| Therapeutic Applications of Yoga |
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Methods
The study was conducted at 'sVyasa', a residential yoga education and research center near Bangalore City in south India. One hundred and four subjects, 39 women and 65 men in the age range of 20–60 years, were recruited for this study after giving their informed consent. Subjects with chronic disease or those on medica- tions or with organ system dysfunction were excluded. The subjects were divided into two groups; a yoga group (n = 55) who were those practicing combined yoga (prac- tice of asanas, pranayamas and meditation) for the past six months or more, and a non yoga group (n = 49), who were those subjects not practicing yoga but working as volunteers or workers at sVyasa. The yoga and non yoga groups were further stratified based on gender. The number, age and physical characteristics of the subjects are provided in Table 1.
The yoga group practiced a mixed set of yoga techniques daily, in the form of asana (postures) and deep relaxation technique, pranayama (breathing techniques) and medi- tation, for at least the past 6 months or more. The asana postures started with stretching techniques followed by standing, supine, prone and sitting postures. The standing postures were the side bending triangle posture (trikonas- ana), forward bending (padahastasana), backward bend- ing (ardha chakrasana) and side lateral bending (ardhakati chakrasana) techniques. The supine postures were straight leg raising and shoulder stand posture (sarvangasana), while the prone postures were locust (shalabhasana), serpent (bhujangasana) and bow (dha- nurasana) postures. The sitting postures were the moon (shasankasana), hardy (vajrasana), and the half matsyen- dra (ardha matsyendra) postures. The asanas were fol- lowed by a deep relaxation technique, which was performed for 6 minutes with closed eyes with specific instructions relating to awareness and relaxation of differ- ent parts of the body. The pranayama phase consisted of fast breathing techniques such as forceful exhalation (kapalabhathi), and breathing through the mouth with tongue folded (shithali and shithkari), sectional breath- ing addressing the lower, middle and upper lobes of the lungs (vibhagiya pranayama), and a slow breathing tech- nique or alternate nostril breathing (nadishuddhi pra- nayama). At the end of the pranayama, the practitioner |
Table 1: Age and anthropometric characteristics of men and women belonging to yoga and non yoga groups.
Values are mean ± 1 SD.
No significant difference between groups |
assumed the supine posture in a totally relaxed state with closed eyes (also called the corpse posture or shavasana) for 3–6 minutes, in which the aim was to achieve an awareness of relaxation of every part of the body. Medita- tion practices were performed in the sitting position start- ing with breath awareness and relaxation. More detailed descriptions of these techniques are available in yogic texts [13].
Menstruating women performed only pranayama and meditation. The non yoga group did not practice any asana, pranayama, meditation or special techniques, but otherwise lived a life that was similar to that of the yoga group, since they were volunteers at sVyasa, were vegetarian and did not drink or smoke.
During the measurement, the subjects had an early vege- tarian dinner before 1800 h the previous night, followed at least 8 hours of sleep, and reported in the fasted state to the metabolic laboratory at 0530 h the next morning. Their body weight was measured to the nearest 10 g by a digital weighing scale (Soehnle, Germany), and height was measured to the nearest 0.1 cm by using a standard stadiometer. The subjects then rested in the supine pos- ture for 20 minutes before the measurement of BMR in a quiet, thermo neutral room. The women were assessed without regard to the stage of their menstrual cycle. The BMR was measured by indirect calorimetry (Oxycon-Pro, Jaeger, Germany), using a face mask and breath by breath analysis of oxygen consumption (VO2) and carbon diox- ide production (VCO2) for a period of 20 minutes; respi- ratory quotient (RQ) and energy expenditure (EE) were calculated from these variables. Other respiratory var- iables collected were the ventilation volume and the breath flow rate. The machine was calibrated daily for flow volume and gas analysis by using certified gases (5.2 % of CO2 and balance nitrogen, and atmospheric air, BOC, UK). The 1985 FAO/WHO/UNU prediction equa- tions were used to obtain predicted values of BMR based on age, gender and body weight.
The data are presented as mean ± SD (standard deviation). Comparisons between the groups were performed using the Student independent t test, and analysis of covariance was used to adjust the BMR for differences in body weight between the groups. Differences were considered to be sig- nificant at p < 0.05.
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