The Science of Yoga

of Buddhism to be false, “then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.”
    Another encouraging sign is that government authorities in the United States and elsewhere have started to fund the science of yoga, mainly as a means of evaluating the discipline’s potential for disease prevention and treatment. The goal is to document the true benefits. In Bethesda, Maryland, the National Institutes of Health, the world’s premier organization for health-care research, is spending money and raising standards. It began funding yoga research in 1998 and has now paid for dozens of studies, including investigations of yoga’s ability to treat arthritis, insomnia, diabetes, depression, fatigue, and chronic pain. Many of these studies appeared since I began my inquiry in 2006, suggesting that the pace of scientific research is quickening. The wave tends to be high quality, helping raise yoga’s social credibility.
    These public investments are starting to pay off in terms of treatments and insights, as suggested by some of the most interesting reports in this book. The Institutes funded the hypertension study in Pennsylvania, the cardiovascular study in Virginia, the telomere study in California, the aerobics study in New York, the neurotransmitter study in Boston, the right-brain study in Philadelphia, and the musician study in Massachusetts, among other projects. Such inquiries are revealing true paths to a better future.
    In 2011, the Institutes began a new cycle of studies, despite increasingly tight budgets. They include yoga for cancer survivors, for adults who suffer persistent depression,and for elderly women at risk of cardiovascular disease.
    Opponents of federal research love to disparage yoga investigations as extravagant wastes of taxpayer money. In 2005, Human Events , a conservative journal, ridiculed yoga studies as symptomatic of the “bloated bureaucracy syndrome.” Such criticism is likely to grow in the years ahead as political battles heat up in Washington over how to reduce the federal budget deficit.
    It follows that the public funding of yoga research, without concerted advocacy, is unlikely to see significant increases anytime soon. Wherever you live—in the United States or elsewhere—it seems like a good time to write your representatives or take other steps to bring the merits of yoga studies to the attention of public officials. In 2011, the amount of money that the National Institutes of Health spent on yoga research amounted to about $7 million. That’s too small to qualify as even a drop in Washington’s bucket. It’s nearly invisible. A much larger investment seems wise, given that yoga’s demonstrated skills at disease prevention might result in savings of billions of dollars in traditional health-care costs. The outlay is highly leveraged, as actuaries like to say.
    As a society, we are learning that extended old age can mean extended pain and debilitation, with worn-out organs and crippling dementias turning the twilight years into tragedies. Yoga seems to hold out the promise of increasing not only our life spans but our health spans. It may be part of the answer to enhancing not just the quantity of life but its quality, to helping us remain healthy for a longer period of time, to making our last years more vital and productive. That promise seems like a wonderful topic for a serious program of research.
    The stakes go far beyond practicalities. One of the most interesting frontiers has little or nothing to do with expediency and everything to do with simple understanding.
    What if Paul had been able to do a few brain scans and other measurements while the Punjab yogi sat in his deathlike trance? What new science might have emerged? Is disanimate bliss a human birthright? Is the euphoric trance safe? Can it spiral into madness? Does it make you a better person? Can it improve how we treat one another?
    Science fiction with its portrayals of long space fights that feature coffinlike freezers and frozen astronauts may be passé. Perhaps human hibernation—as Pauldescribed it more than a century and a half ago—is the right way to go. Maybe future astronauts will slip into a Full Lotus when voyaging between the stars.
    We have yet to address scientifically—much less begin to unravel—such questions. At a minimum, a deeper understanding of yoga has humanitarian implications ranging from practical therapies for people caught in kundalini’s coils to