Ayurveda in Seelisberg
UPDATE: The Sonnenberg Hotel property, on which the Maharishi Health Centre is located, has been sold to a real estate developer who has a project to renovate the hotel to create apartments and rooms. The Maharishi Health Centre, which was housed in a chalet on the property, closed on October 31, 2025. Apparently, the front part of the chalet will be demolished. It is unclear what will happen to the rest of the building. I visited the Centre for a farewell visit two days before the closure. It was a sad occasion for me, having reported on the clinic from the beginning in 1987 and as a regular client. I was saying goodbye to friends. Dr. Sophie Beall will still be available for consultations, but from another location (www.veda.ch). The Centre is now history, but this reportage – prepared in the Centre’s heyday – will remain as a sound document. It is our hope, and the hope of many others, that the Centre may reopen in one form or another in the future. If and when that happens, it will be reported here.
Bob Zanotti
Seelisberg is a small mountainside village overlooking the southern extension of the Lake of Lucerne in central Switzerland. Directly below the village, at lakeside, is the Rütli Meadow, where the Swiss Confederation was born on August 1, 1291, when local patriots swore the Pack of Everlasting Alliance, to defend themselves against the tyranny of the Hapsburgs of Austria. This is a place of historic and patriotic pilgrimage, and is regarded as sacred by the Swiss.
But Seelisberg was also a place of pilgrimage for thousands of people who went there every year for treatments according to “Ayurveda”, the 6,000-year-old traditional medical system of India – the world’s oldest form of medical practice.
The legendary Maharishi Mahesh Yogi made Seelisberg his world headquarters in the 1970’s and 80’s. One of his worldwide projects was to bring Ayurveda to people everywhere, by setting up “Maharishi Health Centres”. Opened in 1987, the Centre in Seelisberg was among the very first to be established anywhere, and was the oldest public Ayurveda facility in Switzerland.
