Yoga Medical Study For Back-pain

Yoga has long been considered beneficial to the body, but could it be a cure for lower-back pain?

More than 300 people in five centres across England have been recruited for the York University for a large trial to test how lower-back pain responds to a 12-week course of yoga therapy. Each participant will be monitored for a year afterwards.

David Torgerson, director of the University of York clinical trials unit, said there had been several smaller trials in the US into the effect of yoga on lower-back pain, but that because they were so small it had been unclear if any benefits were down to the therapies or a particular teacher. He said their Arthritis Research Campaign-backed project would assess moves from the two most popular types of yoga, lyengar yoga and Hatha yoga.

The yoga classes will be carefully structured for people who are complete novices and will not involve any difficult poses. They will start off gently but become more demanding over the 12-week period, with a combination of stretches, bends, lying, sitting, standing and relaxing poses. Patients will also be encouraged to practise daily at home."We hope that at the end of it we might have a potential treatment for back pain," he said.

 One participant, himself a yoga teacher and the professor in foetal and maternal health at Manchester University has signed up. Twelve years ago John Aplin broke his back in  a walking accident in which he broke several bones, including three vertebrae in his back and ribs, when he fell 30 feet off a crag.

Because of fears that he might never walk again and he was kept immobile in hospital for six weeks to allow his bones to slowly recover. Once he was able he began to "very gingerly to practise yoga again". A teacher of Iyengar yoga he was fortunate to get advice directly from the  Iyengar family in India, who asked for pictures of his injuries. From looking at these pictures they recommended a specific program for him, Mr Aplin  followed this program to a full recovery returning to teaching yoga within six months.

Technorati Tags: Iyengar Yoga, Yoga, Yoga & Health, Yoga Therapy

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