Yoga as Medicine
Yoga has been around for many thousands of years, but it didn’t make its way into this country until much later and has only recently been sweeping the country, mostly because of its kinder and gentler form of exercise with countless proven health benefits.
Swami Vivekananda, a great Yogi and author of many Yoga texts, left India to come to America in 1893. He believed that a spiritual essence could be transmitted from one person to another and he wanted to share what Yoga had taught him with another country. He gave his first speech at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago. He opened with “Sisters and Brothers of America,” when he had finished the audience was on its feet, giving him a standing ovation and our love affair with the peaceful practice of Yoga began.
Then in 1924 the United States immigration service imposed a quota on Indian immigration, making it necessary for Westerners to travel to the East to seek training in the teaching of Yoga. One of the earliest of these was Theos Bernard, who returned from India in 1947 and published “Hatha Yoga: The Report of a Personal Experience.” It was a major sourcebook for yoga in the 1950s and is still read today. That same year, Indra Devi opened the first Yoga studio in Hollywood.
But it was Richard Hittleman who introduced more Americans to Yoga than any one else. In 1950 he returned from studying in India to teach yoga in New York. In 1969 he published his first book, “Yoga: 28 Day Exercise Plan” and in 1961 he brought yoga to television with his TV show called, “Yoga for Health”. Although he was a student of the sage Ramana Maharshi and very much a “spiritual” yogi, he presented a non-spiritual yoga for the American mainstream, with an emphasis on its physical benefits. He hoped students would then be motivated to learn yoga philosophy and meditation.
Finally, after all this time, the medical community is taking notice of the great physical benefits of a Yoga practice. With new research study’s starting all over the world every day, I can’t wait to see the findings of these studies put in writing for all to see, but there are many that have already been documented.
Physicians in the U.S. and abroad are conducting a variety of studies gauging whether yoga offers health benefits beyond general fitness and can relieve symptoms associated with serious medical problems. Early results suggest that a regular yoga regimen — involving a variety of postures, deep breathing and meditation exercises — can offer relief for patients suffering from asthma, chronic back pain, arthritis and obsessive compulsive disorder, as well as many other problems.
Until recently, Yoga therapy hasn’t been widely studied in the U.S. with most of the research having taken place in India where yoga originated. But things are changing, several reputable American doctors are pursuing randomized yoga studies, and the National Institutes of Health is funding clinical trials of yoga for treating such conditions as insomnia, multiple sclerosis, fibromyalgia, depression, hypertension, patients with malignant brain tumors and countless others.
Medical or “therapeutic” yoga is a far cry from the intense technique taught in health clubs. Popular styles of Yoga, such as Ashtanga, Bikram and Iynegar are physically demanding, usually causing participants to break a sweat. By contrast, therapeutic yoga focuses on breathing and meditation techniques that calm the mind, increase lung capacity and reduce stress. Health clubs are more into powerful, hot and sweaty, in-your-face kind of yoga. Even group classes offered at most Yoga studio’s are geared toward one style and are taught with the presumption that the participants are otherwise healthy individuals without limitations, conditions, injuries or illness.
Therapeutic Yoga is generally done in a one-on-one type setting where the focus can be on offering specific asanas or poses to create positive result for that particular individuals needs, such as in rehabbing an injury; or in very small group settings with persons who are all affected by the same disorder such as heart disease.
Here are a few of the interesting studies that have been completed so far:
* Chronic back pain: Dr. Vijay Vad, a sports medicine specialist at the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan, is studying 50 patients with herniated disks who are suffering from lower back pain. Half the patients are taking daily doses of the anti-inflammatory drug Celebrex as well as Vicodin for severe pain.
A second group doesn’t take any drugs, but instead spends 15 minutes, three days a week on an exercise program that is about 70 percent yoga and 30 percent Pilates, a technique that involves a series of low-impact flexibility and muscle exercises. The program, dubbed “Back Builders,” specifically excludes many popular sitting and bending positions that can aggravate back problems.
After three months, the results have been striking: 80 percent of patients in the yoga group reported that their pain was reduced by at least half. In the group taking drugs, only 44 percent improved. Three patients, or 12 percent of the yoga group, re-injured their backs during the period; that compares with 14, or more than half of patients in the medication group.
Dr. Vad, who consults with the men’s professional tennis and golf tours, notes that in India, where yoga is widely practiced, lower-back problems are virtually unheard of.
* Mental health: Doctors and researchers are increasingly intrigued by yoga’s potential to treat mental health problems. One study, published in CNS Spectrums, a peer-reviewed psychiatric medical journal, examined 22 adults who suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder, an often-disabling condition that causes odd compulsions, such as excessive counting.
Half the group used standard meditation,while the other half used “Kundalini yoga,” which requires patients to focus both eyes on the tip of their nose, press their tongues to the roof of their mouths, open their jaws and breathe through their noses for at least six minutes. After three months, the yoga group posted a 40 percent improvement, compared with 14 percent in the non- yoga group. Later both groups received the yoga treatment, and after a year posted an average improvement of 70 percent.
One of those patients, a 53-year-old San Diego resident, had been taking the anti-anxiety drug Paxil when he entered the study and says he was “totally skeptical” that yoga could help him. Today most of his symptoms have disappeared. “OCD is not a problem I currently deal with,” he says.
“The results are rather striking and hard for some people to believe,” says David Shannahoff-Khalsa, one of the study’s authors and director of the research group for mind-body dynamics at the University of California-San Diego’s Institute for Nonlinear Science.
* Asthma: P.K. Vedanthan, an allergist and associate professor of medicine at the University of Colorado in Denver, studied 17 adults with asthma. Half the group practiced a yoga regimen that included breath slowing exercises and meditation. Although lung function tests were about the same for both groups, the yoga group was less likely to need inhalers and scored higher on quality of life questionnaires.
Marianne Wamboldt, associate director of pediatrics at National Jewish Medical Research Center, one of the country’s leading allergy and asthma hospitals, is a longtime yoga practitioner who is seeking NIH funding for her own yoga/asthma study. “I don’t think yoga can cure asthma, but I think it’s a good adjunctive therapy that helps,” she says.
* Cardiovascular disease: Mary Jo Kreitzer, director of the Center for Spirituality and Healing at the University of Minnesota Alternative Medicine Center, recently authored an article on how yoga could be used for cardiovascular patients. Yoga has been shown to relieve stress, lower blood pressure and heart rate and improve cardiovascular endurance, she says. “We are on the cusp of a big shift. I think what’s changed is people are demanding it, and they want to look at these alternatives.”
There are currently well over 200 clinical trial studies listed that have either been completed, are in progress or are being recruited for. For a complete list visit:
Finding an instructor experienced in therapeutic yoga isn’t easy. There’s no official national yoga standard, but a good place to start is by looking for a teacher who is registered with Yoga Alliance (www.yogaalliance.org) has a strong background in human anatomy, has been teaching for at least 5 years and has sought additional training in therapeutic practices.
Written by: Barbara Nobles; Owner of Body Benefits
Comments