Yoga reduces perceived stress and improves adaptive autonomic response to stress in healthy pregnant women.

An integrated approach to yoga during pregnancy is safe. It improves birth weight, decreases preterm labor, and decreases IUGR either in isolation or associated with PIH, with no increased complications.

Yoga therapy can be a useful add-on treatment to improve psychopathology, FERD, and socio-occupational functioning in antipsychotic-stabilized patients with schizophrenia.

Fifty three patients with asthma underwent training for two weeks in an integrated set of yoga exercises, including breathing exercises, suryanamaskar, yogasana (physical postures), pranayama (breath slowing techniques), dhyana (meditation), and a devotional session, and were told to practise these exercises for 65 minutes daily. They were then compared with a control group of 53 patients with asthma matched for age, sex, and type and severity of asthma, who continued to take their usual drugs. There was a significantly greater improvement in the group who practised yoga in the weekly number of attacks of asthma, scores for drug treatment, and peak flow rate.This study shows the efficacy of yoga in the long term management of bronchial asthma, but the physiological basis for this beneficial effect needs to be examined in more detail. and unknown factors. We carried out this long term study with matched controls to ascertain whether yoga could have a lasting influence on the course of the disease.Patients and methods Table I shows details of the 106 patients with established bronchial asthma satisfying the clinical criteria of Crofton and Douglas' and Shivpuri9 who were included in this study. The age range was 9-47 years with a mean of 26 4 years. There were 15 women in each group. Fifty three pairs of patients matched for age and sex and type, severity, and duration of asthma were selected from a bigger group who came to our outpatient clinic for yoga Although all 106 patients were equally motivated to take up yoga, the 53 randomly allocated patients willingly served as controls. They continued taking their usual drugs during the study.All techniques of measurement, the length of each interview, and the people recording the data were the same for both groups. The yoga group attended a training programme of two and a half hours daily from 1800 to 2030 after work for two weeks. They were introduced to an integrated programme of the following selected yoga exercises.Breathing exercises (five minutes)-five types of rhythmic, comfortable breathing techniques associated with simple hand and body movements.Sithilikarana, zyayama, and suryanamaskar (five minutes)-Yoga exercises to loosen the joints.Yogasanas-(a) General yogasanas (20 minutes). Simple physical postures (in the standing, sitting, prone, and supine positions), performed BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL VOLUME 291 with smooth, comfortable bending movements and specific slow breathing procedures. The asana practices end with the subject maintaining the final posture with the body relaxed. (b) Savasana (10 minutes). Deep relaxation to relax the muscles regionally followed by conscious slowing of breathing and calming of the mind.Pranayama (10 minutes)-Four types of special breathing techniques performed with comfortable, slow, deep breathing.Meditation and devotional session (15 minutes)-Slow mental chanting of the syllable "OM," leading to the slowing of mental activity. The devotional session was meant to harness the emotions, resulting in a feeling of free...

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Two groups of 45 children each, whose ages ranged from 9 to 13 years, were assessed on a steadiness test, at the beginning and again at the end of a 10-day period during which one group received training in yoga, while the other group did not. The steadiness test required insertion of and holding for 15 sec. a metal stylus without touching the sides of holes of decreasing sizes in a metal plate. The contacts were counted as 'errors'. During the 10-day period, one group (the 'Yoga' group) received training in special physical postures (asanas), voluntary regulation of breathing (Pranayama), maintenance of silence, as well as visual focussing exercises (tratakas) and games to improve the attention span and memory. The other group (control) carried out their usual routine. After 10 days, the 'Yoga' group showed a significant (Wilcoxon's paired signed-ranks test) decrease in errors, whereas the 'control' group showed no change.

Ninety children with mental retardation of mild, moderate and severe degree were selected from four special schools in Bangalore, India. Forty-five children underwent yogic training for one academic year (5 h in every week) with an integrated set of yogic practices, including breathing exercises and pranayama, sithilikarana vyayama (loosening exercises), suryanamaskar, yogasanas and meditation. They were compared before and after yogic training with a control group of 45 mentally retarded children matched for chronological age, sex, IQ, socio-economic status and socio environmental background who were not exposed to yoga training but continued their usual school routine during that period. There was highly significant improvement in the IQ and social adaptation parameters in the yoga group as compared to the control group. This study shows the efficacy of yoga as an effective therapeutic tool in the management of mentally retarded children. SUBJECTS AND METHODSFour special schools for mentally retarded children were selected in Bangalore city, one school providing services for the upper socio-economic strata and the other three

Yoga was as effective as physical activity in improving cognitive performance in 7-9 year old schoolchildren. Further studies are needed to examine the dose-response relationship between yoga and cognitive performance.