The academic website of SAMA-Swiss Ayurvedic Medical Academy, Center of therapy and training in Ayurveda, was created from 2010 onwards. Its scope being to provide professionals, media, authorities and general public in the West with genuine information about Ayurveda at a time when WHO benchmarks were not yet published or known, but pioneering regulatory work for Ayurveda was going on in Switzerland.
Its purpose was to showcase the potential of Ayurveda as a medical system through an example of practical implementation of the Swiss regulatory model – a vision of Indo-Swiss Ayurveda Foundation (ISA) – serving as a support and inspiration to those seeking to understand this medical system or wishing to contribute to its development.
While Ayurveda is the traditional medical system of India since millenniums, having spread to other countries of South-East Asia, it was the last traditional medical system to enter the international scenario of Traditional and Complementary Medicine (T&CM). In 2010 it was not known by medical professionals, authorities and the general public in the West. It had been only, but widely, marketed as massage in the wellness and beauty sector of the flourishing SPA industry, at best as preventive practices. Hardly anyone knew about its tremendous potential as a medical system for mankind.
According to the classical texts, Ayurveda is rooted in timeless and universal knowledge and principles that can be applied anywhere and in any era by adapting it to regional and temporal realities.
In its original form, supported by ISA, this website had a volume of 300 pages – 100 pages in three languages (French, English and German) – serving the purposes of awareness raising, of clearing false concepts regarding Ayurveda and of showcasing a responsible practical model of implementation along with the promotion of SAMA’s clinical and academic activities in the pioneer phase in the West.
A decade later, with the global shift towards the institutionalization phase of Ayurveda, and when SAMA evolves as an institute for science, tradition and research to translate the process, the website serves as a logic continuation in line with its original purpose.
