The Science of Yoga

Tanglewood asked for more. He and Kripalu responded with an expanded study. The young musicians who immersed themselves in yoga, meditation, and Kripalu numbered thirty. And it turned out that their two months of summer practice lifted moods even higher.
    In 2009, Khalsa and colleagues reported that the yogi musicians, compared to a control group, showed strong evidence of not only less performance anxiety but significantly less anger, depression, and general anxiety and tension. They loved it, like their predecessors.
    Moreover, the scientists tracked down the students a year after the summer program and asked if their lives had changed. Most reported that they had continued doing yoga and meditation, and all said the experience had improved their performance skills.
    The portrait of yoga that emerges from decades of mood and metabolic studies is of a discipline that succeeds brilliantly at smoothing the ups and downs of emotional life. It uses relaxation, breathing, and postures to bring about an environment of inner bending and stretching. The actions echo, in a way, how yoga pushes the limbs into challenging new configurations. They promote inner flexibility. As Robin observed, a good workout involves repeatedly pressing the accelerator and brake. Ironically, the overall result is a smoother ride.
    No studies have examined the most extreme consequences. But the current evidence seems to suggest that yoga can reduce despair and hopelessness to the point of saving lives. You cannot read Weintraub’s book and learn the details of her turbulent past— cannot watch her doing Breath of Joy, her face lit from within—without feeling the positive force of life affirmation.
    If science reveals that yoga can excel at emotional uplift, it also shows that the discipline has a downside. It can do great harm.

IV
RISK OF INJURY
    I t is no surprise that a field that prides itself on the routine performance of twists, contortions, and dramatic bends of the human body can do a lot of damage. In a similar vein, it makes sense that circus performers—including tumblers and acrobats—also suffer high rates of impairment, and that running, bicycling, and other vigorous sports can result in painful accidents. Even so, yoga injuries are unsettling because of the discipline’s image as a path to exceptional health. Many people turn to yoga as a gentle alternative to exercises that leave them hurt or intimidated. The idea of damage also runs counter to yoga’s reputation for healing and its promotion of superior levels of fitness and well-being. Few practitioners anticipate strokes and dislocations, dead nerves and ruptured lungs.
    The good reputation of yoga rests in no small part on the public silence of the gurus. Their virtual ban on the word “injury” made the topic of blinding pain and physical damage almost as unmentionable as Hatha’s origins. Gune made no allusion to injuries in Yoga Mimansa or his book Asanas. Indra Devi avoided the issue in Forever Young , as did Iyengar in Light on Yoga. Silence about injury or strong reassurances about yoga safety also prevailed in the how-to books of Swami Sivananda, K. Pattabhi Jois, and Bikram Choudhury. In general, the famous gurus tend to describe yoga as a nearly miraculous agent of renewal. As one, they imply or state explicitly that ages of practice have shown the discipline to be free of hidden danger.
    “Real yoga is as safe as mother’s milk,” declared Swami Gitananda (1907–1993), a popular guru who made ten world tours and founded ashrams on multiple continents.
    Modern physicians, on the other hand, have taken an almost malicious delight in recounting the self-inflicted wounds of yoga practitioners and warning of danger,doing so in dozens of reports. Perhaps they are jealous of the admiration accorded to yoga teachers and get a thrill out of challenging yoga’s mystique. Some have gone so far as to condemn yoga as intrinsically unsafe. What takes the edge off some of this criticism—especially during its first appearance—is how it often revealed a lack of deep knowledge about the workings of yoga but nonetheless managed to strike a tone of icy condescension. Even so, the medical professionals lavished attention on yogis who stumbled into their offices and emergency rooms writhing in pain, and wrote up detailed clinical reports on the accidents and injuries.
    Like stones cast into a pond, these disclosures produced waves of reaction that in time affected the