Asana Research Articles

The Health and Disease Effects of Yogic Practices or Transcendental Meditation

Yoga is an ancient Indian way of life that entails a mental shift, a change in food, and the use of particular procedures including such yoga asanas, breathing techniques, and meditation in order to achieve the greatest degree of awareness. There has been a spike in yoga research over the last decade, but we can only identify a few studies on the health benefits of yogic practices or transcendental meditations. Aside from illness, With this in mind, a Medline assessment of relevant publications on physiological assessment in the English literature was undertaken. The effects of TM and yogic practices are distinct. Data was obtained, concerns were investigated, and considerable health benefits were revealed. Just a few of the advantages include improved cognition, cardiovascular risk, respiration, blood pressure, BMI, or diabetes. Yoga also had an effect. Immunity was boosted, and joint pain was reduced.

Interrater Reliability of an Observational Rating Scale and Video Analysis of Yoga Poses.

Yoga is increasingly popular, not only as a form of recreational exercise but also as a physician-recommended intervention for health conditions. While serious adverse effects accompanying yoga practice are rare, poses that involve upper-extremity weight-bearing have a high risk of discomfort. To better understand factors contributing to adverse effects, there is a critical need for robust instruments that objectively evaluate pose performance. The purpose of this study was to assess the interrater reliability of an observational scale developed to assess the alignment of 3 yoga poses. Cross-sectional experimental study. Thirty-eight individuals were given standardized instructions and performed 3 poses (Downward Dog, Plank, and Side Plank). Lateral videos were rated by 2 raters. A rating scale evaluating the alignment of 7 regions was developed by the study team with input from yoga teachers. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize the percentage of subjects showing ideal alignment and deviations. Interrater reliability was quantified using Cohen kappa coefficient (κ). In Downward Dog, the prevalence of ideal alignment was 20%, 28%, and 37%, at the neck, shoulder, and back, respectively; κ ranged from .44 to .69. In Plank, the prevalence of ideal alignment was 31%, 45%, and 54% at the neck, shoulder, and back, respectively; κ ranged from .47 to .95. In Side Plank, the prevalence of ideal alignment was 16, 41%, and 24%, at the neck, shoulder, and back, respectively; κ ranged from .20 to .84. The observational scale found a high prevalence of deviations, and demonstrated fair to substantial interrater agreement.

A Comprehensive Study of Yoga for Major Depressive Illness

Traditional antidepressant pharmacotherapies or psychotherapies have been related to low remission rates or poor treatment adherence. Even though there is extensive study on the issue, yoga might have been an alternate therapeutic approach. This randomized controlled study utilised confused outcome assessors to look at an 8-week hatha yoga meditation program as a monotherapy for mild to moderate suffering. This article examines recent research on the effects of yoga postures on mental concerns like stress and sadness, psychological disorders, immune system, cardiovascular, or immunological illnesses, and pregnancy. Yoga's physiological benefits, such as reduced heart rate and blood pressure, as well as its physical consequences, such as weight reduction and improved muscular strength, are also discussed. Finally, possible underlying processes are suggested, such as pressure receptor activation leading to increased vagal activity and lower cortisol. Cortisol decrease may lead to beneficial outcomes like improved immunological function and a reduced incidence of preterm.

The Effects of Yoga on College Students' Mental Health

The mental health of college students is an increasingly serious public health problem. Effective and healthy interventions are needed. More and more research has been conducted on yoga, but there are few randomized controlled trials (RTC) on effects of yoga intervention on students' mental health. Therefore, this study examined effects of quality of yoga intervention on mental health in college students. We used PubMed (Medline), Cochrane, Web of Science, CNKI, VIP Chinese Science and Technology Journal Database (VIP) and WanFang Database to search randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of yoga intervention in college students' mental health. After the screening, 17 articles met the requirements and were included along with the utilization of the Cochrane bias risk assessment tool Rob2.0 to evaluate the quality of the included articles. Of 17 articles reviewed, three articles were rated as "low risk of bias", five articles were rated as "possibly at risk of bias", and nine articles were rated as "high risk of bias". The 17 studies predominantly consist of low methodological quality and lack multi-centered, large-sample collaborative research. Almost all researchers mentioned the use of "randomization" in their articles, but they did not indicate which randomization method was used. There was no description of allocation concealment, blinding, case shedding, case follow-up etc., and it was impossible to judge whether the trial design was correct, or whether random grouping was, indeed, undertaken. This study found that most of the so-called "randomized controlled trials" are doubtful, which virtually reduces the strength and credibility of this study. Therefore, improving the research quality of yoga intervention and standardizing the writing of scientific research articles are the problems need to be solved in the current field of sports psychology research in China. Current evidence shows that yoga exercise can relax the body and mind, thereby improving the level of mental health, and complete yoga (exercise, breathing, meditation) significantly relieves the symptoms of depression. Performing yoga postures and exercises promotes blood circulation, effectively improves sleep, and regulates breathing to stabilize autonomic nerves, relieve stress, and eliminate mental tension. In the future, yoga practice can be used as a non-medical intervention to treat mental illness. The quality of the current randomized controlled trials of yoga intervention in the mental health of college students is generally low. Randomized controlled trials with reasonable methodological design, strict implementation, and sufficient follow-up time are still needed. It is recommended that researchers should strengthen the systematic study of clinical trial methodology and strictly refer to the Cochrane manual list for clinical research reports in order to improve the quality of literature reports.

TO STUDY AND CORRELATE THE EFFECT OF INTEGRATED APPROACH OF YOGA THERAPY ON FREQUENCY DOMAIN PARAMETERS AND POINCARE PLOT OF HEART RATE VARIABILITY AMONG PREDIABETICS

Introduction- Prediabetes is demarcated as an intervening stage amongst normal glucose tolerance and type 2 diabetes mellitus. The present study aimed toevaluate the effects ofthe Integrated approach of yoga therapyonlinear andnonlinear dynamics ofheart rate variability and correlate between a linear component that was frequency domainand nonlinear dynamics that was Poine care plotof heart rate variability. Method-The study was conducted in the Department of physiology, Rajasthan University of Health Sciences, Jaipur in association with RDBP Jaipuria hospital.Group A wasinvolved in the Integrated Approach of Yoga Therapy (IAYT)including Prayer, Omkar recitation, yoga postures, breathing techniques, Shavasana,counseling, and dietary modification and Group B was not involved in any yoga sessions. Result-In this study, an attempt has been made to assess specifically the nonlinear dynamics of HRV using Poincare plotafter the integrated approach of yoga therapyand compare it with that of the frequency domain of HRV assessed by linear measures.Thehigh-frequency power( 46.04±11.75 to 67.56± 13.06) and SD1 ( 28.75 ±3.15 to 45.66±2.15) were increased andlow frequency (LF) power ( 66.67±11.87 to 40.67± 13.9) and the SD2 ( 55.76± 1.15 to 44.88 ± 2.15) of the Poincare plot decreased compared to baseline insubjects whofollowedthe integrated approach of yoga therapy, Additionally, significant correlations were found between high frequency (HF) and SD1 (p < 0.05), LF and SD2, (p < 0.05), and LF/HF and SD2/SD1 (p < 0.01). Conclusion-Integrated approach of yoga therapy practiced regularly can emerge as one of the important non-pharmacological tools for primary prevention of cardiovascular disease andrestoring sympathovagal balance. Poincare plot analysis is easier and more sensitive in evaluating the sympathovagal balance and observing the variation in heartbeats.

Yoga and Health

In recent decades, yoga has been studied for its potential to treat current epidemic diseases such as mental stress, obesity, diabetes, hypertension, coronary heart disease, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Individual studies have found that yoga has a therapeutic impact on certain disorders, indicating that it may be used as a nonpharmaceutical strategy or as a supplement to pharmacological therapy for these conditions. However, for therapeutic objectives, these research have only employed yoga asana, pranayama, and/or brief durations of meditation. Yoga's general view is likewise the same, which is incorrect. Yoga actually refers to the merging of individual consciousness with the divine awareness. Yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, pratyahara, dharana, dhyana, and samadhi are the eight rungs or limbs of yoga..

WiPg: Contactless Action Recognition Using Ambient Wi-Fi Signals.

Motion recognition has a wide range of applications at present. Recently, motion recognition by analyzing the channel state information (CSI) in Wi-Fi packets has been favored by more and more scholars. Because CSI collected in the wireless signal environment of human activity usually carries a large amount of human-related information, the motion-recognition model trained for a specific person usually does not work well in predicting another person’s motion. To deal with the difference, we propose a personnel-independent action-recognition model called WiPg, which is built by convolutional neural network (CNN) and generative adversarial network (GAN). According to CSI data of 14 yoga movements of 10 experimenters with different body types, model training and testing were carried out, and the recognition results, independent of bod type, were obtained. The experimental results show that the average correct rate of WiPg can reach 92.7% for recognition of the 14 yoga poses, and WiPg realizes “cross-personnel” movement recognition with excellent recognition performance.

Strategies for Practicing Spanish Through Yoga

The purpose of this article is to provide physical education and classroom teachers basic bilingual yoga postures and cues that can be used as part of their curriculum content or as physical activity breaks or transitions during their lessons.

The Grand Lemurrian Siva Sakthi Maha Mudra

The substratum of the Vedas and the Upanishads is that Lord Shiva is static and his counterpart Paarvathi who is also called Sakthi is His consort. It is generally believed that Lord Shiva is Adi Yogi. In the Indian Santana Dharma which also called Truth the yogic practices are inseparable and also indispensable. That is the marvelous beauty of yogic techniques. That’s why in the great Indian epic Mahabharata Lord Krishna tells Arjuna that He created this Universe with His Yoga Maya. All the Indian traditional spiritual knowledge were transmitted and taught to the Seers by Lord Shiva. The yogic asanas help the performers to sit properly for meditation. Prayer is outward appeal to Gods and Goddesses whereas the meditation is PURELY inner travelling. Prayer requires a deity but meditation does not need any Gods. The proper meditation leads the practitioner to Nirvikalpa Samadhi. In the Indian spiritual systems there are hearing, studying, watching and learning. Reading and learning are not at all similar or identical. The main thing is that even learning is not sufficient to attain spiritual peace, bliss and enlightenment. Some meditations are difficult to perform. In this work, the author unlocks the mysteries and instant benefits of the Grand Lemurriaan Siva Sakthi Maha Mudra which was kept very secret by the Sages till this day

Management of Medoroga w.s.r. to Obesity

To combat the COVID-19 pandemic, governments have imposed various interventions such as lockdowns, that was need of the hour but this situation has changed daily regimen which includes less physical activities and may lead to overweight and obesity. It occurs when calorie intake exceeds the metabolic expenditure. So, the aim is to decrease calorie intake and increase the expenditure through Ayurveda Principles, that is, NidanParivarjan (preventive therapy) and Samshodha (purification therapy). A Female visited to D.Y. Patil Ayurvedic Hospital, Nerul, Navi Mumbai for weight reduction as during lockdown period she has gained 12 kg weight, having aalasya, atikshudha, breathing difficulty while climbing, fatigue and knee joint pain. Her weight was 84 kg and BMI was 34.5kg/m2. On the basis of BMI and her symptoms it was diagnosed as Medoroga (sthaulya). To manage her weight yoga Asanas and diet chart are explained and two sittings of nine PippalyadiBastiwas given. It was found that PippalyadiBastias samshodhan and yog aasanas, diet chart as nidanparivarjanare effective in the management of Medoroga. Patient lost 12kg weight.

Yoga Asanas as an Effort to Reduce Anxiety on Online Learning During Pandemic in Stikes Buleleng Students

Yoga Asanas as an Effort to Reduce Anxiety on Online Learning During Pandemic in Stikes Buleleng Students

Yoga and Cutaneous Functional Unit Recruitment for a Patient with Cervical and Upper Extremity Burn Scar Contracture: Case Report

Burn scar contracture greatly limits function for burn survivors, particularly when the scarring crosses multiple joints. Previous research has identified fields of skin recruited during single joint motion, called cutaneous functional units (CFU), indicating that impairments may be seen distal to the injured tissue. This case report connects the principles of CFU and yoga-inspired therapy modalities in improving clinical outcomes for a burn survivor. The patient is a 38-year-old male who sustained deep partial-thickness electrical burns to his neck, chest, and bilateral upper extremities, presenting with significantly decreased range of motion. The patient attended physical therapy 4 days a week, where he performed a specific yoga asana program during each session. Outcomes including standard range of motion measures, the Vancouver Scar Scale (VSS), and the Neck Disability Index (NDI), which were recorded every 10 sessions. CFUs of cervical extension and shoulder flexion were analyzed via photographs comparing cutaneous position during specified yoga poses and resting anatomical position in standing. Over 30 visits, cervical and shoulder range of motion increased, although the VSS and NDI did not show significant improvement. Yoga poses showed overall cutaneous recruitment distal to the targeted joints, and burned skin was recruited similarly to nonburned skin in positions of stretch. Incorporating multijoint approaches for stretching, like yoga, appears to contribute to improved clinical range-of-motion outcomes when paired with traditional burn-rehabilitation interventions. Yoga poses involving multiple joints align with the principle of CFUs, warranting continued investigation.

Comparative study of role of physiotherapy alone versus physiotherapy combined with yoga in rehabilitation after a sports injury. What can a primary physician offer?

Posttraumatic rehabilitation of sports injuries involves physiotherapy. Additionally, nonsurgical treatment of sports injuries involves regular physiotherapy as a major treatment therapy. This study aimed to evaluate the effects of yoga in addition to regular physiotherapy on these patients. In the present comparative study, we evaluated the effects of regular physiotherapy alone versus physiotherapy combined with yoga on 212 patients following various knee injuries treated nonsurgically. The study was conducted after obtaining hospital ethical, committee clearance, and written informed consent from patients. The patients were assigned into two groups: group C (Conventional) and group Y (Yoga group). The patients in the regular group received physiotherapy rehabilitation program, whereas the yoga group received additional yoga once every day by a yoga expert during their hospital stay. We provided written guidelines and photographs of the yoga asanas and instructed to perform them 3 days/week once they were home. The data on WOMAC score were collected at 6 weeks, 3 months, and at 6 months from the day of discharge from the hospital. We noted that the yoga group patients showed a significant improvement (P < 0.05) in all modalities like pain, stiffness, and function subscales of the WOMAC scale. They experienced significant reduction in pain and stiffness compared with the regular or conventional group on the seventh postinjury day, 6 weeks, 3 months, and 6 months after the initial injury. In this study, a combination of regular physiotherapy and yoga provided better functional outcomes than physiotherapy alone.

A View Independent Classification Framework for Yoga Postures.

Yoga is a globally acclaimed and widely recommended practice for a healthy living. Maintaining correct posture while performing a Yogasana is of utmost importance. In this work, we employ transfer learning from human pose estimation models for extracting 136 key-points spread all over the body to train a random forest classifier which is used for estimation of the Yogasanas. The results are evaluated on an in-house collected extensive yoga video database of 51 subjects recorded from four different camera angles. We use a three step scheme for evaluating the generalizability of a Yoga classifier by testing it on (1) unseen frames, (2) unseen subjects, and (3) unseen camera angles. We argue that for most of the applications, validation accuracies on unseen subjects and unseen camera angles would be most important. We empirically analyze over three public datasets, the advantage of transfer learning and the possibilities of target leakage. We further demonstrate that the classification accuracies critically depend on the cross validation method employed and can often be misleading. To promote further research, we have made key-points dataset and code publicly available.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42979-022-01376-7.

How mind-body therapies might reduce pathological features of Alzheimer's disease.

How mind-body therapies might reduce pathological features of Alzheimer's disease.

Comparative Study of Effectiveness of Yognidra and Antioxidants on Semen Quality in Sub Fertile Male Patients Undergoing IVF Treatment at Wardha Region, India

Background: There are various reasons of infertility in male which can be managed with pharmacotherapy and psychological methods .Physiological and Psychological factors such as low self esteem, stigma, depression anxiety etc which leads to stress contribute to infertility related causes. Yoga (Asanas, Pranayama and Meditation) shows effects on improving psychological factors but no studies are conducted on yognidra related with male infertility. A comparison between yognidra and antioxidant will be efficient in improving quality of semen and can increase ART success rate and Pregnancy incidence by treating psychological and physiological factor.&#x0D; Aim and Objectives: To study the effectiveness of yognidra and antioxidant on semen quality in subfertile male patients undergoing IVF cycles.&#x0D; To sensitize all subfertile males about the study.&#x0D; To assess the effect of yoganidra in subfertile males.&#x0D; To assess the effect of antioxidant in subfertile males.&#x0D; To compare and analyze the semen quality after giving both types of interventions&#x0D; Methodology: 60 infertile patients visiting Infertility clinic Wardha test tube baby centre ,AVBRH, Sawangi Meghe, Wardha will participate in the study. Consent form will be signed by patient. The patients will be divided in to 2 groups of Group number 1 with (30 subjects) antioxidants and Group number 2 will be given (30 subjects) Yognidra. Comprehensive history of patient will be taken in the prescribed format and external genitalia will be clinically examined at Surgery OPD. Study the semen quality and divide according to WHO criteria .Assessment and comparison of semen quality of both the groups before and after intervention .Data of two groups will be analysed and compared.&#x0D; Expected Results: The study shows a comparison between yognidra and antioxidant will be efficient in improving quality of semen and can increase ART success rate and Pregnancy incidence by treating psychological and physiological factor.&#x0D; Conclusion: The current research study will help to understand and explore the utility of yognidra at Infertility clinics and assist practitioner to engage subfertile couples undergoing IVF treatment in the practice of these technique. This study will enhance the quality of support programmes and psychological research. Incorporating psychological intervention provided by yognidra will act as a complementary therapy during infertility treatment.

The Effectiveness of Yoga Asanas in Alcohol De-Addiction

Background: Alcoholism is an addiction to alcohol that has a multitude of psychophysiological effects on a person. According to the WHO, about 30% of Indians consume alcohol, of which 413% are daily consumers and up to 50% comprises into the toxic drinker category. Another worrying trend in India is that the average age to start drinking has increased from 28 years in the 1980s to 17 years in 2007. These statistics are alarming and we all need to learn.&#x0D; Methodology: How to overcome alcohol addiction? While professional advice and treatments are always available, you can also try yoga and meditation to control your cravings. Alcohol abuse, addiction, and the resulting health consequences are worldwide issues. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), hazardous alcohol consumption is the world's third greatest cause of early mortality and disability, accounting for roughly 2.5 million fatalities per year (corresponding to 3.8 percent of all deaths). This manuscript included different forms of yogas known as “yoga therapy” and meditation to overcome alcohol addiction.&#x0D; Results: Addiction has the potential to impair our bodily and spiritual wellbeing, as well as those we love. When an alcoholic stops drinking, grief sets in, and it sets in with increased vigor. The goal of life is to live in consciousness rather than lose it. It is essential to be attentive to be able to overcome sadness. As a result, those who battle with addictions are finding fresh hope in Yoga and meditation.&#x0D; Conclusion: The positive role of Yoga therapy in reducing craving, thus enhancing the management of alcohol dependence. Yoga has proved to be effective in alcohol de-addiction.

A Computer Vision-Based Yoga Pose Grading Approach Using Contrastive Skeleton Feature Representations.

The main objective of yoga pose grading is to assess the input yoga pose and compare it to a standard pose in order to provide a quantitative evaluation as a grade. In this paper, a computer vision-based yoga pose grading approach is proposed using contrastive skeleton feature representations. First, the proposed approach extracts human body skeleton keypoints from the input yoga pose image and then feeds their coordinates into a pose feature encoder, which is trained using contrastive triplet examples; finally, a comparison of similar encoded pose features is made. Furthermore, to tackle the inherent challenge of composing contrastive examples in pose feature encoding, this paper proposes a new strategy to use both a coarse triplet example—comprised of an anchor, a positive example from the same category, and a negative example from a different category, and a fine triplet example—comprised of an anchor, a positive example, and a negative example from the same category with different pose qualities. Extensive experiments are conducted using two benchmark datasets to demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed approach.

Proposed identification of physiological classification and theoretical mechanisms of yogāsanas

Yoga in the theoretical and practical form is now accepted all over the world, by the researchers as well as by the general population. Yogāsana or Yogic postures are one of the main foundations of practical yoga. Mechanisms of Mediation and Prānāyāma has already been established. In this article, the author is for the first time proposing physiological classification of Yogāsana i.e. (a) Stretch (b) Contraction (c). Neuromuscular Coordination (d) Sense Reduction (e) Spine Brain Activation. In support of this physiological classification author has proposed five hypothetical theories i.e. (i) Stretch Relaxation Awareness (ii) Contraction Relaxation Awareness (iii) Ballastic Contraction Relaxation Awareness (iv) Sensory Motor Function Awareness and (v) Vital Energy Flow Awareness to understand the underlying mechanisms of Yogāsana practice and to explain its benefits.

Can Yoga Boost Access to the Bodily and Emotional Self? Changes in Heart Rate Variability and in Affective Evaluation Before, During and After a Single Session of Yoga Exercise With and Without Instructions of Controlled Breathing and Mindful Body Awareness in Young Healthy Women.

Exercise is indispensable for a healthy lifestyle. Yoga exercise can have positive effects on well-being and on cardiac autonomic activity making it an ideal intervention for improving mind-body interactions and resilience to physical and mental stressors. Emotions trigger especially strong bodily and affective-cognitive responses because of their social relevance for the self and their biological relevance of mobilizing the organism for action. This study investigates whether changes in emotion processing related to self-other referential processing and changes in cardiac autonomic activity, reflected by heart rate variability (HRV), occur immediately after already a single session of yoga exercise when yoga postures are practiced with or without breathing- and mindful body awareness instructions. Women, all university students (N = 34, final sample: n = 30, n = 25 naïve to yoga practice) were randomly assigned to two experimental groups who performed the same yoga exercises with or without controlled breathing and mindfulness instructions. Emotional, self-other referential processing, awareness of bodily signals and HRV indicators were investigated before and after the exercise using standardized experimental tasks, standardized questionnaires, and mobile recording devices. Exercising for 30 minutes changed cardiac activity significantly. HRV measures showed adaptability of cardiac activity during the exercise as well as during the affective task post- to pre-exercise. Exercising with breathing instructions and mindful body awareness had no superior effects on cardiac, particularly parasympathetic activity, compared to practicing the same movements without such explicit instructions. Self-referential processing did not change; however, participants were faster and more accurate in their affective judgments of emotional stimuli [regardless of their reference (self/other)], and showed better awareness of bodily signals after compared to before the exercise session. The results support immediate, adaptive effects of yoga exercise on cardiac and affective-cognitive processing in an all-female healthy sample. Therefore, yoga exercise could be recommended as a physical activity for boosting cardiac and emotional resilience in this target group.