Chronically Ill Patients Turn to Yoga for Relief

[Thom Little]

People with chronic illnesses from AIDS and cancer to osteoporosis and Crohn's disease are increasingly turning to yoga classes that single out their specific ailments. Often it is something their doctors recommend for the stress-relieving benefits of both exercise and meditation. But many patients find that the sessions, which make them feel more comfortable, also lessen some of their symptoms and the side effects of their medications. And because students exercise alongside others with their same medical problem, the classes also provide emotional support.

"I had always been exercising, but I had never done anything that focuses on the mind and the body," said Cynthia Mencher, a breast cancer survivor. Five years ago Ms. Mencher, 69, joined a yoga class at the Integrative Medicine Service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan while recovering from her illness. "That gave me back a sense of reinhabiting my body."

Two lumpectomies and radiation therapy had made the left side of her upper body very stiff, but the shoulder poses and twists she practiced in yoga increased her flexibility. Ms. Mencher said she never felt self-conscious if she struggled to do a pose because her class consisted mostly of other cancer patients and survivors. The yoga also relieved some of her mental anguish, she said.

Teresa Kennedy, a former executive at MTV Networks who has Crohn's disease, found that yoga classes relieved her gastrointestinal symptoms to the extent that she was inspired to open her own studio, Ta Yoga House in Harlem. "I don't get G.I. symptoms," she said. "I hardly get stomach aches."



http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/15/fashion/thursdaystyles/15Fitness.html

[sweetheart]

1. I've met people who had miracle cures from yoga

including one woman who could do a yoga handstand for half an hour who was told
years before that she'd never walk again.

Apparently, the disks of the spine lose blood flow around age 25 are are subsequently
"fed" by being squeezed. Just that western life hardly squeezes these disks and they
get hard, and the flow of nutrients to the spinal nerves is lessened. When these disks
are regularly compressed with bending motions to different directions, they replace
fluid and decalcify. Over a longer term, this increased nutrition to the spine can
bring about what seem like miracle cures. That's how a doctor explained to me why yoga
is helping create these magnificent results for people... that is "hatha yoga" the
body-health regimen of raja yoga,

[Neil Lisst]

2. Yoga is great. Probably enhances lymphatic movements.

among other things

[LizW]

3. Yoga fixed my shoulder

I hurt it moving furniture and for a year I couldn't reach behind my back or raise my arm over my head. It ached all the time and the wrong movement would send pain shooting down my arm. After 6 months of yoga with a very gentle teacher, I had complete, pain-free movement.