Yoga and heart diseases

Yoga and heart diseases

 

Yoga can help in preventing and curing cardiovascular heart disease. Proper lifestyle and diet are the keys in managing and avoiding heart disease. Yoga has a role to play in both of these.

 

All over the world, with more and more advancements in technology and modern ways of living life, heart disease has occupied the place of number one killer disease. It is a problem of modern civilization in the largest sense. Heart disease is a psychosomatic disease. It can be avoided or reversed by changing life style and diet. Diet is certainly very important, as diet does not necessarily mean what we intake as a food. It also includes what we consume as thought, feelings, emotion etc. etc. non-food diet. Our thoughts and emotions affect all parts of our body. Emotions spark chemical processes through out the entire body.

 

Coronary heart disease begins with an irritation or injury to the delicate cells that form the lining of the arterial walls. Causes of this could be high levels of fat or cholesterol and these can also be due to smoking or high blood pressure. So faulty diet and improper lifestyle is the major cause of this disease. Many many people dies of heart disease all over the world. This disease exerts tremendous pressure on the society.

 

Yoga is an ancient system of self-development, which offers a holistic approach to man through its ideology & techniques. Muni(Sage) Patanjali's Yoga sutras consisting of eight wings. These eight wings comprise of guidelines for living peaceful and disease free life. Yama & Niyama are the two limbs, which teaches us how one should live his life. Both comprise of rules of living a fruitful life. Yama consists of non killing, truthfulness, non stealing, continence and non hoarding while Niyama consists of purity, contentment, penance, self study and self surrender to God.

 

In the modern age of advanced technology and hurry, curry and worry way of living life, people have lost their ability to recognise sickness at its subtle level. We are so busy with our hectic timetable that we only take notice of our health when serious symptom occurs. Even then, we just look for the appropriate fast method of cure so that we can still make it to our business and social engagements until the inevitable breakdown occurs. Then also we relate only to that specific organ or limb which has been affected rather than to our total health. We should learn to recognise our problems at the emotional level itself before they translate into physical disease. In this way, we can save ourselves from a lot of suffering and depression.

 

We should try to understand more about why we lose our mental balance before it is too late and develops into serious psychological illness. Unfortunately our sensitivity has become so dull that we take notice of the disorder only when our normal function gets affected seriously. Consequently, we fail to get to the root cause of our problems. Here Yoga can be useful if practiced sincerely, regularly and under the guidance of a qualified teacher.

 

Yoga makes us realize that disease affecting any specific part of our body is not really a disease confined only to that part but in fact, it is a manifestation of some disharmony in the body-mind complex of the whole personality. It is now realized that modern medical science influences the health of the people comparatively to a lesser extent than the other factors like hereditary, environment, diet, activities, rest and relaxation, etc. Yoga has much to contribute in these aspects.

 

Recent researches have shown that mind plays more vital role in ensuring total health. Yoga is an effective way of dealing with mind, which in turn helps in dealing with any psychosomatic diseases/disorders like heart and cardio vascular disease. This is the reason why all, including medical fraternity, are now turning to Yoga with great expectations.

 

Yogic Asanas ands Prayanamas are the other two wings of Yoga. We have already discussed about Yama and Niyama. Practice yogic postures and Prayanamas can certainly helps in improving health of heart and mind. If practiced regularly it can prevent cardio-vascular diseases and in case of rehabilitation also it helps immensely.

 

When it comes to life style management, if one practice Yama and Niyama , emotional and mental balance can be achieved. Balance of emotional and stress management can go long way to prevent and also cure heart disease. Even another wing of Yoga, Dhyan i.e. meditation is helpful for mental and emotional balance.

 

In, one of the text on Yoga in Gherand Sahita , it is said that no amount of Yoga can help if the person is not taking suitable and balanced diet. Mitahar i.e. less food is recommended for everybody practicing Yoga.

 

More than diet it is present way of living of tense and stressful life is causing more damage to the heart. Faulty diet is adding fuel to the fire. Consciousness about our body requirement and our sustainable power will save many people from this most fatal disease of the recent times. Yogic way of life has very vital role in preventing, reversing and curing cardio- vascular heart disease.