Travel + Leisure - India & South Asia
THE EXPERIENCE
If you’re inclined to visit one of VIVAMAYR’s clinics, it’s advisable to first meet one of their doctors on their visits to India. Consultations take place in Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai, and Bengaluru, and checking with the team on the schedule can help you book your appointment in advance. I flew down to Dubai for mine, where I was lucky enough to meet the founder, Dr Harald Stossier. Suffering from an unusual case of elevated blood pressure at a young age, I was told to get onto a simple regimen of supplements for a two-month period before visiting Austria for my treatment.
Choosing your clinic is up to your personal preference. Altaussee is situated an hour’s drive from Salzburg, while Maria Wörth is close to the southern
border of Austria—with Italy and Slovenia on either side. The clinics offer a chargeable pick-up service from Vienna airport that is probably the most convenient choice, since it cuts down on having to catch an additional train or plane to the nearest city.
Both Altaussee and Maria Wörth are picturesque towns, situated in pristine locations with views of mountains and sparkling lakes. Winter months can get snowy with temperatures falling well below 0°C, while summers are ideal if you’d like to use the outdoors for exercise. Altaussee offers a particularly beautiful walking path around its famed lake, while Maria Wörth is known for a strenuous hiking path behind its facility that gets you to the Pyramidenkogel, a futuristic viewing tower that offers a birds-eye view of Lake Wörthersee.
But it’s not the view that you’ve flown all the way there for. The treatment starts off with an initial examination by a doctor assigned to you for the duration of your stay. All doctors at VIVAMAYR are medically qualified physicians before they begin studying Mayr medicine.
Using muscle kinesiology and a physical examination, they set you on a prescribed course of treatments and bespoke diet that are tuned to cure your ailments and begin the process of detoxification.
You’re handed a schedule that is jam packed with nouvelle terms and medical lingo—Roeder’s nasal reflex therapy, B12 IV infusion, cryotherapy, colon therapy, hydroxeur baths, and so on. Days usually begin at 7.30 am with breakfast. Then begins a barrage of treatments, massages, baths, infusions, and fitness routines, usually allowing you to break around noon for lunch. Patients are advised to work out as much as they can during the treatment;
I preferred a walk or hike.
During afternoons, doctors gave lectures on Mayr medicine, advice on how one can change their eating habits, and explained the cutting-edge scientific discoveries in medicine being used at VIVAMAYR. For those of you who just want to take a breather, opt for
relaxing lie-ins, zoning out, and looking at the endless mountains and reflections of the sky in the lake.
Patients are urged to drink as much water as they can. Carafes are set up in your room with mineral stones, and a tea bar offers some of the best organic teas. It almost becomes a ritual: choosing your tea and then nursing the hot kettle as it brews the medicinal magic. You’re also put on a laxative course that suits you. Epsom salts drunk in the morning usually end up causing the gut to clean itself. The rumbling of a churning stomach and the reduced calorie intake can make for an irritable first three days. Your body is going into a state of ketosis, using its own reserves for energy and thus automatically detoxifying. By day four, things change for the better. You achieve a sense of clarity and renewed energy, and that is the magic of the cure.