Healthy Hearts: Part 1 | What is yoga’s solution to heart disease?

Coronary or heart failure is the number one reason for human deaths around the planet every year. So, it behooves us to throw light on the very real yet subtle relationship between a healthy heart and a right thinking mind, as per Yogic principles.

Diseases of the heart, which are not congenital in nature, are known to largely occur through a combination of wrong lifestyle and dietary choices. These ‘wrong’ choices set off one’s equilibrium, causing hormonal disruption, which over time leads to various problems such as arteriosclerosis (thickening of artery walls), diabetes and related cardiovascular issues.

Stress is probably the biggest factor responsible for cardiovascular issues as well as most other systemic problems of the human body. This is due to the adverse reaction of the hormonal system to stress. Stress puts the body into the flight-or-fight mode and the hormonal system gets exhausted because of the constant stimulation. A depressed hormonal system leads to imbalance in the systems of the body that maintain its immunity and homoeostasis or equilibrium. The ultimate manifestation of these systemic problems will be seen in organ failure such as myocardial infarction, commonly known as heart attack.

So, that means that even if we adopt a relatively healthy lifestyle and consume a healthy diet, that killer virus called stress will still stand a fair chance of getting to our vulnerable hearts and systemic organs. But what we call ‘stress’ is simply a catch-all term for the life destroying affective or emotional processes of the ‘8 Knots’ that affect the heart, as we shall see.

Yoga asanas, though helpful in preventing most other disease types, are unable to offer any help to those already suffering from cardiovascular issues. The risk of a stroke makes any asana practice too fraught with danger. It’s good to remember here that strokes account for the second largest number of human fatalities around the world.

What then is the yogic solution to heart disease? Firstly, the game is about prevention and not cure. And this is where the mind comes in. A healthy mind with patterns of thought, emotion and action which are not in dissonance with each other is to be gained first through practice.

Body, mind and breathing being intrinsically related to each other, specific control over the one leads to specific control over the other. The body, being the easiest to control, is engineered first, followed by breath and then the mind. A re-engineered body leads to efficient energy consumption through right breathing and the result is a balanced mind. All three then lead to disease prevention and stable homoeostasis. Needless to say, a degree of expertise is presumed for this engineering work, lacking which one should approach one more well-versed in the experiential knowledge of Yoga. 

In the case of those already suffering from cardiovascular disease, the options for re-engineering the body and calibrating breath are unavailable, and they must depend on the hardest of the three paths— direct mental control. Where do we start the emotional-hormonal re-engineering process?

There are 8 ‘knots’ in the heart that can be released through the mental processes. These knots are affective processes or emotional reactions to inner or external stimuli. Practically speaking, these affective processes happen in the mind, but their almost instantaneous effect is in the heart through the hormones of the pituitary, the thalamus structure and the adreno-cortical regions.

Just as the incorrect cascading of the hormonal system has led to a cardiovascular problem, the reverse order or healing of the hormonal cascade structure can lead to a gradual reduction of the damage, and in some cases complete recovery from the cardiovascular issue. The affective or emotional processes ultimately dominate the hormonal cascades and therefore past emotional excesses must now be corrected through the practice of the complementary emotional states.

This technique, termed the Viparita Bhava in Yoga, is the quickest path to self-willed change and, in the hands of a strong-willed person, this powerful technique can lead to self-willed transformation.

Viparita Bhava practices share, in common with all other true Yogic practices, the common thread of increasing joy and fearlessness. These practices not only lead to a transformed and healed body, they also provide a fertile ground for the emergence of a constantly progressing and positive mind. The reality of this transformation is experienced by every dedicated Yoga practitioner.

In the next article we will delve into the first of the 8 knots of the heart, namely doubt, and its release through a specific, Viparita Bhava Kriya.

Till then, keep faith in your potential towards self-transformation. You share in the human mind that can approach godhead, find the subtle answers to the grand workings of this universe and so, rest assured that you can transform the suffering body through the power of the mind on high.

More in this series:

Healthy Hearts: Part 2 | Five yoga asanas to manage stress

Healthy Hearts: Part 3 | Four kinds of fear and how to overcomes them

AryaMarga Yoga is a yogic research institute based out of Himachal Pradesh. Their work primarily focuses on the integration of certain parametric systems of contemporary psychology with the ancient yogic systems of mental process-control.