Dr. Shivarama Varambally

NIMHANS

Abstract:
Yoga as a lifestyle has existed in India for millennia. Although originally designed to facilitate spiritual progress of an individual, there is now convincing data from all over the world that yoga as a practice has salutary effects on both physical and mental health, and that yoga-based interventions have efficacy in several physical as well as mental disorders. Research on yoga at NIMHANS has a history of more than 50 years, with initial work in Neurophysiology and Clinical Psychology focused on effects in long-term practitioners and healthy subjects. In the new millennium (2007 onwards), yoga has been offered as a clinical service to patients with psychiatric and neurological disorders with promising results. In 2014, NIMHANS established the NIMHANS Integrated Centre for Yoga and in 2019, this was integrated into the newly established Department of Integrative Medicine.
Work at the NIMHANS Integrated Centre for Yoga has focused on 2 main areas – designing and development of generic yoga modules for specific neuropsychiatric disorders; and evidence generation for the efficacy and mechanisms of action of yoga as an intervention in these disorders. Of particular note is the demonstration that yoga is efficacious as a therapy in the major mental disorders Depression and Schizophrenia as well as preliminary evidence for yoga as a therapy in cognitive disorders of the elderly, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children, and obsessive-compulsive disorder among others. These studies have also thrown light on some of the brain mechanisms underlying these effects such as reduction in stress markers, improvement in markers of neuroplasticity, modulation of neurohormones and brain metabolism. The talk will focus on summarizing the work done at NIMHANS on yoga as an intervention for major psychiatric disorders and insights on effects and mechanisms of yoga from these studies.

Bio:
Professor of Psychiatry and Founder Head, Department of Integrative Medicine National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bengaluru India