Yoga for Health

The fundamental premise of yoga is that suffering begins in the mind and comes from a sense of separation. When you lose connection with your own values, purpose, and sense of self, this fosters dis-ease (get it?). Treatment of this dis-ease through yoga promotes the reintegration of the mind, body, and ultimately, the spiritual self. Yoga as a medicinal treatment is linked to Indian Ayurvedic medicine. Vaidyas, or Ayurvedic doctors, often prescribe certain movements, breathing patterns, and relaxation techniques as treatments, many of which have received substantial research support in terms of health improvement.

Yoga has potent healing powers and has been used to lower blood pressure, reduce stress, and improve coordination, balance, flexibility, concentration, sleep, and digestion. Over 100 studies have found yoga to be an effective treatment for a broad range of medical problems, from cardiovascular disease to carpel tunnel syndrome. Most notably, Dr. Dean Ornish, a cardiologist in California, believes that the stress-reducing effects of regular yoga practice can benefit cardiac patients and possibly prevent the need for bypass and artery surgery. In his randomized control trial known as the Lifestyle Heart Trial, Ornish and colleagues found that yoga, meditation, a low-fat vegetarian diet, smoking cessation, and regular exercise could not only stop the progression of coronary artery disease, but it could actually reverse it! The patients reported that their chest pain was gone and that they generally felt more happy and energized.

Yoga is believed to calm the nervous system and to balance the mind, body, and spirit. It is thought to prevent specific diseases and maladies by keeping the energy meridians open and life energy (Prana) flowing. A survey released in 2008 by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine reported that yoga was the 6th most commonly used complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapy in the United States in 2007. Just another example of how exercise is a potent medicine!