Part I: Concept Katarata in Yoga and Spiritual Lore
Part II: Influence of Yoga Program on Anxiety and Depression in Subjects Attending a 1 Week Yoga Camp
By
Surya Narayan P

ABSTRACT

Part I: Concept Katarata in Yoga and Spiritual Lore

The meaning of Kātaratā is anxiety, Distressed, grieved, agitated, perplexed, confused. Uncertainty in the mind is also the reason for anxiety. According to Bhagavad Gitā the cause of anxiety is attachment to fruits. Those who are motivated only by desire for the fruits of their action are miserable, for they are constantly anxious about the results of what they do. When consciousness is unified, however, all sorts of anxiety are left behind.Mind-body practices such as yoga widely popular, but little is known about how such exercises impact health-related quality of life. Considerable evidence exists for the place of mind body medicine in the treatment of anxiety disorders. Excessive anxiety is maladaptive. It is often considered to be the major component of unhealthy lifestyle that contributes significantly to the pathogenesis of not only psychiatric but also many other systematic disorders. Among the approaches to reduce the level of anxiety has been the search for healthy lifestyles.

SUMMERY AND CONCLUSION

The causes for today’s stress amongst people are mainly due to the anxiety over one’s uncertainty about future standing in society, namely the economic fear, the hurdle of exams and the lack of psychological support from those who really matter to them. Thus the report is an attempt to understand the drawbacks of our educational system with our ancient system in the background. The way we perceive the stressor and react to it dictates the effects of the stressor. Anticipation usually brings in lot of anxiety, we always are worried about the fruits of our actions and make decisions in haste being attached to sense pleasures and having the wrong perception. Happiness in materialistic pursuits and sense pleasures only leads to episodes of anxiety that is featured by confusion.Anxiety is an emotion, which has received much attention from researchers using autonomic and somatic measures as indicators of  ‘arousal’. There are several reasons for this interest (Lader 1975). First, anxiety is an emotion that everyone experiences frequently. Consequently, the study of anxiety is directly relevant to normal psychology unlike, for instance, schizophrenia. Second, anxiety-proneness varies among individuals and many theories of personality stress the influence of trait anxiety on many aspects of behavior.   According to Bhagavad Gita There is no cause for worry, whether things go well or ill. Therefore, devote yourself to the disciplines of yoga, for Yoga is skill in action

Part II: Influence of Yoga Program on Anxiety and Depression in Subjects Attending a 1 Week Yoga Camp
Background: Yoga has been shown to be helpful in life style related medical disorders through long term randomized control studies.
Aim: To assess the effect of short-term intensive group yoga intervention on self-reported anxiety and depression levels. 
Design: In this open uncontrolled pilot study, 81 volunteers with asthma (15), hypertension (10), anxiety and depression (5), arthritis (17), back pain (13), diabetes (5), digestive disorders (12) and obesity (4) were recruited to participate in a weeklong yoga camp. They were assessed before and after the camp; baseline anxiety and depression was measured by Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale.
Intervention: Integrated set of yoga practices including disease specific physical yoga postures (1.5 hours), pranayama(one hour), meditation(one hour), devotional session (one hour), lectures(one hour) and individual counseling on yogic life style management were taught in the camp daily.
 Results: There was significant reduction in anxiety and depression following Yoga intervention (p< 0.001) was observed in both groups with high and low baseline scores with significantly greater reduction in those with ‘high’ scores.

SUMMARY AND CONCLSION
Significant reduction in anxiety and depression in volunteers with better effects in individuals with higher pre intervention anxiety and depression scores is possible in a short term intensive yoga camp.Overall the results suggest that anxiety and depression reduce with yoga intervention. However this needs to be corroborated with larger randomized controlled trials in subjects with anxiety disorders and with more objective measures of anxiety and depression.The findings from this study could be limited by the fact that the reassessment was done after only one week and confounding effects of retesting would have been dominant. However our results show that the reliability was similar to that used in previous studies.

Key words: Anxiety, Depression, and Intensive Yoga