Chair yoga program linked to reduction in pain among older adults

An 8-week chair yoga program was associated with reduction in pain, pain interference, and fatigue, and improvement in gait speed; concluded a study recently published in the online Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

Sixty-six community-dwelling older adults with lower extremity Osteoarthritis were assigned to this controlled trial for eight weeks and observed by Dr. Juyoung Park of Florida Atlantic University and others from Florida Atlantic University and Atlanta’s Mercer University, to study “Effects of Chair Yoga on Pain and Physical Function Among Community-Dwelling Older Adults With Lower Extremity Osteoarthritis”, who could not participate in standing exercise.

Chair yoga should be further explored, study authors wrote in the conclusion.

Meanwhile, Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada today, called this study by researchers from Florida Atlantic University and Atlanta’s Mercer University looking into possible usage of yoga for pain related issues of elderly “a step in the positive direction”. Zed urged all major world universities to explore various benefits yoga offered.

Yoga, referred as “a living fossil”, was a mental and physical discipline, for everybody to share and benefit from, whose traces went back to around 2,000 BCE to Indus Valley civilization, Zed, who is President of Universal Society of Hinduism, noted.

Rajan Zed further said that yoga, although introduced and nourished by Hinduism, was a world heritage and liberation powerhouse to be utilized by all. According to Patanjali who codified it in Yoga Sutra, yoga was a methodical effort to attain perfection, through the control of the different elements of human nature, physical and psychical.

According to US National Institutes of Health, yoga may help one to feel more relaxed, be more flexible, improve posture, breathe deeply, and get rid of stress. According to a “2016 Yoga in America Study”, about 37 million Americans (which included many celebrities) now practice yoga; and yoga is strongly correlated with having a positive self image. Yoga was the repository of something basic in the human soul and psyche, Zed added.