Yoga : Sum, Substance and Hype

If Google hits and evidence on the net is anything to go by, it seems indisputable that Yoga brings health benefit to its regular users. And had the proof of its benefit been tenuous, leaders and people of 170 countries would not have adopted an Indian practice only on our present government’s enthusiastic foreign policy initiatives.

Yoga increases the body’s flexibility and reduces stress. It improves muscle strength, perfects your posture, prevents breakdown of cartilage, stabilises joints, restores bone mass and protects the spine.

There is also growing evidence that it improves heart functions, reduces elevated blood pressure, brings down high blood sugar levels in diabetics and mobilises excess fat from the liver in patients with fatty liver.

The breathing exercises, with which a session typically starts, improve lung functions, increasing oxygen supply to body organs. The focus on smooth breathing and its voluntary regulation is a simple useful way to improve concentration and dispel anxiety.

Recent research is also beginning to show that Yoga may boost your immunity by enabling the body to generate higher levels of antibodies after vaccination.
A Norwegian study found the Surya Namaskar, a sequence of 8 postures, to be particularly effective in boosting immunity and improving circulation.

Two modern-day ailments seem to respond particularly well to Yoga. Migraine sufferers reported less frequent attacks with the Bridge Pose (Sethu Bandha Sarvangasana). Yoga also helps reduce food craving, a common underlying cause of the present epidemic of obesity. It improves sleep and, interestingly even sexual function in stressed out overworked young people working in multi-national companies and often struggling across different time zones.

If everything is so hunky-dory, where then are the rough edges that need smoothening?

Yoga, which started not just as a physical but also a mental and spiritual practice in ancient India around the 6th or 5th century BCE has now come to be viewed as a series of postures to tone the body. This transformation occurred around the 11th century AD, when Hatha Yoga became the popular form that largely shed the mental and spiritual aspects of the practice.

The problem of today is yet another one: that yoga gurus clamouring for limelight seeming to be at variance on the correct ways, postures and mudras in which Yoga should be practiced, leaving the public somewhat confused.

Further, in their zeal and ambition they cross boundaries of common sense, advising followers to stop all medications and rely only on Yoga.

An old patient of mine of Hepatitis B whose viral counts had become undetectable with antiviral medicines 2 years ago and was instructed to continue the tablets, came to me last week with a recent report in which his viral counts had shot up to 6 lacs! He had stopped the medications at the behest of a popular Yoga guru!