50 Scientific Studies on Yoga

This section provides an opportunity to share scientific articles and studies that shine some light on how Yin Yoga affects us. When you post a link to a study or article here, please include one or two paragraphs summarizing the important findings and/or provide the salient quotation from the article. Please do not simply cut and paste the whole study: provide only links and your summary.
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Bernie
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Joined: Sat Sep 23, 2006 2:25 am
Location: Vancouver

50 Scientific Studies on Yoga

Post by Bernie »

Julia Belluz on July 22, 2015 published an article describing the results of her review of 50 studies that looked at yoga. Her conclusions were that yoga has not been proven to be effective at fixing all the health problems it has claimed to be able to fix, but this doesn't mean it can't be helpful in some cases. Here is her summary:
  • What we know:

    Yoga is probably just as good for your health as many other forms of exercise. But it seems particularly promising for improving lower back pain and — crucially — reducing inflammation in the body, which can actually help stave off disease. Yoga also seems to enhance "body awareness," or people's sense of what's going on inside themselves.

    What we don't know:

    Whether some forms of yoga are better than others, whether yoga should be prescribed to people for various health conditions, and how yoga compares with other forms of exercise for a good many specific health outcomes. There's also no good evidence behind many of the supposed health benefits of yoga, like flushing out toxins and stimulating digestion.

Part of the challenge, which I have mentioned in the past, is defining what we mean by yoga and how to measure it. Yoga is not just stretching, and a 6 week or even 6 month trial comparing yoga to other forms of exercise may not be sufficient to really allow the yoga to work its magic. This is recognized in her article:
  • Lorenzo Cohen, chief of the integrative medicine section at MD Anderson Cancer Center, told me: "Many papers [on yoga] don't have enough of an in-depth description of what they mean by 'yoga.' What was the level of training of yoga therapists? How did they choose different postures or breathing exercises?"
I encourage you to read the whole article to get a good balance of what science can say, and what it can't say (yet) about yoga's benefits.
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