Stress Reduction Through Yoga Nidra

OVERVIEW With the rise in stress and stress-related disorders all over the world, work on health-related issues emerged as an important sub-field of psychology known as health psychology. Health psychology is " the aggregate of the special educational, scientific and professional contributions of the discipline of psychology to the promotion and maintenance of health, the prevention and treatment of illness, the identification of etiological and diagnostic correlates of hea lth, illness and related dysfunction, and to the analysis and improvement of the health care system and health policy information" (Matarazzo, 19 82). In this field, the idea that mind and body are not two distinct and mutually independent systems, but that there is a clear link between the two has gained gro. wing support. That a person's psychological state plays an important role in the development of diseases has been amply demonstrated in various studies (e.g. Bartrop et al., 1977; Stone et al., 1987; Totman & Kiff, 1979). Similarly, a person's characteristic ways of struct in g reality, thinking patterns, and emotions are known to affect his health. For instance, Type A people are more susceptible to heart disease than Type B's (Weidner et al., 1989). Repressed anger is considered to be a significant factor in the development of cancer (Greer & Morris, 1975; Morrison & Paffenb larger, 1981). Such and other findings suggest that the mind factor in human health is by no means negligible and though it does not fall into the realm of the visible and measurable, we cannot afford to bypass it all together in our endeavor to gain knowledge about disease and health