Back to Health Through Yoga

Man’s ultimate goal is the attainment of a state of perfect consciousness, a state that has been described as divine. Yoga provides a wide array of methodologies designed to effect man’s union with the Divine. This system is a gift of our great rishis, who perfected it many centuries ago, and in our land we have preserved this invaluable heritage down through the generations. During the last century, yoga has gained tremendous acceptance throughout the world.

The transition to the state of divinity is through many stages, and the preservation of one’s health is one of them. People’s lifestyle has undergone drastic changes in modern times, adversely affecting their health in many ways. Yoga is proving to be a boon in coping with the stresses and disorders caused by undesirable lifestyle changes. With the recognition of the mind-body relationship by the scientific-medical community, yoga has increasingly become a part of modern medicine, and doctors are freely advising people to take to yoga.

Any person who wants to adopt yoga would like to understand the mechanism of his own body and the role and correct technique of yoga in relieving him of his disorders. The present book, Back to Health through Yoga, by Dr Ramesh Bijlani, goes a long way in meeting the needs of such an aspirant. Dr Ramesh Bijlani, former professor of physiology at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Deli, devoted himself to learning yoga since 1992. His special interests include the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.

According to Sri Aurobindo, ‘All Life is Yoga’. Yoga facilitates the spiritual quest, but this needs a healthy body as well as purification of mind. Yoga can play a useful role in keeping the body healthy. The author has rightly emphasized the importance of the yogic attitude in his book, from which not only lay persons but also members of the medical profession can benefit.

Back of the Book

Back to Health through Yoga looks upon yoga as a precious tool in mind-body medicine. Mind-body medicine aims at correcting the faults in lifestyle responsible for diseases, and thereby creating the best conditions for reversal of the process which led to the illness. It is now known that the body has powerful self-healing mechanisms, which include a well-organised in-built pharmacy. However, self-healing is favoured by right conditions, and yoga is the finest way to create such conditions the postures, diet and sleep (called physical culture in yoga), meditation (as first aid for stress), and the yogic attitude (for sustained relief from stress) are all a part of yoga, and all these have a place in mind-body medicine.

This book is meant for the intelligent and inquisitive reader who may use it to discover the roots of health and disease. Also included are reasoned and reasonable guidelines for a healthy lifestyle based on yoga. Stress management has been discussed on the basis of Patanjali’s enumeration of the sources of klesas. The major lifestyle disorders have also been discussed individually, bringing together at one place, our current understanding of these diseases and their prevention and management using an integrated approach that dissolves the barrier between modern science and ancient wisdom.

About the Book

Dr. Ramesh Bijlani is a medical doctor, writer, teacher, scientist, and above all a person committed to using his unique blend of talents for human welfare. Educated at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, where he did his MBBS and MD, and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge MA, USA, where he did a master’s course (SM) in nutrition, Dr Bijlani spent nearly thirty years on the faculty of AIIMS, teaching and conducting research on nutrition in relation to cardiovascular disease and diabetes. In 1992, he started going into the depths of yoga, specially the integral yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. His personal and professional life converged in the year 2000 when he initiated at AIIMS, a patient care facility for providing lifestyle modification courses based on yoga in tune with the latest developments in mind-body medicine. In the year 2005, he took voluntary retirement from AIIMS to find more time for the dissemination of yoga.

Prof Bijlani was elected Fellow of the National Academy of Medical Sciences (India) in 2005 and conferred an honorary doctorate in yoga by Swami Vivekanada Yoga Anusandhana Samsthana, Bangalore in 2006. Besides his research publications, he has written extensively for children, medical students and lay readers – he has ten previously published books to his credit.