Maharishi Ayurveda: A Journalist's Guide to the Ancient Healing System Maharishi Brought to the West

The consulting room at The Raj, a cream-colored building set on 200 acres of rolling farmland outside Fairfield, Iowa, smells faintly of sesame oil and cardamom. It is a Tuesday morning in October, and a practitioner trained in pulse diagnosis — nadi vigyan, a technique that involves reading subtle variations in the radial pulse — is pressing three fingers lightly against the wrist of a retired schoolteacher from Minneapolis. After about ninety seconds, the practitioner begins speaking, not about blood pressure or cholesterol, but about the patient’s digestive fire, the state of her tissues, and an imbalance she describes as excess Vata — too much of the principle governing movement and dryness in the body.

This is Maharishi Ayurveda in practice. Part medical consultation, part philosophical framework, part lifestyle overhaul. Depending on whom you ask, it is either one of the most comprehensive approaches to preventive health ever assembled, or an elaborate commercial enterprise wrapped in ancient terminology. The truth, as with most things in integrative medicine, falls somewhere between those poles.

An Old System with a Complicated Revival

Ayurveda, literally “the science of life” in Sanskrit, is among the oldest continuously practiced medical traditions on earth. Its foundational texts — the Charaka Samhita and the Sushruta Samhita — were compiled between roughly 600 BCE and 600 CE, though the oral tradition behind them stretches back considerably further. The Charaka Samhita focuses on internal medicine and lays out an elaborate theory of physiology, pharmacology, and therapeutics. The Sushruta Samhita, meanwhile, contains some of the earliest known descriptions of surgical technique, including rhinoplasty and cataract surgery, achievements that Western medical historians have only recently begun to credit properly.

For centuries, Ayurveda served as the dominant medical system across the Indian subcontinent. Then came British colonialism, which systematically marginalized indigenous knowledge systems. The Indian Medical Registration Act of 1912 recognized only Western-trained physicians. Ayurveda survived, but it was pushed to the margins — practiced in villages, taught in underfunded colleges, and often dismissed by India’s own English-educated elite.

The revival came in stages. After independence in 1947, the Indian government began establishing Ayurvedic colleges and research councils. But the figure who did the most to repackage Ayurveda for a global audience was Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the Transcendental Meditation teacher who had already attracted millions of followers in the West by the 1970s.

In 1985, Maharishi convened a meeting in New Delhi that would reshape the trajectory of Ayurvedic medicine outside India. He brought together some of India’s most respected traditional physicians — vaidyas, as Ayurvedic doctors are called — including Brihaspati Dev Triguna, then president of the All India Ayurvedic Congress, and V.M. Dwivedi, a former advisor to the Indian government on Ayurveda. The aim was ambitious: to create a unified, standardized presentation of Ayurveda that could be taught, practiced, and researched using modern methods while preserving the integrity of the classical texts.

What emerged from that effort, over the following years, became known as Maharishi Ayurveda.

The Operating System of the Body: Doshas Explained

At the heart of Ayurveda — all Ayurveda, not just the Maharishi branch — sits the theory of the three doshas. Think of them not as substances you can measure in a blood test, but as organizing principles. They describe patterns of function in the body.

Vata governs movement. Nerve impulses, blood circulation, breathing, the passage of food through the intestines, the blinking of your eyes — all Vata. People in whom Vata predominates tend to be thin-framed, quick-thinking, creative, and prone to anxiety when stressed. They get cold easily. Their digestion is irregular. When a Vata type is out of balance, you might see insomnia, dry skin, constipation, or a scattered, restless mind.

Pitta governs transformation. Digestion is its central domain — not just of food, but of ideas, sensory input, emotions. Pitta types tend to be medium-built, warm-bodied, sharp-minded, and competitive. They have strong appetites and do not tolerate skipping meals well. Out-of-balance Pitta shows up as acid reflux, skin rashes, irritability, or inflammatory conditions.

Kapha governs structure and cohesion. It holds cells together, lubricates joints, moisturizes skin, and maintains immunity. Kapha-dominant individuals are typically sturdier, calmer, more methodical. They sleep deeply and gain weight more easily. Excess Kapha manifests as congestion, lethargy, water retention, or a stubborn resistance to change.

Everyone carries all three doshas — the ratio is what varies. According to Ayurvedic theory, your baseline ratio, called prakriti, is set at conception and does not change during your lifetime. What fluctuates is vikriti, your current state of balance or imbalance, shaped by diet, season, age, stress, and dozens of other variables.

Modern medicine has no direct equivalent to this system, which is part of both its appeal and its problem. Practitioners argue it offers a granularity in understanding individual constitution that conventional medicine lacks. Critics counter that the categories are too subjective to be clinically useful and have not been validated by rigorous typology studies.

Where Maharishi Ayurveda Parts Company with the Mainstream

Thousands of Ayurvedic practitioners worldwide operate independently of the Maharishi tradition. Ayurvedic colleges across India graduate thousands of students each year under the BAMS (Bachelor of Ayurvedic Medicine and Surgery) degree program. Kerala has its own thriving tradition. So what makes the Maharishi version distinct?

Three things, mainly.

First, consciousness as the foundation of health. While all Ayurveda acknowledges a relationship between mind and body, Maharishi Ayurveda places consciousness at the very center of its model. Drawing on the Vedantic philosophical tradition, Maharishi taught that pure consciousness — experienced during Transcendental Meditation — is the unified field from which all physiological processes emerge. Disease, in this framework, begins as a disruption in the relationship between consciousness and the body, long before physical symptoms appear. The prescription, accordingly, is not just herbs and diet but a twice-daily meditation practice to restore coherence at the deepest level.

Second, systematic integration of multiple modalities. Traditional Ayurveda includes hundreds of treatments, practices, and preparations, but how they fit together varies enormously from practitioner to practitioner. Maharishi Ayurveda attempted to organize these into a coherent, teachable system — twenty approaches in total, spanning diet, daily routine, herbal supplements, purification therapies, music therapy (Gandharva Veda), aroma therapy, exercise (yoga asanas and Vedic exercise), and the meditation techniques central to the TM movement. The idea was to make the whole thing navigable for a Westerner walking in off the street.

Third, quality control and standardization of herbal products. Ayurvedic herbal formulations have historically been prepared by individual practitioners or small pharmacies, with wide variation in ingredients, potency, and purity. Maharishi Ayurveda Products International (MAPI), based in Colorado Springs, Colorado, established manufacturing processes that included laboratory testing, standardized sourcing, and adherence to Good Manufacturing Practices. This was a significant departure in a field where product consistency had long been a concern.

Daily Life, Reimagined: The Practices

Walk into a Maharishi Ayurveda consultation, and you will leave with far more than a bottle of herbs. You will leave with a schedule.

Dinacharya, the daily routine, is considered foundational. Rise before 6 a.m. — ideally before sunrise, during the Vata time of the morning, when the body is naturally lighter and more alert. Scrape the tongue with a metal scraper to remove overnight bacterial buildup (a practice, incidentally, that modern dentistry has come around to endorsing). Perform oil pulling — swishing sesame oil in the mouth for several minutes. Practice abhyanga, self-massage with warm oil suited to your dosha type. Meditate. Eat your largest meal at midday, when digestive fire (agni) peaks. Go to bed by 10 p.m. The specifics vary by constitution and season, but the underlying principle is always rhythm. The body, in this view, functions best when its routines mirror the cycles of nature.

Seasonal routine (ritucharya) adjusts diet and behavior to the time of year. Heavier, warming foods in winter. Lighter, cooling foods in summer. Bitter and astringent tastes in spring to counterbalance Kapha accumulation. None of this is arbitrary; there is a logic to it rooted in centuries of observation, even if that logic has not been tested through controlled trials.

Ayurvedic diet goes well beyond what you eat. It addresses how you eat — sitting down, in a calm environment, without distraction. It addresses food combinations (milk and fruit together are considered incompatible, as are fish and dairy). It classifies foods by taste (sweet, sour, salty, bitter, pungent, astringent), by heating or cooling effect, and by post-digestive impact. A Pitta type running hot in July might be steered toward sweet, bitter, and astringent tastes: think basmati rice, cooked greens, cilantro, coconut, and cucumber. A Vata type with irregular digestion in November might get warming soups, cooked root vegetables, ghee, and cumin-coriander-fennel tea.

Panchakarma — the five purification actions — represents the therapeutic heavy artillery. Traditionally it involves preparatory oleation (internal and external oiling of the body), sweating treatments, and then one or more elimination therapies: therapeutic vomiting (vamana), purgation (virechana), medicated enemas (basti), nasal administration of herbs (nasya), and bloodletting (rakta moksha). In the Maharishi Ayurveda version practiced at clinics like The Raj, the more aggressive procedures have been softened. A typical five-to-seven-day Panchakarma program there includes daily warm oil massage by two synchronized technicians, shirodhara (a continuous stream of warm oil poured across the forehead), herbalized steam treatments, and gentle internal cleansing. No bloodletting. No therapeutic vomiting for most guests. The experience is closer to a medically supervised spa retreat, and it is not inexpensive — programs can run several thousand dollars.

Maharishi Amrit Kalash (MAK) deserves its own mention. This proprietary herbal formulation, based on a classical rasayana (rejuvenative) recipe, comes in two forms: MAK-4 (a fruit paste) and MAK-5 (herbal tablets). It contains dozens of ingredients, including Indian gooseberry (amla), raw honey, ghee, Indian gallnut, and various medicinal herbs. It has been the most studied product in the Maharishi Ayurveda line, and the claims made for it — that it functions as a powerful free-radical scavenger — have attracted both scientific interest and skepticism.

What the Research Actually Shows

Let’s be precise about the evidence, because precision matters in a field prone to overclaiming.

Maharishi Amrit Kalash has been the subject of more than a dozen published studies, many originating from researchers associated with Maharishi International University (formerly Maharishi University of Management) in Fairfield, Iowa, or from collaborators at institutions like The Ohio State University and Loyola University Medical Center.

A 1997 study by Hari Sharma and colleagues published in Biochemical Archives found that MAK-4 and MAK-5 demonstrated significant antioxidant activity in vitro, scavenging free radicals more effectively than vitamins C and E at equivalent concentrations. A study published in Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior in 1992 examined MAK’s effects on chemically induced cancers in laboratory animals and reported reductions in tumor incidence. Niwa’s research at the University of Tokushima, Japan, also found that MAK inhibited LDL oxidation, a key step in the development of atherosclerosis.

On the Panchakarma side, a 2002 study published in Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine by Robert Herron and John Fagan measured lipophilic toxicants — fat-soluble environmental chemicals like PCBs and pesticides — in the blood of subjects before and after a standard Maharishi Ayurveda Panchakarma program. They reported statistically significant reductions in the levels of these chemicals, a finding notable because the body has limited natural mechanisms for eliminating fat-soluble pollutants. A separate Herron study from 2011 found reductions in cardiovascular risk factors after Panchakarma.

However — and this is crucial — the limitations are significant. Sample sizes in these studies are small, often fewer than fifty participants. Many studies lack proper control groups or blinding. The researchers frequently have institutional or philosophical ties to the Maharishi movement, raising questions about independence. No large-scale, multi-center randomized controlled trial has been conducted on any Maharishi Ayurveda intervention. The National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) notes that while Ayurvedic practices show promise in some areas, the evidence base remains insufficient to draw firm conclusions about efficacy.

Edzard Ernst, the former professor of complementary medicine at the University of Exeter and one of the field’s most prominent skeptics, has been particularly pointed in his criticisms, arguing that much of the Maharishi Ayurveda research amounts to “in-house science” that would not survive rigorous external replication.

The Criticisms That Won’t Go Away

Beyond the evidence question, Maharishi Ayurveda faces several persistent criticisms.

Heavy metals in Ayurvedic products. A widely cited 2004 study by Robert Saper and colleagues at Boston University, published in JAMA, found that roughly one in five Ayurvedic herbal products purchased from stores in the Boston area contained potentially harmful levels of lead, mercury, or arsenic. This finding applies to the broader Ayurvedic marketplace, not specifically to Maharishi-branded products (MAPI has maintained that its products are tested for heavy metals and meet U.S. safety standards). Still, the association sticks, and the FDA has issued multiple warnings about Ayurvedic products over the years.

Commercialization. Maharishi Ayurveda has always operated, in part, as a business. MAPI sells herbal supplements online and through practitioners. The Raj charges premium prices for its Panchakarma programs. TM instruction itself comes with a fee — currently around $980 for adults in the United States. Critics argue this creates a pay-to-play dynamic in which health advice is inextricable from product sales, an arrangement that would be considered a conflict of interest in conventional medicine. Defenders counter that high-quality herbal products and skilled practitioners cost money, and that the fees are comparable to other wellness programs.

Insularity. Much of the Maharishi Ayurveda world orbits around institutions connected to the TM movement — Maharishi International University, The Raj, MAPI, and a network of affiliated practitioners. For outsiders, this can feel circular: the research is conducted at Maharishi institutions, published in journals sympathetic to integrative medicine, and cited by Maharishi-affiliated practitioners to validate Maharishi products. The system validates itself. Breaking out of that loop — getting funding from independent bodies, publishing in high-impact mainstream medical journals, conducting trials with independent oversight — remains the movement’s greatest challenge in gaining broader scientific credibility.

Cultural appropriation and decontextualization. Some scholars of South Asian medicine argue that Maharishi’s systematization stripped Ayurveda of its cultural context, repackaging a rich, pluralistic tradition into a streamlined product suitable for affluent Westerners. Dagmar Wujastyk, a historian of Ayurveda at the University of Alberta, has noted that what Maharishi Ayurveda presents as a unified ancient system was, historically, a far more diverse and contested body of knowledge.

Where Things Stand Now

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi died in 2008, but the infrastructure he built remains extensive. The Raj continues to operate in Fairfield, drawing several thousand visitors annually. MAPI markets its products across the United States and in dozens of countries. Maharishi Ayurveda clinics and affiliated practitioners exist in Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, India, Australia, and elsewhere. The Maharishi International University continues to conduct research through its Department of Physiology and Health.

Globally, Ayurveda itself is experiencing something of a renaissance. The Indian government established the Ministry of AYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga, Unani, Siddha, and Homeopathy) in 2014, giving traditional medicine its own dedicated cabinet ministry. The World Health Organization published its Traditional Medicine Strategy for 2014–2023, encouraging member states to integrate traditional practices into their healthcare systems. The global Ayurvedic products market is estimated to exceed $10 billion.

Within this broader movement, Maharishi Ayurveda occupies a specific niche: it offers a coherent, all-in-one package to people looking for a systematic alternative or complement to conventional medicine. Its strength is the comprehensiveness of its approach — diet, routine, meditation, herbal support, periodic purification — all organized around a single theoretical framework. Its weakness is the same as its strength: the framework is totalizing, and the evidence supporting it, while promising in pockets, has not yet been subjected to the kind of rigorous, independent testing that would satisfy mainstream medical science.

For the retired schoolteacher sitting in that consulting room in Fairfield, none of this may matter very much. She came because her sleep has been poor, her joints ache, and her regular doctor’s best suggestion was another prescription. The pulse diagnosis gives her the feeling of being seen as a whole person, not a collection of symptoms. The warm oil massage on day one of her Panchakarma program is the most physically relaxed she has felt in months. The dietary advice — warm, cooked foods, specific spices, regular mealtimes — is sensible by almost any standard.

Whether what she is experiencing is a five-thousand-year-old science or a beautifully constructed placebo is a question that science has not yet conclusively answered. What is harder to dismiss is the lived experience itself — the growing number of people who report, year after year, that these practices help them feel better, sleep better, digest better, and manage the slow erosion of aging with something more nuanced than a handful of pharmaceuticals.

Ayurveda, in the Maharishi tradition or any other, asks a question that modern medicine has largely stopped asking: not just “What is wrong with you?” but “What kind of person are you, and how should you live accordingly?” That question may turn out to be more medically relevant than we think.