This book on "Massage for Health and Healing: The Ayurvedic and Spiritual Energy Approach" is a commendable guide to a very important medical aid which reigned with dignity in the past. Though it was neglected for many years, the art of massage has recaptured its central place amongst the forms of healing. Prevention of disease, and promoting health.

Massage is the oldest of all techniques for relieving pain, shaping the organs, regenerating tissues, and correcting almost all internal malfunctions. Massage and its origin in the natural instincts of animals, handed over to the conscious man with a mandate to improve it as far as possible with his old wisdom. Despite advancements in knowledge and complex techniques, massage retains its usefulness and significance even as a method to save a person from immediate death, as in heart failure, breathlessness, and several other fatal ailments.

In all kinds of therapeutic approaches, massage alone can maintain certain links. Any method of treatment with a holistic approach cannot leave out massage. Ayurveda upholds its psychosomatic benefits. Sushruta and other texts explain it, classifying various types of massages and instructions on their manipulations and effects. In Ayurveda, the human body constitutes three functional entities, the balance of which maintains health; an upset in this balance increases disease.

The book serves not only as a guide to novice practitioners but also as a manual and refresher guide for those who are experienced ayurvedic masseurs. The contents (techniques) of this book will bring relief and better health to those who faithfully apply them in their daily lives.

The author, Shri S.V. Govindan, hails from the village Manassery in Ottapalan, situated in the Palghat district of Kerala in southern India. Born on December 24, 1924, Govindanji is the youngest son in a family of five children. He spent his childhood and adolescence in Kerala where he was educated by his brothers who were school teachers at the time. Govindanji has come a long way in gathering valuable experience not only as a teacher in various Khadi Vidyalayas in the country, but more so as an expert masseur with a healing and sympathetic hand.

Govindanji, a devoted social worker, is a disciple of Acharya Vinoba Bhave. He has been active in the field of Sarvodaya work for many years. The usefulness, scientific reliability, and simplicity of massage as a way to serve the masses attracted him. He wanted to help those for whom the conveninience and amenities of costly medicines were out of reach. The value of this useful technique is often overlooked, even by the enlightened. When Govindanji was initiated into this field of massage by none other thatn Shri K. Kelappan, a national leader from Kerala, he realized that it was one of his missions to promote this useful technique by study and propagation. By reading and observation he learned the theory and practice of massage. Encouraged by Vinobaji Bhave, Govindanji wrote his first publication in Hindi Maalish Ka Marma. The practicality of the book attracted many who were interested in this field. Many people read it and encouraged the author to bring out the English version of it.