Need a mud-pack to cleanse your pores? Or some muscle-relaxing time in a steam sauna? Move over high-end wellness spas. You may soon be able to get your wellness fix at the closest State-run medical college and hospital.
Acting on an announcement by Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa in the State Assembly to set up naturopathy lifestyle and yoga clinics in hospitals across Tamil Nadu, the Health department has come up with an impressive proposal to give people access to wellness options like massage, chromotherapy, mud therapy and hydrotherapy. The lifestyle clinics are to be set up at all 18 Government Medical Colleges and 31 district HQ hospitals.
“Initially, it was planned as a simple yoga space for those who are interested, but the effects of these wellness techniques have been established both through traditional Indian practices as well as international techniques,” said a top official with the health department.
Among the equipment that the clinics will have are coloured yoga mats, steam bath cabins, facial sauna, mud barrels, massage tables, automated foot massagers and infra-red lamps.
The purpose of setting up these clinics is not purely cosmetic but to ease lifestyle diseases with wellness solutions. “Poor people can also experience wellness techniques that would have been out of reach for them otherwise. Most spas and yoga studios are extremely expensive, but these will be free of cost,” said the official.