International Day of Yoga: Centre for yoga therapy inaugurated at AIIMS Delhi

NEW DELHI: To mark International Yoga Day on Wednesday, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya inaugurated a centre for yoga therapy at AIIMS here to provide yoga-related clinical services to patients. The All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, celebrated the 9th International Day of Yoga with a mass yoga practice organised at the central lawn in which Mandaviya and Minister of State for Health Satyapal Baghel also participated.

AIIMS Director Dr M Srinivas said the centre will offer yoga as an adjunct therapy for cardiac rehabilitation, hypertension, migraine, seizure disorders, diabetes mellitus, depression, rheumatoid arthritis, and obstructive sleep apnea among other conditions where yoga has been supported by an evidence-based medicine approach for clinical implementation.

Dr Rima Dada, professor-in-charge of the media cell at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) said, "Yoga not only promotes health but can also prevent the onset of diseases and can be used as an adjunct in the management of diseases."

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A mass yoga practice was also conducted at the National Cancer Institute (NCI)-AIIMS, Jhajjar campus. A week long activity to mark the International Day of Yoga was conducted in coordination with the Centre for Integrative Medicine and Research (CIMR), officials said. On June 13, 2023, a national-level quiz competition was organised, followed by an inter-institute yog asana competition conducted on June 15, 2023.

A series of workshops were also organised for nursing officers, faculty members, researchers, administrative officers, staff and research participants, they said.

AIIMS, Delhi, signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ministry of Ayush in 2016 to establish the CIMR in a quest to converge the best of modern medicine with traditional Indian medical systems like yoga and Ayurveda through scientific validation, Dada said.

The CIMR has published more than 22 articles in mainstream journals, including landmark randomised clinical trials such as the LIVE yoga (vasovagal syncope) study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC), CONTAIN (migraine) study in the prestigious Neurology journal, and ELISA (obstructive sleep apnea) study published in Sleep medicine journal.

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Other trials conducted at CIMR, where yoga has been shown to be beneficial, include cardiac health, heart failure, cardiac rehabilitation, seizure disorders, diabetes mellitus and inflammatory bowel diseases. A recently published trial has shown that yoga benefits obese patients with sleep disorders. Significant research work carried out by other departments at AIIMS Delhi includes yoga's impact on glaucoma, depression, male infertility, early pregnancy losses, rheumatoid arthritis and ageing which were published in high-impact journals, Dada said.