subject: Yoga and Cancer [print this page] Cancer touches people all over the worldCancer touches people all over the world. There are over a hundred different types listed by medical journals to date. Fortunately, recent studies have shown that yoga offers cancer patients benefits ranging from decreased stress and discomfort to improved lymphatic flow and better digestion, just to begin with. What specifically causes cancer from a yogic point of view, and how does the view of allopathic medicine differ from that?
To traditional medical doctors, cancer is a disease in the body caused when a group of cells start to divide beyond their normal limits. That means they experience uncontrolled growth that then assaults tissues in the body or begins to metastasize into the blood or lymph glands. On the other hand, in yogic philosophy we view the body as a series of five sheaths, called koshas translated from Sanskrit. These koshas hold within them a microcosmic narrative of the entire Universe, each sheath having a more subtle or dense quality.
The first sheath is called the Annimaya Kosha. It is often referred to as the food body. It relates specifically to the physical body. If you have ever heard the expression you are what you eat, then you know what this sheath represents. Every food material we put into our bodies, whether a chocolate shake, a juicy steak or a plate of leafy green vegetables, has an energetic quality. Some foods create higher or faster moving energy in the body (and thus greater vigor and stamina) while other foods are considered "dead" already, such as meat, processed foods, sugar, etc. They have a very slow-paced energetic quality. They do not add to the life-force or energetic body at all. They slowly break down the cellular process as it exists in its healthy form.
The next sheath is called the Pranamaya Kosha. It is also often called the vital body. This is the energetic body as made evident through the breath. The breath is one of the closest things human beings can liken to infinity. Infinity represents the fastest moving rate of energy because it is timeless. It has no form in its pure state. The pranamaya kosha is a thread that ties the subtle body to the physical body. The fleeting, ever-renewed breath also joins the two koshas.
The third sheath is called the Manomaya Kosha. It is the mental or psychological body. In this sheath reside our emotions and thoughts associated to past memories and anticipation of future events. You'll notice here the absence of a sense of Infinite awareness. One of the most important things cancer patients can practice is an awareness of now. This can be accomplished by simply sitting and focusing on the breath, allowing emotions to arise without attaching any judgment to them. Often emotions are so repressed in us that they start to eat us alive (literally, like those fast-growing cancer cells). If we can just observe the emotions arise instead of stuffing them inside, we can start to deal with whatever emotions caused the inequilibrium in our bodies to begin with.
The fourth sheath is the Vijnyanamaya Kosha. In this kosha, intellect starts to arise an ability to discern our thoughts without sightless emotion. I'm talking here of the inner eye. The eye that holds wisdom. It is also where the sense of "I" arises, or where the ego keeps its abode. This kosha is one of cognition, conditioning or de-conditioning of one's most profound beliefs, the most deeply rooted of which is the I' or "ego" concept. It is the definition we have of ourselves. You might say it is where our story is created the one that doesn't want to be changed. We can look even at our "I" as a cancer patient and start to rewrite our core beliefs about who we are as a corporeal body dealing with a disease. In this kosha, we are rescripting who we are at the level of intellect, like Shakespeare writing a great play, and it isn't easy!
Finally, when we have integrated the ego, we arrive at the Anandamaya Kosha the Sheath of Bliss, as translated from Sanskrit. This is where we become 100 percent conscious and present of the connection we have with all other beings on this planet. This is the state of Sat Chit Ananda Sat means existence, pure and unqualified. Some people call it God. From a yogic perspective, all true healing comes from this place of consciousness, because in this sheath there is no dis-ease without its polar opposite health or ease. One cannot exist without the other, so Bliss arises when we truly understand this seeming paradox.
For most of western medicine; however, the physical body is the easiest sheath to deal with. This is also why chemotherapy and other very harmful means of "healing" the body do not always work or at least have to kill most of the "good" cells left in our bodies before getting to the "bad" ones. The problem with dealing with cancer from a purely physical sense is that the physical body is the most dense form of us. All disease is thought to arise in the energetic body before its ever comes into manifestation in the physical body. Your cancer, therefore, is forming prior to it ever showing signs physically. So what does that mean about healing yourself, about taking control of your own healing process?
It means getting quiet more often so that you can hear what the more subtle forms of energy in your self are telling you. A whisper is just as real as a shout, but you can't hear one unless you are in a quiet space. Perhaps yoga is one way to achieve this quieter space.
On page 55 of the monthly magazine "Yog Sandesh" (English) September 2006 issue, of Swami Ramdev Ji's Trust in India, "Yoga Guru Swami Ramdev while addressing the people said that Yoga & Pranayama have been successful in curing 200 cancer patients and he is ready to give evidence. The ancient science is also beneficial in case of AIDS and experiments are being carried out in that area. He would make formal announcement once the tests are completed". Swami Ji said, "Till now I have completed more than ten thousand scientific experiments. The patients of diabetes, obesity, hypertension, depression, can take part in the seven-day camp and check the results on their own. They will notice 50% improvement within a week".
Meanwhile, western researchers in the medical field are finding the beginnings of their own proof. Karen Mustian, PhD, MPH, at the University of Rochester Medical Center in Rochester, N.Y., for example said that in a study of participantswith cancer who did just four weeks of yoga experienced a 22% increase in sleep quality compared with just a 12% improvement from baseline care, and yoga had an even greater effect on fatigue, with a 42% reduction among yoga participants versus 12% among controls (P
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