The Science of Yoga

exactly because it was easy to lose track of time.
    Science is turning a new generation of imaging machines on these uncommon states in an effort to learn more about their characteristics and better understand the human sexual experience.
    A pioneer is Barry Komisaruk, one of the first scientists to look into the neurophysiology of orgasm. The Rutgers professor worked with two female colleagues to publish the think-off study in 1992, and over the years has sought to map the neural aspects of sexuality, writing more than one hundred papers. His long interest resulted in an understated book, The Science of Orgasm , published in 2006 by Johns Hopkins University Press. By then, Komisaruk was not only doing research and teaching but was named associate dean of the graduate school.
    Relatively late in his career, Komisaruk began using a new means of investigation that went far beyond the EEG in revealing how orgasms light up the brain. The technique, known as functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, or functional MRI, showed changes in cerebral blood flow and thus neuralactivity. By the 1990s, functional MRI had come to dominate the world of brain mapping because of its easy operation, wide availability, and clear data. Its pictures showed the overall brain in grayish tones and areas of heightened activity lit up in oranges and yellows.
    From his laboratory in New Jersey, Komisaruk began using the machine in the late 1990s to better understand the workings of neurophysiology and orgasm. By 2003, still fascinated by the think-off women of more than a decade earlier, he began a new round of experimentation meant to explore what functional MRI might reveal about their spontaneous orgasms as well as fundamental aspects of human sexuality.
    Much good science gets done by eliminating the jumble of confusing variables that surround most aspects of nature. That is what Dostálek and the Russians did in examining the physiological repercussions of a single yoga pose. Komisaruk was attracted to the think-off women for the same reason. Spontaneous orgasms seemed to represent the human climactic experience shorn of the confusing variables of sensory input and muscular contraction. For brain imaging, that meant the sensory and motor cortex would stay grayish, as would most other regions of the brain normally involved in the human interaction with the external world. In theory, the functional MRI would show the purely limbic parts of the experience. Of course, women having orgasms without touching themselves might eventually shudder with pleasure, as the 1992 study had shown. But the commotion might start relatively late in the arousal. In theory, the new line of experimentation promised to produce what Komisaruk called a “cleaner picture” of orgasm and an opportunity to better understand its nature.
    In 2003, upon examining the first images, Komisaruk was pleased to see confirmation of the study’s conclusions from a decade earlier. The pleasure centers of the women’s brains lit up more or less identically whether they reached their orgasmic highs by means of physical stimulation or simply thinking off. Different paths led to the same outcome.
    The challenge was getting enough volunteers. A good study would require a fair number of subjects—all of them possessing a rare talent largely unknown to the world at large. The recruiting job required a light touch, good connections, and a bit of astute salesmanship. After all, what woman was eager to lie down on a hard table under the glare of fluorescent lights andhave her head zapped by a giant donut-shaped magnet while attempting to let go?
    It was a difficult proposition at best—difficult, that is, until Nan Wise came along. Nan Wise is an attractive sex therapist and yoga teacher whom Komisaruk got to know when she went back to school at Rutgers after raising two children. Studying yoga and learning how to pay close attention to the energy currents in her body had turned her into a skilled practitioner of thinking off, and she agreed to a functional MRI scan when Komisaruk asked her. “It’s the least sexy thing in the world,” she told me. “But I do it for science.”
    By early 2010, Komisaruk and Wise had succeeded in doing preliminary scans on half a dozen volunteers. Head movement turned out to be a significant issue. The orgasms that Wise herself experienced while in the machine had resulted in virtually no head motion and thus very clear images. But other think-off