Yoga and Palliative Care
Sunanda Samal, Regional Coordinator-Central India, State Facilitation Team, Pallium India, who is also a Certified Yoga Trainer, sends you this greeting on International Yoga Day, June 21, 2022.
Please read:
(Image: Sunanda Samal is a Certified Yoga Trainer who gives free yoga sessions to the residents of a senior care home in Pune.)
Where there is illness and death, there is grief and loss. Yoga can help patients deal with their own losses and face death; besides, it can support those who are or will be bereaved. Yoga helps provide room for non-pharmacological interventions as part of integrated care. Yoga can help with diagnostic groups experiencing pain, breathlessness, and issues with movement, fatigue, anxiety and depression. Breath awareness is core to this way of working.
Yoga therapy is the process of empowering individuals to progress toward improved health and well-being by regular practice of yoga. The goals of yoga therapy include eliminating, reducing or managing symptoms that cause suffering, improving function, helping to prevent the occurrence or reoccurrence of underlying causes of illness and moving towards improved health and wellbeing. Studies on yoga for palliative care has shown improvements in the sleep quality, mood, stress, management of physical symptoms and overall quality of life.
Integrating ancient wisdom of yoga and spirituality in the conventional palliative care setting appears to be a promising, cost-effective, and holistic approach offering a comprehensive wellness plan for patients. Increasing evidence suggests that yoga, the ancient Indian mind-body discipline can be a useful adjunct to standard care for cancer patients.
Yoga – which includes a variety of techniques, including physical postures, breathing, meditation, and relaxation exercise appear to have utility for patients undergoing radiation therapy, chemotherapy, patients in remission who have completed treatments and patients in hospice or palliative care.
Yoga is strong medicine but it is slow medicine.
Wishing you all a Happy International Yoga Day (21st June).
Stay Healthy, Stay Happy!