Beyond medicine: Mumbai’s love affair with new-age healing

Healing has now turned into a USD 300 billion dollar industry globally. While a lot of healing teachers engage students in unique kinds of meditation, there has been a boom in unique types of healing. For instance, Anu Kulkarni, based in Mumbai launched her very own pendulum healing course where students learn to understand their emotions through colours, pendulum movements and reflection.

The course introduced me to a set of students passionate about healing and working in the same industry. The course is specially beneficial for young teenagers who might go through confusion about their feelings and not be able to access their feelings deeply.

Rita Shah, a student I met at the course conducts an interesting format of flower healing - where she meditates upon someone’s issues and recommends a flower to them to heal from. She meditates, connects with the person’s higher consciousness and meditates upon a flower. She then shares the symbolism of the flower with the person and suggests the individual to meditate upon the flower and take its energy.

There are several other healers like Suruchi Hirawat conducting channel and art healing. Even though Suruchi has not learned formal healing at a university, she connected with channel healing through her interest in channel healing, paintings, journals etc. Using channel healing, Suruchi unlocks the individual’s programming deep in their subconscious mind and helps them to release past patterns and what no longer serves them. Some people have wide awakenings and discover their deeper selves during her sessions.

There are also healers working on access bar consciousness where they assess what the individual’s deeper issues are and detangle them. It is quite interesting to see how different types of healing works for different individuals and each format of healing does not apply to everyone. One tarot card healer I met, Anita, based in Mumbai is one of the most genuine tarot card readers. She uses pure intuition to guide a person.

The healing industry is booming and there are around two million healers in India. Most of the healers don’t carry qualifications from universities and it is tough to differentiate between the genuine healers and those who are trying to make a quick buck. It is quite important to connect with the right people.

Along with the industry of healers, there has also been a boom in related industries like candles and diffusers which are being used by individuals at home to create wellness spaces and wellness rituals. A particular European Indian candle brand called Svitlo has been making the waves for its range of fragranced candles lately. Personally, I enjoyed their range of candles. Spanning from the packaging to the burn time, Svitlo created a great wellness experience for me at home.

While the world of wellness broadens, there is also scope for people to heal deeper and create spaces for new experiences. I am looking forward to seeing new developments in this field.