of people around the world believe it is a remedy for stress. It's prescribed by an ancient Hindu spiritual science known as ayurveda, and its gaining acceptance in the U.S. for its approach to healing not only the body, but a person's mind and spirit as well. Dr. Scott Gerson is both a U.S.-trained medical doctor and an accredited physician of ayurvedic medicine.

Dr. SCOTT GERSON (Director of Clinical Services, The National Institute of Ayurvedic Medicine): Ayurveda through its natural methods of purification and rebalancing can oftentimes promote the healing response in the human physiology. We sometimes can, with time, see diseases that were felt to be incurable, we can see them resolve.

SEVERSON: Dr. Monica Myklebust, an expert on integrating Western medicine and Eastern holistic treatments says Western medicine has a fundamentally different concept of illness and health.

Dr. MONICA MYKLEBUST (Integrative Medicine Consultant): Many people in Western medicine would say that health is defined as the absence of disease, whereas if you look at traditional Chinese medicine or ayurvedic medicine, the definition of health would involve balance, and that balance would involve spiritual well-being.

SEVERSON: Critics argue that ayurvedic treatments are largely unstudied, and in the view of health science professor William London, bizarre. He's a consumer health specialist at California State University, Los Angeles.

Professor WILLIAM LONDON (College of Health and Human Services, California State University, Los Angeles): They involve invoking various kinds of mysterious forces -- not in any way measurable or reliably can be observed. They call them "doshas."

SEVERSON: These doshas are described by Dr. Gerson as each individual's bioenergies that can help in diagnosis and treatment.

Dr. GERSON: So the energies are known as vata, pittah and kapha, and they roughly correspond to the air energy, the fire energy, and the water energy that exists in nature, meaning that the very same energies that we can observe to be operating around us in nature are operating simultaneously within us.

SEVERSON: So Dr. Gerson applies both his medical and ayurveda training to assess the patient's physical, mental, and spiritual health. He then fashions a treatment for the whole person. Treatments can include lifestyle changes, exercise, diet, and herbal remedies.

Mark Laser is a chemical engineering professor at Dartmouth who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis 11 years ago, when he was still running marathons. He turned to Dr. Gerson after weighing the potentially dangerous side effects of undergoing chemotherapy in a clinical trial.

MARK LASER (Ayurvedic Patient): Ayurveda is the first thing that I've found that really sort of encompasses everything, every angle that I've been looking at. Perhaps the biggest of all is the spiritual component, you know, thinking about the mind-body connection, and Scott Gerson is the first person to really offer me hope that, you know, not only can I sort of maintain, but I can actually get better.

Dr. MYKLEBUST: One of the differences between ayurvedic medicine and our dominant paradigm of medicine in the West is this acknowledgment of spirit as part of who we are, and that our spiritual side needs to be in balance with the physical, the emotional, and the mental.

Dr. GERSON: Sometimes a person is suffering from a condition and it's being contributed to by certain types of behavioral habits that have formed, such as stealing or greed or envy. And, you know, I have seen these types of spiritual missteps actually promote a disease in a person.

SEVERSON: Mark Laser's disease is progressive, which means it will likely get worse. But he says he has found relief with some of ayurveda's yoga positions.

Mr. LASER: I think that the biggest thing that it has done is help me to become more comfortable with myself. Now I do have moments where I feel like I'm making physical progress, but obviously I still have a long way to go. I mean, I can't say that I'm markedly better from a physical symptoms standpoint.

SEVERSON: Gillian Bell and other patients are spending an intensive weekend under the care of Dr. Gerson. She teaches yoga to inner-city school kids in rough neighborhoods and says she needs to replenish herself.

GILLIAN BELL (Ayurvedic Patient): This is one of the purest methods of detoxification that I know, so this is a very important place for me to be right now.

SEVERSON: She says the attention and treatment she gets here goes far beyond what a Western doctor could offer.

Ms. BELL: I can have a conversation with Dr. Gerson, and the next day he'll bring it back to me and how it relates to my physical and my mental health. I need that. I need somebody who's going to pay that kind of attention to me and not just my symptoms and write me a prescription.

SEVERSON: Unlike many Western doctors, Gerson begins each day with the traditional puja or prayer ceremony for the good health of his patients. His patients receive an intense two-hour, four-hand massage.

Ms. BELL: When you have two people working on your body, the body can't hide stress.

SEVERSON: And then there is the oil treatment.

Dr. MYKLEBUST: I have experienced it, and I know it's incredibly relaxing. It's poured on the "third eye," which is considered to be an energy center within the body and has spiritual significance.

SEVERSON: Purification and detoxification are important parts of ayurvedic medicine, and parts Professor London finds troubling.

Prof. LONDON: I think there's psychological harm in leading people to believe that their bodies are riddled with poisons that somehow you need to have removed through some kind of fasting process or process where enemas or colonics -- that makes absolutely no sense in terms of what we know in modern physiology.

SEVERSON: Ayurveda treatment includes specially tailored meals of organic vegetables and herbs such as turmeric, ginger, and coriander, and herbal concoctions.

Prof. LONDON: If you are going to be marketing something with claims that something will have a particular kind of benefit for somebody, what I think is arrogant is to do so without being able to provide evidence that supports the claims.

SEVERSON (to Dr. Gerson): What do you say to the critics, and you know there are critics out there, who say it doesn't work?

Dr. GERSON: We have a very old tradition dating back at least 3,500 yeas to show that the outcome of ayurveda in many cases is positive. I'm satisfied that I've seen ayurveda work, although I can't explain it sometimes to my rational mind.

SEVERSON: Ayurvedic medicine may be new and not studied nearly enough to suit many Western doctors, but in India it has been a central part of the medical system for thousands of years. Dr. Gerson spent over five years training in India and is critical of the lack of training of many ayurvedica practitioners in the West.

Dr. GERSON: There are many people throughout the United States and Western Europe who are performing ayurveda in a very incomplete and potentially harmful way. I sometimes see some of these disasters because they walk through my doors for help.

SEVERSON: It has not cured Mark Laser, but he thinks it has helped him in the healing process, peeling away his intense competitiveness and helping him to become a better person.

Mr. LASER: If I hadn't gotten the disease, I'd still be, you know, type A, competitive, you know, probably working on Wall Street or something, trying to make millions of dollars. I mean, but I don't want to be that person. You know, I think life is much more than that.



SEVERSON: The ayurvedic approach to healing will likely be more available as time goes by. One-third of medical schools in the U.S. are now integrating various holistic treatments into their training programs.

For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, I'm Lucky Severson in New York.

ABERNETHY: According to the Harvard Medical School, a third of all Americans seek out, at least occasionally, ayurveda, acupuncture, or herbal remedies -- some form of alternative medicine.