YOGA
The Science of Yoga
The Tribune, Saturday, July 8, 2006, Chandigarh, India
Jyoti Subramanian

Yoga has been practiced for more than ten thousand years in India. Most of the higher techniques, even now are passed on from the master to the disciple in the tradition of guru-shishya parampara. More than intellectual exploration the yogis believe that only through practice and utmost faith in the master, can one realise the goal of yoga. But the western mind only believes in researched and meticulously chronicled data.

Much scientific research has gone into the benefits and effect of yoga. Research by the western world had started as early as 1910, when the German doctor and nerve specialist Dr Johannes H. Schultz conducted research on yoga and hypnosis. On the basis of that research, he built his own relaxation and meditation system, known today as Autogen Practice.

The famous Swiss Psychologist Carl Jung was interested in Kundalini Yoga as a supplement to his psychological theories. In 1932, Jung gave a series of lectures on Kundalini Yoga in Zurich, published under the title The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga by Princeton University Press 1966. Carl Jung believed that we each have a 'transcendent function,' a yearning to evolve, to transcend and that it is the blocking of this function that leads to mental illness.

One of the better-known contemporary yogis, who contributed extensively to scientific research in yoga, was the late Swami Rama, founder of the Himalayan International Institute. In 1970 he was tested at the Menninger Foundation in Topeka, Kansas, and among other yogic skills, he demonstrated extensive control over his brain waves.

In 1973 the Yoga Biomedical Trust conducted a series of studies on 2,700 people that were to practice yoga. They had many diseases: alcoholism, asthma, cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, rheumatism, bad back, insomnia, and other conditions. Seventy to 90 per cent of the participants felt yoga made them healthier.

In Arizona, since the mid-1980's, doctors at the Alzheimer Prevention Foundation worked with Kundalini Yoga as a way of working with patients with Alzheimer's disease, with very good results. The American doctor Dharma Singh Khalsa has written a best-selling book on this research entitled Brain Longevity published by Warner Books 1997.

As reported by Reuters on March 3, 2000, and widely circulated on television, one of the latest UCLA clinical studies of meditation found that it may help to reduce the thickening of coronary arteries and lessen the risk of both heart attack and stroke, even without any changes in their diet or additional exercise.

But for the practising yogi, the term yoga comes from the Sanskrit root yuj meaning to yoke or bind together, connecting the individual soul to the divine one. According to Himalayan master Yogiraj Siddhanath, "Yoga is union in Samadhi". To achieve this state of ultimate self-realisation, the yogi perseveres in the sadhana given by the master in not only this life but sometimes from many past lives.