Wellness through a comprehensive Yogic breathing program – A controlled pilot trial

BACKGROUND: Increasing rates of psychosocial disturbances give rise to increased risks and vulnerability for a wide variety of stress-related chronic pain and other illnesses. Relaxation exercises aim at reducing stress and thereby help prevent these unwanted outcomes. One of the widely used relaxation practices is yoga and yogic breathing exercises. One specific form of these exercises is Sudarshan Kriya and related practices (SK p < 0.001). The participants in the yoga group experienced the practices as a positive event that induced beneficial effects. CONCLUSION: These data indicate that the experimental protocol that is developed here is safe, compliance level is good, and a full scale trial is feasible. The data obtained suggest that adult participants may improve their wellness by learning and applying a program based on yoga and yogic breathing exercises; this can be conclusively assessed in a large-scale trial. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Australian Clinical Trial Registry ACTRN012607000175471.