On the 3rd of every month the area around the City’s upscale neighbourhood Anand Lok gets chock-a-block with people heading to one particular house.
Some seeking comfort from their splitting migraine while others barely able to walk due to frozen joints or back ache. Out of curiosity, Metrolife decided to venture inside this time round and found a venerable old gentleman lending a patient ear to his stream of visitors and providing them relief and comfort from their niggling health problems.
Meet Dr Ketan V Shah. Based in Bangalore, Dr Shah visits the City at the beginning of the new month and holds free acupressure camps during his routine two-day visit to Delhi. And to the surprise of many, he also treats and trains staff and prisoners of Tihar Jail regularly!
Referred to as the ‘messiah of acupressure’, Dr Shah was once a finance director with a private engineering firm before circumstances brought him to his true calling. “I got operated for appendicitis only to develop multiple problems post the surgery. The problems became severe and I tried everything from tantra to mantra and japa,” he laughs narrating his plight.
He soon discovered acupressure and was surprised to get “cured of all the pain within four weeks”. He later thought of relieving his friends from their headaches, cold, back pains and sundry other health problems. What started out as a hobby soon became a mission, a ‘healing pressure’ mission.
At a time when people are going back to their roots and looking favourably at alternative treatment therapies, this finance director was not the odd one out to do so. “When this stream of medicine gave amazing results, I went to Malaysia, Australia and Kazakhstan. Each place has different combinations of acupressure treatments and I combined them all into one holistic technique,” he says informing about the famous Russian therapies – oil pulling technique and honey spinal massage which he learnt in Kazakhstan.
It has been more than 20 years now and he has treated more than a lakh patients in 29 countries.
“I felt I was the privileged one to get side-effects from appendicitis surgery,” says Dr Shah who was approached by Vimla Mehra, Director General (Prisons) of Tihar Jail “to cure staff members as well as prisoners, about eight months back. We started with a limited number of patients but soon the jail inmates became enthusiastic and expressed their desire to learn.” Within no time, the prisoners started practising what they had learnt to treat their friends from minor health troubles like stomach ache, blood pressure, diabetes, etc.
“Today the prisoners who know acupressure are called ‘Chhota doctors’,” says Dr Shah with a sense of pride in being able to change the outlook of the jail inmates and the society at large towards the prisoners. “When an inmate is released and goes out in the society, people will hopefully look at him or her as a healer.”
From changing mindsets and bridging gaps to curing deadly diseases like cancer, he is proud of everything that the science of acupressure can do.
“And all this through a non-invasive therapy that can be learnt by anyone and can be used for self-medication, unlike acupuncture which requires professionals.
Acupressure is capable of curing diseases ranging from asthma to diabetes. But the sad part is that even though acupressure originated in India, it is not practised as widely as acupuncture,” he rues.
For details one can refer to his website: www.healingpressure.com.
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