The Science of Yoga

action, uplifting. Chest is open. Your shoulders are back. Let your breath flow as freely as possible. Good.”
    The patient had her eyes closed, concentrating, lifting and stretching. Her usual list to the left was somewhat diminished. She smiled.
    Elsewhere, the room pulsed. A man in the class had, like me, herniated the disk that lies between the fourth and fifth lumbar vertebrae. Fishman had him doing a series of spinal extensions and elongations, and had the visiting yoga teacher shower him with attention.
    As for himself, Fishmanworked with a group of three women who, he said, had various kinds of abdominal problems. One suffered from prolapse—a condition where the uterus falls out of place, descending from the pelvis into the vagina. Normally, the muscles and ligaments of the pelvic floor hold the uterus in place. Uterine prolapse occurs when the muscles and ligaments weaken and stretch, undoing the usual support. Treatments include surgery, exercise, lifestyle changes, and a device worn inside the vagina that props up the uterus. Fishman took a direct approach that addressed the roots of the problem by seeking to strengthen core muscles and abdominal support.
    He showed the women how to do a variation of the Warrior pose, or Virabhadrasana. From a standing position, he moved one foot forward and the other back, raised his arms straight up, and bent his forward knee. The result was the slow lowering of his pelvis as well as the stretching of his legs and abdomen. “Then you come down,” Fishman said, dropping the thigh so low that it formed a right angle with the back. “Like this.” He stretched his arms high up and his pelvis down low. Then the women tried.

    Warrior, Virabhadrasana
    Fishman moved among them,offering words of advice, encouragement, and—sparingly—praise. He exuded confidence and encouraged them to try hard. “Stretch up as high as you can,” he urged, “stretching way up, way up. Good.”
    After a pause, Fishman led the women into another Warrior variant. It required not only stretching but balance. From the first pose, he had them stand on one leg while raising the rear leg to a horizontal position and lowering the arms and torso. It was like Superman flying with one leg extended straight down. Fishman moved among the women, offering alignment tips. “Bring this hip down,” he told one woman, lightly touching the hip. She 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