Yoga is about balance, harmony and moderation and the practice of Yoga consists of mental exercise, physical exercise and even guidance on diet and living. Yoga stems from the culture of India where the search for enlightenment and unity with the divine will was central to the culture, yet it has much to offer even in a more secular western form.

Mice with HD and an enriched environment do much better than identical but bored HD littermates. Researchers think exercise and an enriched lifestyle causes the brain to make powerful secretions, such as brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), that protect brain cells. Consider here yoga for the spiritual side of your triad to fight HD. --Jerry 29-Jun-2001
Adapted from article by Koo Stark, Health Telegraph 29-Jun-2001 [updated 30-Jun-2001]

Padmasana is better better known in the West as the lotus position. 'Pad' means foot, and 'Ma' derives from a word meaning knowledge. This asana provides a solid base for the practice of pranayama (breath control) and meditation; the spine is erect , the chest open and the flow of blood to the legs is constricted and redirected to the internal organs. Knowledge of Self can be developed in this position - it is a reminder to the aspiring yogi to emulate the lotus plant, with its roots in the dark soil and its face reaching towards the light. It is the basis of many other postures.

Yoga is much more than a series of exercises, says Koo Stark - it's a combination of body and spirit that helps to develop self-awareness

I HAVE practised yoga all my life - in fact, I was introduced to it in utero. My mother, Kathi, a writer in New York, learnt about it in the mid-Fifties, shortly before I was born. In 1948, she devised a television series that was to be aired at 10 in the morning and aimed squarely at women. The idea was that husbands would be dispatched to their offices, children to school and women could settle down with a cup of coffee to watch an intelligent programme about the arts, with occasional items about cookery and shopping.

She took the proposal to NBC which not only liked it, but asked my mother to present the show. And so she ended up flying to Paris for the fashion shows, interviewing characters such as Norman Rockwell and Alfred Hitchcock, and sometimes bringing home the people she had interviewed.

One was with Iyengar, the yoga master who introduced yoga to the West, whom she met when she was a couple of months pregnant with me. Iyengar gave her a course of exercises (hatha, premayana and meditation) to do during her pregnancy that were designed to loosen the joints, lower blood pressure and calm the mind - if they sound familiar, that is because all pre-natal exercises are based on such yoga techniques.

My mother gave birth to me naturally, without drugs, which was quite a rarity in New York in 1956. Afterwards, she kept in touch with Iyengar and continued with her exercises. Among my earliest memories are seeing Mum standing on her head or sitting at her old, manual typewriter in the lotus position. Occasionally, she would take a break from her work and do stretching exercises and eye exercises to relieve the strain. She is now 84 and has had two strokes and a heart attack but still does her yoga.

Yoga can protect children and adults from accidents.

As a child, I practised a version of yoga that she had taught me. Children don't have sufficient powers of concentration to take part in a class, but elements of yoga can be incorporated into their play. My daughter, Tatiana, four, loves jumping on furniture. I could try to stop her but I know that the moment I am out of the room, she will carry on, so I may as well teach her how to jump around without hurting herself. A large part of yoga is about generating an awareness of yourself and your body so that you don't make the kind of blunders that lead to accidents.

When I was studying acting, I became particularly aware of how the body displays emotion - the message that hunched shoulders give; what the way you walk down the street says about you. Later, when I came into the public eye in the early Eighties, acting fell by the way but my stress levels increased enormously so I did a lot of yoga. I was shallow breathing and in a state of panic - each morning I'd pick up the papers to see what had been written about me and gasp, and that would be the last deep breath I'd take all day.

I started learning shivananda, one of the most easily accessible schools of yoga, and later moved to bihar, the tantric form of yoga, tantric meaning transforming, in which the emphasis is not simply on correct posture but on your awareness of the effect the yoga is having on you.

Gone are the days when I used to have to search out a draught-free corner in order to do my yoga: now, every gym and spa offers a variation of the practice. I'm most alarmed by astanga vinyasa, the aerobic yoga, a ghastly hybrid of East panders to West. The only time I've ever had an injury in a lifetime of practising yoga was during an astanga class.

Another cringe-making misnomer is hatha yoga. Yoga is the union of hatha (physical practice: positions), pranayama (emotional practice: breath control) and meditation (mind practice: thought awareness) so, unless the class incorporates all three aspects of body, mind and spirit, it's not yoga.

A yoga class should begin with a few exercises, then continue with one form of breath control and then finish with a meditation. The object of the hatha yoga is to relax the way a baby does, stretching and relaxing into the position. There's absolutely no competition or aerobic activity during the practice. You must concentrate your mind on the task of releasing any tension.

This is how to do a balancing exercise known as the tree. Stand on your left foot and place the toes of your right foot behind your left knee with your heel pointing towards your groin. Hold your arms together in the prayer position (elbows, forearms and palms touching, and fingers pointing upwards). Now slide the right arm higher than the left and pass the left arm through the right, and push the fingers of your left hand up to touch the base of your right palm. Hold the position and close your eyes for a count of five, focusing on your foot; beginners should lean against a wall for support. Release the hands first then the foot, then repeat on the other foot.

Pranayama yoga uses the breath to control the emotion. Remember grandmother's advice? Hold your breath and count to 10 before you speak your mind. Holding your breath forces the mind to calm down. Did anyone ever tell you to sleep on it, it will look different in the morning? Every eight hours or so, your breath will change from right nostril predominant to left nostril predominant. So what, you might ask.Well, left nostril breathing means that the right side of the brain is engaged and right nostril breathing means the left side of the brain is the most influential. Left versus right means masculine versus feminine or logic versus intuition.

There are times when it's more useful to be predominantly intuitive and then again, times when it is more useful to be predominantly logical. For instance, if you need to put forward a reasoned argument at a moment when you're feeling like crying, take five minutes, find a private space and practise the alternate nostril breath. Here's how: If you're right-handed, wet your right forefinger and place it under both nostrils against your upper lip. You will easily tell which nostril is predominant because you will feel the force of air coming more strongly from one nostril than the other. Now place your thumb on your right nostril and your ring finger on your left nostril; practise breathing through one nostril at a time, by pinching off the air supply to a count of five.

Begin by holding your thumb to block off the air supply to your right nostril, then change over using your ring finger to close your left nostril. Inhale through your left nostril, close the left nostril with your ring finger, release the right nostril from your thumb and exhale through your right nostril, keeping your left closed, then inhale through the right, to the count of five, pinch it closed with your thumb, release your ring finger from your left nostril and exhale to the count of five again, keeping your right nostril pinched closed. Keep repeating the cycle.

If you want to, you can wet the tip of your middle finger and, by placing the palm of your hand over your mouth and the base of your middle finger at the tip of your nose, you can put the wet bit at the tip of your finger on your forehead - and there you've found your third eye, also called the inner eye, one of your psychic centres. If you're feeling dreamy and calm, you're ready for the more creative pursuits. You are in your feminine mind.

If you're feeling impatient and embarrassed at doing something so foolish as alternate nostril breathing, then you're in your masculine mind and you can go out and win the war or do the corporate take-over with no guilty feelings. The breath is the link between the mind and the emotions. Calm the breath, calm the mind. Change the predominant breath, change your mind.

OK, now you are ready for the meditation aspect of yoga. This is a very simple meditation with no spiritual or religious connotations, known as the basic yoga meditation. Lie down in a warm, quiet space, on your back, with your feet far enough apart to avoid your thighs touching. The palms of your hands are facing up, arms far enough apart to avoid your upper arms touching your ribcage.

Now, in your mind's eye, travel up your body from your toes, relaxing every inch. When you've finished scanning your body (not forgetting your face and scalp), concentrate on your breath. Inhale whatever positive influence you feel you need to invite. Exhale any pollutants and visualise black clouds departing.

Slowly, bring your mind firmly back, wiggle your toes, your fingers, open your eyes, roll over on to your right side into the foetal position and using your hands to push your body off the floor into a sitting position, slowly get up and stretch.

There you go. Body, mind and spirit. A yoga class. Not a half-assed class.

===From: Kathy -- Subject: Yoga -- Sat Jun 30 13:15:05 2001 GMT===

Yoga--and my yoga instructor--saved me when I was dealing with the unbearable stress of HD, shortly after I found out that's what my mom had--and I was at risk. I was losing it. I nearly had two accidents, I couldn't contain a thought for more than a few minutes. I was a mess. Then I called my yoga instructor, who I'd taken a class with earlier, and she did more for me than any doctor I'd talked to, than any book or website I'd read. It turns out yoga is not only the best way to relieve stress, it's also all about directing energy in the body. When I heard that, it was like a light going off. If I was going to beat HD, it seemed sending that energy to the mitochondria in my brain would do the trick. This appealed to me--yoga is actually based in logic and science, with thousands of years of accumulated practice and knowledge. If you're having trouble controlling stress, try yoga. I took an Integral yoga class, just as described in the article. To find an instructor, go to www.yogaville.org and search their list of instructors. I highly recommend yoga. It was the best thing I ever did.

===From: Giordano -- Subject: Kathy/Yoga -- Sat Jun 30 16:54:39 2001 GMT===

I think you are on to something, stick with it. I meditate at least an hour a day utilizing a flotation tank ( sometimes referred to as a sensory deprivation tank ) which eliminates sensory input such as sound, light, touch, and gravity. This is accomplished by dissolving 100's of pounds of epsom salts in heated water contained in an insulated 'capsule'. The water is calibrated to skin temperature ( approx. 94.5 degrees ) which matches the ambient air temp. inside the chamber. This results in a virtually sensory free, gravity free floating state that produces profound relaxation and sense of well being which I carry out into my every-day life. If I employ the tank regularly I seem to develop a resevoir or core of calm that is the antithesis of fear, worry, and nervousness. I wish I had come upon this method of relaxation for use by my dad before he succumed to HD. The draw-backs of the tank are the initial expense of purchase and finding the room to install it in-home....in my case its been well worth the effort and expense. For what it's worth I also exercise at a gym three times a week, take a complimentary array of food supplements including substantial amounts of omega 3 fatty acids. I eliminated from my diet; fats high in omega 6's, hydrogented & other trans and hard fats, simple sugars, and processed grains and other manufactured food products, replacing them with whole foods and complex carbohydrates.

Good luck to you all in tailoring your own personal response to the threat of HD.