The Science of Yoga

eight meditators showed an increased flow of blood in the right thalamus. The pair of small organs above the brain stem and below the corpus callosum relay sensory messages to the outer brain and the hypothalamus—the control center of the autonomic nervous system and the body’s metabolic pitch.
    Newberg and colleagues presented a more detailed portrait in 2007, drawing on results with twelve meditators and a control group. Here, too, the scientists found increased activity in the right thalamus.
    Yoga eventually caught Newberg’s eye. He did a preliminary study that involved two men and two women, their mean age forty-five. None of the subjects had significant experience in yoga or meditation, and all underwent three months ofIyengar training. The subjects performed their yoga routines daily, initially with a teacher and eventually at home with a DVD. The routine ran for roughly an hour and consisted of more than a dozen poses, including the Downward Facing Dog (Adho Mukha Svanasana) and the Seated Forward Bend with Bent Leg (Janu Sirsasana). The students also did rhythmic breathing in the form of Ujjayi pranayama as well as progressive relaxation and meditation.

    Seated Forward Bend with Bent Leg, Janu Sirsasana
    The scientists scanned the brains of the subjects at the start of the three months and at the end. In 2009, Newberg and six colleagues reported the results. “We found greater overall activations in the right hemisphere rather than the left,” the scientists wrote. The areas of heightened blood flow included the frontal lobe, the seat of higher consciousness, and the prefrontal cortex, the well-developed region of the brain that distinguishes humans from other mammals. Both areas are important to setting and achieving goals, such as accomplishing the precise limb rearrangements of Iyengar yoga.
    In closing, the investigators added that scientists in the future would have to conduct more thorough studies to sharpen their understanding and discover which parts of the typical yoga routine most influenced the rightward shift.
    Over the decades, science has identified another aspect of hemispheric specialization that appears to bear strongly on the issue of creativity as well as the artistic lifestyle—if such a thing exists. The evidence suggests that the right hemisphere orchestrates not only emotion and spatial reasoning but the primal rumblings of sex.
    The clues emerged asneuroscientists moved from electroencephalograms to scans that let them see heightened activity in the deep recesses of the brain. The studies linked sexual excitement to the lighting up of the right hemisphere and in particular its frontal and prefrontal areas. In seeking to explain the findings, scientists proposed that the frontal regions of the brain were producing the racy images and thoughts basic to sexual arousal—the glitter of daydream and desire, memory and fantasy. The studies indicated that the frontal regions tended to retain their glow even as levels of sexual excitement rose and (in step with fast breathing and other physical accelerations) the brain shifted its overall emphasis from cortical to limbic control.
    While the association of sex and artistry may be new to neuroscience, it is extremely old stuff for the world at large and long predates Freud’s theories about sexual energy being a stimulus to creativity. Indeed, the portraits of artists so regularly depict them as beholden to Eros that the image of promiscuity is a literary cliché. The list of the famously profligate includes not only Garbo and Stokowski but Oscar Wilde, Modigliani, Dylan Thomas, Jack Kerouac, Goya, Picasso, Marlon Brando, Hemingway, Frida Kahlo, and hundreds of others. The free spirits are seen as embracing whatever comes their way, be it lovers, food, or intellectual passions.
    Science has addressed the issue and found evidence that supports the risqué stereotype. In 2006, the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London , one of the world’s most venerable journals, reported on a study of four hundred and twenty-five British men and women. The inquiry categorized the levels of creativity among the subjects into four groupings—none, hobby, serious, and professional. The scientists found that the serious artists and poets on average had twice as many sex partners as the less creative types. Moreover, the professional artists tended to have the most lovers of all.
    What all this means for yoga is unclear. The complexities of the