Kerala is a powerful place for women to discover their relationship to the past and the present, to their own nature and to Mother Nature. It’s a place to learn both clinical, codified Ayurveda as well as to brings one’s own hands into making medicines and learning the healing ways of Ayurveda as practiced in grandmother’s gardens and kitchens in communities far and wide.

The Indian state of Kerala has been a sought-after destination for foreigners and North Indians ever since the 1300′s, when Dutch, Portuguese and other trades followed the spice route to export “black gold” – the abundant vine-grown black pepper and other important spices. Known as “Land of the Coconuts”, Kerala’s tropical climate is abundant in a rich variety of flora, including most of the medicinal herbs in the pharmacoepia of Ayurveda and Siddha Vaidya.

Originally born of a long and sophisticated relationship between humans and nature, these forms of traditional medicine arose from –and are still widely practiced–through Kerala and Tamil Nadu, the southern-most states of India.

Kerala is the birthplace of ancient Ayurveda, and offers a wealth of knowledge and materia medica to learn from. Kerala also demonstrates a potential path for Ayurveda to take-in its wholeness–into the future. Here, many Malayalee–the people of Kerala-continue to value traditional, ways rooted in Ayurveda and still cultivate an historical reverence for the potent power of female energy – shakti, even as the forces of modernization grip India.

The City of Trivandrum (officially renamed Thiruvananthapuram)
Spread over the seven lush hills clad in coconut trees. Mahatma Gandhi referred to Trivandrum as the “Evergreen City.” Trivandrum is the ancient capital city, a treasure of Kerala dating back to at least 1,000 BC, named after the abode of Ananta, the sacred serpent, Lord Padmanabha (an emanation of Vishnu) lies upon in the temple at the center of town.

Trivandrum remains relatively untouched by high rise buildings and Western fast food chains, while maintaining its colonial mansions, churches and small houses with red-tiled roofs in narrow lanes, dotted by small shops and eateries–and slower, more traditional life ways.