disciplines for the calming of the mind in the interest of enlightenment, promoting mental
wellness and healthier understandings of suffering and mortality as a path to spiritual
insight.
- Yoga breathing exercises are a particularly powerful tool, amplified in Brown and Gerbarg’s
2012 book, The Healing Power of the Breath (Shambhala Boston 2012). Brown and Gerbarg
recommend “coherent breathing” and breath counting, as does Weil, who outlines his
technique in four simple rules: (1) put your attention on your breath; (2) Try to make your
breathing deeper, slower, quieter, and more regular; (3) Let your belly expand with each
inhalation; and (4) Practice exhaling more air with each breath.^4 The Mayo Clinic
recommends “relaxed breathing” for anxiety and stress.
- The Mayo Clinic and Weil strongly recommend yoga and tai chi, and Weil devotes special
attention to Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, described below under meditation, which
combines yoga postures, breathing and meditation. Weil’s recommendations, and the
science that supports them, are gathered there. Mayo observes that, in addition to relief
from anxiety and stress: “Some clinical research shows that yoga can improve some
measures of cognitive function and decrease symptoms of depression.”
- Mind-body techniques are difficult to evaluate as CAM treatments because it is not possible
to double-blind the clinical trials, but single-blind trials, open-label studies, and studies of
comparative responses to mass trauma provide a substantial scientific basis for
recommending yoga as a CAM treatment. Brown et al., who have used yoga techniques
extensively in mass disaster situations,^5 also have developed a neurophysiological model to
explain how these practices affect mental health in modern scientific terms. It is
hypothesized that stress induces imbalance of the autonomic nervous system with
decreased parasympathetic nervous system and increased sympathetic nervous system
activity, under-activity of the inhibitory transmitter GABA, and increased allostatic load.
