Initially, yoga teacher and econo- mist Rajan Narayanan, Ph.D., founded the nonprofit Life in Yoga Founda- tion and Institute to offer free teacher training. Within a couple of years, the foundation’s focus shifted to integrating yoga into the mainstream healthcare system. “We realized that to make a real difference, we needed to teach doctors about yoga and its scientifi- cally proven effects,” he says. Medical providers can earn credits to keep their licenses current by attending courses by Life in Yoga, the only yoga institution independently certified by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education. Currently, even if physicians don’t practice yoga,


Any physical exercise done with breath


awareness becomes yoga; anything done without the breath is


just a physical practice. ~Rajan Narayaran


where people can’t sit for long without an electronic device. It’s more than just popping pills,” says Narayanan. McCall says, “Even if people can commit to just a few minutes of yoga practice a day, if they keep it up the benefits can be enormous.” “There are no sales reps telling


doctors to use yoga therapy like there are for pharmaceuticals,” remarks Narayanan, and until yoga is funded by health insur- ance, it will be challenging to gain full


acceptance in mainstream medicine. Another barrier is certification standards. The Inter-


it’s likely that many of their patients do. “You now see it everywhere from major medical centers to mainstream ad- vertising,” says McCall, who notes an increase in doctors, nurses and therapists attending the Yoga as Medicine sem- inars he and his wife Eliana teach internationally and from their Simply Yoga Institute studio, in Summit, New Jersey.


Mounting Evidence “Yoga may help prevent diseases across the board be- cause the root cause of 70 to 90 percent of all disorders is stress,” says Narayanan. Yoga increases the body’s ability to successfully respond to stress by activating the parasym- pathetic nervous system, which slows the heart and lowers blood pressure. That in turn suppresses sympathetic activi- ty, reducing the amount of stress hormones in the body. Studies collected on PubMed.gov demonstrate that


yoga has been found to help manage hypertension, osteo- porosis, body weight, physical fitness, anxiety, depression, diabetes, reproductive functions and pregnancy, among other issues. Studies at California’s Preventive Medicine Research Institute have tracked amelioration of heart disease. A growing body of research is validating yoga’s benefits for cancer patients, including at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Can- cer Center. A small study at Norway’s University of Oslo suggests that yoga even alters gene expression, indicat- ing it may induce health benefits on a molecular level.


Cultural


Challenges “For yoga to be effective, a regular practice must be implemented, which is challeng- ing in a culture


national Association of Yoga Therapists (iayt.org) and the Council for Yoga Accreditation International (cyai.org) are both beginning to offer certifications for therapy training programs and therapists. Narayanan is hopeful that certifi- cation could lead to yoga being covered by insurance. Medical school curricula have started shifting to em-


brace complementary approaches to wellness, with many textbooks now including information on mind/body ther- apies. The Principles and Practices of Yoga in Healthcare, co-edited by Sat Bir Khalsa, Lorenzo Cohen, McCall and Shirley Telles and due out in 2016, is the first profession- al-level, medical textbook on yoga therapy. “Yoga has been proven to treat many conditions, yet


yoga teachers don’t treat conditions, we treat individuals,” says McCall. “Yoga therapy is not a one-size-fits-all prescrip- tion because different bodies and minds, with different abili- ties and weaknesses, require individualized approaches.” While medical research is working to grant yoga more legitimacy among doctors, policymakers and the public, McCall says, “I believe these studies are system- atically underestimating how powerful yoga can be. Sci- ence may tell us that it decreases systolic blood pressure and cortisol secretion and increases lung capacity and serotonin levels, but that doesn’t begin to capture the totality of what yoga is.”


Meredith Montgomery, a registered yoga teacher, publish- es Natural Awakenings of Mobile/Baldwin, AL (HealthyLivingHealthyPlanet.com).


normandale


HEALTH EDUCATION Classes •Workshops • Certificates


INTEGRATIVE


Ayurveda, Herbalism, Reiki, Tai Chi and much more


Normandale.edu/ce 952-358-8343


natural awakenings September 2015 21


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32