Wellness After Symposium Blog – Friday 28th May 2021
By Guest Paul Fox – Yoga in Healthcare Alliance
What an extraordinary first day! After inspiring thoughts from Heather Mason and Chelsea Roff on the vital role for yoga in healthcare – and the power of yoga to change, and sometimes save, lives – HRH Prince of Wales popped up on screen. In a short address he added rocket boosters to the movement to bring yoga into healthcare by asserting its important role for mental and physical health as the world recovers from the Covid-19 pandemic.
As Heather remarked, the comments from the UK heir to the throne endorsing yoga will reverberate and help to create the changes that many of us have dreamed of.
Next up was Deepak Chopra, showing that this best-selling lifestyle guru is substance as well as style. Looking as cool as a cucumber, he gave a detailed talk rooted in science and connecting health, consciousness and awareness through yoga, meditation and lifestyle change. Bio-feedback could lead to bio-regulation. You become what you see/envision.
After summarizing key teaching from Patanjali’s sutras, Deepak led a practice. Observe the breath. I am present in every breath I take. I am present in every sound I hear. I am present in every sensation I experience and everything I touch. I am present in everything I see. I am present in everything I taste. I am present in everything I smell. I am present in every experience across the fabric of space and time. Joyful energetic body. Loving compassionate heart. Quiet, reflective, alert mind. Lightness of being. Now you are ready for your journey in yoga. Who am I? What is my purpose? Then transcend into stillness.
The focus for Day 1 of this Symposium was Covid-19 and its impacts. One huge area is the mental health crisis created by the pandemic.
The President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, Adrian James, spelled out just how big the mental health challenge is. Existing mental health patients, NHS workers, the bereaved and the unemployed are among the most badly affected groups. Unfortunately, he said, “all the dials are going the wrong way”. Anxiety levels up; wellbeing scores down. 67% of young people believe that the pandemic will have a lasting negative impact on them.
The biopsychosocial model used by psychiatrists for decades includes a broad view of the individual as a whole person. This means that alongside National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE-approved) interventions, there was also an important role for complementary social prescribing activities, including yoga.
And Dr James revealed that from the age of 3 or 4 he would sit in the lotus position with his grandmother and watch a programme called ”Yogi”. He indicated that he was unlikely to be able to take this posture now! “Yoga has a lot to offer” he said.
Just after 4pm the Symposium felt like it got deadly serious, with a presentation from Melissa Wickremasinghe, a specialist in respiratory medicine who had spent the previous 12 months caring for acutely ill Covid patients at Imperial College. Through slides and detailed pathology she set out the way the disease had affected people, in particular their lung tissue. More research was needed to refine which complementary practices, like yoga, would be most effective to mitigate ongoing effects of Covid – such as long-term lung inflammation, breathlessness, and fatigue.
Dr Wickremasinghe ran through the current research on yoga, especially breathing practices, indicating which practices appeared to be working well. For patients with pulmonary fibrosis (creating stiffness in the lung) she recommended avoiding very slow breathing if they suffer from low oxygen levels.
Covid has exposed and worsened health inequalities and linked to the wider conversation about equity, justice and the need to tackle structural racism. The Health Inequalities Panel Chaired by Stacie Graham included outstanding and compelling presentations. Kate Mulligan from Toronto University demonstrated the correlation between Covid rates, housing, poverty, ethnicity, transport and historic oppression of indigenous and migrant communities.
Structural racism was also laid bare by Rhonda Smith from the California Black Health Network, who showed how death rates and vaccination rates were all skewed against the black community. Priya Verma, both a Physician’s Assistant and a yoga therapist, invited us all to recognise our different gazes. How do we look and perceive what is around us? The holistic gaze of yoga, based on compassion and ahimsa, provides a gaze that can create safety and connection with everyone we meet, she said.
David Peters provided insights from neuroscience on how to limit the fight or flight response, and root ourselves in autonomic regulation and the relaxation response. He also led the Symposium through mindfulness practices to promote a settled mind and upregulate the vagus nerve to create a positive sense of wellbeing. “Drop the negative dialogue and be kind. Move. We were not made to stay still”.
He also spoke about humans being hardwired for nature connection, and that being in green space supports mental health.
Friday’s final keynote fell to Dr Amit Bhargava, a GP and leading figure in the College of Medicine. He called his presentation “The Storm” because of the death and devastation caused by the virus. Across the world, different people have different amounts of agency to deal with the disease. And Dr Bhargava said that, with new variants emerging all the time, “none of us are safe yet”.
