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Yogic Exercises - A complete health perspective.


The Yogic workouts of stretching out the nerve fibres and tightening the central nervous system that ultimately affect the cells mechanically can therefore affect the body in a very positive way at the cellular level.  Role of yogic exercises in management of cardiac diseases, diabetes, chronic pancreatitis ,depressive disorders, epilepsy, osteoarthritis, multiple sclerosis, even for tuberculosis and pleural effusion have been reported, The five principles of yoga are relaxation, exercise (asanas),pranayama (breathing control), nourishing diet, and positive thinking and meditation, Pranayama are yogic breathing techniques that increase the capacity of lungs help to strengthen the internal organs, improve mental control and deepen your ability to relax.  Besides the Yogic exercises, general exercise regime of running, walking or aerobic exercises may also help in the cell rejuvenation.  This is a system of yogic exercises of the Indian Rishis and Yogins of yore based on exact principles.  However, mechanism of yogic exercises for restoring health and fitness components operating through psycho-neuro-immunological pathways is unknown.  The ultimate effect of yogic exercises is to achieve bliss and remain relaxed. Perhaps this is reflected from behavioral outcome such as remaining in happy mood, positive feelings etc. Such similar psychological state are attributed to the endorphin secretion and the parasympathetic actions of ANS on neuro-muscular functions .These endorphins are known to conserve bodily resources and energy , which appears to have similar effects of yogic exercises in resource conservation.

Yogic exercises are normally done to tone the body and the nervous system. Yogic exercises are normally done to tone the body and the nervous system.  Yogic exercises come under Hath Yoga system which is one of the eight limbs of “Ashtang Yoga” as enunciated in Patanjali Yoga sutras.  However, effectiveness of yogic exercises on various aspects of mento-physical health are evident from the earlier studies such as enhancement in the immediate memory , improvement in psychomotor stability, restoration of emotional stability, management of stress , attention resource conservation as well as improvement in anti-oxidant status suggest a complex interaction of attention with the breathing activity and unique aspect of attention to set right the metabolic imbalance monitored by the conscious information processing.  Recent scientific studies have shown the beneficial role of yogic exercises in management of asthma.  The effectiveness of yogic exercises on CNS depends on the innate nature of yogic instruction component to play a vital role on PNE network that modulates immune system.  Surya namaskar is the one of the most important and basic yogic exercises.

Therefore, the dual effect of yogic exercises on nervous system seems plausible in modulating immunity and relaxation.  Therefore, main features of instruction of yogic exercises include monitoring and filtering of information content concerned with several components of body awareness like stress detection, stimulus content and rejection of the post detection process that results in muscle relaxation.  However, so far, no reports are available regarding working mechanism of Yogic exercises in modifying PNE network functions for reversing stress mediated immune diseases.  Yoga training group will be practicing yoga exercises along with the medication, Yogic exercises used by the patients included pranayamas (deep breathing exercises), kapalabhati (cleaning breath),bhastrika (rapid and deep respiratory movements like that of the bellows), ujjayi(loud sound producing pranayama) and sukhapurvaka pranayama (easy comfortable breathing), meditation and shavasana (relaxation technique), under the guidance of trained yoga teacher for 45 minutes a day for the duration of 2 weeks and will be instructed to practice at home for 45 minutes twice daily, regularly for remaining 6 weeks and will be instructed to maintain a dairy record of each day of yoga practice.  The stress is known to be the root cause of all non-communicative diseases (NCD) and the yogic exercises are considered as the best tool to manage stress.  This first line of action suggests the possible role of CNS in secreting endorphin through yogic exercises.

This proposed model seems to be feasible for experimental testing and to explore various aspects of psycho-immunological effects of yogic exercises.  This amply suggests that the idea of application of yogic exercises to overcome stress by the virtue of body-oriented awareness including muscular stretching as well as relaxation potential to maintain one’s health seems viable.  After all, immunity is proposed as an information exchange rather than transaction of energy content. This suggests that the HIP of yogic exercises is essential for understanding the information processing aspect of psychology in tune with the molecular information exchange processes occurring at PNE level and immune system.

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