The Science of Yoga

quickly rotated her hips into a horizontal plane.
    “Good. With the hip down, raise the leg up.” He put his hand under her leg, signaling how he wanted her to raise it, and she gave a little moan at the effort. “See what you’re doing?” he asked. “You’re stretching everything in here”—he motioned to her lower torso—“front and back.”
    And so it went. For the better part of an hour, Fishman led the women through numerous sitting and standing poses, all aimed at stretching and strengthening their midregions. “Try to engage those muscles,” he said at one point, encouraging the women to push themselves even while paying attention to the sensations.
    Fishman closed with a meditation. It began with a few minutes of relaxed breathing with eyes shut to foster inner awareness of body position and sensation, especially in the lungs.
    “Feel on the right side and the left side,” he said. “Is it the same? Feel your shirt against your skin. Is it pushing equally? How about the tenor of your breathing? Are you a soprano or an alto or a baritone? Listen to your breathing. Don’t try to do anything. Just pay attention. How does the air go in? Both nostrils? One? Feel the bottom of your lungs, the sides, the back and front. Feel what’s going on in there—these capricious things that we need so desperately and never see.”
    Then there was quiet.
    Weeks later, I returned to Fishman’s Upper East Side office to ask some follow-up questions. He said his staff was dismantling his West Side office for a bigger space around Columbus Circle. It would have a larger room for classes, Fishman said. The yoga aspect of his practice was clearly expanding.
    He said none ofthe other doctors in his practice did yoga or prescribed it to patients. It was his specialty alone, though, he added, one of his aides and a physical therapist also studied the discipline.
    I asked how, overall, yoga had aided his practice. He said it acted as a kind of laboratory for the nurturing of physical creativity, letting him experiment on his own body and that of willing patients to discover new kinds of natural cures and therapies. Without yoga, he said, “I’d lack the most interesting, least expensive, and most helpful and versatile form of treatment that I have.”
    I asked if he had ever had surgery on his left rotator cuff. No, he answered. The yoga solution, he added, had been working just fine for seven years now.
    He held his left arm high over his head and smiled.
    To become a physician, Fishman had to undergo an ordeal of schooling and formal assessment that, in the end, gave him admission to an elite club. The first big evaluation was the U.S. Medical Licensing Examination, a series of tests taken during medical school and residency. He then earned a medical license from the State of New York and its board of medical examiners. To stay in good standing, his license required that he do fifty hours of continuing education each year. He also earned professional certifications from the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, the New York State Workers’ Compensation Board, and such professional bodies as the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.
    So, too, the physical therapists who work for Fishman are licensed through the state and the American Physical Therapy Association. These organizations require graduate degrees in physical therapy, as well as continuing education. At first the degree tended to be a master’s, but the field of late has moved rapidly toward requiring a doctorate. The course work for such a diploma is heavy in embryology and histology, anatomy and physiology, pathology and pharmacology, kinesthesiology and imaging techniques. Many states require the dissection of cadavers.
    The goal of mandatory licensure is to form groups whose members have met certain minimal requirements that—among other things—are meant to protect the public from harm. The highly regulated world of medicine is typically backed by the force of law and seeks to deter and penalize interlopers. In NewYork State, where I live, practicing medicine without a license is a felony punishable by up to four years in prison.
    What Fishman underwent to become a yoga therapist bears no resemblance. He received no formal training, earned no license, faces no requirements for continuing education, and will never confront any oversight panel or threat of reprimand and penalization. His complete freedom of activity arises not