Psyche of Parkinson's Disease: A Yoga Perspective

Individuals' perceptions and beliefs generate and reflect streams of thoughts. Yoga philosophy states that theses thought patterns may lead an individual to manifest particular disease/s or to those diseases following different illness trajectories. This study is designed to survey the existence of particular streams of thought patterns among individuals throughout New Zealand who have been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. These people diagnosed with Parkinson's and without the condition registered with Parkinson's New Zealand will be invited to self-complete a questionnaire. The questions will ask how frequently they have particular types of thoughts. The responses will be analyzed to test hypotheses about thought patterns that are correlated with Parkinson's and its distribution by age, sex and disease severity. The control group will make it possible to determine whether particular thoughts precede or follow the progression of the disease. Therefore, exploring associations between thoughts in particular areas and disease and thereby scrutinize claims of the Yoga philosophy. However, the findings may generate hypotheses for future testing, for example via cohort studies.