Yoga when used as a form of alternative medicine is a combination of breathing exercises, physical postures, and meditation, practiced for over 5,000 years. 

In India, yoga is a daily part of life. It is common to see people performing yoga in the morning or speaking about food diets and body therapy entirely based on Yoga or the Hindu healing system of Ayurveda. 

A survey released in May 2004 by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine focused on who used complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), what was used, and why it was used in the United States by adults age 18 years and over during 2002. According to this survey, Yoga was the 5th most commonly used CAM therapy (2.8%) in the United States during 2002 when all use of prayer was excluded. Yoga is considered a mind-body intervention that is used to reduce the health effects of generalized stress. 

Overview

Yoga is believed to calm the nervous system and balance the body, mind, and spirit. It is thought by its practitioners to prevent specific diseases and maladies by keeping the energy meridians (see acupuncture) open and life energy (qi) flowing. Yoga is usually performed in classes, sessions are conducted at least once a week and for approximately 45 minutes. Yoga has been used to lower blood pressure, reduce stress, and improve coordination, flexibility, concentration, sleep, and digestion. It has also been used as supplementary therapy for such diverse conditions as cancer, diabetes, asthma, AIDS and Irritable Bowel Syndrome. 

Yoga and Breast Cancer Patients

In 2006, scientists at the University Of Texas conducted an experiment on 61 breast cancer patients. They took 30 of those patients and put them through a 6-week yoga program. At the end of those six weeks, they found that the patients that went through the yoga program felt much better about themselves, and were not as tired during the day 

Hatha yoga 

In The West, hatha yoga has become popular as a purely physical exercise regimen divorced of its original purpose. Currently, it is estimated that about 30 million Americans and about 5 million of Europeans practice a form of hatha yoga. But it is still followed in a manner consistent with tradition throughout the Indian subcontinent. The traditional guru-student relationship that exists without sanction from organized institutions, and which gave rise to all the great yogins who made way into international consciousness in the 20th century, has been maintained in Indian, Nepalese and some Tibetan circles. The word Yoga and the official source of Yoga lore is stemming from India. Yoga as a word stems from the Sanskrit verbal root ‘yuj’ and indicates the verb to ‘to yoke’ or ‘to unite’. The transliteration form Sanskrit into Chinese is the following: →瑜伽→用賀. The meaning yoke as used on oxen is closely related, but also the same root gives us "join", "junction", "junta", "adjust", "joust", and "juxapose" to name a few. As such we can see a close resemblance in meaning to the Chinese concept of Taiji, which’s meaning could be stretched to indicate polarisation within a unity, but it is by no means identical to Taiji. That the meaning is not identical can be easily deduced when we compare Chinese practices and Indian practices of physical and mental or emotional purification. The only thing that maybe could be seen as identical is the recognized need for discipline and continuity in practice. Yoga connotates the process of yoking or fusing individual consciousness and awareness with the Vedantic, Hindu or Buddhist concept of Brahman Atman which is nowadays commonly equated with God, the divine or in a mixture of Jungian and New-Age sense with super-conscious awareness, but with which is intended a sort of natural state of mind, or of the soul in unison with the divine. As a practice Yoga is a kind of purification as to reach liberation of obscuring qualities present within mind and body. These obscurities according to Indian tradition are obscuring our recognition of origination in the divine and are therefore close in meaning to the content of European systems of thought such as Platonism and Christianity. In China Yogic practices have become successfully integrated within the systems of Buddhism of course, but also within a variety of Daoist practices. Wudang Xiqi yoga is an example of this. The purpose of these practices and their application are not Indian in that case, but have become fully Daoist. Xiqi Yoga is based on dantian breathing practices and seek a particular application of clarity and strength, that is different from the seeking of enlightenment in normal Hatha or bodily Yoga practices.

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