• International Yoga Day highlights yoga's potential to reduce opioid dependence, offering a low-cost, low-risk adjunct therapy.  

• Dr. Hemant Bhargav from NIMHANS developed a yoga module, supported by the Science and Technology of Yoga and Meditation (SATYAM) program, aimed at reducing opioid use and withdrawal symptoms.

• Mechanism and Benefits: Yoga increases brain levels of gamma-aminobutyric acid and oxytocin, aiding withdrawal management, relapse prevention, and enhancing self-regulation and prefrontal activation.

• Preliminary studies, including a 9-month follow-up, showed yoga's feasibility. 

• A randomized controlled trial with 60 subjects revealed that yoga practitioners had 2.68 times higher chances of negative urine screening for opioids than an exercise group.

• The study results were as follows:

1. The yoga group experienced significant reductions in pain, craving, anxiety, depression and improvements in sleep quality and overall life quality.

2. Yoga reduced craving-related brain activity in regions linked to stress and salience, indicating its potential to mitigate opioid dependence.

• Yoga proved to be an effective supplementary tool to enhance abstinence, reduce opioid use severity, and improve the well-being of these patients.

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