Can Yoga Cure Illnesses? Cure Through Yoga.
This is what we try to answer in this article. There are numerous people who would willingly attest to the fact that Yoga cures all kinds of ailments, from stress to cancer. As to finding people who have been cured by yoga, that will be a little more difficult. One of the side effects of Yoga, is that people would manifesting an aversion to any form of publicity.
As submitting to the philosophy of Yoga becomes a way of life, mind you, it is not a religion, and yoga is reputed to help people connect to their own absolute truth, the attraction of the fast paced public world becomes less attractive as it loses much of its appeal. Yoga emphasises that many of the world’s illnesses are but mere manifestations of stress.
Elderly people, housewives, teenagers, sportsmen and -women, business professionals, all set to practicing some or other form of yoga, yoga positions, breathing exercises and meditations. For many individuals, yoga has become a way of life.
Proponents of yoga argue that it has a multiplicity of techniques to counter that cause and, unlike drug therapy, attack the cause, not just the symptoms. It offers, they say, a holistic approach to health and fitness. Many professional athletes, looking for the edge have turned to yoga as a supplementary form of training. They have found that yoga aids their state of mental and physical relaxation between training sessions, and their crucial build-up to big meets, where a competition is usually won or lost in the mind.
Perhaps one of yoga’s major attractions is that it combines physical and mental exercise. It is excellent for posture and flexibility, both key physical elements for most sports-people, and in some respects, there are strength benefits to be gained. Yoga teachers say that the approach of yoga therapy is one of the most effective ways of achieving the mental edge that athletes seek.
Marian Fenlon, one of Brisbane’s leading yoga teachers of the past 20 years, is the author of two books on the subject and has had thousands of yoga pupils. Many of them have, in turn, become teachers. Believe it or not, she has even taught yoga to footballers. Many years ago, she took Brisbane Souths rugby league team for an eight-week course and, amazingly, it was well-received.
She says there are eight components to yoga therapy – attitudes, disciplines, posture and flexibility, breathing, sensory awareness, concentration, contemplation and meditation. Yoga can play a substantial supporting role to modern medicine, and complement other fitness and exercise programs.
While there is no great component of aerobic fitness in yoga therapy, it complements aerobic exercise because of breathing techniques that can be learned. So there are advantages for even the most demanding of aerobic sports – swimming, cycling and running. There are numerous documented cases of yoga relieving or curing serious illnesses – such as Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, heart disease, and respiratory illnesses like asthma and emphysema.
So much for the claims then, what about the real stuff? Well, one only needs to look at the explosion of bikram yoga outlets in the US to know that there must be some truth to them. It would seem that its founder started the yoga classes after having experienced a spectacular improvement after an improtant sport injury.
