Ayurvedic Treatment Soothes Weary Eyes

A raw whole wheat bagel keeps the ghee from spilling all over the client's face. Photo by Chip Scheuer.

It’s hard to imagine a world without sight, yet it’s not very often that we give thanks to the organ responsible. The eyeball is, after all, a miraculously perfect lens; a portal between our brains and the uncensored images of the outside world.

The ancient ayurvedic treatment called “netra basti” concentrates on the deep relaxation of the ocular muscles while cleansing and lubricating the eyeball and socket with castor oil (said to prevent cataracts), rose water or, most commonly, ghee (clarified butter). Local ayurvedic practitioner Heather Nagel recommends the treatment for anyone who spends long hours gazing into a computer screen.

“The computer screen is hypnotizing. It literally draws you in and causes you not to blink as much,” says Nagel, who volunteers her time along with Talya Lutzker at the non-profit ayurvedic clinic Aushadi Santa Cruz.html. “The eyes dry out and over time that causes damage to the ocular tissue.”

“’Netra’ means eyes. ‘Basti’ indicates where you’re basically enclosing one area of the body so that you can give it very specific attention and treatment,” says Lutzker, just minutes before I allow her to pour hot butter into my eyeball.

Two raw whole wheat bagels, or “dough dams,” lay next to the massage table, and Lutzker informs me that they will be the method of enclosing the ghee over my eye.

“It needs to be sticky enough to stick to your skin, but not sticky enough that you have flour residue on your face,” she says, adding that years of practice have helped her find the perfect consistency. She sets to work adhering the bagels to my face, and the cool pressure of the dough around my eye socket is immediately tranquilizing.

Once the seal is complete, Lutzker pours about an eighth of a cup of warm ghee over my closed eyelid. It feels extremely strange—warm and goopy—but I realize there is no need to wince.

“The ghee just weighs on your eyeball a little bit. The idea is that whatever is behind your eyeball comes out, dirt or particles, or mucus. Mucus in the eyes is pretty common,” explains Lutzker.

She tells me that whenever I am ready I can open my eyelid and gaze into the warm goo. It’s like looking through murky stained glass: I can only see a vague outline of Lutzker’s face hovering above me. It stings slightly, too, almost like looking into a bright light. A little burning is normal, says Lutzker, and it slackens off once the ghee finds its way into what I imagine must be my tear ducts.

“The eye is also the same channel as the liver. So in theory and in practice, your liver is being nourished and excreted in this treatment as well—in a very subtle level, of course,” Lutzker says.

For about 15 minutes, I do nothing but move my eyeball around in all directions as Lutzker massages the skin around my eyes through the ghee. I never want it to stop. But life as we know it must go on, and Lutzker gently interrupts my alpha wave bliss to pour out the ghee. Sure enough, there are tiny black particles and unidentified floating globules (probably mucus) now floating in it.

Although I leave the clinic smelling like an uncooked pie crust, and my vision is not miraculously sharper, as I had hoped it would be (on the contrary, it’s a bit blurry for the first two hours after treatment), my eyeballs feel extremely well pampered, and a few hours later I fall into one of the most restful nights of sle