How Yoga Helps Medical Conditions Adjunct to Western Medicine

by Baxter

People Join Together to Form Another Person
by Utagawa Kuniyoshi

In our posts How Yoga Helps with Medical Conditions: Prevention and How Yoga Helps Medical Conditions: Symptom Improvement, we described yoga’s powerful role in preventing medical conditions, and for improving symptoms and sometimes even curing conditions. Today, we will look at an equally valuable application of yoga: as an adjunct to western healing modalities. 

For yoga, acting as adjunct treatment means playing a secondary role by supporting or enhancing the effects of the primary forms of treatment. Baxter personally experienced this when he was being treated for a frozen shoulder. His western medical treatment included a steroid injection and physical therapy, and Baxter supplemented that treatment by practicing asanas to improve flexibility and using breath work for pain management.

There are four basic ways you can use yoga as an adjunct to western medical treatment.

1. Adjunct for Prevention. When you are using western medical recommendations to prevent a medical condition, you can use yoga to support your efforts. For example, if you have a family history of diabetes and want to do everything you can to prevent yourself from developing the disease, you could use yoga stress management techniques and active asana practices to support the primary prevention recommendations your doctor provided, such as making dietary changes, maintaining a healthy weight, and maintaining adequate levels of exercise. Other examples include using yoga as an adjunct for prevention of heart disease, high blood pressure, and obesity.

2. Adjunct for Ongoing Treatment. When you are receiving ongoing medical treatment for a condition or disease, such as multiple sclerosis, chronic back pain, or high blood pressure, you can use yoga to improve symptoms, such as pain or weakness, to prevent your condition from worsening, or to help you maintain your present level of functioning. You can also use yoga’s stress management techniques to help you deal with stress of having an ongoing medical problem.  

3. Adjunct for Rehabilitation. When you are undergoing rehabilitation from physical problems, including an injury, recent surgery, cancer treatment, stroke or heart attack, you can use yoga as an adjunct to the primary treatments, such as medication or physical therapy, which you are receiving to help you heal. For example, after cancer treatment you could use your asana practice to regain strength and stress management tools to help you recover emotionally. And for emotional problems, such as anxiety and depression, you could supplement medication and talk therapy with yoga stress management and equanimity practices.  

4. Adjunct for Palliative Care. When you have a condition for which there is no cure, you can use yoga for symptom relief and comfort care as a supplement to medications and other primary treatments. For example, for someone with COPD (emphysema), who will not regain normal breathing even with western medications, yoga tools such as meditation and simple breath practices can help ease anxiety and stabilize symptoms, at least for a while. For end of life care, yoga can compliment hospice care, helping to ease the transition towards death.  

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