Can Yogasana Practice alone be Wholesome and Therapeutic?

Sangeeta Chakrabarty, S S Dempo College of Commerce and Economics, Cujira Goa

Ramprasad S. Joshi, BITS Pilani K K Birla Goa Campus Zuarinagar Goa

 

 

 

Abstract

Practice of yoga is spreading and deepening worldwide in recent decades. Urban population is taking up yoga as alternative therapy against lifestyle-induced degenerative diseases. The most common, popular form of yoga known is the practice of hatha yoga, the bodily posture exercise regime (asanas), combined with breath-control (pranayama) and meditation (samadhi).

 

We begin to investigate two questions in this work: One, does the practice of mere hatha yoga give any more therapeutic benefits than other similar regimes of exercise? Two, what are the advantages of practicing yoga under a complete yoga expert instead of amateur self-learning? We conducted a survey of 150+ urban individuals in modern occupations or homemaking. We examined unintentional exercise as a part of their daily home and work routine. We examined intentional exercise regimes: the type of regime; the supervision mode; the duration, frequency, and intensity; and any conscious monitoring of the targeted health indicators for the sought health benefits. We report the results.

 

About 30\% respondents practice yoga. Fewer belong to a yoga group under expert training. Most are practicing for a narrow set of health concerns. Conscious and clinical monitoring of the same was almost absent. Yogasanas are just one of the eight parts of a disciplined lifestyle of which any one alone cannot be completely helpful in the well being of an individual.

 

Introduction

In today’s fast paced, fast food and stressful life conditions many of us are prone to obesity in the belly and waist region due to sedentary lifestyles. A gradual decrease in metabolism results in slow degeneration of various vital organs to which there maybe few or no symptoms at all in the early stages of life (in twenties). Neglecting such minor problems continuously and carrying out the same sedentary routine may lead to a host of degenerative diseases in the long run and this can lead to irreversible conditions like acute cases of diabetes and hypertension.

 

Once a person is diagnosed with any one of these silent killers, they either resort to various strict diet schedule, exercise, weight control, reduced cigarettes, alcohol and salt intake or continue to neglect it completely relying heavily on medications alone. A few of them start yoga as an alternate therapy either on their own by watching online videos or try some nearby classes. Neither all the videos available are meant for such specific patients nor all the so called yoga teachers trained to solve such specific problems!  According to [3], the difference between a yoga teacher, researcher and yoga therapist is not clearly defined until March 2016 in India and in US! There seem to be no universally accepted norms or modalities which confirm to any standardization for such practitioners and these may result in serious complications to patients.

 

Literature Review Yoga is a science of managing and maintaining your health due to mind-body practice, it’s not a therapy for treating specific diseases. Regular practice of yoga provides reflection, change and self-awareness. It can help in managing or controlling life-style induced degenerative diseases like diabetes[6], cardiac disease[5], maintain cardiovascular health[9]; but for all these promised benefits, there is an associated comprehensive life style to be practised along with the yogasanas. A person doing yoga everyday but not following the other requirements like proper and timely sleep, rest, right diet, avoiding smoking or alcohol, etc. may not get significant benefits from yoga. Many people even cannot let go of their mobile phones during yoga practice sessions which obviously compromises the required  concentration and breathing. Yoga practice is a system outlined in the yoga sutras attributed to the ancient sage Patanjali which is summed up in [10]. Sivananda says about what is known as the eight-limbed Yoga (Ashtanga Yoga) that it contains five Sadhanas, namely, Asana, Pranayama, Pratyahara, Dhyana and Samadhi and three others, namely, ``Yama or self-control by way of chastity, temperance, avoidance of harm (Ahimsa), and other virtues; Niyama or religious observances, charity and so forth, with devotion to the Lord (Isvara-Pranidhana); and Dharana, the fixing of the internal organ on its object as directed in the Yoga-practice''. It is widely believed, like this master, that without a guru teaching and monitoring continuously for adherence and practice of the comprehensive prescriptions and prohibition of proscriptions, effective yoga practice is very difficult if not impossible. If true, it means many things, among which the most important one for this work is the question it raises on plausibility of therapeutic effects of yoga on lifestyle-related health problems. We wonder:

 

We observe that people who fell into ill-health due to a lifestyle that is wholly deviating from what yogic practice prescribes, start practising only hathayoga (yogasanas)  optionally with pranayam and dharana. According to yoga masters this does not constitute yoga in its entirety and it should not be as effective. Then, is it even significantly effective, and how much? If yes, what is the part of yoga that is like other exercise and physiotherapy regimes that are effective without any comprehensive lifestyle advice? If not, then are modern medicine doctors and physiotherapists prescribing some partial, targeted yogasana practice and reporting its postitive effects like [5,6,10] misled by optimistic bias?

 

Motivation

The present work is the first of an intended series conceived of as an investigation of the questions, ``Is Yoga just one variety of an exercise regime or more than that? Does yoga embody or anticipate all other forms and practices of bodily and mental exercises?'' Conscious of the fact that this entails a long term plan and sustained enquiry with a committed set of participants, we set out to introduce the series with a preliminary survey of just what kinds of participants could help us in this endeavour.

 

Apart from the claims and the glamour yoga is enjoying in recent years internationally and domestically in India, we are mainly intrigued by the spread, the popularity, the apparent enthusiasm in spite of lack of standardization and attention to quality assurance. Many urban health fads spread like wildfire and recede like flash floods in arid zones. Laughter clubs is just one such example[1]. Then there is a more sustained wave of zumba training and other dance-as-exercise regimes across urban India, again without standardization. Whether the same participants sustain the activity for a significant duration in their lives, creating the potential to make plausible long term changes in their lives, is not investigated ever in academia, to the best of our knowledge.% The difference between such health and exercise regimes and yoga is ``in the name'': yoga is by its name or definition standardised or idealised in the philosophy of Samkhya Metaphysics and Patanjali's YogaSutras manual.

 

We are inspired by Late Dr. Ravinder Lal Kapur, arguably the only psychiatrist  to  have  taken  a  sabbatical  to  study  the  subjective experiences of yogic practices, under the aegis of the  Indian  Council  of  Medical  Research  (ICMR) [1]. He explored therapeutic effects of yoga for mental well-being by learning yoga himself first, and then trekking to the Himalayas to meet and interview ascetics from different sects of Hinduism, coming across philosophers, intellectuals, artists, visionaries all kinds of explorers, keeping a diary meticulously of his own experiences with yoga and their interviews, for writing a monograph later[7]. Kapur confirms the claim of yoga gurus that the psychological and somatic aspects of yoga are integrated: they cannot be examined or followed in isolation.

 

This integrity claim has large support among researchers. Another medical investigation[8], of yoga therapy for alleviating tiresome and irritating symptoms of perimenopause and menopause, by a registered yoga teacher in the U.S.A., concludes that the best results  ``are achieved if the student understands how to integrate mental concentration with the physical postures and exercises.''

However, this article cites no data or empirical study. Another study[11], based on intensive systematic double-blind trials, concludes that ``Yoga improves functional disability, pain intensity, and depression in adults with chronic lower back pain''. The mention of depression in the conclusions, though not intended in the objectives, is significant. Yoga's benefits in multiple sclerosis patients has been explored in [4], which claims on page 193 that yogic practice reverses the debilitating process of muscle spasticity by ``bringing into consciousness, and under intentional control, what has been dropped from the spotlight, or had never been there at all.'' It argues that this is so because a given strong muscle that can generate a certain amount of pull with its contraction may not make the  person that has that muscle strong unless it can be applied intentionally.

 

Finally, the bold thesis[2, see pp. 135--136] that anticipates this new renaissance about mind-body unision in place of Cartesian Duality gave us the core idea:

 

The proposition that there are two inter-related informational systems, cerebral and somatic, implies in terms of my definition of mind, that there are two kinds of mind in all higher animal species. This is reflected in the concept of a conscious and an unconscious mind, as proposed by Sigmund Freud. It is then the cerebral input from the somatic system which emerges as `unconscious material’ in our dreams, or in the course of psycho-analysis and under hypnosis. But since feed back to the environment from the cerebral system is largely limited to responses effected by bodily movement, the overt cerebral rendering of this covert input from the somatic system is usually no more than symbolic. This is especially so when such somatic, or unconscious, material is actually verbalized through the movements of speech.

 

In summary, we set out to investigate the role or significance of verbalized, symbolic instruction and conscious intention in therapeutic effects of yoga on healing and well-being.

 

Experiments

The present work is only a preliminary investigation, more to identify a method and target groups for more thorough, systematic and deep investigation. We designed a questionnaire (reported in the appendix below) to know, inter alia, the subjects'

[Profile] like gender, weight, height, degenerative illnesses, home and work places and modes;

[Activity Profile] at home and at work, including climbing steps and daily chores;

[Exercise] regime and mode, with or without supervision;

[Monitored Effects] of the exercise regime, if any.

 

Methodology No systematic design of the process of acquiring responses and randomization or factor analysis was made, because this was intended as only a preliminary survey. Circulation among known yoga practitioner groups was the main device used. Overall, about 150 responses were obtained.

 

However the obtained responses indicated the following diversity and unity:

[Gender] almost 50:50

[Weight] median and mean around 67kg, few below 60 kg, few outliers above 80 kg; outliers did not have any significant pull on central statistics

[Height] concentrated around 5.5', within 5'-6'

[Age] was also concentrated within 30-50 years

[Travel Mode] very few travel by public transport

[Well-being] Only one-third reported any degenerative illness and chronic treatment, and there was not too much variation in the chronic illnesses reported

[Domestic and Workplace Activity] was less varying in terms of the amount of unintended exercise

[Intentional Exercise] was reported by about half the respondents, and yoga was among more than half of them (about 30-40\% of the total); most exercise regimes were half to one hour daily; less than a third were actually practising yoga under expert supervision but this constituted almost all yoga practitioners.

[Efficacy] of the exercise regimes was not inferred from the responses, with only a fifth reporting proper monitoring of vital indicators of morbidity or fitness.

Conclusion

From the responses, as well as from the informal discussions to infer data from anecdotal  collection, the following summary conclusion was drawn:

 

Apparently, the active lay members of yoga groups in and around Tiswadi region in Goa are not conscious of the intended effects of yoga and of the importance of that consciousness in order to actually realise those effecgs. In order to investigate further, we need to create that awareness and design a longer, deeper process.

 

References

 

[1] Ajit V. Bhide. Obituary: Ravinder Lal Kapur (1938–2006). Indian Journal of Psychiatry, 48(4):277-78, Oct-Dec 2006.

[2] Stephen Black. The Nature of Living Things: An essay in theoretical biology. WILLIAM HEINE-MANN MEDICAL BOOKS LTD., 1972.

[3] T. Fischer-White and A. G Taylor. Credentialing and policy update for yoga teachers and yoga therapists: implications for yoga research and yoga therapy research. J Yoga Phys Ther, 2(6), 2016.

[4] Loren M. Fishman and Eric L. Small. Yoga and Multiple Sclerosis: A Journey to Health and Healing. Demos Medical Publishing, LLC, New York, 2007.

[5] R. R. Guddeti, G. Dang, M. A. Williams, and V. M. Alla. Role of yoga in cardiac disease and rehabilitation. Journal of cardiopulmonary rehabilitation and prevention, 3(39):146–152, 2019.

[6] R. Jayawardena, P. Ranasinghe, T. Chathuranga, P. M. Atapattu, and A. Misra. The benefits of yoga practice compared to physical exercise in the management of type 2 Diabetes Mellitus: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Diabetes & Metabolic Syndrome: Clinical Research & Reviews, 5(12):795–805, 2018.

[7] Ravinder Lal Kapur and Malavika Kapur. Another way to live : a psychiatrist among Indian ascetics. Penguin/Viking New Delhi, 2009.

[8] Hari Kaur Khalsa. How yoga, meditation, and a yogic lifestyle can help women meet the challenges of perimenopause and menopause. Sexuality, Reproduction & Menopause, 2(3), September 2004.

[9] K. S. Sharma, N. R. Choudhary, and P. Subramanya. Evidence base of yoga studies on cardiovascular health: A bibliometric analysis. International journal of yoga, 2(12):162, 2019.

[10] S. S. Sivananda. Kundalini Yoga. The Divine Life Trust Society,

http://www.rsl.ukans.edu/pkanagar/divine/ online edition, 1999.

[11] Kimberly Williams, Christiaan Abildso, Lois Steinberg, Edward Doyle, Beverly Epstein, David Smith, Gerry Hobbs, Richard Gross, George Kelley, and Linda Cooper. Evaluation of the effectiveness and efficacy of iyengar yoga therapy on chronic low back pain. Spine (Phila Pa 1976), 34(19):2066–2076, September 2009.

 

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[1]We are not commenting here on the respectable few laughter clubs that sustain their activity and utility; we are commenting on the spread and hype that quickly wanes.