Hindus have commended Banner MD Anderson Cancer Center in Gilbert (Arizona, USA) offering free yoga classes for cancer patients, survivors and caregivers.
 
“This mindful, meditative, mat-based class helps lower anxiety, boost mood and improve quality of sleep”, an announcement says.
 
Distinguished Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada today, termed it as a step in the positive direction to make multi-benefit yoga available free of cost for cancer patients, survivors and caregivers. Zed urged Banner Health Board Chairman Larry Lazarus and CEO Peter S. Fine to offer free yoga classes to all Banner patients.
 
Yoga, referred as “a living fossil”, was a mental and physical discipline, for everybody to share and benefit from, whose traces went back to around 2,000 BCE to Indus Valley civilization, Zed, who is President of Universal Society of Hinduism, noted.
 
Rajan Zed further said that yoga, although introduced and nourished by Hinduism, was a world heritage and liberation powerhouse to be utilized by all. According to Patanjali who codified it in Yoga Sutra, yoga was a methodical effort to attain perfection, through the control of the different elements of human nature, physical and psychical.
 
According to US National Institutes of Health, yoga may help one to feel more relaxed, be more flexible, improve posture, breathe deeply, and get rid of stress. According to a “2016 Yoga in America Study”, about 37 million Americans (which included many celebrities) now practice yoga; and yoga is strongly correlated with having a positive self image.  Yoga was the repository of something basic in the human soul and psyche, Zed added.
 
Banner MD Anderson Cancer Center, whose tagline is “Making Cancer History” and which claims to be the “right choice for the fight against cancer”, was launched in 2011. Dr. Matthew Callister is Medical Director.