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Yoga: Your Best Preventive Healthcare Plan

By Joseph Roberson

“We know a great deal more about the causes of physical disease than we do about the causes of physical health.” –M. Scott Peck

 

Yoga is specifically concerned with causing health. The centuries-old techniques of Yoga are time-tested practices, proven by millions of individuals by their own experience. Yoga is the science of living well, of proactively cultivating health, wellness, vitality and happiness.

 

“The doctor has been taught to be interested not in health but in disease. What the public is taught is that health is the cure for disease.” –Ashley Montague

 

From the on-going healthcare debate we all know by now that healthcare in this country is controlled by profit motive. There simply is not enough profit potential in preventive healthcare for the drug companies to promote it. It is not your doctor’s fault that she or he cannot help you with your back pain until it is so bad that surgery is required. Doctors are trained to perform extreme acts of intervention when disease threatens your health. Surgery, as a solution, costs more than Yoga and other alternative preventative measures.  Therefore it is not surprising that there is a billboard visible from I-95 in downtown Baltimore advertising a local hospital as the leaders in weight-loss surgery! You cannot find a billboard advertising weight loss through Yoga or any other preventive techniques. Why? Because Yoga costs little or nothing and therefore there is not enough profit incentive to justify the cost of a billboard!

 

Health insurance companies have, on the other hand, taken notice of the proven fact that Yoga, meditation and other stress reduction techniques reduce health care costs. Mutual of Omaha initiated coverage of Jon Kabatt-Zinn’s “Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction” protocol after clinical studies proved its effectiveness. So now many health insurance plans cover ‘alternative medicine’ techniques including yoga.

 

Every human being is the author of his own health or disease.” –Buddha

 

Western medicine has become more and more specialized, dividing you up into many distinct parts. Many doctors specialize in just one organ or one system, and while she may know a great deal about the diseases that afflict the area of expertise, she cannot guide you in cultivating wellness. Ironically, the nurse practitioner’s mission more closely reflects Wellness Yoga’s focus on helping the entire system work together harmoniously.

 

Yoga is too often presented as mastery of pretzel postures. Wellness Yoga promotes mastery of health and vitality and happiness. Wellness Yoga is the marriage of Hatha Yoga, the traditional postures, breath techniques and meditation, with Ayurveda, India’s indigenous healthcare system. Together Yoga and Ayurveda provide a complete set of techniques and lifestyle practices to enable you to cultivate your own health and vitality. Wellness Yoga is the practice of skillful living, of daily exercise, healthy breathing habits, stress management, meditation, eating well, and of balancing work, play and rest.

 

While Wellness Yoga is firmly grounded in tradition, it is an ever-evolving pursuit of health, well-being, vitality, happiness and fulfillment. Yoga continues to evolve today, changing and growing in response to new information provided by scientific medical research.

 

Yoga is a holistic mind/body/spirit practice. What does this mean? In Yoga, we regard the entirety of You as one multifaceted, multi-layered system of systems, from your bones to your blood, from your digestion to your dreams, from your serratus muscle to your soul. The goal of Wellness Yoga is the consummated love affair among all the organs and systems of You.

copyright 2010 Joseph Roberson

The Maryland Women's Journals, 2010