Author:
Publication: The Times of India
Date: Anjali Joseph
URL: May 18, 2005
When you call the mobile telephone
of Satyapal Singh, special inspector general (Konkan range) of the Maharashtra
police, the caller tune you hear is the Gayatri mantra. Not quite what
one expects from the police? In a similar vein, next month Singh is organizing
a one-month trial of Yoga designed for police officers in Thane. Rather
than being a reaction to the marine Drive rape case, Singh says the project
results from a 20-year interest in yoga. "It's basically designed to teach
police officers to manage stress. If you can't control your mind and your
attitude, you can't work effectively," he says of the trial, devised by
Kaivalyadham londavala.
Worldwide, yoga is going mainstream.
In medical research, for example, the United States's government-funded
National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine spends part
of its $100 million-plus annual research budget on studying the effects
of yoga on various diseases including multiple sclerosis, HIV and depression-the
last two in a collaboration with Bangalore-based Swami Vivekananda Yoga
Anusandhana Samsthana (SVASYA) which the Indian government funds for applied
research on Yoga.
In Indian too, yoga is rapidly being
institutionalised, even if research is hampered by much smaller-scale funding.
The ministry for human resource development, which this year is funding
Kaivalydham Lonavala to the tune of Rs. 65 lakh, every year sends 30 allopathic
doctors to undergo the institute's nine-month yoga teacher's diploma. But
some, like Yoga teacher Bharat Thakur feel Indian clinical trials in yoga
will take off only if private industry takes an interest in funding them.
Doctors from various specializations
now recommend yoga to their patients. Mumbai gynaecologist Ashwini Bhalerao-Gandhi
says she advises asana and meditation for women suffering from hormonal
imbalance . Doctors like Bhalerao-Gandhi advocate yoga because of positive
anecdotal evidence rather than the results of clinical trials. People who
do yoga say it helps them manage their ailments. Seventy-three-year old
Mumbai dentist Nishabh Parikh, for example, says regular yoga practice
has stalled the progress of arthritis, which his doctors told him was incurable.
The flip side of taking yoga seriously
as a medical intervention is that it may need more regulation. At present,
little prevents someone with a one or two-month certificate in yoga setting
yoga as a teacher. "When I started a studio in Dubai, the authorities wanted
to see my certificates and there were a lot of laws to comply with. Why
don't w have that in India?" questions Thakur.
If yoga is to join mainstream therapies,
there are likely to be some interesting battles on the way to establishing
any 'official version' of the science. Most yoga derives from the 2,500-yr-old
Yoga Sutra laid down by the sage Patanjali. Even so, enough variations
are doing the rounds, from the outlandish (power yoga', Bikram yoga, and,
in the US, hybrids like Yogalates or hip-hop yoga) to the classical. Which
way now on the path to inner awareness?
