Yoga- complementary and alternate medicine par excellence
By Yogacharya Arun Kumar and Yogacharya Dr. Subash
Chawla
In the Readers Digest family guide to Alternative Medicine more than
140 therapies, remedies and self help treatments from acupressure to Zen
meditation have been mentioned including yoga. It states that in the
last few years yoga has begun to be used more and more as a therapy to
help in the management of particular ailments especiallyof stress and
stress related problems Because it works on body and mind - yoga is
recommended for the relief of conditions such as heart disease and
asthma which are amongst other ailments that respond to yoga therapy.
In 1983 a yoga biomedical group in Britain conducted a poll of 2700
people who practised yoga and were suffering from one or more of 20
different ailments. For each condition over 70 per cent of those polled
said that yoga had helped them to improve.
Research
The table below shows the number of people who answered 'yes' to the
condition they suffered ( column 1 )and column 2 shows the number of
cases and column 3 the percentage helped
The World Health Organization has dedicated a full Chapter on yoga in
its book Traditional Medicine in Asia published by its Regional Office
for Asia and fully recognises yoga as complimentary and alternate
medicine
Considerable research has been conducted on the ability of yoga to
improve various disorders of the cardiovascular system which is a major
health problem the world over.
Blood pressure and heart rate can both be lowered by the simplest
scientifically proved asana - shavasana .Yoga improves cardiovascular
efficiency and the relaxation Techniques of yoga are known to have a
significantly beneficial impact on weight control , blood pressure and
high blood sugar levels.
Tulpule used yoga in the treatment of myocardial infarction. He found
that simple yoga postures were beneficial to 102 male patients with
myocardial infarction who practiced for an year The famous father of
prevention and reversal of heart disease Dean Ornish
and Bimal Chhajer have reversed coronary arterial occlusion using
meditation , life style changes and yoga inter alia.
Cancer
At Apollo Cancer Hospital , Chennai, India, Yogacharya Arun Kumar and
his team have worked on hundreds of cancer patients and found that yoga
is highly effective in contro;;ing , reversing and healing cancer. The
regular practice of yoga helps the practitioners to handle their own
selves physically, mentally , emotionally and spiritually thus providing
a holistic therapeutic approach to cancer.
Through special meditation, visualization and relaxation techniques
one will be able to reprogram the mental thought patterns and produce
positive thoughts to counter cancer.
The Government of India has initiated the AYUSH programme for primary
health care in India very successfully.
A - Ayurveda
Y - Yoga and
Naturopathy
U - Unani
S - Siddha
H - Homeopathy
AYUSH is most cost effective and easily accessible to the over one
billion population of India. |