Elite Task Force Assembles to Urge Addition of Meditation and Yoga to Help Fight COVID-19
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The Safe and Proven Practices Have Anti-Inflammatory, Immunity-Boosting and Anti-Stress Benefits, Even for Beginners, Says the World-Class Team Led by Dr. Deepak Chopra and Top Scientists
By Maureen Seaberg
At a time when every hospital bed counts, experts led by Dr. Deepak Chopra have joined forces to make the public aware of the many disease-fighting benefits of meditation and yoga.
The team includes: Michelle Williams, S.D., dean of Harvard’s School of Public Health; noted biophysical anthropologist William Bushell, Ph.D., Paul J. Mills, Ph.D., professor of family medicine and public health and chief of behavioral medicine at the University of California, San Diego, Ryan Castle, executive director of the Chopra Library, and Rudolph E. Tanzi, Ph.D., Harvard professor of neurology.
The team says these complementary traditions can be added to our self-care and medical regimens and are safe, effective and easily done at home by the more than one billion people sheltering in place around the globe.
Most people know about the relaxation effects of the modalities, but not the many positive physiological changes they can create.
Many are also unaware that much of the damage done by infectious diseases, including even the most virulent ones, is the result of the person’s own immune or inflammatory response “over-reacting” to the infecting organism, says MIT-affiliated biophysical anthropologist William C. Bushell, who is the director of research and academic liaison for Chopra Library for Integrative Studies & Whole Health. Bushell is the original developer of this model based on work he has been doing for a decade in collaboration with Dr. Neil Theise and other scientists.
“There is also an extensive lack of knowledge that meditation and yoga possess significant anti-inflammatory properties, as well as anti-stress, and quite possibly anti-infectious properties as well,” he adds. “These positive properties of meditation and yoga result from directly influencing…
