The Science of Yoga

move through its usual range of motion. It was a huge relief.
    The results were surprising. Fishman and his aides published them so other health professionals could learn the trick.
    I asked where else yoga could heal.
    Fishman said it excelled in such things as osteoporosis—the disease of the bone that removes minerals and leads to increased risk of fracture. It often strikes older women and, without pain or symptoms or diagnosis, lies behind millions of fractures of the hip, spine, and wrist. Yoga stretching, he said, worked beautifully to stimulate the rebuilding of the bone. It happened at a molecular level. Stress on a bone prompted it to grow denser and stronger in the way that best counteracted the stress. Fishman said that for three years he had been conducting a study to find out which poses worked best to stimulate the rejuvenation.
    “It’s a big thing,” he said of the disease. “Two hundred million women in the world have it and most can’t afford the drugs,” some of which produce serious side effects. By contrast, Fishman enthused, “Yoga is free” and completely natural.
    “There are bad things in yoga,” he volunteered. But not enough to outweigh the benefits.
    Fishman knew the dark side in detail, it turned out. He told me about an injury survey thathe and his colleagues were doing—the one based at the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons that documented hundreds of yoga injuries, including strokes.
    On the plus side, Fishman said, yoga excelled at fighting the stiffness of arthritis. The inflammation and tight joints restrict movement, and yoga worked to increase the range of motion. As was his habit, Fishman had written a book about it, Yoga for Arthritis.
    How often do you prescribe yoga for your patients?
    Twice this morning, Fishman replied.
    A woman in her late thirties had severe osteoporosis. The loss of bone mineral had weakened her frame and she had broken her foot four times doing exercises. Fishman prescribed a series of yoga stretches to be done flat on her back, lessening the chance of spinal fracture and providing a stimulus to help bring back the minerals.
    Another woman, in her early forties, had severe neck pain. She also suffered from degeneration of the macula—the highly sensitive part of the retina responsible for central vision. Fishman suspected that her poor eyesight had caused her, a stock trader, to hold her head jutting forward and to the side all day long in an unnatural position that had resulted in her neck troubles. He prescribed yoga positions in which she would lie on her stomach and raise her head up and backward—the motion opposite of her daily grind. He said it would strengthen her neck and counteract the degeneration, letting the damaged tissues heal.
    “I prescribe a lot,” Fishman said. He had an unfair advantage over most yoga therapists, he added, because he could use all the diagnostic tools of modern medicine to pinpoint the problem, after which he could come up with yogic remedies of unusual specificity.
    “A lot of yoga therapists don’t have that ability,” Fishman said. “They treat in a very generic fashion that can be dangerous.”
    The woman that morning with the neck pains illustrated the importance of good diagnostics, he said. An electromyogram revealed nerve damage in her neck and allowed him to prescribe the right physical treatment. By contrast, a diagnosis that was more informal might have blundered into a yoga treatment with false promise and possibly bad side effects.
    Fishman said he never distributed handouts showing yoga postures, though sometimes he handedout yoga books. Instead, he said he gave out prescriptions of the kind used for drugs and medicines. But instead of writing down names of pills, he drew pictures.
    He searched his desk, found a pad, and sketched away. After a minute, he showed the results. It was a three-step plan for battling spinal stenosis—the condition that had struck Glenn Black, where the spinal canal narrows, causing serious problems.
    His sketch featured happy little stick men. The first stood, arms out, and the next frame showed it bent over sideways, hand to foot. The second sat upright on the floor with one leg stretched out and an arm reaching back in a spinal twist. The third lay flat and lifted the legs with a belt. The stick figures were informative but only rough outlines. Fishman said his usual method was to go over the details with patients.
    Every Tuesday in the late