In recent decades, yoga has been rapidly gaining popularity all over the world. The goal of yoga is to teach a person to control his psyche and body.
It seems that interest in yoga in our country is growing by leaps and bounds. And yet, the level of its popularity in our country is still far from the level that it has long ago reached in the United States and Western Europe.
The etymology of the word "yoga" itself is associated with the Sanskrit root "yui". It has many meanings, about twenty: "to unite", "to connect", "to connect", "to curb". The Soul (Atman) and the Universe (Brahman) are the two components that need to be tied together, according to the yogis. For the first time the word "yoga" is found in the "Rig Veda" - the oldest surviving monuments of Indian literature.
So what is yoga? In a broad sense, these are spiritual and physical practices developed in different directions of Hinduism and Buddhism, the purpose of which is to teach a person to control his psyche and body in order to help him achieve an exalted spiritual state. In a narrow sense, yoga is one of the six orthodox schools of the philosophy of Hinduism. Yoga has eight basic steps. "Yama" - curbing bodily desires; "Niyama" - fostering the desire for knowledge and spiritual improvement; Asana - discipline of the body; Pranayama - breath control; Pratyahara - isolation of the senses; Dharana - attention; Dhyana - contemplation; and "samadhi" - concentration.
Yoga: light version
For a long time, yoga was popular only in India and some other Asian countries. In the 19th century, thanks to the Indian public figure and humanist Swami Vivekananda, yoga became interested in America. He has visited the USA, UK and Japan with yoga lectures. Soon they became interested in this doctrine in the countries of Europe, and at the beginning of the 20th century in Russia.
In our country, yoga has long been treated with distrust. Moreover, in 1974, the Sports Committee adopted a special decree prohibiting yoga. It was allowed only in 1989, when, at the invitation of various departments and independently of each other, three natives of India visited Moscow, who played an important role in the development of yoga in the world, and in our country in particular. They were Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, guru Bhajan and guru Iyengar. They chose students from among Russian enthusiasts, some of whom began to popularize this Eastern practice in our country.
Studying the yoga market in Russia, the authors of Kommersant MONEY tried to calculate how many Russians indulge in yoga. Since there were no serious marketing studies on this topic, they relied mainly on expert opinion. For example, Inga Yakhney, an expert from the Association of Professional Fitness, believes that today about a third of Russians who lead an active lifestyle are engaged in yoga. According to VTsIOM estimates, only 12% of Russians regularly go in for sports - it turns out that about 4% of people practice yoga in our country. Khatuna Kobiashvili, publisher of Yoga Journal, believes that in Russia there are at least 200-230 thousand practitioners of various types of yoga, but emphasizes that the growth continues, over the past five years it amounted to 400-500%.
Today, the quantitative and qualitative growth of yoga practitioners is noted. In terms of quantity, the first major leap took place in the early 1990s, the second - since 2008, which was probably associated with the onset of the financial crisis. The qualitative growth is expressed in the fact that people interested in yoga classes in fitness clubs gradually began to visit specialized centers. Today there are thousands of schools in which yoga of various directions is taught: karma yoga, jnana yoga, bhakti yoga, hatha yoga, raja yoga, agni yoga, kriya yoga, mantra yoga, laya yoga and tantra -yoga. However, it should be borne in mind that, as in the rest of the world, in Russia there is a dominance of yoga fitness - and with yoga as a spiritual practice this has very little in common, yoga fitness is aimed exclusively at working with the body. The interest in this kind of yoga - the light version - is really great.
For body and soul
Due to the fact that in recent decades yoga is rapidly gaining popularity all over the world, scientists have also turned their attention to it. They are trying to find a scientific basis for the benefits of yoga for physical and psychological health.
To determine how meditation affects the human brain, if at all, a group of neuroscientists at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) examined 44 people. Half of them practiced meditation for five to forty-six years, an average of 24 years. Among other techniques, zazen, shamatha and vipashyana were used. Daily meditation took them from 10 minutes to 1.5 hours. The remaining 22 study participants made up the control group, they did not practice meditation.
Scientists monitored changes in the state of the participants' brains using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). It was found that certain structures in the head of experienced meditators were very different from those of others: in particular, the researchers found that people who practice meditation have a larger volume of the hippocampus, areas of the orbital-frontal cortex, thalamus and temporal inferior gyrus. As you know, these departments are responsible for the emotional state of a person and his ability to control responses. Eileen Luders, who led the study, emphasized in an interview with the Telegraph newspaper that the observed changes in the brain of meditators can provide a scientific basis for their ability to tune in to a positive wave. “Differences in brain anatomy may give us clues to these exceptional meditators' abilities,” she added. In the future, specialists will have to determine how meditation affects the human body at the cellular level - to find out, for example, whether meditators have changes in the number and size of neurons, or, perhaps, it is the quality of the connections between them.
A group of scientists from the Boston University School of Medicine and McLean Hospital, led by Chris Streeter, found that just three yoga sessions a week can help a person fight depression. For twelve weeks, they observed two groups of people, one of whom walked for three hours a week, and the other did yoga. Before and after the study, the subjects underwent magnetic resonance imaging. Analyzes showed that those who practiced yoga had a higher level of the amino acid (GABA) - this is the most important neurotransmitter of the human central nervous system, it is necessary for the normal functioning of the brain. Gamma-aminobutyric acid relieves anxiety and has a calming effect, and low GABA levels are commonly seen in depression.
Researchers at the University of Oregon (Oregon Health & Science University), led by James Carson, studied whether yoga could help relieve muscle pain, more specifically pain caused by fibromyalgia. This disease is manifested by chronic neuropathic pain that spreads throughout the body.
Since 80–90% of patients with fibromyalgic pain are women, the researchers decided to include only women in the study. 25 participants took part in a specially designed Yoga of Awareness program, the remaining 28 received standard treatment. “Although yoga has been practiced for millennia, it is only now that researchers have begun to demonstrate how it affects people with chronic pain,” says Dr. Carson. After the course of treatment was completed, both groups of patients were carefully examined: the results of the "yogini" were much better.
The upward facing dog position helps to develop elasticity in the muscles of the shoulder girdle and upper back, and also improves blood circulation in the pelvic region
Scientists at the University of Montreal (Université de Montréal) have come to similar conclusions: in an article published in the American Psychological Association journal, they argue that regular yoga practice stimulates the central region of the brain that controls the response to pain. Canadian researchers recommend yoga classes for patients suffering from neurological disorders.
Yoga has also been shown to be beneficial for teens with eating disorders. These are the results of a study led by T. Rain Carei of Seattle Children’s Hospital.
The results were published in the Journal of Adolescent Health. The study involved 50 girls and four boys aged 11 to 16 years. 55% of the participants suffered from anorexia, 17% had bulimia, and the rest had other eating disorders. The group was divided into two parts, for eight weeks one half underwent the usual course of treatment, and the second group also included weekly two-hour yoga sessions in the course of treatment. Some of the participants admitted that the only time when they do not think about their own weight at all is during yoga.
After a follow-up study was carried out a month after the completion of the course of treatment, it turned out that the group that did yoga without yoga returned to their previous indicators - those that were before the start of treatment. However, this did not happen with the group members, who were also prescribed yoga classes.
Researchers from Hampton University, Virginia, led by Anand B. Shetty, have concluded that yoga and breathing exercises are beneficial for overweight adolescents. Sixty high school students were divided into two groups. One practiced a kind of yoga pranayama four times a week for 40 minutes, others led a normal life. The body mass index (BMI) of the first group on average decreased from 22.8 to 21.5 (by 5.7%), and in the control group increased from 22.3 to 22.4. “Pranayama exercises affect the blood supply to the brain and metabolism,”says the author of the study. He associates weight loss with two factors: the exercises themselves and a decrease in the size of the stomach due to the practice of pranayama. Anand Shetty suggested including yoga in the school curriculum of physical education for adolescents.
What scientists are now figuring out using scientific methods has been known to Indian yogis for thousands of years. It seems that these numerous studies will attract new "adepts" to the ancient Eastern practice - albeit in a simplified form.
Authors: Tatiana Lychenkova, Victoria Rusina. Around the world
