Paper short abstract:

In my paper, I focus on the relational ways, people are establishing their wellbeing as a part of Ayurveda practice. I look at how these new forms of bio-social kinship are created in the process of accommodating Ayurveda body ontology in ones´ health-seeking practice.

Paper long abstract:

Since one starts to practice Ayurveda – usually understood as a traditional Indian medicine - her ideas of body and health are reconfigured towards an interconnectedness of a person and surrounding bio-social environment. The body, usually perceived as quite isolated, and autonomous subject becomes understood and experienced as more dependent on and as a part of its surroundings.

In my four-years long research of Ayurveda in the Czech Republic, I have followed people, who, in 2013 enrolled in the course for an Ayurvedic practitioner. I was looking at how the, relating it to the dominant biomedical ideas, different ontology, and epistemology of the body and therefore wellbeing has been confronting the prevailing body-related ideas and practices these people were used to enact.

The by-products of the process of negotiating wellbeing according to Ayurveda teachings, change often quite drastically human and non-human relations within. In my paper, drawing on a critique of anthropology and sociology of CAM which mostly agrees about CAM having an emancipating effect on people, I look at how new forms of symbiosis are created in the process of accommodating Ayurveda body ontology and epistemology in ones´ everyday practice. These people are developing a kind of alliances but also antagonism with surrounding (natural) environment. In my paper, I therefore ask, how the new ways of establishing wellbeing in the situation of co-dependency with bio-social environment, informed by Ayurveda ontology, reconstruct the ideas and practice of kinship.