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Patanjali has also listed the subtle forms, which are duhka, daurmanasya, angamejayatva and shvaasaprashvaasa (pain, depression, tremors in the body and irregular respiration). Pain and depression work at the mental level, but the tremors in the body and irregular respiration are on the physical plane. This shows that mental problems later convert to physical ones. Both result in mental disturbance. Considering this, we have to admit that Patanjali must have been the first therapist who accepted all diseases as psychosomatic. Nowadays, everyone is accepting illnesses as psychosomatic, but let me tell you that Patanjali advocated this two thousand years ago!
Were any references made later to Patanjali's yoga? Were there any guidelines laid down regarding the yogic cures for diseases? We began searching in Hatha Yoga Pradipika which is an important literature on hatha yoga, and we found several references which acted as guiding factors. On the basis of these, we can say that hatha yoga has discussed cures for diseases fairly clearly. There is a verse,
Yuvaa vriddo' tivriddho vaa vyaadhito durbalo' pi vaa Abhyaasaatsiddhimaapnoti sarvayogeshvantadritah. (Ch 64.)
Anybody, whether young, old, very old, diseased or weak can attain accomplishment in yoga through practice. If a diseased or ill person can attain perfection through yoga, then the practice has to hold a lot of potential for cure. Based on this we started to search deeper and we came across another verse:
Astu vaa maastu vaa muktiratraivakhanditam sukham
Whether there is liberation or not, an uninterrupted healthy life in this world can be provided by hatha yoga. Unless one is physically fit and without disease one cannot enjoy a healthy life. Therefore, this indicates that yoga has the potential to treat diseases very effectively.
Keeping this in view, I went through forty texts that we have in our Kaivalyadhama library and found that twenty-five of these discussed examples of diseases, which I classified into three parts. Some examples discussed specific diseases and provided cures for them through yoga practices. The second group spoke of cures strictly in ayurvedic technical terms, for example, Vaat dosha niyanti, pitt niyanti, and vaat pitt kaphodbhava kapharogascha visanti.
Those references that I could not classsify under the first two groups made up the third group. These references note the
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