Evolution of Nadi Parikshan Device
In the first part, you experienced Aniruddha"s journey which forced him to research about Nadi Parikshan. Now here is the second part in which Aniruddha shared his initial experiences which challenged and changed his thought process
Science 03-Mar-2023
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How his journery started towards Nadi Parikshan...
The whole journey started during my engineering days, when my father Padmabhushan Dr. J. B. Joshi was not well for quite some time. He took the advice of his guide Dr. M. M. Sharma and we visited Vaidyaraj Ashok Bhat, a renowned Nadi expert. Until then I had never visited any Ayurvedic doctor or setup as such. The clinic was very typical with silence all around and the smell of Ayurvedic medicines. When Vaidyaraj Bhat checked my father’s pulse, he was able to find out the root cause of the suffering and promised that he would solve the problem. There will be a positive immediate effect of the treatment and in the six month’s time, all will be normal. Well, eventually it took slightly longer, but it actually helped !!
During one of the conferences, I got a chance to meet Padmavibhushan Dr. Valiathan and later met at his office at Manipal university. Looking at the work and the prototype, he advised me to make sure that the “product” which eventually is launched has to look like a very detailed and professional medical product. We Indians do not give much attention to that and so our products sometimes look substandard as compared to the products from the other countries. He asked me to keep at least 10 to 15 percent of my initial funds for the same. Well, we got the product designed and developed from one of the best Mr. Satish Gokhale of Design Directions and it helped. It's not just the look and feel but also the ease of use that helped our product journey.
I think the PhD days and the interaction with Vaidyaraj were the best days of my life, so much learning – and it is still guiding me in some way!!
In the initial days, he taught how he “feels” the nadi, how he learnt himself, how he is teaching his students and so on. At IIT Bombay, based on the set steps of how the ECG machine was developed in the past 150 years, I started working on the sensors. I started with the mike (let me hear what the pulse says), then the simplest capacitive pressure sensors, then the optical sensors. All the 7-8 sensors and data acquisition methods (work of almost 1.5 years) were giving good pulse waveforms; but Vaidyaraj was not happy with the visual display of the waveforms. He was not able to see the “nadi” that he feels of the patients.
Going deeper and working closely with Sharmaji (a very talented domain expert in embedded systems), I used the piezo pressure sensor of very minute pressure range (very sensitive), and bingo. On one day, when I showed the print-out of the pulse waveforms taken from a user; just by looking at the image, Vaidyaraj was able to tell:
- It’s a Nadi of female of age 20, 25, 30 – who the person could be
- She is having chest pain – what the symptoms could be
- The pain is due to gasses – the root cause, and
- Ask her to have ABCD before meals for the next 7 days – a simple natural solution.
To my surprise, I had taken Meghana’s nadi because she was having chest pain. At that time, we knew we had cracked the sensor, now the big task was to understand what he actually “saw” and mathematically code it.
The journey of “rule-based intelligence” started in his clinic and I had the most amazing experiences during the data collection process. Our final database was of 500 patients along with Vaidyaraj’s inputs. We used to discuss a patient's journey, disease journey, what could be different reasons and what patterns in the pulse waveforms indicate any of those points.
And along with that, there was a completely different journey:
- We took the pulse of a paralyzed hand, and a non-paralyzed one. And to my surprise, the pulse waveform patterns showed the exact correlations which he was talking about,
- A doot-nadi of a pregnant woman’s husband was studied (she was in a different city at that time) and again, based on the pulse waveforms he was able to diagnose what issues she was suffering through. The husband agreed to each and every point. For me, that was magical. Well later, we worked on so many doot-nadis and in my journey a few years later – I will definitely work on this. Not now, later when things are in control.
- During one of the interactive sessions, my laptop was behaving incorrectly. It was slow and had become hot. I knew it was because of the fan issue. But on that day, Vaidyaraj explained to me how each of the battery, ram, rom, fan, hard disk etc components of a laptop is functioning exactly like different organs systems in a human body.
- How exactly the same functional blocks are there in any typical warehouse and so on. It’s all about Input, Transformation, Output and Storage. And how the whole system collapses when any one of these does not work properly. And how Vata is the most important in all considering the all above and also, how Prana is most important in Vata. And he actually went ahead on Prana (which I don’t remember now).
- One day, he was explaining the power of breathing. He told me to connect the sensors to his hand. And told me not to stop until I see a change. Well, the pulse waveform was flowing normally. And after 45-50 seconds the pulse patterns changed. They became abnormal and by the end of 1 minute, the pulse waveform was almost flat (with some noise of course), but it was more like a dead-nadi. And after a few seconds, the pulse waveform became absolutely normal. Huff, whenever I remember that day, I still go numb.
- And Nadi of trees using the same Nadi Tarangini sensors was such a pleasant experience. Nadi changes when his wife is talking to those trees and so on. At the moment, I cannot even explain what it was, but maybe some other time.
- Also, we had discussed and tried measuring the vibration nadi of chair when the patient actually left the room. Well, nothing was captured as such, but he wanted me to work on that for sure. Let’s see.
- And then I had also developed one method where you get a 3D pulse from the same location. He was so happy and we worked on the energies, temperatures, and different parameters in that 3d pulse. The code and knowledge is still there on the computer. I promise, I will open up that chapter very soon…
- I also want to write about a slow-learner Marathi kid’s pulse, but it is so difficult to digest in today’s language of science, so again, I will talk about that some other time.
- I also want to write about my uncle Moreshwar Joshi’s (renowned journalist from Pune) experiences with him, but again it is difficult to digest.
- During the discussions of him with one of his students from the USA, it was also thought that Aniruddha will never actually learn the Nadi Pariksha, as it has to be solved completely data-driven without any bias in mind.
And so many experiences… so many memories. Vaidyaraj has given me 6 goals on Nadi (let me say I remember only 6) during the discussions. Believe me, every goal is scary - as each goal connects “any” person’s nadi directly to the whole nature or universe. But I can only say, I have 25 more active years for sure. I am hopeful and definitely have all the spiritual energy that he has given me, to systematically work on any of the above. It’s a matter of time, money and courage.
Story to be continued..
Dr. Aniruddha Joshi
Dr. Aniruddha Joshi, the founder of “Atreya Innovations”.
Dr Aniruddha Joshi has developed the device using electronic systems and artificial intelligence (AI) as an alternative to the ancient pulse testing method in Ayurveda called ‘Nadi Pariksha’. He has been awarded for his innovative.
Dr Joshi has also developed another device called ‘Turiya’, which updates its users about their health condition.
Apart from his passion for new product development and algorithms, Aniruddha is an avid traveler, hardcore foodie, movie buff, and sports lover.