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The Practice of Yoga for the Digestive System
Faulty diet,tension and lack of exercise are the chief causes of most digestive disorders.This book explains how the practices of yoga and yogic diet can be utilized to balance these factors and eliminate digestive problems.Written by Dr.Swami Shankardevananda Saraswati under the guidance of Swami Satyananda Saraswati,the book combines the traditional medical view with the ayurvedic and yogic views of healthy digestion. Includes practical information on food and medical section on digestive disorders,their causes and a practice section complete with detailed instructions and diagrams.
281 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 28, 2009
This book is written by Doctor Swami Shankardevenanda, who is from Sydney, Australia. He became a medical doctor there in Australia and later also become a Swami of Yoga. This book is a guide to healthy living and eating. It doesn't just tell you what to eat - it helps to understand what your body needs, what various foods provide, and then makes recommendations on how to provide your body with everything it needs. It focuses mostly on normal eating practices, but also addresses dietary illnesses and irregularities, it helps you to understand how your particular body type deals with food and also to understand what different foods do for the human body in general.
This book brings together the best of eastern and western knowledge to give a compelling and helpful guide to Yoga for digestion. Yoga is the practice of bringing together body and mind to work in harmony. Why is that important? Consider this analogy from the book:
"The mind is like the sea, the body is the land and their sphere of interaction is the seashore. When the mind is peaceful and relaxed, the sea is calm. However, when the mind is troubled the sea becomes turbulent and waves beat against the shore, tearing away large sections of the land. This is the psychosomatic disease process which results in indigestion, constipation, peptic ulcer, diarrhoea, and so many other minor and major diseases." (p. 88)
And what happens if the mind and body are NOT working in harmony?
"In the area of digestive problems, jealousy is thought to be an underlying cause of ulcer, anger of hyperacidity and dyspepsia, greed of obesity, frustration of diarrhoea, and possesiveness of constipation. In other disease areas such as cancer, victims are thought to be those who were not close to their parents in childhood and hide their emotions. Even when under stress they say, 'Everything's fine!' Heart attack victims tend to be just the opposite as they feel they are under greater stress than they really are. People with arthritis, especially women, tend to have unfulfilled ambitions due to feelings of inadequacy when they were children. Many of these conditions set in after being triggered by some traumatic experience." (p. 85)
This is not new age shtuff. This knowledge and these practices got back at least as far as the time of the Bronze Age (around the time the old testament was being written). Luckily for us, this author is both a doctor and a swami, so he is always using scientific evidence to support his ideas. Don't believe that stress causes digestion problems? check this out:
One "experiment involved pairs of monkeys who were restrained and subjected to electric shocks delivered to the feet automatically every 20 seconds for six hours. After a six hour rest, shocks were again repeated for 6 hours, and so on. The first monkey, the 'executive' was given a lever to press. When pressed at the right time, it prevented shocks to both monkeys and he quickly learned to stop the shocks. His partner, the 'control' received very few shocks. His lever was without effect and so he soon came to ignore it. The executive monkeys died after several days of continuous stress from gastrointestinal erosion and bleeding. No control monkey died or had ulceration." (p. 105)
The book also includes specific and extensive advice on diet and cooking, always referring back to western medical authorities for evidence: yellow foods, "such as carrots, pumpkin, papaya and mangoes contain carotene which is noted to be a very potent anti-cancer agent." "GEC Chicago carried out research on this project, involving thousands of men, which lasted probably more than 15 years. They concentrated on lung cancer, which is the commonest in the USA, and found a direct relationship between the amount of yellow food eaten and the non-incidence of cancer." (p. 161)
The books is full of many more facts and more wisdom than I care to outline here for this review. I have learned such a huge amount from the book though that I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to live healthily and eat well.
(P.S. The last third or so of the book is a guide to some of the exercises and concentration positions of Yoga.)
This book brings together the best of eastern and western knowledge to give a compelling and helpful guide to Yoga for digestion. Yoga is the practice of bringing together body and mind to work in harmony. Why is that important? Consider this analogy from the book:
"The mind is like the sea, the body is the land and their sphere of interaction is the seashore. When the mind is peaceful and relaxed, the sea is calm. However, when the mind is troubled the sea becomes turbulent and waves beat against the shore, tearing away large sections of the land. This is the psychosomatic disease process which results in indigestion, constipation, peptic ulcer, diarrhoea, and so many other minor and major diseases." (p. 88)
And what happens if the mind and body are NOT working in harmony?
"In the area of digestive problems, jealousy is thought to be an underlying cause of ulcer, anger of hyperacidity and dyspepsia, greed of obesity, frustration of diarrhoea, and possesiveness of constipation. In other disease areas such as cancer, victims are thought to be those who were not close to their parents in childhood and hide their emotions. Even when under stress they say, 'Everything's fine!' Heart attack victims tend to be just the opposite as they feel they are under greater stress than they really are. People with arthritis, especially women, tend to have unfulfilled ambitions due to feelings of inadequacy when they were children. Many of these conditions set in after being triggered by some traumatic experience." (p. 85)
This is not new age shtuff. This knowledge and these practices got back at least as far as the time of the Bronze Age (around the time the old testament was being written). Luckily for us, this author is both a doctor and a swami, so he is always using scientific evidence to support his ideas. Don't believe that stress causes digestion problems? check this out:
One "experiment involved pairs of monkeys who were restrained and subjected to electric shocks delivered to the feet automatically every 20 seconds for six hours. After a six hour rest, shocks were again repeated for 6 hours, and so on. The first monkey, the 'executive' was given a lever to press. When pressed at the right time, it prevented shocks to both monkeys and he quickly learned to stop the shocks. His partner, the 'control' received very few shocks. His lever was without effect and so he soon came to ignore it. The executive monkeys died after several days of continuous stress from gastrointestinal erosion and bleeding. No control monkey died or had ulceration." (p. 105)
The book also includes specific and extensive advice on diet and cooking, always referring back to western medical authorities for evidence: yellow foods, "such as carrots, pumpkin, papaya and mangoes contain carotene which is noted to be a very potent anti-cancer agent." "GEC Chicago carried out research on this project, involving thousands of men, which lasted probably more than 15 years. They concentrated on lung cancer, which is the commonest in the USA, and found a direct relationship between the amount of yellow food eaten and the non-incidence of cancer." (p. 161)
The books is full of many more facts and more wisdom than I care to outline here for this review. I have learned such a huge amount from the book though that I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to live healthily and eat well.
(P.S. The last third or so of the book is a guide to some of the exercises and concentration positions of Yoga.)
June 18, 2023
Very nice introductory book on the digestive system and remedies and teaching from yoga and Ayurveda. I like how the author is not prescriptive.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews