Salem Press

Magill's Medical Guide covers diseases, disorders, treatments, procedures, specialties, anatomy, biology, and issues in an A-Z format, with sidebars addressing recent developments in medicine and concise information boxes for all diseases and disorders. Below is an excerpt from the Guide's essay on yoga.

Health Benefits of Yoga
Research, mostly done in India, suggests a wide variety of positive health effects from the daily practice of yoga, including, but not limited to, pain reduction in arthritis and carpal tunnel syndrome, reduction of coronary artery disease, and relief from asthma and other respiratory ailments. Situated in Bangalore, India, the Swami Vivekananda Yoga Anusandhana Samsthana (Research Foundation), or sVYASA, treats people with such ailments as asthma, arthritis, heart disease, high blood pressure, psychiatric ailments, and eating disorders. The center uses an integrated approach to yoga therapies that includes asanas (physical postures), chanting, kriya (yoga cleansing techniques), mediations, pranayam (breath control), and lectures on yoga philosophy. The system has been shown to benefit people with asthma, mental retardation, rheumatoid arthritis, and Type I diabetes mellitus. It is believed to improve visual perception, manual dexterity, and spatial memory.

The movements and body positions employed in yoga are now recognized in medicine for their promotion of flexibility and their use in stress reduction.

With support from other organizations, sVYASA ha been engaged in a vast variety of research, including the use of yoga to treat obsessive-compulsive disorder; the effects of yoga on people with multiple sclerosis; and the use of yoga for assessing alertness, ability to focus, flexibility, balance, quality of life, and fatigue in healthy elderly people. Pranayam has been shown to lower blood pressure in people with hypertension, to alleviate discomfort from gastritis, and to reduce stress and anxiety.