Bobby Sira
Specialist Oncology Pharmacist & Integrative Cancer Practitioner · Founder, PharmAveda
The Philosophy behind how I work:
The PharmAveda Approach
I trained as a pharmacist, and I have spent almost a decade of that career inside oncology teams — which means my starting point is always clinical: what is safe, what is evidence-based, what actually interacts with what. But over the years, it became clear that this was only ever half the picture. Managing a disease well and helping a person heal are not the same undertaking, and most people going through cancer are only ever offered the first.
My training in Ayurveda and Yoga Therapy — time spent in the Himalayas, in South India, and at a gurukula in Bangalore — gave me the other half. Ayurveda doesn't separate body from mind from the subtler dimensions of a person; it treats disease as an imbalance that runs through all of them, and it treats healing the same way. So my practice brings pharmacology, functional medicine, and pharmacogenetics into direct conversation with dosha constitution, breathwork, and yogic philosophy — not as a nice complement to "real" treatment, but as one coherent approach to a person who is, at every level, one system.
What makes this work distinct is less any single tool and more what I do with all of them together: I hold the full range — from the most concrete clinical detail to the most subtle inner work — and help each person find the combination, and the sequence, that their particular journey needs.
Beyond the Cancer: Healing from Within
Two kinds of ground
Cancer care asks two different questions, and most people only ever get help with one of them.
The first is horizontal: what is happening in my body, and how do I manage it well? This is the ground you stand on — understanding your treatment, managing side effects, protecting your nutrition, knowing which supplements support you and which quietly work against your chemotherapy. It is where clinical safety lives, and it is where I have spent almost 30 years, the last decade of them inside oncology multidisciplinary teams.
The second question is vertical: what is happening in me? Not the disease, but the person carrying it. This is the ground you grow from, a re-acquaintance with who you are underneath the diagnosis, a steadying of the nervous system, a return to something in you that was never sick in the first place.
Most support addresses one or the other. My work sits at the place where they meet.
"I have a sense of being held, of being content and comfortable within myself."
- Diane W., living with stage 4 colon cancer.
The horizontal: clinical safety and astuteness
You should never have to choose between what your oncologist prescribes and what you take to feel better. This is where the pharmacist in me stays vigilant — trained in Integrative Oncology through ACNEM and in Advanced Integrative Metabolic Oncology through the AIM programme — cross-checking mistletoe therapy against your chemotherapy protocol, checking whether that antioxidant you read about actually belongs in your regimen this month, understanding your genomics well enough to know which paths of metabolism matter for you specifically. It is precise, evidence-led, and unglamorous work — and it is the foundation everything else is built on. Nothing vertical is safe to attempt without it.
The vertical: healing from within
But the horizontal alone tends to run out of road. I meet many people further down their journey — after the second-line treatment, after the third opinion, after the supplement stacks and the diet overhauls — who have done everything right on the horizontal plane and are still asking, quietly, why doesn't this feel like enough?
How Ayurveda Understands Cancer
In Ayurveda, cancer is understood as a chronic, long-standing imbalance across the three doshas, the body's fundamental constitutional energies, an imbalance often masked for years, showing no early signs, or one we simply were not attuned enough to notice as it developed beneath the surface. Restoring balance and cultivating conscious behavioural patterns become an essential part of the cancer journey itself, work that can sit safely and effectively alongside all cancer treatments. Preparing the body and mind ahead of surgery or other treatment can bring a certain equipoise to what is often a difficult process.
This is where Ayurveda and Yoga Therapy do something conventional support rarely reaches: they work with prajnaparadha — the subtle drift away from one's own true nature that Ayurveda names as the deepest root of disease — and pratyahara, the practice of withdrawing the senses inward so the mind can actually rest and the body can actually hear itself. This isn't relaxation as a coping strategy. It's a re-entry point into the parts of you that exist independently of any diagnosis — the self that was there before the cancer, and will be there regardless of what the cancer does next.
How they work together
These two grounds aren't separate tracks running in parallel. They feed each other.
Strong horizontal foundations are safe, well-managed and well-understood treatments, and these create the stability a person needs to do real vertical work; it's very hard to sit with your own depths while worrying about drug interactions. And the more a person grows vertically, the less they tend to need from the horizontal: nervous systems that are genuinely regulated need fewer interventions to manage; a person anchored in their own ground tends to make calmer, clearer decisions about their care, and often needs less rescuing from crisis.
You don't have to choose when to start. Some people come to me at diagnosis, ready to build both grounds from day one. Others arrive later, having exhausted the horizontal avenues and unsure what's left - for them, the vertical work is often what restores a sense of agency that the horizontal alone couldn't give back. Either point of entry is a good one.
What this looks like in practice
A personalised plan grounded in clinical pharmacology and functional medicine — sitting alongside, not replacing, your oncology team — combined with Ayurvedic and Yoga Therapy practices tailored to your constitution and your present state. Safety-checked. Evidence-informed. And built with the understanding that you are not only a patient managing a disease, but a person, a soul, who is still, underneath it all, growing.
When I received my cancer diagnoses a friend directed me to the ‘Yes to Life’ website, the UK’s integrative cancer care charity. There I found Bobby Sira, an oncology pharmacist and an Ayurvedic practitioner. I couldn’t believe my luck as Bobby lived not far away and we were soon meeting up for conversation and support. Chemotherapy is very medicalised and it is easy to lose one’s sense of self in the middle of it. I was keen to have some agency around my treatment and in particular to boost my immune system. Bobby gave me this and so much more, gently guiding me in ways that I could integrate some alternative healing into my life. From diet to meditative practice to circadian rhythms and many conversations in between. Bobby’s approach has been life changing for me and with his pharmacy background I knew that I could have full confidence in his recommendations. I urge you not to wait if you think you need a helping hand, I can’t recommend Bobby highly enough. Bobby offers support for body, mind and spirit that sits seamlessly alongside medical treatment.
- Diane Wood, July 2025 Google review
Dear Diane,
Thank you for your heartfelt words and sharing your journey — it is an absolute privilege for me to walk alongside you and create together a unique path that resonates for you. You are the true guide, and it is the wise mind that seeks more than what appears possible, and embraces the journey. Thanks to Yes To Life charity for being there to support and advocate the importance of Integrative Oncology. Sincerely grateful.
- PharmAveda (Bobby's reply)
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Trained in Integrative Oncology through ACNEM and Advanced Integrative Metabolic Oncology through the AIM programme (Dr. Nasha Winters), with Ayurveda and Yoga Therapy training in the UK, Himalayan foothills, South India, and a Gurukula in Bangalore — alongside almost 30 years in clinical pharmacy and a decade inside oncology multidisciplinary teams. |
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