Perelman School of Medicine (PSOM) at the University of Pennsylvania study finds “twice-weekly yoga led to better physical, sexual, emotional, and social health”, according to a Penn Medicine news-release.
Men who attended a structured yoga class twice a week during prostate cancer radiation treatment reported less fatigue and better sexual and urinary function than those who didn’t, according to a clinical trial led by PSOM, release points out.
Each session lasted 75 minutes, beginning with five minutes of breathing and centering techniques and ending with five minutes of Savasana, a common yoga position. Typical sessions incorporated sitting, standing, and reclining positions that were modified using props to adapt to each patient’s needs and restrictions, release adds. Dr. Neha Vapiwala was the principal investigator in the study, which was partially funded by American Cancer Society.
Meanwhile, Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada today, called this clinical trial looking into the effect of “yoga on the side-effects and quality of life issues caused by prostate cancer treatment” a “step in the positive direction”. Zed urged all major world universities to explore various benefits yoga offered.
Yoga, referred as “a living fossil”, was a mental and physical discipline, for everybody to share and benefit from, whose traces went back to around 2,000 BCE to Indus Valley civilization, Zed, who is President of Universal Society of Hinduism, noted.
Rajan Zed further said that yoga, although introduced and nourished by Hinduism, was a world heritage and liberation powerhouse to be utilized by all. According to Patanjali who codified it in Yoga Sutra, yoga was a methodical effort to attain perfection, through the control of the different elements of human nature, physical and psychical.
According to US National Institutes of Health, yoga may help one to feel more relaxed, be more flexible, improve posture, breathe deeply, and get rid of stress. According to a “2016 Yoga in America Study”, about 37 million Americans (which included many celebrities) now practice yoga; and yoga is strongly correlated with having a positive self image. Yoga was the repository of something basic in the human soul and psyche, Zed added.
Founded in 1765, PSOM in Philadelphia claims to have been ranked “among the top five medical schools in the United States”. Dr. J. Larry Jameson is the Dean.