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Yoga, Health, and Peace: A Medical Perspective

A medical doctor presents a scientific perspective on yoga's role in holistic health and peace.

"To create a healthy world, we must be healthy ourselves."

"Yoga techniques influence us on all levels: physical, mental, social, and spiritual."

The speaker, addressing an audience including Vishwa Guruji, explains how modern lifestyles cause stress and disease, contrasting this with the integrated approach of the Yoga in Daily Life system. He details how specific yoga practices—like meditation, prāṇāyāma, and āsanas—scientifically support health by influencing the brain's cortical and subcortical levels and peripheral organs. The talk covers preventing memory loss and depression, advocates for a vegetarian diet, and concludes that balanced self-realization through yoga fosters global peace.

Filming location: Prague, Czech Republic

Dear Vishwa Gurujī, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, I am very honored to share my experience with yoga from the perspective of a medical doctor. I will speak about caring for our health and how this is important for creating peace. I was given a choice between Czech and English. As I like both languages, I decided to make the visual presentation in Czech and speak in English, which I hope will be easier for the translators. We create the world by who we are, how we think, what our actions are, and the example we set for others. Therefore, to create a healthy world, we must be healthy ourselves. As you have heard, our health is composed of several parts. It is not just a physical state; we must also be healthy in our thinking, socially healthy, and develop spiritual health. These parts are deeply connected. Without integrating them all, we cannot be truly healthy, even on a physical level. Currently, we are not living a lifestyle for which our evolution prepared us. Technological development is very fast, and our connection to life is not as natural as it was meant to be. We do not move as much as our bodies are accustomed to. Psychological and stress factors are growing. We do not eat properly, and most importantly, we are not developing social and spiritual health. Spiritual health, in particular, is something greatly underestimated in education and healthcare, something modern medicine largely fails to account for. As you know and have heard today, Yoga in Daily Life is a scientific, holistic system that works on several levels: physical, mental, social, and spiritual. I wish to present the scientific viewpoint because modern medicine must be evidence-based. There must be scientific literature supporting our actions and treatments. I want to show you that modern science actually supports all yoga practices. The techniques we have are documented in scientific literature and can genuinely help keep us healthy. Due to the constant media stream, we are exposed to a flood of thoughts and information, to many "truths" we must process. We are becoming chronically stressed from having to make constant decisions. Our social bonds are weakening. Consequently, we over-activate our autonomic nervous system, and this stress impacts our organs. When the sympathetic nervous system is activated excessively, it damages peripheral organs, leading to psychosomatic diseases like ischemic heart disease, stroke, hypertension, and diabetes. All these diseases are essentially caused by chronic stress overload. On a neuronal level, there are three pathways through which we can address a stress situation. 1. The cortex is where our conscience resides, where we consciously learn from our actions. 2. The subcortical level involves the autonomic (vegetative) system—the hypothalamus, pituitary gland, and the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. These reactions are subconscious and govern our organs. 3. Then we have the peripheral organs: the cardiovascular system, the hormonal system, our immunity, and so on. The process flows downstream from the cortex, from our consciousness. We can positively influence all three levels through yoga techniques. The conscious cortical level can be influenced by meditation, concentration techniques, and primarily by developing a value system through yoga principles like Yama and Niyama, which correlate with Christian principles and those of other religions. The subcortical level can be influenced by techniques like prāṇāyāma and relaxation, which directly affect our autonomic nervous system. We calm the sympathetic nervous system and enhance the tone of the parasympathetic, which cools down our stress reactions. The peripheral system can be influenced by āsanas, prāṇāyāma, bandhas, and Haṭha Yoga kriyās, which cleanse the body, provide exercise, and help maintain muscular tone. I specialize in memory, and a major problem today is the growing number of people experiencing memory loss. People are developing dementia; it is becoming a significant threat, called the epidemic of this century. Even young people's memory is worsening, as we can Google everything and use copy-paste functions. We are no longer trained to remember, and the dementia epidemic is growing. Why is memory important? It is a crucial part of our existence. It tells us who we are by connecting us to our past, helps us learn from mistakes, and thus allows us to improve ourselves. If we lose memory, we lose the sense of who we are and can no longer grow spiritually. All yoga techniques are scientifically proven to help preserve our memory. Being vegetarian is important not only for adhering to the principle of Ahiṃsā, as discussed today, but also for maintaining a healthy mind and spiritual development. Furthermore, scientific evidence shows that reducing or eliminating meat consumption is healthy for the body. A vegetarian diet offers a healthier balance of lipids, more vitamin C from vegetables, and excessive animal protein can be harmful to health, shorten lifespan, and promote cancer. Here, I would like to point out that Oriental cuisine is very important because it is inherently designed to be vegetarian. The meals do not pretend to be meat with artificial substitutes but are perfectly designed as they are. Crucially, they utilize spices which, as shown in many studies—like curcumin, cinnamon, and ginger—are very healthy. They can improve immunity, help prevent dementia, preserve memory, and remove pathological proteins in the brain that cause memory loss. Population studies show that in India, the same age group has four times less dementia than a comparable age group in America. This is truly significant. Physically, as you know, dementia and much memory loss can be prevented through movement. Numerous scientific studies prove that regular movement is important not only for the cardiovascular system but also for retaining memory. It is neuroprotective and can help prevent the loss of neurons in the brain with age. Yoga offers two kinds of exercise: dynamic practices like Sūrya Namaskāra, which benefit the cardiovascular system, and āsanas, which are vital for maintaining concentration and work with our frontal lobe, the brain region key for focus. There are also many studies on meditation using neuroimaging from magnetic resonance, which prove that regular meditation can enlarge the memory areas in your brain. You can truly do a lot for yourself by meditating regularly. Another issue is depression, a very common phenomenon in our society due to our disconnection from the world. It is also a major recognized risk factor for developing memory problems. Yoga is a very good way to alleviate or prevent depression without medication. Concentration and meditation techniques help you connect with the present moment. This connection is a primary phenomenon now being researched by modern science, which is returning to an understanding long known in Eastern philosophies. So, how is yoga connected to health and peace? You can integrate all these aspects. Yoga techniques influence us on all levels: physical, mental, social, and spiritual. When we are in balance across all four parts of our being, we can move toward self-realization. Achieving self-realization means we know who we are, where we belong, how we are connected to others, and how our actions influence them. This understanding allows us to live together with other human beings, all living beings, and our environment in peace. Thank you very much.

This text is transcribed and grammar corrected by AI. If in doubt what was actually said in the recording, use the transcript to double click the desired cue. This will position the recording in most cases just before the sentence is uttered.

The text contains hyperlinks in bold to three authoritative books on yoga, written by humans, to clarify the context of the lecture:

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