Abstract
Drawing upon results of my diploma thesis and current fieldwork I would like to discuss main tensions which emerge in the process of introducing and practising Ayurveda in the Czech Republic. When translated to this cultural-economic-bio-political environment (e.g.
Lock and Nguyen, 2010), Ayurveda (and other TM) faces limitations, which largely result from its supposed incommensurability with biomedicine. The aim of my research is to establish the analytical symmetry of this translation.
In the Czech Republic there are no practitioner associations neither concrete legislation regulating Ayurvedic practice. This is directly connected with the absence of standardization of Ayurveda in this country and leads to the constant negotiation of the fundamental content, form and legal possibilities of Ayurvedic practice.
Ayurvedic practices are enacted by clients, practitioners, clinics, education centres and also by governmental or supranational political institutions that participate in forming the legislation of medical discourse. Despite the high heterogeneity of Ayurveda, the main tensions emerging during its establishing are recognized by practitioners through Czech ayurvedic area.
I interpret these tensions as bad passages (Moser and Law, 1998) in the process of fulfilling the notion of ideal form of Ayurveda (set by Ayurvedic practitioners etc.) in terms of the difference of its ideal and its actual practice. I examine these limits through possibilities of defining the official status of the Ayurveda as a medicine, possibilities of its professionalization, standardization and institutionalization and possibilities of understanding, which is formulated by some Ayurvedic practitioners as the aim of Ayurvedic education.