The Science of Yoga

individuals interested in yoga cures and instruction, especially young people. The ashram, he declared in a veiled reference to the Hindu drive for independence, would excel at “sending out youths that will selflessly help the building of their nation.”
    For nearly a half century, Gune worked with missionary zeal to direct scores of scientists who wrote hundreds of pioneering reports, helping to recast the ancient discipline as a boon for health and fitness. His toils won the admiration of Gandhi, Nehru, and many other stars of the independence movement, as well as major gurus who spread the reformulated yoga around the globe. And he did it all with a curious mix of pride and bravado, humility and innocence.
    “He never wanted people to honor him,” O. P. Tiwari, secretary of the ashram, told me as monsoon rains fell outside his office window. “He never wanted that people would give him credit—would say he had done a great work.”
    Most surprising of all, Gune came to his scientific passion not as a scientist or a physician. In terms of credentials, he was nothing close to a respected von Török, a lowly Paul, or even a student who had majored in the sciences. Nor did he have any money. What he did have—in spades—was the confidence of the independence movement.
    Gune (1883–1966) had grown up north of Bombay in an area that became a hotbed of the insurrection. An orphan at fourteen, he threw himself into the nationalist struggle. He eagerly read Kesari (or Lion ), a populist newspaper that urged a fallen people to boycott British goods and influence, to educate themselves, and to strive for self-rule. As a young man, he resolved to devote himself to the cause of Indian freedom through national and religious service. He vowed to remain celibate, to forgo a family, and never to serve the British. Instead of British-made textiles, he wore khadi, or homespun cloth. At one point, he roamed from village to village usingthe medium of Hindu music and song to spread Kesari ’s message of independence.
    His big opportunity arrived when a wealthy industrialist hired Gune for a teaching job at one of his pro-independence schools. Gune rose quickly. By 1920, his patron put him in charge of a small college. But Gune found himself out on the street in 1923 when authorities shut down the college for agitating against British rule.
    His benefactor again came to the rescue. This time he gave Gune a large donation that let the jobless educator take the biggest step of his life and found the scientific ashram.
    In his research, Gune made up for lost time, publishing a flurry of findings in Yoga Mimansa. Its language was English, signaling its wide target audience. He presented two studies in 1924, six in 1925, four in 1926, seven in 1927, and so on. Early on, he performed more than a dozen X-ray studies of yogis in various states of contortion. This surge was unique for the day.
    “We cannot make even a single statement,” Gune boasted, “without having scientific evidence to support it.” That, of course, was a fairy tale. But it showed the depth of his enthusiasm.
    The yoga taught at the ashram had been carefully repackaged. No untidiness was tolerated, nor ashes nor unkempt hair. Everything was squeaky clean—like science itself. Yoga’s unsavory aspects had suddenly vanished.
    Throughout his career, Gune maintained a virtual taboo on the word “Tantra”—the parent of Hatha that Hindu nationalists had come to abhor. Students heard nothing about thrills similar to “the bliss experienced in sexual orgasm,” as White had put it. They got no tips about extended lovemaking, as the Hatha Yoga Pradipika had instructed. All that was off the public agenda. The reformulated program had to do with giving yoga a bright new face that radiated with science and hygiene, health and fitness.
    Gune’s investigations could be quite technical, despite his lack of formal scientific education. An early one centered on high blood pressure. The question was whether the risks of challenging poses outweighed the benefits. To study the problem, Gune had eleven students do the Headstand and the Shoulder Stand, two of yoga’s most demanding poses.

    Headstand, Sirsasana
    Inversions, by definition, can unnerve. Quitesuddenly, new students find their worlds upended and their hearts racing. Once beginners have achieved a measure of skill and confidence, however, they tend to find the poses strangely relaxing or, at other times,