Where Asanas Meet Medicine

Medical Research At Aiims, Delhi, Shows That Yoga Reduces The Severity Of Diseases And Improves Immunity

- ANIRUDHA KARINDALAM

As I stepped into All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi, I was swallowed by a maze of corridors. The queue in front of the pharmacy zigzagged between different buildings. Lanes and passages crisscrossed each other, and suddenly I had to make way for ambulances or patients being carried on stretchers. In the melee, sweepers quickly did their work. There was madness, yes, but with a method to it.

AIIMS has been India’s leading medical facility since 1956. The top government medical college and hospital is teeming with patients— from the low-income and middle-class households who come for quality and affordable care, to the VVIPs who come for expert opinion or care.

Now, AIIMS has also become the epicentre of yoga research in the country. Doctors and researchers are exploring therapeutic effects of yoga to combine it with modern medicine, and to evolve fresh guidelines for clinical practice. As Yoga has been India’s cultural property, scientists and academicians worldwide are taking keen interest in the research at AIIMS.

In 2016, AIIMS set up the Centre for Integrative Medicine and Research (CIMR), where practitioners of modern medicine collaborate with practitioners of yoga and ayurveda. Then, there are individual researchers like Dr Rima Dada, professor at the lab for molecular reproduction and genetics, department of anatomy. Since 2008, Dada has been studying the impact of yoga on rheumatoid arthritis, glaucoma, depression and male infertility.