Sanaiyah Keswani-Gurnamal’s story is as colorful and fascinating as the cities she has been to.

She says she is Indian by nationality but consider herself multicultural, having lived in many places.

Born in Taiwan and raised in Japan, she studied and worked in the United States, lived in London, and then moved to Dubai.

At a wedding in Cebu, she met Ravi Gurnamal. After only a week, she knew he was the man she was going to marry; five months later, she moved to the Philippines. That was almost four years ago.

Lactose intolerance

She went to Dubai to work as a marketing executive. At that time, her aim was to be successful in her endeavor.

But in 1998, she went through a life-changing experience. She was diagnosed with a condition called lactose intolerance, which stemmed from a traumatic childhood memory when she was 8 years old. Her body ejected all dairy products.

A number of treatments failed and she had to bear with the condition for eight years. In 2006 she tried hypnotherapy and it worked.

“I was shocked that in just an hour, I was cured,” she recalls. “I walked out of the session and went straight to Häagen-Dazs, my favorite ice cream place. I remember specifically ordering cookies and cream. And then I waited for the old symptoms to come back (for my stomach to ache, cramps, etc.) but there was none. It has never come back since.”

Her interest whetted, she started studying alternative healing techniques.

To date, Sanaiyah is the Philippines’ first certified practitioner and instructor of ThetaHealing, which involves “muscle testing” and “scanning” the “chakras” or the body’s energy centers. She is also a clinical hypnotherapist, reiki practitioner and pranic healer. She is well-versed in other healing methods such as emotional freedom technique, Tarot reading and crystal healing.

Preventive medicine

She founded The Third Eye Wellness, a mind-body-energy wellbeing center that provides health and wellness activities in Dubai.

She launched its Manila center in 2012 with her partner Maisha Chulani and incorporated the concept behind the Chakra Café.

“The food we eat and the nutrition we provide ourselves impacts the health of our energy or chakra system, and therefore our physical body,” she explains.

“Disease shows up six months prior in our aura or energy system before it actually manifests in our physical body,” she points out. “Therefore, if we moved from corrective medicine to preventive medicine by being more aware of what we are creating in our bodies, we would be healthier, happier and better individuals.”

Sanaiyah says that chakras regulate the flow of energy in one’s body. Health is determined by the flow of energy (chi, ki, prana) from the seven chakras into the metabolic network of the body, she adds.

The chakras are blocked due to emotional, mental or spiritual issues which restrict energy flow and lead to disease, discomfort or dysfunction in the body.

A person should know which area of his/her life where the chakras are too much, too little or whether out of control. “Where there’s anxiety or fear,” says Sanaiyah, “most likely, the chakra is out of balance. What you can do is to eat according to that chakra to strengthen it.”

She adds: “As we go higher up the chakras, from the throat up, there are less types of food that are beneficial. In which case, liquids, teas and spiritual activity will open up—the higher spiritual wisdom would come in.”

The chakras in the body can be bolstered by the right diet. Sanaiyah suggests the following do’s and don’ts:

Eat plenty of fruits and green vegetables every day.
Chakra Café’s dishes boost the body’s energy centers.

Avoid genetically modified foods.

Don’t eat overcooked food.

Avoid canned foods or those with lots of preservatives and long shelf lives.

Avoid white sugar, iodized salt, white bread, white rice. Go instead for sea salt, brown rice and bread or even quinoa, a type of herb cultivated for its starchy seeds which are used as food and ground into flour.