According to a new study, practicing yoga or meditation can help reduce healthcare costs by as much as 50 per cent for the people.

The study conducted by researchers at the Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital Institute for Technology Assessment and the Benson-Henry Institute, showed that yoga and meditation can keep you healthy and reduces spending on healthcare. The study said that the practices like relaxation response or deep rest can help avoid stress and anxiety and help maintain a healthy heart rate and blood pressure.

Researcher James E Stahl said, “Our study's primary finding is that programs that train patients to elicit the relaxation response can also dramatically reduce health care utilisation. These programs promote wellness and in our environment of constrained health care resources, could potentially ease the burden on our health delivery systems at minimal cost and at no real risk.”

The researchers conducted a comparative study of data available on Research Patient Data Registry (RPDR) of Partners HealthCare and data on individuals participating in the BHI Relaxation Response Resiliency Program (3RP) from the year 2006 to 2014. They found that practitioners of yoga, meditation, prayer spent a much lower amount on medical costs compared to those who did not practice.