Yoga cures

Yoga in a popular status Yoga, one of the oldest forms of exercise in the world, is experiencing a rebirth in our stressful modern world. You might not imagine that a 3000-year-old exercise could grow so popular. But now yoga is even being prescribed by some medical practitioners for a number of health problems and ailments, as a stress reliever and as a supplement to other fitness programs.

Talking to someone who practices yoga every day and they will instantly extol an endless list of benefits. Beginners seem to become converts quickly. They believe it is the key to good health and happiness in today's world - a common goal for most people. But perhaps the greatest advertisement for yoga is the fact that it seems to have moved from the ranks of weird and alternative to a position of fairly widespread community acceptance.

Housewives, businesswomen, sportspersons, teenagers and the elderly are all practicing a variety of yoga asanas, meditation and related breathing exercises. For many, yoga becomes a way of life - often giving people's lives a more spiritual side, though it is not necessarily associated with a religion. One school of thought believes that chronic and accumulated stress is the cause of many of our modern ills.

Proponents of yoga argue that it has a multiplicity of techniques to combat that cause and, unlike drug therapy, it attacks the cause, not just the symptoms. It offers a holistic approach to health and fitness, they say. Many professional athletes, looking for an edge, are turning to yoga as a supplemental form of training. They have found that yoga aids their state of mental and physical relaxation between training sessions, and aids their vital build-up for the big meets, where contests are generally won or lost.

Perhaps one of the major attractions of yoga is that it combines physical and mental exercise. It is excellent for posture and flexibility, both key physical elements for most sports-people, and in some cases, it also has strength benefits. Yoga teachers say the yoga therapy approach is one of the most effective ways to get that mental edge that athletes want.

Marion Fenlon, one of Brisbane's leading yoga teachers over the past 20 years, is the author of two books on the subject and has had thousands of yoga disciples. Many of them, in turn, have become teachers. Believe it or not, she has even taught yoga to footballers. Several years ago, she took the Brisbane Souths rugby league team for an eight-week course and, surprisingly, it was well received. She says there are eight components to yoga therapy - attitude, discipline, posture and flexibility, breathing, sensory awareness, concentration, contemplation and meditation. Yoga can play an important supporting role in modern medicine, and complement other fitness and exercise programs. While yoga therapy has no major component of aerobic fitness, it complements aerobic exercise because of the breathing techniques that can be learned. So even the most demanding aerobic sports – swimming, cycling and running – have benefits. There are many documented cases of relief or cure of serious illnesses by yoga – such as Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, heart disease and respiratory illnesses such as asthma and emphysema.