Hindus welcome Catholic Creighton University using yoga to help Parkinson’s patients

Hindus have welcomed the reported use of yoga by Jesuit Catholic Creighton University in Omaha (Nebraska) to help patients with Parkinson’s disease. Creighton University physical therapy students are reportedly learning to improve patients’ (with Parkinson's disease) function and way of life with techniques from yoga, reports suggest. According to reports, Creighton Pediatric Therapy hosts two handwriting camps annually, which included yoga. Creighton offers classes in Vinyasa yoga (which includes sun salutations), Sunrise Yoga (for gaining peace of mind), “Faculty/Staff Yoga”, Restorative Yoga, Yoga. Distinguished Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada today, termed it as a step in the positive direction to incorporate yoga techniques to help patients with Parkinson’s disease. He also commended Creighton for offering various yoga programs and utilizing yoga in pediatric therapy camps. Yoga, referred as “a living fossil”, was a mental and physical discipline, for everybody to share and benefit from, whose traces went back to around 2,000 BCE to Indus Valley civilization; Zed, who is President of Universal Society of Hinduism, noted. Rajan Zed further said that yoga, although introduced and nourished by Hinduism, was a world heritage and liberation powerhouse to be utilized by all. According to Patanjali who codified it in Yoga Sutra, yoga was a methodical effort to attain perfection, through the control of the different elements of human nature, physical and psychical. According to a recent report of US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: “Yoga is the most popular complementary health approach in the United States - used by 14.3% of the adult population, or 35.2 million people”. According to US National Institutes of Health, yoga may help one to feel more relaxed, be more flexible, improve posture, breathe deeply, and get rid of stress. Yoga was the repository of something basic in the human soul and psyche, Zed added. Creighton University, founded 1878, “committed to Jesuit, Catholic values and traditions” and ranked “No. 1 regional university in the Midwest”; has 8,910 students in its nine schools-colleges. “Formation of the student as a “whole person” and well-rounded individual is key in every program”, its website states. Many Jesuits live and work on the Creighton campus as professors, administrators, coaches and students. Even the University president, Rev. Daniel S. Hendrickson, is a Jesuit.