Strenghthen Your Sensorium with Yoga and Meditation to Help Fight COVID-19
By William C Bushell, Ph.D., Eddie Stern, and Maureen Seaberg
When oxygen levels in people’s blood drop dangerously low, they will usually become short of breath; they will likely become alarmed and seek emergency help.
However, in COVID-19, the virus often compromises the sensorium, the seat of the senses, so much that “silent hypoxia” occurs and victims have no idea they are in mortal danger.
We have found that practicing meditation and yoga could boost sensory health. And as if to underscore it, doctors are having success placing patients into a prone posture akin to the yoga asanas in order to improve their respiration.
Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, a task force was formed to advocate the practice of meditation and yoga as a potential adjunctive treatment for COVID-19, because of the significant anti-stress, anti-inflammatory, and immune-enhancing (including anti-infectious and antiviral) properties of these behavioral health modalities.
This task force, consisting of scientists from MIT, Harvard Medical School, the University of California, San Diego, and the Chopra Research Library of the Whole Health Institute, included infectious disease epidemiologists, one of whom has been affiliated with the Centers for…
