Jonathan Toews Opens Up About His Healing Trip to India and Whether He’ll Ever Play Hockey Again

Jonathan Toews had about as close to a dream career in hockey as you can get. He was named captain of the Chicago Blackhawks at just 20 years old and led the Original Six franchise to three Stanley Cups, all while racking up a pair of Olympic gold medals and a bevy of individual awards along the way. But in December 2020, Toews announced he’d be sitting out indefinitely with an undisclosed illness. That would later be revealed as chronic inflammatory response syndrome (CIRS), which was causing persistent fatigue and inflammation, and it caused him to miss the NHL’s entire pandemic-shortened season.

The now 36-year-old did return to the Hawks for a further two seasons, but in August 2023, he posted on Instagram that he’d be stepping away from the game as he tried to get his health challenges—which also included long COVID—under control. He has not played since, and the endless frustration of trying to feel like himself again led him to explore some unconventional remedies. The latest was a five-week stint in India where he practiced Ayurveda, a traditional form of alternative medicine that involves herbal medicines, yoga, meditation, and enemas.

In a long, in-depth conversation, the future Hall of Famer spoke candidly about all of the health issues he’s dealt with—dating back as far as 2009, his second year in the NHL—as well as his decision to go to India and the healing he’s experienced through a potent mix of ghee butter, painful massages, and induced vomiting.

Toews: I mean, I don't know. If I do look back on my career, I always kind of had digestive issues, immune system issues—nothing seriously chronic or diagnosed when I was young—but definitely in my teenage years I was always battling something.

Early in my career, it was probably my second season in the NHL, I kept getting sick, I couldn't sleep at night, all these things where it just finally got to the point where I was like, “All right.” I always thought, in my mind, that everyone else just felt that way and that was just normal, but then it got so bad that I barely made it through the playoffs that year.

I was 21 years old or something. That was my first moment where I realized that things were not normal and I needed to look into it. That's when I started learning about health and nutrition and what I put in my body. I really saw a huge, major difference at that age. So, it's kind of a lot of ups and downs throughout the years, because let's face it, the NHL season is such a marathon with the travel and the time changes and the games and all that stuff.

But I think it was probably right when COVID shut the world down, March of 2020, that I had just got to that point where a lot of things added up and kind of boiled over at the same time. I had been burning the candle at both ends, so to speak, for quite a while. I did get sick with COVID in February before anyone ever realized it was a thing. I played that whole last month with a really, really bad cough. I wasn't sleeping at night, I couldn't really get any rest because I was just coughing and playing through it somehow. I guess from there just one thing led to another and it just kind of snowballed on me. A lot of things added up and the wheels came off.

My understanding of it all is that people get really affected by COVID—metabolic issues and how your cells and your organs and tissues make energy—and everything fell apart at once. So, that's the simple gist of it. I worked with some really great doctors, some very knowledgeable people, and learned a lot of interesting tools and practices and medicines and supplements and made changes to my diet—all the things, really! But nothing got me to that place where I'm like, "Okay, yeah, this thing is in the rearview mirror and we're back to firing on all cylinders."

It wasn't just a biological thing. It wasn't just what are you eating, what are you putting in your body, what's going on underneath the surface. It was a big learning experience, as far as emotions and energy and perspective. My attitude, my perspective towards everything in my life, and even the game of hockey, all that was kind of going through a shift. There were a lot of deeper, kind of intuitive aspects to it, too. My body just kind of eventually gave up on me.

It wasn’t until last summer, 2023, that I started working with an Ayurvedic practitioner. After everything that I'd done, this guy told me to change my diet in a certain way. He put me on certain foods, a few things that I'd never really tried before, and I started taking these herbal tinctures to help with inflammation and digestion. That was one of the major shifts where it was like, "Okay, there's something here that we haven't really touched on and it's really moving the needle." He made the suggestion like, “Hey, I've had a few clients that have gone to this Ayurvedic retreat in India, in the province of Kerala, which is basically the home of Ayurvedic medicine. You should go out there and you should do this Panchakarma detox.” When he first mentioned it, I just kind of laughed at him. I was like, “Okay, man. I don't need to do that.” Part of my ego was just like, ”I’m not going to India. That’s ridiculous. I don’t need to do that. We’ll figure this thing out.”

Then, in a weird way, one thing led to another and I decided I wasn't going to play hockey last season. I didn't explore trying to sign another contract with anybody, because I knew deep down I needed some time away from the game. I wanted to give my body the time and space to truly heal and figure this stuff out. I had all this time and space before one of my really good friends was getting married in Italy in October. I’m like, “I have this whole month. What do I do with this time?” In a weird way, the whole Ayurvedic thing kept popping up. Random people would start talking abut Panchakarma this and Ayurveda that. I started really giving it some thought like, “Well, maybe I should give this thing a try.” I didn't even really research it at all, didn’t look at other possible clinics or places that offered the same treatments. I was just like, “You know what? This guy suggested this thing. He had clients that said it was a really, really good thing and a very reputable place, let’s just go with it and give it a shot.” So I decided to do that, and I went out there last September of 2023, and it was the most life-changing thing I’ve ever experienced and I literally got stronger every month since then.

So, come this past summer, I had in my mind: One more kick at the can. Let’s try this thing one more time, see where it takes us, and we should be in a good place. Sure enough, I'm really happy that I did, because this time was more than a month. I did five weeks and I expected it to be a little bit easier—because I was just in a better place and I was stronger and more resilient going into it this time—but it kicked my ass even harder. It was very intense. It was an emotional rollercoaster, a physical rollercoaster, it was all the things. But again, just an equally incredible experience. The quote I keep using is, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.” My mom has been saying that since I was a kid. But it’s never been more true for me.

I was a little bit nervous, because I've been kind of keeping it pretty hush-hush with what's been going on in my personal life, but it felt really good to share that part of my experience and also at least feel somewhat of a positive response from people that may or may not know anything about it.

I was actually traveling with a couple buddies. We were down in Costa Rica for a week or two and one of my buddies had similar issues that he just could not seem to get rid of. We had a friend in common that we met in Costa Rica and he's like, "Hey, you should work with this guy."

I honestly don't even know his real name, but he goes by Sadu. He is an Austrian fella and he, I guess, studied Ayurveda for years in an Indian monastery. He spent a lot of time as a monk, meditating and studying Ayurveda and Vedic scripture. That was another one of those things where I'm like, “Okay, man, I’ve done it all. I've tried it all. I’m so frustrated and exhausted and just fed up with this shit, so why not? Let's call Sadu.” He was hanging out on an organic farm in Puerto Rico.

I'll admit, I was pretty skeptical. And then, just the way the conversation went, he seemed to have a pretty incredible understanding and almost a bead on what I was about to tell him. He was tapped in in ways that we may not understand, but he seemed to just really, really understand my backstory without me getting into it too much. The suggestions that he made and the herbal tinctures were some herbs that I recognized, but a lot of them were Sanskrit names, all these Ayurvedic herbs that are not necessarily as well known to us in the US.

But he sent me all this stuff back in Chicago. It was a vegetarian diet, no meat, no dairy products, no nothing else except for maybe some ghee butter here and there in some of the cooking. But as soon as I started doing it, I just felt a lot lighter and I felt like things were clearing up. Digestion got better and there was less of a reaction every time I would eat something.

So, week to week it’s different. There's a whole laundry list of treatments that are considered part of a Panchakarma program. But, for me, the first two weeks they call it deepana, which I don't really know what that word means. [Editor’s note: It means “rekindling digestion.”] That's another thing, all this Sanskrit Indian language, everything is so different and even when you think you're learning something, the next minute you forget it, because everything's so different. It's hard for your brain to really soak it in.

But the first two weeks was called deepana, which essentially is getting your body ready for deeper detox. The normal routine would be: They wake you up at 4:30 and the first yoga session’s at 5 in the morning, which I pretty much skipped every single morning. I just didn't have the strength. That's the truth. I didn't make it to the first yoga session. But anyways, at 6 they’d have a morning puja, which is a prayer ceremony that they would do every morning—also skipped that. At 7: most people would be doing their first enema treatment. Everyone had a different concoction of herbs that they would do at 7.

At 8 you'd have breakfast, 9 you get a mud bath, so you'd be basically covered head to toe in some kind of clay and other minerals and properties that pull toxins through your skin. You’d slap that on for about an hour or so. And usually 10, 10:30 was a massage where it’s excruciating. You’d have two grown men doing the massage and it’s full-blown abuse. It was so painful. There were some days they were going so hard, both massaging the same areas at the same time, trying to get your whole lymphatic system going. I would get kind of angry, because I was like, “Is this guy taking out his anger on me? I'm in so much pain.” It's funny because you’re sitting in the cottage, just chilling, and you can hear people screaming from the massage rooms, because they’re just getting worked in there. A week in you’d be absolute mush. Everything that was stiff in your joints and your muscles would basically disappear and every muscle, every fiber in your body would be so relaxed. They’re moving so much fluid and so much inflammation out of your body.

Noon would be yoga nidra every day, which is a meditative type of yoga. Lunch would be 1 PM. And then there was another 4 PM yoga session, dinner at 5:30, another puja, which is a prayer fire ceremony at 6:15 ‘til about 7. And then, you'd be pretty much lights out by 8:30, 9 every single night because you’re getting up so early. That’s pretty much what the days look like when you’re on the program of enemas and massages. They were giving me medicine that was like serious laxatives. The first two weeks—now I’m sharing too much info, but it is what it is at this point—I’d be in the bathroom all afternoon, like 1 to 4, 2 to 5 pm. I literally lost 20 pounds in the first two weeks because it was just so much. It’s kind of crazy. You see people go through some crazy transformations the first couple weeks.

The next treatment I did was called snehapanam, which is basically ghee butter treatment. I think, in my case, I did it for five days. They'll give you a nice big glass of melted ghee butter. It's a clarified butter where they'll heat the butter and skim the fat off the top, so it's much more clear, I guess.

They give you the ghee butter that's got all these herbs cooked into it. It actually tastes pretty decent, but by day three or four they're basically doubling the dose every day. Then, the medicine becomes so strong, because it’s pulling so much out of your tissue and your cells and little microbes and viruses and heavy metals are basically releasing in your blood stream. By day three or four, you’re feeling in the dumps. I’m not kidding you, it’s brutal. This year was really rough. I don't know if I should share the details, but I was pretty close to hitting the panic button, because they want you not feeling good, because that's the sign—

You feel so low that you don't really have an appetite, so they don’t really want you eating anything. But literally five days straight of ghee butter in the morning and that's about it. Then, they'll give you two days of normal meals and, again, the meals that they give you are designed to make you feel like absolute shit. Day eight is the vamana, which is the induced vomiting. That's the day where you basically have to drink 12 liters of fluid.

Four liters of milk, four liters of some sort of licorice herbal tonic, and four liters of salt water. You kind of get in a rhythm. Every third or fourth glass you are puking everything up. Again, that’s all designed to basically pull all the toxins out of your system and just purge it out of your body. So like I said, the five days of the ghee butter treatment is an emotional rollercoaster, but once this is done, as you can imagine, it’s pretty miserable. Once it’s over, I mean, I was exhausted for three days, but you’re so glad it’s over and it’s just such a good feeling of accomplishment that you’ve gotten all this craziness out of your system. In a way, too, all of this crap is stored emotions and stored energy, if you believe in that sort of thing. But when you experience it, you realize there’s definitely a correlation, there’s definitely a connection.

Yeah, I mean, noticeably more so than anything else I’d really done, even from all the supplements. I went and did plasmapheresis. In some cases, they'll give you a young person’s plasma, which for obvious ethical and personal reasons, I didn't feel comfortable with. I opted not to do that, but I still did all these things that I was spending a good chunk of money on that were not really doing much.

I tried...dammit, what’s the other one? Where they basically take your blood out? Ozone therapy was another one. That was absolutely brutal. I was not ready for that. My body did not react very well to ozone. Everyone’s got their own beliefs, and I think I’m at that place where I do see there's some wisdom in the Ayurvedic when you really get to sink into what they teach and it’s not just the food, it’s not just the medicine and the food that you're putting in your body, it's the state of your mind, it's the state of your emotions, it’s the state of your energy and your attitude and your perception.

Are you in a state of gratitude? Are you in a state of openness, and willingly present and accepting what's going on in your life? Or are you in a place where you’re kind of fighting everything and in a victim mindset? I know, for a long time, I was hoping that something outside of me would be the cure for all of my ailments going on on the inside. And, in a way, it’s kind of the reverse.

There’s no WiFi on the whole property, except for in their little office where people go in there and check messages and stuff. I’m not going to lie, I turned my phone on here and there. But you try not to, and I think that part of the healing process is just not being distracted and really kind of sitting with whatever’s coming up. I think that’s a huge part of it, and, for me, one of the most powerful things I realized about going over there is, again, not just being immersed in a whole totally different culture and way of life with people that think completely different than you and were raised different, but also just being disconnected from your own world and not having anything pulling you back into your old patterns.

And it’s not a fun process, obviously. No one really wants to sit there with all the bullshit coming up, right? But at the same time, I would say it’s a big part of it, and I didn’t realize how important it was until I got there and I was really kind of going through it. But yeah, I wasn’t on my phone much.

Who knows where it starts? I think we all have different genetic makeups or predispositions in certain ways. I’m not going to lie to you, my theory is you can look at your own blood work—if you really want to get into that stuff—over the years and kind of correlate some kind of a story as to what's going on in your body. But I also find that so complicated and difficult to really rationalize and prove anything. My outlook on life has changed through all this. I think I got to a point where the game of hockey just became really, really hard work and I was putting so much pressure on myself. The game had become such a heavy burden with the pressure I was putting on myself, and the pressure I was feeling from other people in my life to perform and to be a certain way.

COVID—I can’t speak for anybody else, and I can’t speak for our society as a whole, obviously—but just for me, personally, the whole time has been a really huge shift in my ability to take back my own life. And claim my own energy and my own awareness and my own attitudes. Also, just get enough space away from the game of hockey and just how things were in Chicago, to look back and be grateful for it all and a whole new life. When I got sick (I was pretty sick with COVID), one of those things where your immune system is going crazy and reacting to everything. I'd have a glass of water in the morning and my whole body would just swell up. I was just reactive to everything.

I’ve worked with a lot of doctors who all seem to have their own theories and their own approaches and, ultimately, the way I look at it now, I know myself, I know my own history, I know what I've been through better than anybody and it’s kind of up to me to really take this into my own hands and figure it out. My body was definitely trying to tell me something, and my feeling was it was teaching me how to slow down, become more present, become more appreciative of the little things, create some sort of healthy space for myself in my life, and not have to live by these high expectations all the time. So it’s just an interesting way to look at things, and it's never perfect, but you do your best to try and find that balance that works for you on a deeper level, so to speak.

A lot of antiinflammatory things. Everything from vitamin C to glutathione. There's probably a few I can’t talk about. I mean, they weren’t banned substances, but I know the NHL is cracking the whip. It wasn’t anything I wasn’t supposed to be doing, I was just trying to mainline it in there to get the highest doses possible. You got to find a way.

I was taking very high potency curcumin, things that were kind of alleviating the inflammation a little bit. But it was just such an onslaught every day and every game of coming home and just feeling like I just had cement legs and arms. Nothing was clearing out of my system, and it’s almost like my liver was just so overburdened with toxicity and kind of, what do they call it? Microtoxins, or the waste that your immune system creates in your body when it's releasing all these immune cells.

[Laughs.] Yeah, I mean I’ll totally admit, I’ll be the first one to say that I’ve judged things in that sense before, too. I’m constantly trying to test my own limits as far as what I’m open to or what I’m judgmental of, but also realizing at what point will I trust something. At what point will I say, "Okay, this can be useful." Sometimes I think you just need to give things a shot and be open to it and experience it for yourself.

How else can you really prove anything? And ultimately nothing is 100%, but I’d say, in this case, I was a huge skeptic at first. I just kind of kept slowly opening myself up to the possibility that this could be helpful. Looking back, I’m so happy that I did it and it just goes to show, for me, that, again, everyone's having their own experience, everyone’s on their own journey. You’re ready for what you’re ready for. I know when I first got sick, four, almost five, years ago, I wasn't ready for this sort of thing. I wasn’t open to it, I wasn’t ready for it, so it didn’t really present itself in my life. I know that sounds woo-woo, but I also believe that it’s true, that things happen all at the right time and that’s just kind of the way it shook down for me.

To answer your first question, absolutely. The other quote I’ve been living by as of late is to not throw the baby out with the bath water. Again, I’m not all or nothing on anything, and I think I’ve taken a lot of good from these experiences and learned a lot through Ayurveda. I’ll continue to learn more about this stuff and try to incorporate it in my life more and more.

I think, going to your hockey question, again, I haven't spoken about this to a lot of people, but it’s definitely still in there. I’ve talked to a lot of the guys that are done, and a lot of them will say that desire to be on the ice competing and to be in the locker room with the guys never goes away. It’s just something that you have to accept when your time comes. So there’s that, but at the same time, I think there’s a big part of me that really wants to give it my all, to get back on the ice and see where it takes me.

There’s a part of me that really doesn't feel like my career is over yet, and who knows what this next part of the journey looks like, as far as getting back on the ice and trying to make a return to the NHL. There’s never any guarantees in life, but I’m going to give it my best shot. I’m going to enjoy every step of the way. As hard as it’s been at times, I look back now and I’m pretty thankful for it all. So we’ll see what happens.