The Cost-Effectiveness
of Yoga Therapy:

For the past 27 years, Dr. Dean Ornish has been directing a series of clinical trials proving that a Yoga-based program of comprehensive lifestyle changes--based on Sri Gurudev's teachings--can reverse the progression of even severe coronary heart disease. Dr. Ornish, who is founder and president of the non-profit Preventive Medicine Research Institute (PMRI), and clinical professor of medicine at the University of California (UCSF), San Francisco, was a longtime close personal friend and student of Sri Gurudev. Here, he discusses his latest research which continues to place him in the forefront of his field.

Dean Ornish: Beginning in 1993, my colleagues and I at PMRI began training hospitals around the country to show that people in other parts of the United States could do it as well as in California and that this approach was medically effective and cost-effective. We now have data on more than 2,000 patients who have gone through these hospital-based programs.

In brief, we found bigger changes in diet and lifestyle and better improvements in clinical outcomes, by far, than had ever before been shown. Mutual of Omaha, for example, saved almost $30,000 per patient. And, Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield of Pennsylvania found that they cut their medical costs by fifty percent in one year. Based on these findings, Medicare is now completing a demonstration project in the hospitals we trained...