Posts Tagged ‘yoga’

• Mindfulness Meditation Training Changes Brain Structure in Eight Weeks

  Date: 2011.02.09 | Category: Reading | Response: 1

  Participating in an 8-week mindfulness meditation program appears to make measurable positive changes in brain regions associated with memory, sense of self, empathy and stress according to a study that will appear in the January 30 issue of Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging. Read the whole story at http://www.sciencedaily.com/

• Yoga proved to heal patients suffering of heart infarct

  Date: 2010.01.19 | Category: Reading | Response: 0

  Today I listened to Swedish public service radio channel P1 where they made a case on a study from the hospital of Danderyd.

  60 patients where divided to two groups. One group got prescribed with traditional western rehabilitation doing gymnastic exercise twice a week and the other group got prescribed with a CD with simple 30-40 minute yoga exercise to do at home.
  During the 12 week test period blood count, levels of stress hormones and perceived life quality was measured of both groups. The results now shows that yoga was with out doubt the best working method. Both blood pressure and stress levels where lower in the yoga group than in the group that followed the western rehabilitation method. Blood sugar levels where equal for both groups. And even thou the patients of the yoga group where sceptical in the beginning they all reported higher levels of life quality than the other group.

  The medical yoga doctor Göran Boll commented on this study by saying that the deep relaxation achieved by yoga breathing techniques and exercises are helping the body to strengthen the immune system and the body’s self healing capabilities.
  Göran Boll says that almost all of our modern western illnesses are products of living with to much stress.
  -We doesn’t seem to have time to listen to our own warning signals and keeps going until we crash. We get sleep troubles, migraine, high blood pressure levels, heart disease and brain-fag. If we then can activate the relaxation system and learn to listen to our body’s we will surely feel better, he says.

  Yoga was developed for 5000 years in India before it started to spread around the world in the 60′s. Since then yoga has been developed in different directions. Medical yoga in this study was based on simple Kundalini yoga exercises and focuses on deep breathing.

  Medical yoga is also used in cases of:

  • High blood pressure
  • Migrain
  • Eating disorders
  • Exhaustion
  • Depression
  • ADHD
  • Back and shoulder troubles
  • Hip troubles
  • Problem with sleeping
  • PMS
  • Rosacea

  To the Swedish news article on this study:
  http://www.aftonbladet.se/kropphalsa/article5918409.ab
  http://www.sr.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=1272&artikel=3379090
  And listen to the clip:
  Kropp & Själ – Yoga för hjärtat
  Read more on medical yoga at:
  http://www.yogamag.net/archives/1980/isep80/yogamyo.shtml