From combat boots to Yoga mats

Telling them to take care of their mind, soul and body is one thing. Telling them Yoga helps, especially with Marines, it another story. I told one Marine years ago he should take Yoga. He snapped back, "What's next? Knitting?" I don't know if he ever tried it but I hope he did. After all, learning how to calm down your body as well as your mind helps heal you faster than anything else.

From Danger Zone to Om Zone: How Yoga is Making its Way Into Our Military
Posted: 12/19/11

Aditi Nerurkar, M.D., M.P.H.Physician and Integrative Medicine

Yoga. Famously practiced by Madonna, Gwyneth, and Sting. Less-famously practiced by 16 million others. And now... even by our military. Though we envision the typical yoga-going American as a Lululemon-clad, earthy female, a fresh crop of American yogis are being cultivated from this fatigue-clad, stereotypically-rigid repository.

The Department of Defense is currently investigating yoga as a therapeutic intervention in its men and women, and much of its interest has been spurred by the large numbers of returning combat veterans with PTSD.

"Historically, PTSD has been overwhelmingly treated as a mental health condition with psychological treatments, and the body has been ignored. But PTSD is a mind-body disorder with both mental and physical components. So yoga, in its blending of physical postures with conscious breathing, adds a strong dimension for the existing treatment of PTSD," says Sat Bir Khalsa, a researcher at Harvard Medical School who is conducting yoga trials on military personnel. "Our results are preliminary, but they do show a statistically significant improvement in the severity of PTSD with yoga," he says.
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