COVID-19 Pandemic and Yoga practice -New prescription for Stress Reduction?
Vini Vijayan, Niveditha Sukesh, Devi Asokan, Aiswarya Premkumar, Sukesh Sukumaran.
The emergence of COVID 19 pandemic since December 31 2019, and isolation of novel SARS-CoV-2 changed the world. Since then, cases have spread all over the globe including 213 Countries/ territories. As the coronavirus spreads throughout the world, so has the ramifications of its spread impacted every aspect of our daily lives. While the physical, economic and social consequences of this pandemic have been enormous, its toll on the mental health and stress level of the general public is especially significant and should be addressed. Mandatory stay at home orders, social distancing measures, the closure of schools, parks, visitation in nursing homes, while necessary to contain the spread, may additionally lead to declining mental health. The latest statistics show that a whopping 264 million individuals worldwide suffer from clinical depression.
We propose the use of some simple Yoga practices to cope with this stressful situation and also to address the immune boosting effect of this practice. Proper practice of Yoga assists in mental clarity as well as emotional and physical control. It also helps with stress relief and increases one’s awareness of the physical body rhythms. In this article we address simple Yoga and how to practice it with illustrations. We discuss the available literature regarding Yoga and its benefit in stress and immune-boosting.
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