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Project Susthiti — healing our Covid caregivers with Music Therapy
and Yoga Therapy

Arnab Bishnu Chowdhury, Dr. Bhalendu Vaishnav, Sevastiana Korotynskaia,
Karen Miscall-Bannon

Abstract
The Covid pandemic has opened up new challenges for healthcare systems, for care receivers
and caregivers. Often, we tend to forget the wellness and well-being of the caregivers, better
known as the Covid Warriors since our focus is on the care receiver. Caregivers need healing to
raise their well-being and wellness so that they can raise their caregiving capacity. As a response,
Project Susthiti designed and offered a programme blending Yoga Therapy and Music Therapy
to help the Covid Warriors battle stress and burn-out. Our uniqueness lies in composing original
Raga-based music tapping into the framework of rasas and ragas based on the requirements of the
a
Covid Warriors working in Covid wards and applying our music to induce deep relaxation, rest
and sleep. 280 Covid Warriors received our 3-hour online programme. Our first pilot-study was
conducted at Sri Pramukshwami Medical College, Anand, Gujarat and it was presented as an oral
paper at the 5th Medicine Annual Conference Virtual 2020, Department of Medicine, Christian Medical
College, Vellore in November 2020. Sixty-eight percent of the participants recorded significant
change in alertness followed by calmness and control over anger.

Grasping the challenges

In late May 2020, during the peak of the first
Covid wave in India, a resident doctor from a
well-known public hospital called and informed
that a couple of young doctors serving the
Covid ward had attempted to commit suicide.
Luckily, they were saved. This got us thinking
that Covid healthcare workers are human
beings and therefore they too need healing and
care, so that they can become better caregivers.
Our argument was, if the caregivers are not in a

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