The Pandemic And Yoga

Yoga is the key to good overall health

- Dr. Pushpa Neelkantan 

A Pandemic is an epidemic occurring on a worldwide scale. Being highly transmutable, it affects more and more people. Misleading information and information voids during such disease outbreaks like the coronavirus are a source of confusion and create panic.

What is the root cause of the pandemic?

Human activities cause climate change and biodiversity through their impacts on our environment. The Harvard Medical School of Health and Global Environment warned that “the primary causes of pandemics are the destruction of the natural world through activities including deforestation and hunting.”

Stringent lockdown measures and social distancing were implemented after the outbreak of Covid. It had great repercussions on social and mental health and for the economy as “human wealth and health depend on nature’s health.”

To live through the pandemic and work and study from home due to frequent lockdowns was a challenge. The mounting uncertainty in understanding the pandemic, the uncertainty of the future regarding salary cuts, loss of jobs specially for the self-employed were a great source of anxiety.

Yoga was one of the coping mechanisms to maintain good all-round health and a positive frame of mind.

The invaluable contribution and awareness of yoga Asanas for strengthening the immune system and improving lung health with the help of Pranayama and Mudras was widely reported by yoga institutions and teachers.

The need of the hour was a sanitation of mind, the correct understanding and response by understanding yoga philosophy and the proposed action through practices of yoga in relation to the pandemic.