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A series of exercises as old as the Sphinx could prove
to be the medical miracle of tomorrow - or just wishful
thinking from the millions who have embraced yoga in a bit
more than a generation.
Yoga can be fun or be made fun of; it can help you look
marvellous or feel marvellous. These aspects are not
insignificant. They demonstrate the roots yoga has dug
into India’s cultural soil—deep enough for open-minded
researchers to consider how it might bloom into a therapy
to treat or prevent disease.
The sensible practice of yoga does more than give you
that blissful look. It can also massage the lymph system.
Lymph is the body’s dirty dishwater; a network of
lymphatic vessels and storage sacs crisscross over the
entire body, in parallel with the blood supply, carrying a
fluid composed of infection-fighting white blood cells and
the waste products of cellular activity. Exercise in
general activates the flow of lymph through the body,
speeding up the filtering process; but yoga in particular
promotes the draining of the lymph.
Yoga relaxes you and, by relaxing, heals. At least that’s
the theory. The autonomic nervous system is divided into
the sympathetic system, which is often identified with the
fight-or-flight response, and the parasympathetic, which
is identified with what’s been called the Relaxation
Response. When you do yoga the deep breathing, the
stretching, the movements that release muscle tension, the
relaxed focus on being present in your body—you initiate
a process that turns the fight-or-flight system off and
the Relaxation Response on. That has a dramatic effect on
the body. The heartbeat slows, respiration decreases,
blood pressure decreases. The body seizes this chance to
turn on the healing mechanisms. |
