Regional Medical Center in New York launching “Healing Yoga” for cancer patients

Nationally recognized hospital Orange Regional Medical Center in Middletown (New York) is launching 10-week “Healing Yoga” class from February 17 for “cancer and chronic disease patients” to improve their “quality of life”.

It utilizes the practices of yoga therapy as a complement to traditional medicine. Its claimed physical benefits include: increases resistance to illness & disease; eases side effects of antiviral medications; induces the “relaxation response”; supports a healthy immune system; increases strength & flexibility and eases chronic pain.

It lists other benefits of healing yoga as: promotion of stress reduction and relaxation, ease of depression and anxiety and encouragement of healthy decision-making.

Meanwhile distinguished Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada today, termed it as a step in the positive direction to make multi-benefit yoga available for cancer and chronic disease patients. Zed urged all major US hospitals to launch yoga classes for their patients.

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.

History of award-winning Orange Regional Medical Center goes back to 1908. Terrence L. Olivo is Board Chairman; Scott Batulis is President and CEO; and Susan Garcia is yoga instructor.

Source: World Hindu News (WHN)