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Yoga for Survivors

Paloma Chavez

ystudents.jpgYou have had a stressful week of overwhelming job demands, your family is misunderstanding you, and then you got a ticket for being late at your parking meter. Sound familiar? Is this an overwhelming situation? Perhaps? We all have challenging weeks. And at the end of it we feel like we “survived” the storm.

Well, in truth, there are real survivors of natural disasters whose peaceful moment turns into a harrowing event. In India, a Dr. Shirley Telles and her colleagues of the Swami Vivekananda Yoga Research Foundation have created a study with a group of tsunami survivors one month after it’s occurrence.

The participants where selected from different backgrounds and were led through an intensive Vivekananda yoga program for 8 days. Because the participants exhibited fear, anxiousness, loss of sleep, and depression, the study was seeking positive results through an active yoga practice.

The final results showed an improvement in each of these areas as well as a noted decrease in respiratory rates. According to the article in Reuters Health, Dr. Shirley Telles and the researchers state, “Yoga practice may be useful in the management of stress following a natural disaster in people with widely differing social, cultural and spiritual beliefs.”

[tags] yoga as medicine, yoga study, yoga practice, Reuters Health, tsunami,Vivekananda yoga[/tags]

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