Airing Pain

This edition has been funded by a grant from the Scottish Government. We hear about two very different ways of giving people in pain the knowledge and power to help themselves. Will we soon be able to get a prescription of yoga on the NHS? Christine Johnson speaks to yoga teacher Anna Semlyen about a study that shows yoga can be an effective and cost-effective treatment for chronic low back pain. Semlyen, who helped design the programme used by the research trial, recalls how she has seen people get back into gardening or extreme sports after taking up yoga. The research study found a similar effect among the group of patients using yoga: reduced levels of disability and fewer days off work compared to the control group. Not only is this a low-tech and cheap treatment, but it’s also empowering, argues Semlyen, as it lets people ‘be their own healers’. ‘How are you?’ Three little words often dreaded by people in pain. Gareth Parsons explains to Paul Evans why these simple social rituals can be so dif