Meeting Eric Small, shaking his hand and looking into his eyes, one would never know he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis about 50 years ago. Photographs in his yoga studio show him in complex poses, the kind that take years of study to perfect.
Small's almost lifelong dedication to yoga has given him the stamina, strength and confidence, he says, to live medication-free. Now in his early 70s, he has symptoms of relapsing-remitting MS, including loss of vision, fatigue and occasional numbness. But he's also able to sustain a daily two-hour practice in addition to teaching -- most notably others with MS, even some who must use wheelchairs.
This yoga niche, called therapeutic yoga, is not limited to people with MS. Such therapy incorporates poses (asanas), breathing (pranayama) and meditation techniques to improve quality of life and manage symptoms of various diseases, chronic conditions and illnesses -- including asthma, back pain, fibromyalgia, depression and cancer.
Although conventional exercise -- walking, bicycling -- is recommended for many people with health problems, yoga goes a step further, say its proponents. The mind-body connection that yoga can create serves to heal the mind and spirit as well as the body, they say.
In India, the roots of therapeutic yoga go back thousands of years, but the mainstream medical community in the U.S. has been slow to embrace it, considering the practice little more than good exercise. Now researchers have studied its effects on carpal tunnel syndrome, asthma and heart disease, and health professionals have incorporated it into medical programs that offer other alternative therapies, such as acupuncture and massage therapy.
A study in 1998 showed that yoga, more than conventional treatment, helped reduce pain and improve hand strength for people with carpal tunnel syndrome. That same year, yoga was shown to be effective in improving the quality of life for people with asthma.
A study in the June issue of the journal Neurology showed that MS patients who practiced yoga for six months had significantly less fatigue than those who didn't practice it. Current studies are evaluating yoga's effectiveness in treating symptoms of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, depression and breast cancer.
