Yoga - successful in the treatment of drug addiction

"Yoga might be helpful in the treatment of drug addiction. Drugs - their primary effects may be sedative, stimulating, or dissociative - all can produce some kind of euphoria, which might have a quality similar to that of altered states of consciousness arrived at through Yoga techniques," Professor Dr. Peter Sedlmeier reports.

"How can these euphoric states be induced by drugs? Consciousness can be released from inhibition by sedative drugs (e.g. alcohol), it can be directly expanded and enlarged by stimulating drugs (e.g. cocaine), and a variety of ´religious feelings´ can be induced by dissociative drugs such as ayahuasca, marijuana, peyote, or LSD. The similarity between the effects of Yoga and drugs might be the basis for using Yoga as a potent therapeutic device in this field.

Some of the beneficial therapeutic effects of Yoga can be seen as (predicted) byproducts of Yoga practice, which are attained on the way to higher stages of consciousness.

It seems that in therapeutic settings, Yoga practice is quite prevalent but there is still a scarcity of empirical studies that measure its effectiveness in the treatment of different disorders and examine differential effects of Yoga versus conventional therapeutic approaches ..."


Peter Sedlmeier: Ancient Indian Psychology - Can it Offer Anything to Academic Psychology?
in: Rapp, Sedlmeier, Zunker-Rapp (Eds.) Perspectives on Cognition.
Pabst, Lengerich/Berlin, 540 pages, ISBN 978-3-89967-314-2

Pabst Science Publishers (Lengerich/Westfalia, Germany) is publishing ten psychological and nine medical journals; furthermore, Pabst is publishing more than hundred psychological and medical books per year – partly specialized scientific literature, partly specialist literature written for laypeople.

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