Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Madurai
Thiruvananthapuram
Vijayawada
Visakhapatnam
Yogic sedation
|
According to Dr.Murugan, the urban and educated people responded more positively to the yoga therapy than the rural folks.
|
THE ART of yoga is one of the best gifts to us from our ancestors. It contains a wealth of benefits for mankind. The effect of this rich art on ailments like diabetes, stress and strain, blood pressure, depression has particularly been proved time and again. Yet, there remain several other undiscovered areas for which yoga can be a panacea perhaps.
An ENT surgeon, Dr Murugan M. Ram, in coordination with the Yoga Centre of Madura College, has embarked on a novel attempt seeking to make yoga work as an alternative for local anaesthesia while performing minor ear and nasal surgeries. He calls this method 'Yoga Nidra' or the 'Yoga Therapy'.
"The yoga nidra is the stage in which an individual reaches a point between sleep and awakefulness. The intellect becomes silent and concentration is diverted or muffled. As a result pain perception is reduced", he explains.
To find out the best results for both yoga therapy and anaesthesia, the surgeon set five basic parameters for his research like fear factor, reduction in anxiety, reduction in concentration, sleep induction, pain tolerance and post-surgery feeling.
Except in the case of fear factor and pain tolerance, all others yielded satisfactory results with yoga therapy.
Tried on 23 patients in the age group 12 to 55 years last July, the yoga nidra apparently proved effective in 75 per cent cases. For comparison, Dr.Murugan conducted surgeries on 27 other patients after administering anaesthesia to them. However, this registered 90 per cent effectiveness.
"Though the rate of anaesthesia-administered surgeries fell on the higher side, the yoga therapy has its own advantages", he asserts.
As per the findings of the surgeon, the yoga therapy is free from side effects and post surgery consequences are less when compared to the anaesthesia-administered cases.
"Another crucial factor is the duration of hospitalisation. With yoga therapy, the hospital stay is almost nil and medical expenses are reduced as the patient can walk out within a couple of hours after the surgery,'' he says.
Few other factors, which the surgeon observed during the research include, the pupilary reaction to pain and light, tactile reflections during surgery and facial expressions of the patient during the pain tolerance session.As part of a follow-up exercise, views of patients were also sought to a questionnaire and on the basis of that the rate of effectiveness of yoga nidra was calculated.
According to Dr.Murugan, the urban and educated people responded more positively to the new therapy than the rural folks. "It is nothing but fear and lack of courage to bare pain" he reasons out. The yoga nidra was strictly followed only with the consent of the patients and the same will be practiced in future too.
The present attempt may be a random check, but, if its efficacy increases fool-proof then perhaps mankind can be credited with tracing yet another benefit of this ancient art of yoga.
M.R. ARAVINDAN
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Madurai
Thiruvananthapuram
Vijayawada
Visakhapatnam
|
