KALW Radio spoke with Dr. Sudha Prathikanti, who founded the Integrative Psychiatry program and Ayurveda consultation service at the UCSF Osher Center.

Click here to listen to the podcast.

Western medicine once shunned alternative treatments like acupuncture, acupressure or the Indian system of Ayurveda. But the field of medicine is now taking them more seriously.

Proof can be found in the emerging field of integrative medicine. Its approach is to combine modern medicine with alternative and complementary approaches, to take into account the whole person. Dr. Sudha Prathikanti a strong believer in integrative medicine. As the daughter of Indian immigrants, she grew up around meditation, yoga and Ayurveda. Like her father she went to medical school and more recently, established the first integrative psychiatry program at UC San Francisco’s Osher Center for Integrative Medicine. She’s also researched the effectiveness of using yoga to treat major depression.

PRATHIKANTI: We no longer have to have this argument about “is it in the domain of the physical or is it in the domain of the psychological?”; And then the larger question is “what is spiritual?”