Yoga - Its Origins, Purpose and Relevance in Today's Society

Since we have been discussing Yoga as treatment for panic attacks during the past few days it would be appropriate today to discuss some facts about what yoga actually is and its relevance in today's modern society.

Yoga is an ancient form of exercising meant to enhance the harmony of body and mind. "Yoga" is pronounced "yog" in its original dialect and literally means unification or merger. It is symbolic for the measures practiced to bring about union of mind and body. The ultimate aim for the yoga exercises is to bring about harmony between the body and the soul for self enlightenment.

For this yoga utilizes movement, breath, posture, relaxation and meditation for establishing a healthy, lively and balanced approach to your life. These yoga exercises were initially in the ancient days used to prepare those who were going in for a life of asceticism and meditation. Yoga prepared them for the rigors of meditation, the concentration required for long periods of time, to help them to develop the temperament for long periods of sitting and standing still. In those days such meditation was thought to be a way of reaching out to God and hence they took great pains to get it right and thus yoga was popular.

In Hindu life cycle, the last few years of old age are meant to be spent in solitude like staying in exile, giving up on all worldly possessions and thinking about what all you had accomplished in life and repenting all your repentable deeds. These all were thought of as ways of getting ready to meet God once you died. Hence yoga and meditation played a great role in accomplishing these too.

In today's context, yoga can be used as a means to lead a stress less life. To maintain your composure in day to day problems and to maintain a fine balance between work and a healthy mind. Yoga is also a great form of alternative medicine which is gaining popularity among the population. Yoga works for great many disorders related to the respiratory system, the digestive system, the musculo-skeletal system, body weight, psychiatric problems such as panic attacks etc.
Thus yoga should not be ignored when considering some complementary medicine to go for along with conventional therapy. It is just a one time investment - the training part - and you have an asset for life which can help you in innumerable ways.

If you need to de-stress your self, are looking for sure shot way for weight loss, want to learn about yoga's role as complementary medicine for some disorder that you may have, log on to The International Yogalyam for learning and training yourself for yoga.

Regards,

Dhritiman Chakrabarti.

Treatment of Panic Attacks and Anxiety - Yoga and Meditation

Yoga and meditation are practices that help your body to renew itself naturally. The yoga helps to do so physically while the meditation helps to do so mentally. The satisfaction that one gets after doing a session of yoga and meditation is unparalleled. Hence people are getting slowly and slowly gravitated towards these forms of natural healing.

Yoga and meditation are nearly the only types of alternative medicine that require nothing but your body to complete them. Only a little instruction is required in the beginning and you have an asset in your life that will remain with you forever and help you with the various conditions of of ill health that you may have - physical or mental.

Now we shall discuss the effects of yoga and meditation in the treatment of panic attacks and anxiety. Yoga leads to a slow decline in the sympathetic tone of your body as does meditation by decreasing your stresses and tensions. These alone help in a great decrease in your anxiety level and the frequency of panic attacks correspondingly decreases.

The yoga and meditation also have a sort of placebo effect on the patient. As yoga is something that you do yourself, it helps in gain of self confidence. The medication and psychiatric therapy are something that a patient may or may not have confidence in, but when a person goes on to yoga and medication for treatment of panic attacks and anxiety, its usually his own choice and he goes in for it because of that very reason that he believes in yoga and that it will cure him. Hence, the placebo effect.

Thus if you are a patient of anxiety or panic attack, ideally, you should go around and search for the efficacy of yoga and meditation and only when you gain confidence in these techniques that you should go in for these. Otherwise you will not benefit from the major placebo effect of these treatments.

If you are a patient of anxiety, panic attacks, or even general stress and are tired of your medication and their side effects, start learning about yoga and meditation. These alternative therapies will surely help in decreasing your anxiety levels.
If you feel convinced enough then go ahead and learn the power of yoga. Otherwise, poke around and find out a bit more.

Regards, Dhritiman Chakrabarti.

Alternative Therapies - General Discussion

Some definitions:
Mortality: Death due to a disease.
Morbidity: Bad effects of a disease not amounting to death.

I classify diseases according to whether they have "low mortality and low morbidity" or "low mortality and high morbidity" .
High mortality diseases are left out of the discussion because they are usually treated at the hospitals.
The low morbidity is also left out of the discussion because people don't seek treatment for such conditions.

So our discussion centers on high morbidity conditions with low mortality - such as Panic attacks and Anxiety, overweight people, various skin condition like acne etc.
Many of such conditions are not treated successfully by conventional allopathy (doctors and medical science). And in many cases the side effects of the drug become the source of morbidity.
Therefore patients are always on a look out for alternative therapies - Yoga, Homeopathy, Ayurveda, Hypnotherapy etc.

And since these conditions have low mortality, the alternative therapies are not monitored and tested. Thus publishers often launch products in these categories of disease without any danger of retribution.
Whether these products are useful or not is never known until a patient tries it out for himself. Thus a patient is becomes a sort of a guinea pig who doles out money for being experimented upon.

Mind you I am not saying that alternative therapies are all bad. Many people are cured of their diseases trying out these therapies. Many people report benefits in the form of alleviation of symptoms.
All I am trying to point out is that the mechanisms of these therapies, their actual benefits, their side effects are not known and that one should be careful while trying out new therapies.

Personally, I am a fan of Yoga as an alternative therapy for various diseases and as a general enhancer of quality of life and fitness levels.

If you are interested in learning about various therapies, here are the links:

Yoga

Aromatherapy

Regards,
Dhritiman Chakrabarti