NEW DELHI, INDIA, April 19, 2002: India’s military research industry is to launch experiments with yoga to sharpen the skills of troops in modern warfare and help cope with the stress of battling domestic insurgencies. For the first time journalists were taken on a tour of one of the military’s top research facilities, the Defence Institute of Physiology and Allied Sciences. It was set up after 1962 when Indian troops were badly mauled in a border battle with China. Besides yoga and novel cures for mountain ailments, the institute is also on the verge of patenting a water-cooled combat suit for high-temperature battlefields. Chief scientist W Selvamurthy said research into yoga had shown the ancient discipline to be more effective than routine physical exercises as it could be practiced on a glacier, in the confines of submarines or even a battle tank. “Yoga reduces wear and tear of the heart and on our objective scientific scales we have seen it produce mental tranquility, greater alertness, flexibility and enhanced tolerance to cold.” Experiments so far have been conducted on groups of 60 volunteers.
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