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SUMMARY Dr. Swami Shankardevananda Saraswati
Dr. Sannyasi Swaroopmurti has given us a very wonderful overview of his experience in using yoga in psychiatric conditions. He is a field worker. He is a man who is experiencing the problems of trying to implement yoga not just in the eastern block, which is undergoing so many changes, but into the psychiatric world, the world of mental illness. Over the years, through his dedicated work, he has covered so many fields, compulsion, anxiety, depression, mood disorders, emotional disorders, hyperactive children, alcoholism and drug abuse, insomnia. Most important of all, he tells us that the doctors need yoga more than the patients. Some doctors suffer as much stress as their patients. I think for us, as doctors, the line between being a doctor and a patient is often very blurred. Sometimes I am not sure if I am a doctor or a patient!
We need to see yoga integrated much more into the environment of mental illness, because of its capacity to purify, to make sattwic, our manas, buddhi, ahamkara and the whole of our chittashakti, to purify the underlying force which powers our mental processes. How this can be done in a practical way in different countries, in different conditions, we will find out slowly, especially with the help of people such as Dr. Sannyasi Swaroopmurti.
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