Yoga as a corrective therapy for disease

Today I want to talk about Yoga and how it is used in India as a way of creating balance when an illness or dis-ease is present.
At the Centre where I worked in India, Soukyam,  whatever the patients complaint, there would be many facets to their treatment (all natural), there would be a combination of nutrition, hydrotherapy, fasting, massage, oleation, herbs, but everyone, no matter who, was given a Yoga programme individually tailored to them.
I did not come across one person who did not benefit from their daily yoga practice in a few short days.
In my training, I was taught that Yoga is not just a set of random exercises picked to improve general flexibility. It is far more serious than that. The exercises for each person are picked specifically based around their problems and symptoms. It is given as a prescription as much as herbs and medicines are prescribed.
Energy flow, oxygen, flexibility, improving subtle energy systems (nadis), chakras, breath, mental clarity, and spirituality are all incorporated into a yoga practice, a few simple moves and postures can do so much seems simplistic, but I have seen it and experienced it for myself.
Diabetes patients are gicen pancreas and digestive stimulation exercises. Hypertensive patients are given cooling breathing techniques, people with back problems are given postures that will specifically stretch the area of the back which has become painful, according to the capability of the patient. Yoga supports and underpins all other treatments.
Pranayama - yogic breathing techniques - typically taking 10 minutes or less - are also prescribed for each person - used to stimulate or calm depending on whether they are showin signs of over-stimulation or depression.
The beauty of Yoga is not just that it is free and easy, but also that once someone has been taught and learned, it can be continued easily from home, and will ensure that once health is returned, the person stays healthy.

Are we the first generation to discover the mind body connection?

It is somewhat vain of us to consider the idea of the mind body connection as something new. Every time I read an old textbook on herbs or health, there always seems to be a reference to the inseparable connection between the state of the mind and the state of health.

Yesterday, I was reading Culpeppers herbal reference book and I came across his description of the herb Motherwort:

There is no better herb to take melancholy vapours from the heart, to strengthen it, and make it a merry, cheerful, blithe soul than this herb. ... Besides, it makes women joyful mothers of children, and settles their wombs, as they should be, therefore we call it Motherwort. It is held to be much use for the trembling of the heart, and faintings and swoonings, from whence it took the name Cardiaca. 

The powder thereof, to the quantity of a spoonful, drink in wine, is a wonderful help to women in their sore travail, as also for the suffocating or risings of the mother, and for these effects, it is likely it took the name Motherwort with us....

I was stunned by this simple description, as I often am by Culpepper, his seamless jumps from physical to mental and emotional aspects of the actions of herbs is an art that has been forgotten in the scrabble to 'explain' what the herbs do in terms of their chemical constituents. We have become too accustomed to treating the physical and emotional aspects of our health as two completely separate things. Is this to do with the separation of the religion with medicine? Can the two really be separated?

I do understand that we have to have some explanations, today we compare herbs with medical drugs more and more in a bid to identify their actions. But we should not loose sight that the actions of the herbs are more than just physical. Going back to the traditional herbal textbooks and the original art of medicine, where mental and physical health is inseparable, is a good place to start.