The word “yo­ga” comes from San­skrit “Yuj”, which means “union”, a union of the body and mind. Yo­ga is thought to have orig­i­nat­ed in In­dia ap­prox­i­mate­ly 4,500 years ago and sev­er­al styles of yo­ga con­tin­ue to be prac­ticed in the world to­day.

The eight limbed ap­proach to the prac­tice of yo­ga iden­ti­fies steps to achiev­ing this union. Un­like phys­i­cal ex­er­cise, yo­ga is holis­tic and in­cor­po­rates prac­tices that fo­cus on both the body and mind. Some of these steps in­clude so­cial and per­son­al ethics, yo­ga pos­tures, breath­ing tech­niques and med­i­ta­tion.

Mod­ern med­ical re­search is re­plete with da­ta analy­ses that es­tab­lish­es an as­so­ci­a­tion be­tween bet­ter health out­comes as well as qual­i­ty of life in chron­ic dis­ease pa­tients and the prac­tice of yo­ga reg­u­lar­ly. Yo­g­ic prac­tices are known to re­duce blood glu­cose lev­els and to help in the man­age­ment of co­mor­bid dis­ease con­di­tions as­so­ci­at­ed with Type 2 di­a­betes, re­sult­ing in a sig­nif­i­cant pos­i­tive clin­i­cal out­come (Raveen­dran et al En­docrinol Metab (Seoul). 2019 Sep; 33(3)).

This idea of yo­ga as a treat­ment modal­i­ty is known in T&T. How­ev­er, no sub­stan­tial re­search has been done on a T&T chron­ic pop­u­la­tion to see what re­sults can be had. In Jan­u­ary, a lo­cal so­cial work group called SE­WA TT--a ma­jor stake­hold­er in so­cial work where health­care ini­tia­tives are con­cerned--be­gan an ini­tia­tive called ‘The Stop Di­a­betes Move­ment’ (SDM). To do so, it part­nered with the Swa­mi Vivekanan­da Yo­ga Anu­sand­hana Sam­sthana (S-VYASA) uni­ver­si­ty lo­cat­ed in Ban­ga­lore, In­dia. There has been sig­nif­i­cant re­search done at this uni­ver­si­ty that has re­sult­ed in de­vis­ing stan­dard yo­ga pro­to­cols for use among chron­ic dis­ease pa­tient as a modal­i­ty to treat­ment in con­junc­tion with their reg­u­lar med­ical ther­a­py. In one of their piv­otal health pro­grammes, SVYASA has done a sig­nif­i­cant door-to-door aware­ness cam­paign re­gard­ing yo­ga for di­a­betes where­in they have reached close to 250,000 homes and brought them to yo­ga ses­sions.” Be­cause of this work, Dr. Na­garath­na, the Stop Di­a­betes Move­ment leader of SVYASA re­ceived Amer­i­can Di­a­betes As­so­ci­a­tion’s 2019 Vi­vian Fon­se­ca and Na­gen­dran Di­a­betes Re­search Award in Cal­i­for­nia.

SEWA International Trinidad and Tobago

From this in­tu­ition they were able to host Mr. Chin­may Supur (Bsc. Neu­ro­science and head of aca­d­e­m­ic de­vel­op­ment and re­search at VYASA Nor­Cal). In col­lab­o­ra­tion with Mr. Supur, SE­WA TT con­duct­ed a 9-day yo­ga work­shop at the NCIC Na­gar in Ch­agua­nas. This work­shop saw the train­ing of 11 yo­ga in­struc­tors in the yo­ga pro­to­cols for chron­ic dis­ease pa­tients. This work­shop was com­plet­ed at the end of Jan­u­ary and present­ly these very in­struc­tors will con­duct a once week­ly yo­ga pro­gramme that will run for three months on three sam­ple groups.

These groups will be di­a­bet­ics, pre-di­a­bet­ics and nor­mal in­di­vid­u­als. The ob­jec­tive pa­ra­me­ters that will be used be­fore, dur­ing and af­ter the 3-month re­search pro­gramme will in­clude blood pres­sure, body mass in­dex, gly­co­sy­lat­ed he­mo­glo­bin, and a fast­ing lipid pro­file (cho­les­terol lev­els). The in­ter­ven­tion will in­clude a holis­tic yo­ga pro­to­col of phys­i­cal pos­tures, breath­ing ex­er­cis­es, med­i­ta­tion, di­etary ad­vice and mind­ful think­ing tech­niques.

It is hoped that af­ter 3 months, da­ta would be avail­able in a T&T pop­u­la­tion that sup­ports yo­ga as an es­sen­tial modal­i­ty of treat­ment among chron­ic dis­ease pa­tients in T&T that yields bet­ter out­comes. Med­ical pro­fes­sion­als and re­searchers in­volved in this pro­gram wel­come this proven pro­to­col be­ing im­ple­ment­ed for the first time in Trinidad and To­ba­go, along with po­ten­tial ad­vo­ca­cy op­por­tu­ni­ties with the Min­is­ter of Health that will fol­low.

If any mem­ber of the pub­lic is in­ter­est­ed in be­com­ing in­volved in this ini­tia­tive, please vis­it SE­WA TT’s web­site at https://www.se­watt.org/ for more de­tails.