Long before Mehmet Oz, M.D., was a regular guest on "Oprah" -- long before the Army started contemplating whether Complementary and Alternative Medicine had a place in treating PTSD, blogged about here -- there was yoga, and there was meditation. For thousands of years, these techniques for helped adherents gain flexibility, quiet the mind, and often, restore some inner peace. CAM for PTSD is in the news recently, but a book by well-regarded Rodale Press, from a dozen years ago, mentions both yoga and meditation, as well as sound healing, as possible therapies for PTSD. Here's what they have to say:
Stress reduction is an essential part of recovery from post-traumatic stress disorder, says Stephen A. Nezezon, M.D., yoga teacher and staff physician at the Himalayan International Institute of Yoga Science and Philosophy in Honesdale, Pennsylvania. To lower stress, he says, you can try a daily routine of breathing exercises, mediation, and yoga poses.
Do the complete Yoga breath exercise (see link here) whenever you’re feeling stressed, suggests Alice Christensen, founder and executive director of the American Yoga Association. Meditation helps clear your mind and teaches you to relax, she says. For the poses, select three or four from a Yoga daily routine. Christensen recommends varying the poses daily to keep your interest high and to strengthen different parts of your body. Dr. Nezezon says you should include at least one relaxation pose, such as "the corpse" (pictured above), "knee squeeze," or "baby," in your daily yoga routine.
Dr. Nezezon also recommends doing the "alternate nostril breath" (explanation linked here) each day as a way of helping you regain emotional balance.
Source: New Choices in Natural Healing: Over 1,800 of the Best Self-Help Remedies from the World of Alternative Medicine, Edited by Bill Gottlieb, Editor-in-Chief, Prevention Magazine Health Books. Emmaus, PA: Rodale Press, Inc. (1995).
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For more information about yoga, try these highly-rated instructional videos, produced by Gaiam, an excellent source for such material: Yoga for Beginners, Yoga for Stress Relief (with the Dalai Lama), and AM/PM Yoga For Beginners (with The Dalai Lama & 10 Routines), You can also try reading about Yoga on About.com (linked here), subscribe to the Yoga Journal, or watch the Yoga Journal's video on Yoga for Stress. (All hyperlinks lead you to the material described.)
For more information about meditation, sometimes referred to as "the inner Yoga," try these videos by Gaiam, an internationally-recognized source of high-quality instructional material about various bodywork therapies, including yoga. Meditation for Beginners, and/or Relaxation and Breathing for Meditation. You can also try books at Amazon.com by American author, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D., featured in an excellent Bill Moyers series on PBS years ago called Healing and the Mind. Kabat-Zinn is Professor of Medicine Emeritus and founding director of the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, Massachusetts. Kabat-Zinn teaches mindfulness meditation as a technique to help people cope with stress, anxiety, pain and illness, and leads workshops and retreats on the power of mindfulness, such as the one linked here (registration is full, but there is a waiting list).
