From the cradles of the majestic Himalayas to the heart of a cozy residential neighbourhood in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce in Montreal’s West End, the owners of Centre & Spa d'Ayurveda Holistique have travelled a long way, all the while carrying with them the secrets of the 5,000-year-old Indian practice of Ayurveda, the science of life. “I was raised among herbs. We even had a consultation room at home from where my grandfather used to practice. I have grown up with Ayurveda,” says Anita Sharma, who runs the Centre & Spa d'Ayurveda Holistique with her husband Manmohan.
A fourth-generation practitioner, Anita learned the tricks of her trade from her parents and grandparents. She then went on to sharpen her home-grown knowledge by studying in ‘gurukulas’ in Kerala and Rishikesh in India. While Ayurveda is a tradition that is practiced widely in various parts of the Indian subcontinent, there wasn’t much awareness about its holistic benefits among Montrealers when Anita arrived in the early '90s.
Remembering those early days, Anita jokes about how most people watched curiously as she solved family members' everyday health issues with “spices, tea and some greenery” – a picture-perfect image of the enigmatic "Mistress of Spices" of the Orient. It was only after a brief teaching stint at the erstwhile Natural Health Consultants Institute that a significant number of people were exposed to Ayurveda, which led the husband-wife duo to open their doors to the public.
