One of my friends mentioned that he had some cancer related activity and somehow the situation seems to have improved significantly due to practising Pranayama meditation. Pranayama is a slow and deep breathing excercise. It is one of the most powerful meditation techniques I know of.
The mind and the seat of consciousness (called soul in religious circles) have the ability to heal our body. While medicines help, it is quite well acknowledged by modern medicine that mind has a significant role in healing. For example, many cases patients get cured by placebos, which are dummy medicines. Similarly, valid and proven-effective medicines don't work sometimes because of the mental condition of the patient. Please recognize the important role mind pays in healing. Mind can overpower the scientifically tested medicines!
One can accelerate healing by having the mind chant mantras. Or by the mind telling the broken hand to heal. There are some evidence based studies for this phenomenon. One can experiment for themselves to validate this hypothesis.
A stressed mind would mean slower healing. A calm mind means all the life and mind energy can be focused on healing. In this sense, the health benefits of meditation are indeed significant. Based on experimentation and reading of various Yogic texts, I am fairly convinced that strong meditation is a very powerful cure for any disease in any common condition. Lord Kapila discusses, in Sankhya yoga section of Srimad Bhagavatam, how meditation can cure diseases.
I had managed a small surgery with no painkillers after surgery with just meditation and homoeopathy. The doctor said that, in her twelve years of service, she has not seen such an example.
Somehow, modern medical practice is blind to this. If you go a hospital in America, it is typical that the mind gets no rest. The mind is engaged by television from 8am to 10pm.
Different food stuffs have different impacts on our health. If you eat a heavy to digest food, the digestive system and overall body are stressed negatively effecting healing. For gastro intestinal diseases, it would make sense to rest the digestive system by fasting or regulated eating. My sicknesses have always been related to bad eating. Somehow modern medicine does not focus on this. The amount of healing missed is stupendous!
Actually, it has been my experience that the Yogic or Vedic understanding of human body and mind is complementary to modern medicine. For example, the consensus in medicine is that one will die or get into serious trouble if breathing is stopped for more than four minutes. There is enough anecdotal evidence of Indian yogis stopping breathing for ten minutes to thirty minutes or more. My friend Gaur Natraj told me he could voluntarily stop breathing for 6 minutes. I have heard or read of very convincing accounts of upto thirty minutes in voluntarily stopping breathing (and heart). These techniques when studied deeply should enhance significantly medical understanding of the human body.
To summarize, modern practice has two blind spots: effect of food on health and power of mind as an active curing agent. Modern medicine and science will significantly improve itself by studying Yoga.
On a different day, I will discuss how obesity is the biggest health challenge and how Yoga offers a very natural solution. Similarly, National Institute of Health says 5% of America is clinically depressed and one sixth of the country experiences depression over a lifetime. There is no good medical solution. Yoga offers a very viable solution to this. The reader is encouraged to verify it for themselves while clinical experiments by NIH are ongoing in this aspect.
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