South Asia’s Ancient Wisdom Meets Modern Mental Health: Reviving Holistic Healing Embrace yoga for mental health!
Modern medicine has been studying the beneficial effects of yoga techniques on different health conditions for some time and analysing the science behind it. Many practitioners of modern medicine are now prescribing yoga to patients, particularly those with mental health problems. Barbara Koltuska-Haskin, Ph.D., a neuropsychologist with over 30 years of clinical experience is a strong believer in its therapeutic ability, and recommends practicing yoga to most of her patients, if there are no medical contraindications.
What is mental health?
The Mayo Clinic explains: “Many people have mental health concerns from time to time. But a mental health concern becomes a mental illness when ongoing signs and symptoms cause frequent stress and affect your ability to function.” According to the World Health Organization one out of eight persons suffers from a mental health condition at some time or another. Some commonly understood and widespread health conditions are stress, depression, anxiety, panic attacks, OCD, PTSD, ADHD, with varying symptoms and causes.
All of us know at least one person who suffers from something like this.
How does yoga help?
Studies using scientific imaging have shown how yoga, through its regulated and low impact exercise lowers the hormones that cause stress while enhancing ‘feel-good’ brain chemicals that play a key role in maintaining mental health and equilibrium. The chemicals are serotonin, dopamine, endorphins, and oxytocin. The steady and natural therapeutic release of these hormones through yoga practice can help in controlling and even reversing mental states, without the need of pharmaceutical intervention, depending on how serious the condition is.
Modern medicine often advises supplements or pharmaceuticals that can have adverse side effects or not provide any benefit: about one in three people with depression do not find antidepressants effective. The mindful practice of yoga, increasingly prescribed by psychotherapists and counselors in the US as a complementary or standalone therapy, offers a benign and holistic approach to well-being.
Qualified guides needed for mindfulness, meditation and practice
However, even yoga needs to be pursued with learning, deliberation and caution when dealing with a patient.
Broad-based yoga wellness programs are beyond doubt hugely beneficial for maintaining general fitness and health. What is not so well established are the practices recommended for specific mental health conditions. Dr. Eleanor Criswell, a psychotherapist who teaches the psychology of yoga at California’s Sonoma State University, says “Without proper supervision, a student can have increased sadness…. Sometimes the higher sense of alertness enables acting on bad impulses. Depressed people can feel more depressed with relaxation.”
One of the foremost institutes of yoga which propagated yoga worldwide, the Bihar School of Yoga, says in its yoga manual “when learning the practices of yoga the guidance of a qualified teacher is
recommended.” The bundle of practices it recommends for anxiety and depression are vastly different: meditation is to be avoided for depression as it can cause introversion.
So, who is qualified? Community enthusiasm for ‘wellness’ has led to the rapid rise of ‘wellness coaches’ who add yoga on to other offerings at gyms, without a profound understanding of mental conditions and how yoga works. While looking for a guide, it is important to investigate antecedents thoroughly: training in a reputed yoga institute, years of practice, experience in mental health. And what’s best, a doctor’s referral.
Yoga is for everyone
Yoga is a means of balancing and harmonizing the body, mind and emotions and is available to all regardless of faith or ideology. South Asians have been exposed to it for a long time and many view yoga as a shared South Asian heritage! Go for it, to reduce stress, overcome anxiety, manage depression, any mental health condition that disrupts the smooth functioning of your life or that of your loved ones.
MORE INFO
The Science Of Yoga
https://blog.yogaalliance.org/2023/05/01/how-yoga-benefits-mental-health/
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/how-my-brain-works/202205/yoga-and-the-brain https://www.houstonmethodist.org/blog/articles/2021/sep/the-benefits-of-yoga-how-it-boosts-your -mental-health/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6971819/
Clinical Perspectives
Anxiety and yoga
Depression and yoga
Videos with Sat Bir Singh Khalsa, Ph.D., assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and director of yoga research for the Yoga Alliance
Some Therapeutic Videos
Relaxing Yoga for Better Mental Health
20 min Yoga For Stress Relief
Easy Yoga For OCD
