Yoga Medical News Daily

Recent yoga books addressing specific health conditions

Current medical research articles detail the health benefits of yoga practice for a variety of health issues. These include pain relief, improved flexibility, bone health, and/or support for an overall better quality lifestyle. Here is a small selection of books, many very well illustrated, that focus on the use of yoga for a specific condition. With the exception of The Yoga for Osteoporosis by Dr. Loren Fishman and Ellen Saltonstall which will be published in March 2010, all of the titles are currently in print.

Yoga as Medicine: The Yogic Prescription for Health and Healing, by the Yoga Journal and Timothy McCall. Bantam;  2007. Included are twenty chapters featuring noted yoga instructors describing their approaches to specific conditions—panic attacks, carpal tunnel syndrome, depression, infertility, cancer, etc. They offer advice, rather than fixed protocols.      

Yoga for Arthritis: The Complete Guide, by Loren Fishman MD and Ellen Saltonstall. W. W. Norton & Company, 2008. This heavily illustrated guide helps readers understand arthritis and gives a spectrum of exercises for beginners and experts. Broken down into chapters focusing on each major joint, there are 100 classical yoga poses and numerous imaginative and physiologically sound adapted poses, all with step-by-step instructions and photo demonstrations.

Yoga for Osteoporosis: The Complete Guide, by Loren Fishman MD  and Ellen Saltonstall. W. W. Norton & Company — forthcoming publication date: March 29, 2010. Offers a medical yoga program designed for the management and prevention of osteoporosis, with hundreds of illustrations. Classical yoga poses, as well as physiologically sound adapted poses, are presented with detailed instructions and photographs. 

Yoga for Anxiety: Meditations and Practices for Calming the Body and Mind, by Mary Nurriestearns and Rick Nurriestearns, New Harbinger Publications 2010. Mary NurrieStearns, a psychotherapist and yoga teacher, and Rick NurrieStearns, a meditation teacher, present self-healing techniques for generalized anxiety disorder drawn from the yogic tradition.

Yoga for Pain Relief: Simple Practices to Calm Your Mind & Heal Your Chronic Pain, by Kelly McGonical.  New Harbinger Publications, 2009. Stanford psychology instructor and well-known yoga teacher Kelly McGonigal shows readers how yoga and the latest skills drawn from mind-body research can help alleviate chronic pain.

Yoga for Movement Disorders: Rebuilding Strength, Balance and Flexibility for Parkinson's Disease and Dystonia (Spiral-bound), by Renee Le Verrier. Merit Publishing, 2008. Designed for people with dystonia, muscle imbalance, rigidity, and spasms due to such causes as Parkinson's, stroke, and multiple sclerosis. The focus is on rebuilding strength and flexibility as well as physical and emotional balance. The author is a certified yoga instructor and a Parkinson's Disease patient. She specilizes in teaching yoga to movement disordered patients. Foreword by Dr. Lewis Sudarsky, Director of the Movement Disorder Clinic at Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston; Associate Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School.

Yoga and Multiple Sclerosis: A Journey to Health and Healing, by Loren Martin Fishman MD, and Eric Small. Demos Health, 2007. Designed to manage symptoms, raise functional abilities. Co-author Eric Small was diagnosed with MS at the age of 22, and soon after became a serious student of Iyengar yoga, which has helped him greatly with the effects of his illness. He has been teaching yoga since the mid-1960s. 

Healing Addiction with Yoga: A Yoga Program for People in 12-Step Recovery, by Annalisa Cunningham, Findhorn Press, 3rd ed., 2010. The author is a certified yoga teacher and a communications teacher with a background in counseling. The book presents a 21-day yoga regimen using relaxation techniques, nutrition and lifestyle suggestions, aerobic activities, and journal writing, all geared to incorporate the 12-step philosophy into yoga practice. The featured poses are drawn from the popular hatha yoga tradition. Newly updated and revised.

Yoga for Pain Relief by Kelly McGonigal

If you suffer from chronic pain, the just-published Yoga for Pain Relief offers some rigorously researched mind-body options to help you understand your pain and befriend your body as well as your spirit.  Author Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D., award-winning instructor at Stanford University, as well as editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Yoga Therapy and a frequent contributor to Yoga Journal and IDEA Fitness Journal, takes the reader gently through this toolkit of recommendations in a succinct and authoritative manner.  

According to Penny Cowan, executive director of the American Chronic Pain Association, "this book is very much in line with all that the American Chronic Pain Association teaches. I recommend that you relax, renew yourself, and enjoy your adventure through Yoga for Pain Relief."

In addition to the book, McGonigal provides additional information in her accompanying website Yoga for Pain Relief including separate sections listing resources for people with pain, resources for yoga teachers, and resources for health care professionals.

Loren Fishman on Yoga's Benefits in Treating Osteoporosis

Loren Fishman's article Pilot Study and New Book Prove Yoga's Benefits in Treating Osteoporosis appeared today in the Huffington Post referencing earlier published results of his pilot study on yoga and osteoporosis (downloadable pdf copy of the article at: http://www.sciatica.org). His and co-author Ellen Saltonstall's forthcoming book Yoga for Osteoporosis will be published in early 2010.

Today's Huffington Post piece succinctly sums up why yoga is good for you and high impact exercise is not:  

"Too much impact exercise and you will help your bones while hurting your joints. Don't exercise and your osteoporosis will advance. It's both ends of the bone against the middle.

While Yoga is no panacea, it does provide weight-bearing exercise with none of the dangers that lead to osteoarthritis. Yoga pits one muscle group against another to generate forces far greater than gravity. Yoga is isometric exercise. It is also weight bearing. Both of these types of activity have been proven to improve bone strength. Unlike most forms of "weight-bearing" activity, Yoga does not damage cartilage or lead to osteoarthritis, another peril of aging."

For additional information see Dr. Fishman's site at: http://www.sciatica.org/. 

Mindful Living a la Ellen Langer . . . and Jennifer Aniston

Ellen Langer's latest book Counterclockwise: Mindful Health and the Power of Possibiity New York: Ballantine Books, 2009), along with her earlier publications such as Mindfulness (1989), backs up her statements about the obvious with relevant research in an engaging and mind-opening process – so needed in this time of datafied, categorized, and compartmentalized mindlessness. In essence her message is that "opening our minds to what’s possible, instead of clinging to accepted notions about what’s not, can lead to better health at any age." 

Instead of summing up the extent of her work in this brief post, here is a selection of sites describing her message and the reception to her findings: ellenlanger.com (illustrated with her paintings); Get Mindful, Psychologist Tells Davos Elite; and Botox for the Brain.

And there's more, including the Harvard Psychologist Ellen Langer to be Portrayed by Jennifer Aniston in the Film "Counterclockwise" (November 17, 2009) on Behavioral Health Central.com; and the Ellen Langer workshop at Kripalu scheduled for February 5-7, 2010.

Seeking Health Information Online: Does Wikipedia Matter?

This article in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (July-August 2009, 16: 4; 471-479), by Michael R. Laurent and Tim. J, Vickers, Faculty of Medicine, Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven, Belgium, "measured Wikipedia's ranking on general Internet search engines by entering keywords from MedlinePlus, NHS Direct Online, and the National Organization of Rare Diseases as queries into search engine optimization software. We assessed whether article quality influenced this ranking. . . . Results: Wikipedia ranked among the first ten results in 71–85% of search engines and keywords tested. Wikipedia surpassed MedlinePlus and NHS Direct Online (except for queries from the latter on Google UK), and ranked higher with quality articles. Wikipedia ranked highest for rare diseases, although its incidence in several categories decreased. . . . Wikipedia articles were viewed more often than MedlinePlus Topic (p = 0.001) but for MedlinePlus Encyclopedia pages, the trend was not significant (p = 0.07–0.10). Based on its search engine ranking and page view statistics, the English Wikipedia is a prominent source of online health information compared to the other online health information providers studied."

Google Books now offering access to Yoga Journal issues published 1975-2008

Hard to imagine, but there were once yoga crossword puzzles. Researchers interested in the development and reception of yoga in the United States during the last 30 years will now have ready access to primary research material. Google Books offers open-access, full views in color of issues of Yoga Journal from May 1975 to December 2008. The Yoga Journal issues can be accessed by going to the Google Books site, then searching "Yoga Journal" in the search box, then clicking on the link "Yoga Journal," then clicking on the link "Browse all issues," to view the issues available for full viewing. The first issue, May 1975, looks like it was produced with a typewriter and Judith Lasater, who is listed on the masthead as Copy Writer, has an article in the issue as well.

Recent Ashtanga yoga study and some essential Ashtanga resources

The study by Sandra Benavides and Joshua Caballero, “Ashtanga yoga for children and adolescents for weight management and psychological well being,” Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice (vol. 15, issue 2, May 2009; 110-114; Abstract: PubMed ) concludes that “Ashtanga yoga may be beneficial as a weight loss strategy in a predominately Hispanic population.” The article mentions that the participants did a modified Ashtanga yoga sequence lasting approximately 1 h and 15 min, three days a week for 12 weeks. For those interested in learning more about Ashtanga yoga, there are now dozens of excellent books and DVDs available. YMN Daily recommends two sources that offer a expert overview and introduction to this strenuous yoga: David Swenson's Ashtanga Yoga: The Practice Manual, an Illustrated Guide to Personal Practice (2 ed. 2007); and his DVDs, most especially, his First Series, the Short Forms, and the Second and Third Series DVDs. Also, Ashtanga Yoga: Practice and Philosophy (2007) by Gregor Maehle serves as an essential reference guide and practice manual to the positions and the philosophy - a book of interest to those new to Ashtanga as well as those who have been decades-long practitioners. 

Book Highlight: Yoga, Karma, and Rebirth, by Stephen H. Phillips

Stephen Phillips, a professor of philosophy and Asian studies at the University of Texas at Austin with a long-standing yoga practice, in his latest book "explores traditional teachings of hatha yoga, karma yoga, bhakti yoga, and tantra and shows how such core concepts as self-monitoring consciousness, karma, and nonharmfulness (ahima), reincarnation, and the powers of consciousness relate to modern practice." For his scripting of a yoga class in the first chapter entitled "Principles of Yoga Practice and Types of Yoga Theory," he acknowledges his debt to many yoga teachers, including Peggy Kelly (founder of Austin Yoga Institute); several teachers at YogaYoga.com, and to his brother-in-law, John Schlorholtz, author of the DVD series Ageless Yoga. Yoga, Karma, and Rebirth offers a glossary with pronunciation guide defining more than three hundred technical terms. More information on the book and the author, including a video interview at Yoga, Karma, and Rebirth, Columbia University Press.