We’ve updated the yogatherapy.health Research page with new studies, which you can browse by area of concern. The list emphasizes good-quality reviews and randomized controlled trials, and each entry includes a brief overview and a link to the primary source.

Why study yoga?

If you’ve practiced yoga for any significant length of time, you’ve likely experienced some notable effects. Given the undeniable changes people experience in their bodies, minds, and emotions, they sometimes ask why formal scientific research is even necessary. What can a randomized controlled trial (the gold standard of research) or a systematic review (which considers a number of studies together) tell us that we can’t discern by carefully examining our own lived experience?

“There is a common misperception…that research is too reductionist for application to holistic practice and whole-person approaches,” wrote Steffany Moonaz, PhD, C-IAYT, Pamela Jeter, PhD, and Laura Schmalzl, PhD, C-IAYT, in “The Importance of Research Literacy for Yoga Therapists,” in the 2017 volume of the International Journal of Yoga Therapy. Although individual studies cannot possibly cover all aspects of a holistic practice like yoga therapy, “these contribute to a larger body of evidence that points towards broader trends. Taken as a whole, the research literature is stronger and more relevant than any single study alone.” The take-home message: Dive in and devote some time to understanding the work that’s been done in your chosen area. The U.S. National Library of Medicine’s PubMed index is a reliable source for expanding beyond the listings on yogatherapy.health. Ideally you’ll come back to your searches again and again—with a mind open to new evidence.

Our own perceptions can hinder our ability to take in new information that contradicts what we think we already know, another key reason we need the information supplied by structured research. Yoga itself aims to help us to see more clearly, without the inaccurate film of our own projections over our eyes, so studying the practices with the scientific method is a yogic thing to do!

Scholars like those at the Symposium on Yoga Research offer another compelling reason to study contemplative practices such as yoga: More study can ultimately help to improve access to these health-promoting skills for people who are suffering.

Visit our Research page to check out the range of areas in which yoga has been formally studied—you may be surprised!