Coaching a Healthy Lifestyle: Positioning Ayurveda in a Late Modern Context

This article is a case study of practitioners of Ayurvedic health counselling in Stockholm, Sweden. The focus is on the practitioners' ways of presenting their practice. It is found that the practice is construed as a form of coaching, where life style advice is primary in relation to different remedies and medicaments. The majority of the clients suffer from vague, stress-related complaints, problems that "fall through" the conventional health care system. The primary cause of these problems are attributed to imbalances that are created by the fast pace in contemporary Western society. Discourse analysis is used to interpret how this implies a positioning of the practitioners as a part of a holistic health milieu.