Yoga in Prevention and Therapy
1University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany
2University of Connecticut, Storrs, USA
3University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, Australia
4National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bangalore, India
5University of Westminster, London, UK
Yoga in Prevention and Therapy
Description
Yoga is rooted in Indian philosophy and has been a part of traditional Indian spiritual practice for millennia. In recent times the role of yoga has broadened. Yoga has now also become a popular route to physical and mental well-being and has been adapted for use in complementary and integrative medicine internationally. In the latter setting, yoga most often includes physical postures, breath control, deep relaxation, and meditation/mindfulness techniques. In western societies, yoga is gaining increased popularity as a preventive and therapeutic practice, making it one of the therapies with the most rapid increase in prevalence.
Given the relatively low cost of yoga programs, yoga could easily be implemented worldwide as a preventive and therapeutic means to improve health, well-being, and, for patients with chronic health conditions, better symptom management. As such, healthcare providers are increasingly presented with patients using, or interested in trying, yoga for the management of their medical conditions. This increased use of yoga raises the issue of the efficacy and safety of yoga as a health therapy. Moreover, psychological and physiological mechanisms of action of yoga as a preventive and therapeutic remain largely unknown. Both efficacy and mechanisms need to be investigated in more depth in order to improve both clinical decision-making and research quality on one of the most prevalent complementary therapies used for the prevention and management of chronic health conditions.
This special issue is dedicated to research that focuses on the clinical application of yoga in preventive medicine and therapy. Original research and high-quality systematic reviews/meta-analyses on clinical trials as well as basic research are welcome. Studies employing innovative methodology and examining epidemiological and economic issues in yoga research as well as qualitative analyses are explicitly invited.
Potential topics include, but are not limited to:
- Clinical trials on the efficacy and safety of yoga interventions
- Cost-effectiveness studies of yoga interventions
- Epidemiological and clinical research on yoga for disease prevention
- Survey studies on prevalence, patterns, and predictors of yoga use
- Basic research on yoga’s physiological and psychological mechanisms of action
- Qualitative studies on patients’ and therapists’ perceptions of yoga in prevention and therapy
- Methodological issues specific to yoga research