How Yoga Supports Health & Physiology

Lesson Overview

In this lesson, we specify the general and specific ways that yoga techniques support health, including its impact on various bodily systems.

Objective

Become competent in specifying the ways that yoga supports health from various perspectives.

Description

Describe four perspectives from which yoga can be described as supporting health. Explain ways that yoga can serve a preventative role and examples of providing symptomatic relief. Understand how yoga techniques can be used along with western medical treatment and how they can help to address imbalances related to health conditions. Specify multiple categories of bodily systems that are supported by yoga practices and the ways in which yoga supports health of those systems.

How Yoga Supports Health

There is an understanding in many healthcare settings that, when all else fails, yoga works. – Joseph LePage

There are different perspectives from which we can discuss how yoga supports health. For a long summary list of health benefits, see Timothy McCall MD’s list of 38 benefits here.

Here we examine yoga’s impact from the following perspectives:

1. Prevention & symptom relief
2. Support along with other treatments
3. Balancing stability & ease
4. Impacting bodily systems & processes