Can Yoga replace medicine?

Medical experts believe yoga can help manage chronic lifestyle diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, and reproductive and  respiratory disorders
Students from Bluebell Public High School perform yoga in Malleshwaram  Nagaraja Gadekal
Students from Bluebell Public High School perform yoga in Malleshwaram  Nagaraja Gadekal

BENGALURU: This ancient discipline of bringing the body and spirit in unison is a well-known way to fight physical and mental health issues. This International Yoga Day, City Express brings to you the effect of yoga in day-to-day life. To what extent is yoga helpful? And can it be used as substitute for medicines?

Yoga helps cure diseases
Yoga is a mind-body workout that includes strengthening and stretching poses with deep breathing and meditation and relaxation. There are different types of yoga poses such as Hatha, Vinyasa, Ashtanga, Bikram and Iyengar to help relieve stress.

Post-traumatic diseases, which  arise after experiencing stressful situations, occur in more than 33 per cent of the people. The word Yoga originated from the word Yogum, a discipline that helps you gain control  of your life and gives you a sense of stability. According to ancient Shastras, practising yoga helps in the merging of the spiritual and the physical planes of the body which creates resistance against diseases.  “In every person, there is something called the spiritual pendulum.

When the spiritual pendulum of a person becomes unstable, they become prone to diseases. Yogis and monks who spent their life the Himalayas survive because of their stability in the spiritual pendulum,” says yoga therapist and physiotherapist, Sanal Kumar.

He adds that he was able to stabilise acute diseases such as arthritis, thyroid, blood pressure, diabetes and heart conditions in his patients through yoga. “Through proper practice even cancer can be controlled to a certain extent,” he believes. Anil Kumar a private yoga instructor from Mysuru says that all kinds of diseases can be cured with yoga. “But it all depends on the mental power of the person.

Spirituality cannot be taught to someone but can be attained through proper directions by the guru. Once you attain it, you will have resistance against diseases,” he says. Vinod Kumar, a yoga instructor from Bengaluru, agrees. “Once you practice yoga under the guidelines, you will be able to attain a certain  level of resistance,” he says.  

Recommended to an extent
So, why don’t doctors recommend it? Doctors in Bengaluru prescribe yoga for mental health and for relaxation, but do not recommend it for everything. “Yoga is necessary to maintain a healthy life. In that context, yoga will help in bringing down the chances of getting cancer and leading a healthy lifestyle.

Once cancer sets in yoga helps in coping with it. But it is not entirely true that it will cure a person of it. It helps prevent the relapse of the disease,” says Dr Murali Subramanian from Oncology India.
According to Dr Narendra, senior diagnostician from Sreeyas Diagnostics, yoga can cure diseases but he believes medications should also be used.

Dr Mohammad Ajmal, general physician from Mysuru, says, “I believe that yoga does cure a lot of diseases. For example, when my mother was diagnosed with arthritis, yoga helped her in her day-to-day activities. She practised yoga along with taking her medications and it has since then it been under control. But diseases such as cancer, I guess, can only be prevented to a
certain extent.”

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The New Indian Express
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