Magic on their fingertips: Sidha, an alternate healing therapy
Twenty-four-year-old S. Ramya was suffering from a swollen knee due to a torn ligament. As the pain became unbearable, she decided to opt for nadi vaidyam, an ancient Indian method of pain relief. Five days later, she was back to her routine life.
Most people who visit Sathya Sindhuja’s Chakrasiddh at Kapra lake have tried all other alternatives without results. They opt for Sidha as just another option, but are amazed when they start living normal lives within a few weeks.
Take the case of 63-year-old M. Laxmi who suffered from a severe neurological disorder due to which her head was not stable and she suffered from continuous trembling. She was not able to sit, walk or even sleep due to the irregular and continuous trembling. In the last one year, she had consulted 11 doctors but nothing had helped. At last she opted for Sidha treatment and is now able to walk, sit and move. While the trembling still exists, it is much better now.
Unfortunately, Sidha, an alternative therapy under the AYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga, Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy) department, is not very popular as there are very few practitioners of the ‘science’. And like every alternate therapy of medicine, it is usually resorted to when modern medicines fail.
For the layman, Sidha is nadi vaidyam and marma chikitsa, where nadis are channels or energy pathways in the body that propagate pranic current throughout the body. There are 72,000 such key energy pathways with access on the surface of the skin. These pathways are connected to powerful energy points or marmani, located at sites richly supplied by nerves, which are sensitive to stimuli like touch and pressure.
A trained Sidha master knows these points and can apply the right amount of pressure in the right places to alleviate pain.
Sindhuja explains, “I learnt Sidha from my grandmother when I was four years old and I completed learning by the time I was 12. Since the last 23 years, I have been using this treatment to relieve people of pain. It is good for arthritis, sciatica, spinal problems like spondylitis, lower back pain, knee problems, bone dislocation, all types of joint pains and etc. The knowledge of right pressure points is important. Most of these problems can be treated in two weeks. We take an X-ray before and after the treatment to show the difference. No medicine is used in this treatment, hence there are no side effects.” She also treats patients for migraine, poliomyelitis, paralysis, cerebral palsy and many other health disorders.
Sindhuja is helped by her colleagues Uma Reddy, Rohini Sudhakar, Padmaja Srinivas and Ujwala Kondepudi who counsel patients on simple lifestyle modifications to ensure that there are no recurrences.
The treatment has a holistic approach as it not only cures the body but also relaxes the mind and rejuvenates the soul. Hence the treatment demands a strict protocol in terms of cleanliness and also maintaining discipline while the process of treatment is on. These combinations help the body heal faster and also give a positive outlook, which is an important part of the treatment.