The Science of Yoga

variety that formed early in the twentieth century under the influence of science might be called Yoga 2.0. Now Yoga 2.5 or even 3.0 seems to be in the works, judging from the advent of many vigorous styles and the wide efforts of yoga professionals to make their discipline safer. In the future, Yoga 4.0 may yet emerge, quite different from anything we can now imagine.
    A first step in yoga’s wider development centers on addressing the threat that practitioners face right now—the lack of reliable information about the discipline’s pros and cons. Increasingly, it seems like the din of competing styles, the rise of new commercial ventures, and the inchoate nature of Yoga 3.0 are adding to the confusion. I have tried my best to clarify the situation with this book (and its suggestions for further reading and detailed notes). But there’s still a long way to go—and a lot more that can be done—to help make trustworthy information more widely available.
    One problem is the diffuse nature of the existing science. It seems fairly unique in havingbeen done in so many places over such a long period of time. In my travels, I was impressed at how experts had assembled troves of books and papers. The Ponds in Canada, Sat Bir Khalsa in Boston, Mel Robin in Pennsylvania, Gune’s ashram south of Bombay, and PubMed in Bethesda have all assembled much good information on the science of yoga. But they all seem to have different pieces of the puzzle. And I suspect there are many more out there waiting to be uncovered, examined, and shaped into a comprehensive body of knowledge.
    If I could snap my fingers and make it happen, I would establish a Yoga Education Society that took on the job of pulling all the information together and making it publicly available. YES could become not only a central repository but an impartial voice that summarized the information, giving practitioners a good place to go for reliable assessments. YES could also act as a force to counteract the growing waves of commercial spin and help raise the visibility of yoga benefits that seem to get relatively little attention, such as the discipline’s promise as an antidepressant, a sex therapy, and a stimulus to creativity.
    If I have been hard on yoga commercialization, it is because the trend raises fundamental questions that seldom get addressed. Today, as always, yoga has no social mechanism that sifts through the numerous claims to ascertain the truth, and the commercial blitz with its dynamic goals and competitive agenda seems to make that weakness all the more glaring. Imagine if Big Pharma had no Food and Drug Administration and other regulatory agencies looking over its shoulder. The marketing of fake diseases and bogus cures—already a multibillion-dollar embarrassment despite all the bureaucratic scrutiny—would be much worse.
    Yoga seems to be moving toward that kind of predatory behavior as it grows into a bustling industry. Of course, commercial ventures can also perform wonderful acts of public service. Witness the free event with all the yogis in Central Park. But what they do best is promote their own interests and welfare.
    To me, the great hope of improvement centers on expansions of scientific research and the rise of the kinds of thoughtful individuals profiled in this book. They are busy combining yoga and science, leaving behind the ambivalence of recent decades and looking ahead. The group represents a vanguard of forward thinkers with serious degrees, serious interests, and—perhaps most important—the serious credibility required to raise the discipline’s standing. They are changing both what yoga is and our understanding of what it can do.
    The decades between the founding of Gune’s ashram and the publication of Light on Yoga bore witness to a radical shift of perspective. Yoga, instead of looking to gurus and antiquity for guidance, looked to science. But that bond weakened over the years. As a result, yoga’s primal attitudes often reasserted themselves.
    Today, it seems that the relationship between science and yoga is ripe for revitalization. I take heart not only from the new generation of scientific yogis but from the declarations of respected authorities such as the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader. In his book The Universe in a Single Atom , he writes that “spirituality must be tempered by the insights and discoveries of science.” Remarkably, he even states that if science found particular tenets