B. Division of Yoga and Life Sciences

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This Division offers short-term courses and elective courses (to be chosen by MSc and PhD students). The Department of Health Sciences is attached with a 160 beds yoga therapy Health Home (Arogyadhama) meant to not only treat the yoga therapy participants (we do not call them patients) suffering from various modern ailments but also draw normal persons for prevention of possible illness and promotion of positive health by the Integrated Approach of Yoga Therapy (IAYT). The students will not only acquire theoretical knowledge and practical experience by their own yoga practices but also get the rich experience of working with doctors, senior yoga therapists and with the yoga therapy participants. Handling them under severe conditions of the diseases immensely help them to become confident of their learning and usefulness of IAYT. The research section with modern gadgets helps them to measure the changes in these participants to assess the improvements. The Department of Bio-Sciences includes the following laboratories: the psychophysiology, Neuro-psychology, sleep lab, metabolic analyzer lab, immune lab, bio-chemistry and psychology labs. It is here that the students get the necessary training to do research of international standards. The modern scientific research is applied to esoteric dimensions of tradition as well as investigations into the paranormal. Essentially this department is meant for the basic research to understand the effects of various yoga practices on human systems. The Department of Natural Sciences has 8 sections encompassing a large spectrum of living systems and their changes due to interactions with human beings. The effect of Agnihotra, Sound, Music, Vedic chanting etc. on plants and animals is studied in great detail in this department. The department includes agricultural farms, gardens, forests, horticultural plants and a GoSala with more than 100 cows. The usefulness of cowdung, Gomutra or urine of cows as possible medicines is also studied.

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    Oxygen consumption during pranayamic type of very slow-rate breathing
    (Indian Journal of Medical Research, 1991) Telles, Shirley; Desiraju, T.
    To determine whether the yogic Ujjayi pranayamic type of breathing that involves sensory awareness and consciously controlled, extremely slow-rate breathing including at least a period of end-inspiration breath holding in each respiratory cycle would alter oxygen consumption or not, ten males with long standing experience in pranayama, and volunteering to participate in the laboratory study were assessed. These subjects aged 28-59 years, had normal health appropriate to their age. Since Kumbhak (timed breath holding) is considered as an important phase of the respiratory cycle in the pranayama, they were categorised into two groups of five each, one group practising the short Kumbhak varieties of pranayama, and the other the long Kumbhak varieties of pranayama. The duration of Kumbhak phase was on an average 22.2 per cent of the respiratory cycle in the short Kumbhak group and 50.4 per cent in the long Kumbhak group. The oxygen consumption was measured in test sessions using the closed circuit method of breathing oxygen through the Benedict-Roth spirometer. Each subject was tested in several repeat sessions. Values of oxygen consumption of the period of pranayamic breathing, and of post- pranayamic breathing period, were compared to control value of oxygen consumption of the prepranayamic breathing period of each test session. The results revealed that the short Kumbhak pranayamic breathing caused a statistically significant increase (52%) in the oxygen consumption (and metabolic rate) compared to the pre-pranayamic base-line period of breathing. In contrast to the above, the long Kumbhak pranayamic breathing caused a statistically significant lowering (19%) of the oxygen consumption (and metabolic rate). The values returned to near normal in the post-pranayamic periods. The data provide a basis to indicate that different types of pranayamic breathing may lead to different types of alterations in the oxygen consumption and metabolic rate.
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