Yoga Therapy, Ayurveda And Western Medicine- A Healthy Convergence

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Foreword One must know why Dr. Sarkar, a vascular surgeon trained in the USA, became interested in alternate therapy models, especially the Indian ancient system of Ayurveda, the mother of all medical wisdom, and its offshoot, yoga. He not only got interested in it but adopted it for himself after he had a coronary revascularization done-a procedure done in the best tradition of Western. medicine. Medical pioneers like Forssmann, who in the early 1900s tried to insert a catheter into his own heart when conventional wisdom was that such a procedure would be fatal, and other innovators like Lewis Dexter and Sir John Michael, used self-study to show the world that the procedures they were implementing on themselves were applicable to others as well to achieve better health.

In a similar tradition, Dr. Sarkar became an expert in Ayurvedic and yogic methods of healing after his own heart surgery, practiced them on him to avoid the risky chemical drugs of Western medicine, and then shared them with the health care community. He did this despite the fact that he now has man-made coronary conduits in his heart and the conventional wisdom in Western medicine says that one has to be on blood thinners for life with many other powerful drugs. Having seen hundreds of such patients during his time as a practicing physician, Sarkar knew the risks and the adverse reactions of those drugs. Many of these drugs are double-edged swords, especially the blood thinners. Having taken the risk to avoid the drugs, he conquered coronary artery disease over time by his own, homegrown coronary collaterals through yoga and Ayurveda. Dr. Sarkar writes this book with firsthand knowledge of the subject not simply through study but through practice.

Ancient Indian sages were masters of the science of quantum physics. Hans Peter Dorr, the man who showed that energy equals matter and called it a-duality, writes in his book that he learned most of what he wrote from the ancient Indian wisdom. DUTT, a former director of the Max Planck Institute for three decades, says the Indian concept of adviata is the root of all scientific wisdom. Ayurveda and yoga also belong to the same Sankya school of Indian thought. In their classic book What Is Life? Scientific Approaches and Philosophical Positions, Dorr and Fritz Albert Popp explain the beauty of life and the human body's capacity to heal itself under all circumstances. Ayurveda and yoga are no longer only in the realm of philosophy but are also part of the latest science.

In the ne~ evolutionary system's biology, the human body is a closed system capable of healing itself with a built-in doctor inside (the immune system). In this universe, all no dominant systems are subservient to the most dominant rhythm, called mode-locking. The energy of the breath, or prana, therefore becomes the most dominant rhythm, mode-locking all other systems (except menstruation) in the body. One can now understand why yogic breathing (pranayama) becomes vital to yoga. This book is one of a kind and extols the virtues of these ancient Indian systems of healing by a man who lives and swears by them in a completely authentic way. I enjoyed the narration of Dr. Sarkar's journey and the easy-to-understand prose. The book gets very high marks in my assessment and is a must-read in every household. Happy living, folks.

Preface This book combines Eastern and Western practices: the yogic tradition of passing down knowledge and the economics of supply and demand, a staple of Western thinking. After I witnessed firsthand an unthinkable transition in my own body from disease (I use the hyphen in disease to emphasize the absence of Disease, and will use this spelling of disease throughout the book) to wellness through the practice of Yoga Therapy, I wanted to share my new knowledge with a sometimes-skeptical medical world. I thought that if it worked for me, it could work for others-or at least improve their conditions in some measure. As my own medical doctors witnessed the transformation in my body through their analysis of hard medical data, they wanted to know how I was able to graduate from a chronically ill heart patient to a dies-ease-free, medication-free state. They wanted to know how to help other patients, and I wanted to aid them in that goal. Since that time, I have lectured all over the world to thousands of doctors and worked with major organizations like the American Heart Association and the International Association of Yoga Therapists. All of the people I met asked me to write a book for easy reference of my teachings, and here is the answer to that request.

Although I was healthy by most standards (I exercised, had a good diet, and had regular checkups with excellent results), I had an unexplainable heart attack at age fifty-two. After surgery, I turned to Yoga Therapy and Ayurveda to prevent-and ultimately reverse-my heart disease. When the local medical community found out about the amazing recovery I was making from heart disease through the practice of Yoga Therapy, they wanted me to share my methods. I established a Yoga Therapy class where area health care providers could learn how to incorporate Yoga Therapy into their Western medical practices.

Community members with underlying chronic diseases also started attending the classes, and their progress was documented during their regular medical checkups. It became apparent that Yoga Therapy is a very strong, albeit slow, medicine.

But strong medicine, no matter how slow, is good medicine.

Physicians started sending their patients to the Yoga Therapy classes to learn the practice and to incorporate Yoga Therapy in their daily lives.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages