Snehana
Ayurvedic oleation: saturating the body with healthy fats — oil massage, ghee taken internally — to calm Vata and prepare for purification therapies.
Snehana comes from sneha, a beautiful word that means both "fat, oil" and "affection, tenderness": to oil the body is, quite literally, to give it love. It is the great therapy of unctuousness: saturating the body with fat to counter dryness, stiffness and restlessness — the qualities of Vata — and to soften whatever is tense.
Two routes are distinguished. External snehana (bahya) covers all oil applications: full-body massage, foot massage, scalp oiling, oil in the nostrils. Its central practice is abhyanga, warm-oil self-massage — the most accessible Ayurvedic ritual to adopt at home. Internal snehana (abhyantara) means taking fats by mouth, first among them ghee, sometimes in increasing doses over several days in supervised protocols.
Snehana is not merely a comfort treatment: in the great panchakarma cleanse, internal and external oleation form the indispensable preparatory phase — the fat is believed to mobilise fat-soluble waste towards the digestive tract before elimination. Concretely, to begin: ten minutes of self-massage with warm sesame oil before the shower, two to three times a week. Intensive internal oleation, on the other hand, belongs under professional supervision, and is not advised in cases of weak digestion, Kapha overload or problematic cholesterol levels without medical advice.